Mission impossible

I have not done a lot of knitting in the past few years, for a variety of reasons. Here I am going to talk about one of them.

A couple of decades ago my mother, on her deathbed, suggested I complete a knitting project she had started. Naively I agreed to that. After she died I looked at the project and realized I might have taken on more than I could handle. It is supposed to be an afghan, measuring approximately 4.5 x 5 ft. But my mother, rather ambitiously, decided to increase the size to a queen-sized bedspread. It is knitted in strips, each strip about 7 ft long, and as many strips as it takes to cover a queen-sized bed. The strips are of two different widths, but all told two strips is about 2 ft. wide. Unfortunately, my mother purchased enough yarn for the afghan, but not enough for her queen-sized version.

My mother was a very tight knitter and I am quite loose. So my initial attempts at this project resulted in strips that did not match up at all to what she had already done (I think about 3 strips). So I kept downsizing the needles to get the right gauge. I finally got more or less the right size of needles. The pattern is very lacy, with an eight-row repeat. It takes me about 45 minutes to complete one pattern set about one foot wide and slightly over an inch high. The mind boggles at how long it might take to complete an entire bedspread at that rate, so I laughingly told people that it was most unfortunate that I did not have a daughter that I could pass this impossible project on to. Knowing that I was never going to finish this project I kind of used it as something to occupy time, without any thought of finishing it. Like playing with a Rubik's Cube if you have no talent at it or access to online solutions.

So all well and good, not a problem, after a couple of decades I now have 5 strips completed and one about half done. I easily memorized the eight-row pattern through years of repetition, so although it looks terribly complicated I can do it quite easily. Just not very fast. When I counted how many strips were done, I thought that I should start thinking about sewing them together. 

In the instructions there is a lot of detail on knitting the pattern, but only one sentence about joining the strips.

"With right side of work facing, join yarn and crochet evenly in s.s. along 2 side edges and in s.c. along top and bottom edge."

[s.s. = slip stitch and s.c. = single crochet stitch]

Holy moly, talk about over-simplification! I tried and tried to "crochet evenly" 2 side edges that did not match up, stitch for stitch. Not because of gauge or stitch size issues but purely because of the pattern. And the yarn is 3-ply, trying to keep the crochet hook from getting caught up between the plies of the yarn is almost beyond me. I tried to find a way of joining the strips without crocheting them but that was just not possible. I tried to find a way to do it relatively quickly and accurately but it was either quick or accurate, not both. In frustration I set it aside, for several years. 

I blithely continued knitting more strips, trying not to think about the fact that they needed to be joined. Someone suggested that I give up on the bedspread and just make scarves, but these scarves would be over 8 feet long, since the lacy structure makes the strips very stretchy. I also had to find more yarn identical to the yarn my mother started with. 

Fortunately, Michael's Craft Store carries it and still has the same colour lot, and there is a Michael's near where I live. I bought as much of the yarn as I figured I would need. Unfortunately, although the colour lot number is the same, there has been a bit of variation in the past couple of decades. I can see the difference in shade between the old yarn and the new. However, no matter, I am probably not going to live to see the finished product anyway, the unmatched shades will be someone else's problem.

Over the Easter long weekend I finally dragged out the two strips I had begun to crochet together and decided to try to finish it. Hey! Four-day long weekend and it's done! For the first time in years I feel like I can continue with this project, knowing that sewing together the strips is time-consuming and tedious, but not impossible.

Two joined strips

I think I need two more strips, one of which is half-done. Then crocheting 7 ft x 5 more joins = 35 ft in slip stitch and then single crochet all around the outside edges (26 ft?). I may need an additional strip, I won't know until the first seven are joined.