I’ve been look­ing for a good yarn scrap project because I love the patch­work look and my yarn col­lec­tion is grow­ing at an uncon­trol­lable rate.

I came across a mitered square baby jack­et one day so I fol­lowed the link to the free pat­tern, but it involves sewing all the squares togeth­er… doable maybe for a baby jack­et but I was­n’t into sewing hun­dreds of squares togeth­er to make up a blan­ket. So I tried look­ing for visu­al tuto­ri­als for a join-as-you-go ver­sion but did­n’t come across any. After mak­ing the Ten-Stitch Blan­ket I was pret­ty sure it’s pos­si­ble to join as you go, so I tin­kered around a bit and fig­ured out a system!

Inter­est­ed in knit­ting along? :D I fig­ure if we start now, and knit one or two squares a day, we’ll have a blan­ket by Christ­mas to give away as gift! (or keep for your­self!) You can also use the idea of tem­per­a­ture blan­ket, mood blan­ket, or sky blan­ket. They’re real­ly great ideas to be mind­ful of our sur­round­ings or our feel­ings so we don’t take them for grant­ed or be unaware of how things affect us. 

Each square does­n’t take very long to make, only 23 stitch­es at its widest part, and it keeps decreas­ing as you go so it feels like it’s knit­ting up even faster. There WILL be a mil­lion ends to weave in, but I weave them in as I com­plete each square so I don’t leave them all till the end.

So! In this post we’ll show you the mate­ri­als I used, and how I made the first square. In the next few posts I will share:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make stripes!

First, we need:

24-peg loom (I got mine from this kit, it’s the small­est in the kit)

Loom pick

Bulky weight yarn or two strands of worsted held together

Stitch mark­er

Tea! (option­al but high­ly recommended)

(For the demon­stra­tion I’m going to make a hand tow­el with some worsted weight cot­ton, and for clar­i­ty pur­pose, I’m just going to use a sin­gle strand. But for the blan­ket, if you’re using worsted weight, it’s best to use 2 strands held togeth­er for the gauge of this loom.)

Before knit­ting we need to mark the mid­dle stitch. Count­ing from the first peg, which is the first peg to the right of the side knob, put the stitch mark­er on the 12th peg on the loom, like so…

Then we’re ready to cast on!

Cast on row: Make a slip knot with the yarn, adjust it to the first peg. E wrap (wrap the work­ing yarn around the peg from right to left) the first peg and knit off. Cast on the next 22 pegs by e‑wrapping each peg twice and knit the bot­tom loop over the top loop. Beware not to cast on too tightly.

Row 1: Purl (here’s a video of purl­ing) to the marked peg, e‑wrap knit the marked peg, purl to end. (Note in the pic­ture that the last peg of the loom is emp­ty — we only use 23 pegs of the loom.) Beware not to make the stitch­es too tight.

Row 2: Move the loop on the peg to the left of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Now the marked peg has 3 loops on it. 

(Always move the loop on the left first, then the one on the right, so it looks consistent.)

Move the loop on the peg to the left of the now emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg. Keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the right until you reach the begin­ning of the row.

E‑wrap and knit off each peg until you reach the marked peg. E‑wrap the marked peg, knit off all three bot­tom loops on the peg (I pre­fer knit­ting them off one at a time, it’s easier).

You will now have an emp­ty peg to the right of the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg, e‑wrap the peg and knit off. Then keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the left and e‑wrap and knit off until you reach the end of row. I find it eas­i­er to do this with the loom sit­ting flat on a surface.

And that’s it! Just repeat rows 1 and 2 until you have 3 pegs left with loops on them. (mov­ing the stitch­es is kind of tedious, appar­ent­ly there are looms with mov­ing inserts to help with this…? But I don’t have one of those looms, so this is why we only make one or two squares a day! It’s not so bad.)

Purl the last 3 loops, then move the loops to the left and right of the marked peg to the marked peg. E‑wrap and knit off the bot­tom 3 loops. Take the last loop off the peg, cut yarn, and tie off by bring­ing the yarn tail around the loop to the front, then through the loop from back to front, as pictured.

And here we have our first square! Now by always e‑wrap knit­ting the marked/middle peg, you’ll get a raised line of knit stitch­es or braid run­ning diag­o­nal­ly through the square. For my blan­ket I just purl all the pegs on the purl rows, because I can’t trust my atten­tion to always knit that one stitch on purl row and not make mis­takes. But it’s up to you!

Here’s a sneak peek of how we will join the next square, so you can see the fin­ished square. (and see? I already make a mis­take by purl­ing the marked stitch on a purl row!)

Hap­py knit­ting! I’ll be back in a few days with the next episode of join-as-you-go mitered square blan­ket! :D

 

Posts in this series:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make striped squares