Men Who Knit Promoting and inspiring the art of knitting amongst men.

Febr 28, 2009: It's done! At about 6pm this evening I finished the last border fill-in section. Still have a few loose ends to weave in on the back and will do a final block after warmer weather arrives.

A fellow knitter asked me to explain how I connected the strips. I used a "three-needle join." After the shells were knitted together, using the same "three-needle join" method, I had 7 strips. I first picked up stitches along the edge of one strip - that was about 300 stitches. Then I knitted 8 rows and set that strip aside, needle and all. Then I picked up the same number of stitches on the adjacent strip and knitted 3 rows. With right sides together, I put the needles with live stitches side by side. With the third needle, I simply bound off both together. Depending on the stitch, I used garter, it can be virtually invisable. Here's a video demonstrating the technique: three-needle bind-off

Febr 18, 2009 - I finished knitting the strips together just before midnight. Actually knitting on this project 4 weeks so far. If I'm lucky, I'll have it done within another week.

Feb 12, 2009 - Quick update. Shells are knitted into strips. Blocking the strips and they are flat and fitting together. Knitting the first two strip together.

Feb 4, 2009 - The shells are knitted, all 63 of them plus two extras! Bill helped me arrange them and now I'll begin to knit them into strips, sans blocking. Just couldn't come up with the right shape/size. Sorta like trying to put a square peg into t round hole...

Jan 28, 2009 - Half of the shells are knitted, the other half is balled up and ready to be knitted. Then I'll block each one and begin the process of knitting them together. How did I ever think this would only take me a month to complete?

Jan 21, 2009 - I'm pleased with the "green" shells, but the "reds" and "blue-greens" are still debatable. The afghan will consist of 63 shells, 9 x 7. Everyother shell will be a green. My first attempt was to combine shades of red and blue-green in every non-green shell. Made several and feared they looked too "granny-square"ish. Then tried several using reds and blue-greens on separate shells. Think I like this better, but still thinking about it. In the meantime I'm working the green shells, need 32 of them...

After litterally piling up yarn from Bill's stash while back in Nebraska, I managed to stuff my bags full of as much as I could and managed to get a lot of it back with me to Istanbul. Then I got stuck on color choices...
Then several days ago, a fellow Raveler offered to share her template with the group. That little tool and Bill's suggestion that I look at kente cloths for inspiration, was all I needed to get excited about the project again.
I'm going to work my version in strips of shells, alternating greens and reds. Still pondering the colors of the connecting strips, but I'll have time for that while I knit up 63 shells...
Pics are of the Nebraska pile, the final color groups, the balls (I knitted a shell, unravelled it, measured the lengths of each section. Then I measured, cut and balled-up the yarns needed for each shell. It took some time, but made knitting the shells easy and allowed me to evenly distribute my colors over the entire afghan. I'm done with the greens and will continue with the reds tomorrow). I'm thinking this'll take me around 4-6 weeks.