Mitered Cross Blanket

It's finally finished and has been delivered to his dorm room.  Meet my Mitered Cross Blanket.  It is probably the biggest thing I have ever knit by size.  Maybe something I've done has had more stitches, but I'm positive nothing has measured this large.

We moved our son to college a couple of weekends ago, and I packed this blanket in a care package with snacks and supplies, along with a letter, explaining about the blanket.

The details

Yarn:  I used all Knitpicks yarn -- Chroma and Wool of the Andes (WotA)  .G is a freshman at West Virginia Wesleyan College. The school colors are orange and black; that dictated the colors of the blanket.

• Chroma in Smoothie.  I used more less than one skein to make 3 squares
• WotA in Coal.  I used 3 skeins to make 4 squares and to do the edging iCord
• WotA in Orange.  I used two skeins to make four squares and had almost none left.
• WotA in Cobblestone Heather.  I used two skeins to make four squares. 
• WotA in Dove Heather.  I think I used 19 skeins as the background color for 15 squares and 6 half squares.

Needles: US Size 6 Knitpicks options needles.  I used both the nickel plated and harmony interchangable needles, depending on my mood.  For the icord, I used nickle plated dpn.

Pattern:  Mitered Cross blanket for Japan by Kay Gardiner of Mason-Dixon Knitting.  Here's the Ravelry link, and here is a link to April in Mason-Dixon Knitting.  If you scroll down, you'll see Kay's blanket and a link to buy the pattern -- proceeds go to Japanese Earthquake relief.  I love that buying the pattern benefits others, and I hope when I told that to my son, it said something to him about serving others and its importance.  My son is over six feet tall, so I added two rows of squares to the blanket for a total of 15 squares in six rows.  I did the icord in a contrasting color (coal).  I liked the look it gave the blanket -- it just seemed right for G.  I added a yarn over to the icord repeats -- knit-knit-yarn over-knit through back loop, and then I passed the yarn over over the final knit two together through back loop. Somehow the yarn over covered the stripe.   By the way, go buy the pattern -- even if you don't plan to make the blanket.  It's a good thing to do.

I stitched a cross (Faith), an anchor (hope) and a heart (love) in the corner.   ¹³

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.  (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Size:  I thought I was making a 6 foot by 3 foot blanket.  It turned out to be 8 feet by 3 feet, 3 inches.  I have no idea how it ended up so long, but he'll have lots of room to snuggle in this behemoth.

Final thoughts -- This is a great pattern that is interesting enough to knit for a long time (3 months) but simple enough to not be frustrating.  I enjoyed the knitting.  It was a great project to carry me through the transition of my son's high school graduation and his summer before college.  I was able to knit my love into something warm to leave with him at school -- something that left an important message about caring for others.  Something that told him how much he is loved.

He texted his dad a picture of his newly lofted bed today.  Check out what's up there -- the blanket.  Cool.