Ever Increasing Circles

Looking back through my knitting notebook it would seem that all I have been making are dishcloths. That is because I have been making a baby blanket.

So I got to thinking about the different ways to make a blanket and the disadvantages of each.

The blanket I am making is circular. I started off with very few stitches, the first rounds go quickly so you think the blanket will be finished quickly but, of course, as you add more stitches each round takes longer so the blanket is no longer such a quick knit. (Even though when you start a circular blanket you know the later rounds will go much slower than the earlier rounds, your brain ignores this each time.)

Another way to make a blanket is to make lots of squares (or rectangles or hexagons) and sew them together to make a blanket. The advantage is the sense of achievement when finishing a square and seeing them pile up but the thought of sewing them all together puts me off such a project.

You could always start with the required number of stitches for the width and work until the blanket is long enough. This way you're not going to be fooled with the speed of early rounds but you do have to cast on a large number of stitches which I am not too keen to do even though with a circular blanket you end up with many more stitches.

My initial thoughts came up with just these three ways to make blankets but then I thought of a couple more which don't seem to have the same disadvantages of these methods.

Corner-to-corner. Starting with 1 or 3 stitches you increase at the beginning of every row until the blanket is half the size and then you decrease at the beginning of every row until no stitches. The advantages are that you can work until half the yarn has been used and then start decreasing; just as you are fed up with each row taking longer they start getting shorter. The immediate disadvantage is making sure that the increases and decreases look similar.

The other method, which I am not sure I have seen used, is starting off with the final circumference and then decreasing to a few stitches. Two disadvantages I can immediately think of are the large number of stitches you'd have to cast on and if you run out of yarn you can't stop as you'd be left with a hole so if you couldn't get more of the same yarn, you'd have to add complimentary yarn or start all over. But at least each round would go quicker as the stitches reduce in number.

The blanket is actually finished, just when I thought it was going on for ever, but I have to cast off. Another problem when making blankets - and another argument for using a method where you end up with few stitches - is making sure the cast off is not tight but also neat. I have a month to achieve this.