Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Flattery by Imitation

I was certainly inspired by Cara of january one to make a Mitered Square Afghan, and if you were too, then come on over and show us the progress on your Mitered Square Afghan.

I did an MSA in college and ended up giving it to Purple Heart. It was like Cara's - random colors, clever placement, but also unlike Cara's - individual miters rather than four like miters making a square. I had mixed feelings about this blanket, which was the main reason that I gave it away. I liked the process of knitting the miters, and I liked the freedom of the random color selection, but it turned out too random for me. So on the new MSA, I am going to incorporate some ideas that I love:

1) I love Cara's idea of making four squares that have a single Main Color and four other Complement Colors.

2) I love the tutorial on Mason-Dixon (scrooolllll down to May 10, 2006) that shows you how to do a *minimal* sew MSA.

3) I love the idea of a planned MSA as opposed to a random four-square creative placement thing-a-ma-jig which I can never pull off. When I do random, it always just seems busy or clashy or um, what's that word. Oh, yeah: "ugly."

Okay, so based on that, I came up with a pretty sweet layout:


The little squares on the side are more or less the colors of Cotton-Ease that I have. I know... Cotton-Ease. Sue me. BUT I have old colors and new colors and it turns out to be a really nice spread. Anyway, the black check mark I am using to copy and paste over the squares that I have completed. A few of the colors are not exactly true to life because I am a little bit technologically challenged and used MS Paint; HOWEVER, I am in love with this layout and can't wait to see it coming together.

Okay, now talking size: based on a little Googly research, this MSA will fit a Twin, which should be perfect for my 7 month-old baby girl when she is ready for her big girl bed. (Hopefully it won't actually take that long to make the blanket. Ha.) Thats 80 miters, and I can already see that mitered pillows are in the future as well...

Okay, so let's begin, shall we?

4 comments:

Karen said...

I love the idea of a MSA blog! Sign me up! I also looooove your layout. I am a big fan of tone-on-tone and stripes in the same color family. I might borrow your orange/yellow/white block layout idea, i love those colors. I would love to be added to this blog!

Angela said...

Thanks for your comment. I am ditching my (oft blogged about) OCD tendencies and just knitting miters that please me. I will admit, I had a serious twinge of regret when I saw how beautifully Cara's squares turned out using a consistent background color. (That may be why I have put down the squares for the chevron scarf recently.) Thanks for the invitation!

Katy said...

Thank you for inviting me to join. I would be glad to. However, my mitering will probably go very slowly!

I love your diagram/plan. How did you do it?

KnittyLynn said...

Hey now! No dissin' the Cotton Ease. :) I happen to like it too. It plays nicely in my stash with the Malabrigo and Socks That Rock. No fiber snob here! :)