Knitting a square & joining things.

[jackandahat]

(Forgive me, this is going to be a stupid question)

I'm trying to join some other pieces together by picking up a side from each and knitting a square in the middle, decreasing towards the centre.

But I'm struggling with the "How many and how often?" part of decreasing. Doing sl1 k2tog psso at each corner still gets me a lump in the middle.

How would you decrease to make a flat square?

Second, hopefully less daft question - how do you go about joining pieces using knitting? I'd like to make an afghan out of blocks, but I'd rather not do that amount of sewing if possible. Which is where I ended up on the problem above. All the patterns I've found so far are either log-cabin type where it gets bigger and bigger, rather than something you can work on in small pieces, or they're pieces sewn together after.

Comments

[hazel]

I would probably just pick up stitches along one edge of the completed square in my new colour. And then you could stop at, say, a length of 4 or 6 squares, and just have the long seams down the edge to sew to other bits of afghan.

(Other people may have better techniques, though!)

[nitoda]

I have joined squares by picking up from the cast off edge of one and joining to the side edge of another at the end of each row if you see what I mean ... You could knit in strips this way, but if you want a technique other than sewing to join lots of separate squares, you should probably look at crochet.

[pinesandmaples]

Knit the blanket in pieces then:

crochet them together.

pick up stitches and do 3-needle bind-offs.

pick up stitches and do some other bind-off you are about to invent.

sew.

If you are looking for speed and general appearance, crochet is your winner here.

Added: The joining things to things problem up top sounds like you are describing a mitered square. If so, you'll always have a ridge of bumps.

[medrin]

As for the square decreasing towards the centre, the maths sounds right with sl1 k2tog psso, (at, I'm assuming, every other lap) Maybe you should just try binding off when you have 12 left instead of 4.

As for the second question: From what I'm gathering you want to knit each square separately and then join them together without sewing. My first thought was to use some crocheting. I'm thinking adapting a crochet bind of. That when you pick up the stitches with the crochet hook you go through the side of the piece you want to attach it to with the crochet hook, pull the stitch trough and then do the crochet stitch on the other side (hope that makes sense). To get enough live stitch edges you might want to do a cast on that gives you another live edge. Or you can just simply crochet two sides together (place them with the front facing each other and do a row of chains through the side.)

[aquaeri]

Yeah, your "how many decreases per row" problem on the inward-knitted squares depends on the stitch you're using, and your particular knitting style. If your stitches were perfectly square, three->one in each of four corners would work perfectly. Two rows of garter is close enough to square for most people for this to work every second row. But for other stitches, you have to adjust so you decrease often enough, but not too often. Every two out of three sounds, like medrin says, a good one to try with a typical stocking stitch pattern. If you've got ribbing or lace or anything else, you'll need a gauge swatch and a bit of maths. (Which I will happily help you with if that's an issue.)

And from my experience with hats, yeah, the 12-stitch row is probably the one to bind off on unless you're fond of nipples.

[starfish]

If you don't have Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac, and have some discretionary funds, pick up a copy. It's a good read, and there are tons of techniques and tips in there, as well as patterns. The chapter I just read last night is about knitting squares for a blanket ... leaving the edges "live" (on waste yarn) and doing something she calls "weaving" to get the edges together.

[aunty_marion]

Hee! Have only just got to this (*kicks computer again*), but I see you've already got a lot of good advice.

I did the squares for the TARDIS top and bottom in the 'round', by casting on four times what the pattern said (for knitting a flat square up from one side), and doing the decreases every other round; but what I did was mark the 'corner' stitches, and decrease each side of those, so each side would be [K1 (corner stitch), SSK, knit to two stitches before next corner stitch, K2tog], and repeat four times. That way you don't get the 'bump' so much, but more flat lines of decreases aiming in towards the centre. For the top, I did a couple of 'steps' where instead of doing one plain round between decrease rounds, I did two - that made it peak more for a slightly slanted roof.

And, serendipitously, that's the second time I've typed up those instructions in two days - one of my friends on Ravelry is attempting a knitted TARDIS. So I'll leave you with the links etc I posted as a comment to her:

"I got the idea for doing the top/bottom that way from iamshadow’s (iamshadow21 on Ravelry) coloured blanket squares - http://www.ravelry.com/projects/IamShadow21/double-vision - which she did that way. http://knittingpix.dreamwidth.org/10443.html is where she talks about it (in the comments, I think?)."