Well, that exaggerates a bit. But after a very, very warm stretch in late winter, it suddenly got colder quite quickly, and stayed a bit on the breezy side for a while. On the one hand, I was ready for spring to come for sure. But on the other, it gave me reason to pull out some very, very wooly yarn and play around with it.
A couple years ago I bought 8 skeins of Sirdar Eco Wool DK, and 2 skeins of a complementary colorway of Noro Kureyon, at a going out of business sale. I kind of thought I'd make a sweater with the yarn, something mostly brown, with a stripy waist, or something. But when I started playing around with the yarn, I decided that actually, it wanted to be an afghan. And as it turned out, that last gasp of cooler weather was absolutely perfect for knitting what turned out to be quite a large wooly project.
And so, Embellished Squares.
Size: 44" square unblocked, 50" square blocked (and it could probably have been blocked even bigger than that, had I wanted to)
Yarn: Main color: Sirdar Eco Wool DK, colorway 203, 8 skeins; Contrast color: Noro Kureyon, colorway 149, 2 skeins
(this means a total of 1092 yarns of more or less DK weight yarn; although the yarns claim to be different weights, they're very, very close; you could easily use more than two colors on this, too--or just one, for that matter)
Needles: US size 7 (4.5 mm) 40" long circular needle (or double pointed needles and circular needles, perhaps of multiple sizes, in the same size, if you're not comfortable with magic loop)
(I am a very loose knitter, so if you're not, you might want to go up a size)
Pattern notes: In the second row, I've noted places to put 4 markers. While you're using double pointed needles or magic loop, you won't need all of them. Even later, because the increases are open, it's very obvious where the end of the four sections are, so you may not need anything but a marker for the start of the round.
I'm also not describing moving the markers, necessarily, but the markers should separate the four pattern repeats on all the even rows.
I'm putting in color changes as I knit them, but you can add in more or fewer color repeats. This is what happened to work with the yarn I had, but you could experiment with all sorts of different striping designs.
Pattern:Cast on 8 stitches of main color, using TechKnitter's circular cast on, here, or another method suitable for starting in the middle. Join for knitting in the round by distributing stitches on double pointed needles or magic loop. When you're able to move from either double pointed needles or magic loop onto a regular circular needle, do. (I just used the one long one, magic looping until the whole thing was big enough to fit on the circular needle I had, but you could use a shorter one for a while.)
Set up section:
R1: knit all stitches.
R2: [pm, yo, k1, yo, k1] 4 times.
R3: knit all stitches
R4: [yo, k3, yo, k1] 4 times
R5: knit all stitches
R6: [yo, k1, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1] 4 times
R7: knit all stitches
R8: [yo, k to one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
Section 1:
R1: purl all stitches
R2: [yo, k to one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
R3: knit all stitches
R4: [yo, k1, (yo, k2tog) until one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
R5: knit all stitches
R6: [yo, k to one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
Repeat Section 1 three more times, using contrast color for the first repeat (in other words, the four total repeats go main color, contrast color, main color, main color)
Section 2:
Use contrast color for first repeat of this section.
R1: purl all stitches
R2: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R3: knit all stitches
R4: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R5: knit all stitches
R6: [yo, k1, (yo, k2tog) until one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
R7: knit all stitches
R8: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R9: knit all stitches
R10: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
Repeat section 2 two more times, using main color.
Section 3:
Use contrast color for first repeat of this section.
R1: purl all stitches
R2: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R3: knit all stitches
R4: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R5: knit all stitches
R6: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R7: knit all stitches
R8: [yo, k1, (yo, k2tog) until one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
R9: knit all stitches
R10: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R11: knit all stitches
R12: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
R13: knit all stitches
R14: [yo, k to one stitch before marker,
yo, k1] 4 times
Repeat Section 3 two more times, using main color.
Border:
Finish with garter stitch border
R1: purl all stitches
R2: [yo, k to one stitch before marker, yo, k1] 4 times
Repeat these two rows until somewhat before you run out of yarn, ending with R1. I ended up with 11.5 repeats of the garter border, which meant 12 garter ridges on the right side of the afghan.
Bind off: use a fairly loose bind off method of your choice. I used a modification of Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind off; her method has you "processing" each stitch by adding in a particular kind of yo, and I did that processing every other stitch, not every stitch. It's not that I didn't want the resulting edge to be super stretchy, it's that I worried about running out of yarn.
Weave in ends. Frankly, I think it looks fine unblocked...
but blocking does make it a little neater, so block as much or as little as you like. I blocked it gently, I'd say, which certainly smoothed out the wrong side significantly.
It also made it fold more neatly.
And even the edges look nice.
This was, incidentally, a perfect, soothing, meditative knit. All those primarily knit rows, with just a little interest... perfect for tv watching or procrastination. And particularly at the beginning, center out blankets are so much fun because you just keep seeing them grow and grow. At the end, the rows are mighty long, it's true... but they're worth it in the end.