As you might remember, Cris is designing a block each month using Juniper Moon Farm Yearling yarn. You can find her January post here – Lauria
I had an immense amount of fun designing and stitching the February block for the Blanket Block-A-Long. Making a block take shape from just an inkling of an idea in my head to an actual thing on the needles is extremely satisfying.
This month’s block incorporates two different color work techniques, mosaic and intarsia. I used the Hot Chocolate colorway as the base color and four other colors as accents. Projects like these served as the inspiration for this block design. However, rather than offsetting the bricks in each row, I preferred to stack mine in this geometric pattern. (While I used 4 accent colors, this pattern could easily be modified to use fewer or more colors.)
Mosaic colorwork looks and sounds way more complicated than it actually is. Designs in the fabric are created using slipped stitches. In this block, I slipped the stitches that create the vertical “mortar” between the colored bricks. The disadvantage of the way I stacked the slipped stitches is that it pulled at the edges of the block, making it pucker a bit both vertically and horizontally.
Intarsia is one of those techniques that I have both long admired and found intimidating. When switching to a new color, you essentially drop the old color, and pick up a new one. There are no floats across the back of the block, and you twist the strands yarn around each other to hold the block together. I found Purl Bee’s intarsia tutorial extremely helpful in learning the technique.
While my first block needed only gentle blocking to get to the desired 12 inch x 12 inch size, I had to be much more aggressive when blocking this block because of the slipped stitches and the aforementioned puckering.
If you want the pattern for the February block, head on over to the blanket thread in the Juniper Moon Farm group on Ravelry. I am sharing the patterns for testing over there.
I already have a design idea percolating for next month’s block, but I would love to have your feedback on the color. January’s block was done in Chili Pepper (orange), and this month’s block is largely Hot Chocolate (brown). For March, should I use Mermaid (blue) or the Butternut (yellow)? Tell me what you think in the comment section, and I’ll use with whichever colorway the majority prefers.
