Oddballs

I'm not really what could be described as an anal-retentive personality, but I do not like having multiple knitcheting projects lying around. The fact that I made a ravelry WIP for my oddball project has meant that every time I look at my projects page (to quietly enjoy how many have been marked as favorites by other people; There! I've said it.) it's right there at the front of the queue. And now that I've finished the Afghans for Afghans blanket (my other, somewhat long-term WIP) it's what comes up in the little popup one sees when one's mouse lingers too long over my avatar.

So I picked it up again yesterday, after finishing Quietude, and was immediately unsatisfied with the crochet square I'd made before. It's called the Russian Square in the Harmony Guide, and it's a granny square with alternating 3-stitch columns of front and back post dc. But the corners, where the stitches are added, are done in plain dc (since you can't make a post stitch if there's not already a dc to work into) and the row gauge for post stitches and plain dc is radically different. Which means that the corners pooch out something fierce.

So I had been thinking about Joan Schrouder's Great American Afghan square, after knitting a little one for the Pratchgan, and hunting up my old knitlist patterns, and I got to wondering how one would do the same thing in crochet. It's not hard; instead of working (2 dc, ch 2, 2 dc) in each corner, just work (4 dc, ch 2) instead. Changing colors every round makes the twisting a bit more subtle, but it's certainly visible.

I had toyed with the idea of doing the whole coat in dc, but I think I'm going to pick up and knit out from the square. The sleeves will somehow happen while I'm knitting; I'm trying to decide between knitting the body and picking up a normal-style sleeve cap, knit with short rows, or working a sort of dolman sleeve up over the shoulder. I'm not a complete believer in seams' providing the necessary structure of a garment, but this is going to be a longish coat, and I don't want it to stretch out too much. We'll just see.