White stuff in January?

After several weeks - or at least what seemed like several weeks - without any white stuff, we had a delightful storm pass through last Friday. Light and fluffy, and not accompanied by any ice that disrupted our electricity. A delightful time was had by all.

The other white stuff on my radar is the counterpane.I've already decided that my Dallas trip this April will be accompanied by counterpane knitting.  The squares are small, portable, and I don't need the pattern. 

Except - I only have 15 squares left to knit.  And the borders, and the edging.  Those are going to be LONG strips, not anywhere near as nicely portable as the squares.  Not to be foiled in my travel knitting plans, I decided to seam together the 64 squares I had done, calculate how long a border needed to be, and start work on those. 

The observant reader will notice that 64 squares + 15  = 79, a very odd number of squares to need.  That's because seaming a queen-sized counterpane - in white - is NOT appropriate knitting for stationary bicycling, so I started, and finished, a 65th square.

Based on photos in Mary Walker Phillip's Counterpane book, the border seems to be seamed to the bias edge of the squares at about a 3:5 ratio. And since there are 159 rows in a square, that translates 1064 rows in a border.  With 47 stitches per row - maybe 21 hours for a short border?  Maybe a bit more, since the bobbles and wheat ears do add stitches , and there's a lot of turning. 

In other news, Filia and I have finished the Third Degree Martial Arts Black Belt Sudoku book.  We've had fun, and have some new strategies firmly in our store of tricks.  We've a fresh book of 300 puzzles to start tonight, and a goal - master the Y-Wing!

Until next time ...