The 6 tips I mentioned yesterday for Knitting with jumbo yarn is making the task so easy that I’m venturing in several free patterns I can’t wait to share with you this week.

To be completely honest, I started knitting a swatch to see what the yardage in a ball of Couture Jazz yarn would yield. I cast on about 40 stitches and just kept knitting, I joined one ball, then joined the next one. I was planning on making an afghan with this yarn, but I had been planning on finding a pattern for one.

I opened up the Couture Jazz Fall 2016 look book found on their website and there were a lot of different garments all worked up in garter stitch. I, personally, like the way stockinette stitch looks and feels. There’s something inherently pleasant about knitting something that will lay flat and has a smooth texture. I’m blaming the existence of this afghan on the hypnotic allure of the stockinette stitch.

While I was knitting this ‘swatch that got away’ I learned a lot. Little things that you wouldn’t have thought about before you started a project, but things that actually make a difference once you’re there.

I know this sounds like common sense, but knitting an afghan like this means you have a huge project hanging around your house. I don’t really have a great place to put a project like this away and my cats just love unattended knitting projects. They think they’re world-class knitters.

The best place I found to keep this project was a big cardboard box I had received some yarn in! The whole project, extra balls of yarn, needles, the afghan itself, all in the box.

I also learned that when knitting Couture Jazz on a US 17 [9mm] needle, it’s a fairly dense blanket.

It happens to get really warm when that project is sitting on your lap as you knit it. Luckily there were a few cold days of autumn where I was glad to have the extra warmth. Just be aware of the environment when knitting this blanket. If it’s the middle of summer, you may want to find an extremely cool place to knit, like a basement. Projects like this are definitely not beach knitting.

Even so, jumbo yarn gets the project done quick! So it’s never dragging on for very long, even when making a blanket.

I know this sounds like common sense, but trust me, you get it in a whole new wave of color and texture when it’s actually happening to you. As with any project you start, make sure you’ve done your homework and know what you’re knitting yourself into and with these tips, it won’t be any trouble at all!