WIP Wednesday - Periodic Table Blanket

I feel it is high time that I gave you all an update on this massive project of mine, which has been going on for what feels like forever (I believe it is about ten years...) I seem to go through waves of really getting into the project, and knitting several squares for it, and then not touching it for another several months.

Recently I reached a new milestone for it! I finally completed groups 3 through 12, the biggest number of same coloured squares. For some reason, in past Lottie's infinite wisdom, I used the most eye wateringly offensive shade of neon orange. I really don't know why, I must have been going through something! XD Anyway, with those squares now out of the way I can turn my attention to the remaining groups on the table. Groups 13 through 16 including helium will be in the same colour. But I don't have a colour picked out for them just yet. I am thinking of looking through my stash and seeing what I already have. I know full well that I won't have enough for all the squares I need, but at least I can get that one ball out of my stash before I get a load more to complete that section of the project.

Now with groups 13 through 16 considered and planned out, the only squares left are the Actinides, these I do actually have the yarn for, and are a delightful hot pink - Again. past Lottie, what were you thinking? - Unfortunately that yarn is sitting at my mother's house, and as I write this we are in the middle of a lockdown amidst a global pandemic. There is no chance I'm getting that yarn any time soon.

That all being said the end for this huge project does seem to be in sight. I think if I kept my mind to it then I could start to work my way through the next set of groups, and hopefully it won't be another ten years to finish this project!

To take the photo for this post, I laid all the squares out on my living room floor, and they took up more space than I actually had. There was also a lot of tension changes, which will be fun to deal with when we come to  trying to join all the squares together.

The Lanthanides

Slow but kind of steady progress is being made on the periodic table blanket. It has been a on going project for a little while now, the first post about it here, was from the 3rd of February last year... Oops!

Anyway I have now managed to complete the Lanthanides. Once I've sewn the blanket together I'm going to think about putting the chemical symbols on it.

The lanthanides occupy one of the very bottom lines of the periodic table, and are the rare earth elements. Technically they sit inside the periodic table, between barium and hafnium, but they would look a bit silly there, so they sit along the bottom.

At the moment I'm working through getting some of the squares around the table itself to make it a more rectangular blanket shape. Although the next load of squares to go will be groups 3 to 12, which are mostly metals.

Periodic Squares

For a long time I have wanted a patchwork quilt, I also am a sucker for science and used to have a passion for chemistry. So a little while ago I started to create a blanket.

Blanket Pieces Laid Out

For this blanket I have knitted squares, I intend to then so them together and on each square I shall sew on the correct chemical symbol. Progress on this blanket has been very very slow, but today I finished another square, which is one more on the way to the finish. But also, I realised I had no record of what squares I had knitted... I had previously written a chart of the periodic table which I had free handed, and looking back at it I had no clue what was going on and what I had done already. (Some squares were crossed out and others scribbled here and there).

Old Chart and New Chart

So I sat down and I drew out another chart, this time using squared paper and created a second chart that was neat and understandable.

Then was the task of sorting the squares into colour and seeing what bits of the blanket had been done and what was left to do.
Very satisfyingly I was neatly crossing things off the chart and there are now a nice amount of crosses in the boxes.

One of the things I failed to take into account was my eagerness to get the project started when I first settled on the idea, meaning that I have a partly completed blanket that hasn't been knitted to the same pattern. For the majority of the blanket I have been knitting the squares diagonally, in a diamond shape, this means that the square doesn't pull awkwardly in the blanket and it all lies nicely. But in the first column of my periodic table, my squares have been knitted straight and to varying sizes...
Oh well, I will see how this all looks in the end, then I may have to redo some of the start.

The pattern I've used for the square is a simple garter stitch pattern I have explained here: Square Pattern

For my squares I have used size 9 (3.75mm) and all of the wool is double knitting. Each square doesn't take much yarn to produce and one 100g ball gives quite a few squares.