The Continuing Saga of The GNAA

I'm starting to get even more frustrated with this Great North American Afghan. I finished doing this first square designed by Susan Levin for the second time, and after being sure to swatch for gauge more carefully this time, it turned out too small!

My first time knitting this square, it turned out too big, so this second time around, not only did I swatch on three needle sizes to be sure I used the correct-sized needle this time, I also measured it while on the needles until the halfway point, and at that time it measured a perfect 6 inches vertically and 12 inches horizontally. But since it came off the needles, I haven't been able to get it to measure 12 inches square.

I understand that the cables are drawing in each side, but even when I pull on it to try to straighten it up, I still can't get it to 12 inches horizontally without sacrificing the vertical measurement and making the center panel bubble up. This is acrylic yarn, so not really blockable.

I'm especially concerned about this square because in the layout used for the afghan in the book (which I wanted to follow), it is a corner square, so it will only be sewn to two adjacent squares rather than four. If it was destined to be an inside square (sewn on four sides) or even an edge square (sewn on three sides), I wouldn't be so concerned as it would probably straighten out okay after being joined to at least three surrounding squares.

Even though I was disappointed with my second knitting of the Susan Levin square, I thought it would be best to go ahead and swatch and then complete the second square (designed by Rita Garrity Knudson) before making a final decision on what to do about the Susan Levin square. This way I'd have another square to compare to, and especially if the Rita Garrity Knudson square turned out to be 12 inches square using the needles the gauge swatching indictated, that might help me figure out how to get the Susan Levin square to finalize at 12 inches square as well.

By the way, my swatching for gauge on stockinette stitch for this square resulted in my using size 5 needles to knit this square, the same size needles I ended up using to knit the Susan Levin square the second time after swatching for gauge using the mosaic stitch used in the center panel of the pattern.

The Rita Garrity Knudson square is knit in the round from the outside in, and I'm close to finishing the knitting portion of the square. Once that's done and it's off the needles, I'll be able to discover the final measurement outcome. I'm not even bothering to measure it while it's on the needles since that proved to be irrelevant with the Susan Levin square.

Adding to my frustration is using these bamboo double-pointed needles I got off eBay a while back. The yarn sticks to the needles, and the stitches do not slide across the needles as I'm used to with my other knitting needles. I have to push and shove each stitch along, which makes it really slow-going. I had just switched to these DPNs a couple rounds before taking the above picture. Prior to that I was using my Denise needles, but the circumference finally got too small to knit comfortably with those anymore. Anyway, I can't help but wonder how going from knitting so smoothly on the Denise needles to the stuttering, stop-and-go, push-and-shove kind of knitting I'm having to do now on the bamboos will affect the final measurement.


I couldn't resist comparing the two squares since the outside perimeter of the Rita Garrity Knudson square is there even though the inside is not yet knitted, so I put the Susan Levin square on top and took this picture. It looks like the Knudson square is going to be more 'square' and probably measure larger. I'm getting the feeling that I'm going to end up knitting the Levin square a third time!