More Preparations... and Some Testing: Hear Me Roar!

January was supposed to be my Craft Diet Month.  Might have slightly overdone it in December, so made a deal with myself that in January I'd only knit the Long Anticipated Socks and the fingerless owl mittens for my friend.  And then this blanket comes along.  Decided to be a good puppy with Tons of Self-Discipline and not start actual knitting until socks and mittens were done.

But woe the Itch to Start.  Argh!  Socks in meanwhile proved to be absolutely no fun in the bad light of winter evenings.  They're in dark yarn and can't see what I'm doing.  So after about half an hour I toss them in a corner and go do something that doesn't give me a headache.  Not really the way to get anywhere sockwise.  So... asked The Man if he'd rather have blanket or socks.  Blanket all the way!  So now socks are literally hibernating.

Yesterday I started the Lannister block with the bit of Cascade 220 I have in my stash.  Had to frog the first attempt because apparently it's 85 and not 84 stitches wide.  Le Sigh.  Luckily I wasn't very far along and it's rather fast knitting.  Am making good progress by now (about 20 rows in 2-3 hours of unconcentrated knitting.)

The paper is A3 size (to give an indication)

Also made a spreadsheet in an attempt to map out which colours I need.  At this time I have absolutely no idea how much yarn I'll be needing, but am guessing A LOT (not to be confused with the Absolutely Nifteh Alot ).  My estimate at this time is 1.5 skein per background (except for the Tully one, which has two colours instead of just one).  I have absolutely no idea about the motifs. 

Oh.  And then I just got an extra idea.  The back of the blanket has been bothering me these past days.  I think duplicate stitching looks rather okish (as opposed to stranded knitting for instance), but still.  So maybe (CRAZY ALERT), I should knit blocks with the words of the Houses to provide a niftier back.  Would make things even cozier.

Hear me Roar!

Up close and personal.  Marker indicates where I have to start with the Lion.