Udon blanket by ‘We are knitters’ Review

This is my eight knitting project. This is the Udon blanket by ‘We are knitters’. The color is salmon. It is knitted in “The wool” which is a chunky 100% wool 1-ply yarn. I picked this kit because it looked simple like the Deja vu hat and the Oromo cardigan with seed stitch and I am going to use it on my bed. It took me about 15 hours of knitting time, which included about 4 hours of fixing my mistakes.

This kit includes 5 balls of The wool, a set of 15 mm knitting needles in wood, which I opt out, a label that you can sew on the finished product (which said knitted by myself), and a couple sewing needles.

Cost breakdown: 5 skeins of yarn $120, the kit was $125 with the needles, $113 without the needles. So the pattern ended up costing me nothing and is cheaper buying the kit than the skeins separately.

Customer service was of no help when I contacted them on 2 separate occasions. All they told me was everything needed is in the kit, which I already know. What I wanted to know is how wide and if it is knitted in one piece. I was also debating whether to get the Udon blanket XXL or just this one. So based on this advertisement email sent to me, I decided to get the smaller one instead.

When I received the kit, I was sorely disappointed. The pattern indicated that the stitches cast is the width of the blanket rather than the length, which the above picture shows a vertical rectangle rather than a horizontal rectangle. Keeping 75 stitches on one needle proved to me a big challenge to me, I could not see if I make a mistake or not, because all the stitches were pushed together. Imagine the final product is 45 inches wide, pushed to a 12 inch needle. Hind sight, I should not have followed the pattern at all.

By the middle of the third ball of yarn, I was not enjoying making this at all. I wanted to get it over with, I have other yarn, but not another set of needles. Mistakes were also hard to fix on seed stitch. I would highly recommend threading a life line every 10 rows or less so if you have to pull stitches off you can easily put the stitches back on your needle. I could not see what I knit because the stitches were all squashed together.

I do not have to have any “new” skills but this is a hugh challenge. I wished customer service would have told me this is very wide, I specifically told them I have a hard time if the piece is a lot wider than the needle. This is an “Easy” kit which is not easy at all for me.

The finished product is 27 inches high and 45 inches wide. So why cast 75 stitches? I could have cast 50 stitches or less and make a vertical rectangle rather than a horizontal one and keep the width of the piece more manageable. Will I make it again? Definitely not according to the pattern. Definitely not the XXL. I will make another one which is probably 40-50 stitches wide. I am glad I am done though.