Hello! I'm a relatively new knitter who's got this crazy blanket idea. I'm a fan of rococo sort of art and was hoping to knit a blanket with an elaborately framed picture on it. I was hoping for a woman dressed like someone from the period, but with a laptop instead of a book on her lap, just for anachronistic kicks. I'm in the process of drawing the woman and finding a nice frame design, but I'm a bit worried. If anything in this works, I'll go ahead and post it. I also will try and keep a thread going to show progress. Anyway, questions......

1: What's the best way to convert this into a pattern, or say a chart to knit off of? I was hoping to slap a grid over said picture in a program like Illustrator, and then simplify the form as much as possible.

2: This is going to end up really elaborate. I was considering using a fine yarn so I could get a smaller gauged knit (did that make sense?). Like you'd increase the pixels per inch on a picture to make it sharper? But that would make this take forever and a day. Thoughts?

3:Would you even attempt this madness? Even to me this sounds like a crazy huge project. But the product may be worth all the trouble if it turns out as well as I envision it.

4: This is going to take a heck of a lot of yarn if I do a fine yarn to do it. As a result, this may cost me a hefty sum. Should I choose to sell the thing online, say on etsy.com, how much do you think I could ask for it? How do you price your items? How much would you pay for this sort of thing?

Thanks so much for all your help!
(I feel compelled to drop a "tl:dr")

:heart: sallyoftheflowers

:noway: That sounds kind of complicated for a new knitter, but if you can pull it off more power to you!

1. You can create a chart from a photo here (http://www.microrevolt.org/knitPro/). It's not perfect and takes some working with, but it's possible.

2. Yes, it would take longer, but you'd get more detail. Depending on what the picture is it will probably have to be done either intarsia or fair isle both of which take more time and yarn as well.

3. No, I would not even attempt this at this point in time and I've been knitting for 4 yrs. I like a challenge, but I'll stick to sweaters and such. ;)

4. Um...there is no way you could charge enough to ever recover the cost of the yarn much less your time and effort. There is a thread in the General Forum about how much to charge and that's pretty much been the consensus for normal knitting so something this insane time consuming and expensive is probably out of the question. :teehee:

I don't mean to discourage you. If it's something you really want to do then go for it. :thumbsup:

Thanks!

I'm totally willing to try it out, despite the enormous resources required. If it works, I think I will have made an uber heirloom! :mrgreen:

You might consider forming the picture with a duplicate embroidery stitch, rather than actually knitting it in.