Quiet Storm
Strawberry, CA during the snowstorm last Sunday. Via Instagram with some-filter-or-another. Wordless Wednesday.
Winter’s Warmth
One thing daily November blog posting does is make me remember every last thing I’d considered writing about during the past year. There are people who set themselves up for daily blog posting for a year, and I just can’t understand how that lunacy works. However, I think that getting back into writing and thinking about crafting at this time each year is ultimately good. So today I remembered I’d wanted to post about these afghans:
A couple of years ago I was in my mother-in-law’s closet for whatever reason and saw the giant stack of afghans that she’d made. You may remember Jennifer taught me to crochet 6 or 7 years ago, and in fact my first project (now abandoned) was one of these blankets in two shades of blue. I ultimately decided not to continue that blanket because (1) it was made from Red Heart, and there are more enjoyable yarns to work with, and (2) the center of it was incredibly wonky, the result of my not achieving any sort of tension control for about 15 rows.
Jennifer tells me she used to work on one of these blankets during the winter to keep warm. Jeff always talks about the wood stove that kept them warm at one of their houses, one of the old plantation-style houses in the South that didn’t have central heat or air. The blanket would just keep getting bigger and eventually cover her lap, and be finished by winter’s end.
When I was making my grandparents’ blanket it was sort of like that. It was very warm as it grew! It sounds very Little House on the Prairie to make a blanket to keep yourself warm on winter nights, but actually I consider that a great idea. One of my aunt Becky’s friends does hand quilting, and I believe he quilts it in the winter as well (he lives in the oft-frigid northern Iowa) but not in the summer.
Anyway, I think that these are pretty awesome, and I wanted to share her hard work and effort with you.
Goal Achieved, Level Up
KNOCK KNOCK. Hello? You guys are being extraordinarily quiet. Everyone okay out there?
So you know I finished the One Skein Scarf, and mentioned the hat, and said it was all part of a hat/scarf/mittens set. The set comprises the scarf, the Applejack Cap and Lion Brand mittens made out of 3-year-stashed Homespun Prairie. Voila!
I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. The hat was supposed to be looser than this, but since I (a) used a smaller hook to make the stitches smaller to make it warmer and (b) used bulky yarn instead of worsted, you can maybe see how I’d end up with a different hat than the pattern makes. I added stitches to it to compensate, and also added length to the hat so it would cover my ears. After all, what’s the point of a warm hat if it won’t cover your ears? Actually, for acrylic, all this stuff turned out very warm.
The making of the mittens was an odyssey. I started them the day we left Iowa (the 26th) and made the ribbing, then continued the next TWO DAYS OF FREEZING TRAVEL through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. It was very snowy in Iowa and Missouri. Made for exciting travel. All my pictures look sort of dream-like, because I couldn’t keep the condensation off the windows. Here’s where I was just south of Kansas City, Kansas. My toes felt totally frozen.
I made both mittens at once as I went along. I knew if I just did one, the other would never get made. Here we are in the spectacular Flint Hills in Kansas. It’s amazingly … I don’t know. Not much there but cows. The Flint Hills are a unique place. You know that super green and huge blue sky with hills desktop in Windows? I think that came from this place. In winter, it just looks scary-barren.
I’d managed to get a pair of warm slippers in Wichita, which gave me enough energy do all but the fingers by the time we’d gotten to Northern Oklahoma, near Ponca City (where I used to live). We thought we’d be able to make it home the first night, but a 2 hour traffic jam and icy conditions meant we stopped for the night in Oklahoma City. Mittens going well, though.
Somewhere south of Ft. Worth, Texas I was mostly done with a thumb and was finally warm again! It was about this point I gave up on following the pattern, because the pattern had long since begun to seem stupid. It wasn’t wide enough in the hand, for one thing. So I just kept going and made them to fit my hand exactly.
By the time we got home to Austin both thumbs were finished. I needed to finish the fingers for the last three inches, and sew ‘em up. Two weeks later, I was done. It was frustrating to make mittens with this yarn. The thread-like core kept snapping when I tried to pull a seam tight. All I can say about it now is that my stash is smaller, and they’re very soft mittens.
It was an interesting start on non-beanie hats and finger-wear. I kind of wanted to try the patterns out on a yarn I hadn’t spend a lot of $$ on, so I could do them again but better. Now if I can only remember to write up what I did!
