Ripples

I am still working on the quilt, slowly, but …

I took a break to do some crocheting. After a few months away from it, I don’t seem to have forgotten how. Whew.

This is a gift and it is also a stash-buster. I think I can tell you the original source of most of those yarns – the orange and bright green are from the Flower Afghan, while the robin’s egg blue and chocolate are from my Herman-the-Elephant and Basil-the-Dog amigurumi. I’m not sure where the off-white comes from – probably something I was going to make but never did. Anyway, it’s a nice, sturdy washable blanket … and as you may have guessed from the size, it’s a baby blanket.  I seem to know a lot of people who are pregnant or new parents right now.

The other day when I’d just started this blanket I ran across another Chevron Baby Blanket pattern at the Purl Bee, which included the following paragraph:

If you lived through the 60s and 70s perhaps you have vivid memories of a chevron afghan. Perhaps you appreciated it at the time; were indifferent to it in the 80s; despised it in the 90s; and have developed a deep affection for it over the past decade, itchy acrylic, zany colors and all!

And indeed, I DO have such a memory of a chevron blanket, below, that was given to my family by a family friend. As a kid it was my second favorite blanket behind my Absolute Favorite Blanket. This afghan was one of those early crafts that made the idea of the “handmade blanket” such a desirable thing in my life. Looking at it now it’s dreadfully seventies in both color and style (avocado chevrons FTW!), plus the yarn is Seventies Acrylic – in other words, scratchy. But I still love it.

One day the seventies will come back into style and we will all be encouraged by crazy designers to love avocado and mustard again. Until then, blankets like these must be loved for their memories!

I like to believe, however, that my modern version is both prettier and comfier than my green blanket!

Train Blanket Update

The Biggest Crochet Project Ever continues to move forward at its usual glacial pace. In fact, it’s moving ahead even more slowly these days because when I moved, I moved two BART stops closer to San Francisco, so I have less time on the train. Closer also means I sometimes don’t get a seat, so no go on those days at all. I kind of miss having my solid 40 minutes a day. Nevertheless, progress is happening.

• Row 1/Centers:  316 complete out of 320 total
• Rows 2 & 3/Flowers:  120 complete out of 320 total
• Row 4/Trim: 40 complete out of 320 total
• Row 5/Border: Since I’m doing a join-as-you-go method, I can’t start on row 5 until I can lay all the different combinations and create a pattern to balance the light and dark elements.

Put another way, since I’m a math geek: if each row counts for is 20% (which isn’t exactly right, but close enough), then I’m now finished with 29.75% of the blanket. By the time I finish with rows 1-3, I’ll be 60% done. Oy, maybe I shouldn’t have done those calculations. They’re a little  overwhelming. Sometimes I wish I painted or something instead of tackling projects that can take months of effort.

At least it’s all super organized, right? Lest you doubt:  I have each of the 16 color combinations in its own labeled baggie stored with the yarn in the next color that needs to be attached to it. Think that’s bad? I also arrange all my quilting pins by color on a rainbow Dresden Plate pincushion.

Now back to my regularly scheduled channel: being sick. Jeff’s gotten sick too, and he never gets sick. It’s been a long, frustrating week since my sore throat showed up, and only in the last day have I done anything close to “getting better.” Yesterday I was planning to see (bought tickets even!) two awesome museum exhibits that are closing this week, but wasn’t well enough to make that happen. I definitely have bronchitis, complete with an inhaler and a total lack of sleep from coughing. I’m supposed to go back to work Tuesday, and I’m wondering how well that’s going to go.

Oh well. Enough whining. This too will pass, eventually.

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.