A long time coming

This post has been haunting me for a couple of years. I mean, in the way that a goal, idealized and not yet realized, can haunt a person.

Let me back up. I started knitting a little more than three years ago. Two years ago, I decided that I’d be brilliant and knit Christmas gifts for my immediate family. I did everything the ambitious and enthusiastic new knitter does–I chose projects of a variety I’d never done before. I knit my brother a hat, the first hat I’d ever knit, I think, and that one was finished and appreciated on Christmas day (and probably never worn again, as he lives in Florida and well… it’s in the 70s there this week). I knit my dad socks, the first socks I’d ever tried to knit, and the man wears a US 14. They were larger than the cat. I only finished one before Christmas, but I boxed it up and wrapped it and then showed him the other sock, in situ, on the needles and about half-way done.

For my mother, whom I love dearly and find myself becoming more and more like each day (which has both it’s positives and negatives), I decided she needed a blanket. I’d only ever really knit scarves before this point, and what is a blanket except an exceptionally wide and long scarf that you wrap around your body instead of your neck?

I told you, I was new to this game. The hat was finished on time, the socks were finished soon after, and the blanket, while technically finished by Christmas day, was all wrong. Approximately three feet by 7 feet (which really is a wide scarf, so I guess I succeeded in that regard), it was too long and not wide enough to be an effective blanket. But my mother was incredibly excited about it, and so when I told her I’d take it home with me and re-do it, I’m sure she thought it would happen sooner rather than later.

In the great scheme of things, I suppose two years later really isn’t that bad.

The original blanket was knit flat, with panels of alternating stockinette and reverse stockinette stitch. This incarnation is crocheted — 20 single crochet blocks, 45 stitches wide and about 12″ long, stitched together with a single crochet on the back side.

I did one round of double crochet on the edges, after the blocks were stitched together, and then a little ripple effect on top of that to give it a little sass—it’s approximately four feet by five feet of single crochet. It needed some sass.

The yarn is Elizabeth Austen’s Wool of the Andes. I’m fairly certain it’s been discontinued. It was probably about to be discontinued when I bought the initial skeins of yarn, because that’s my luck, so finding more skeins of yarn to finish the blanket was cause for excitement. I now have two more skeins left over, and absolutely no idea what to do with them. Maybe I’ll make a pillow to match.

As an aside, do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a cat to lay where you want her? Anything I don’t want her to lay on, she plops right down on. I ask her politely to be my model and look pretty on my blanket, and nothing doing.

Many treats were devoured in the taking of these photos. My parents’ cats are probably going to hate this blanket—it’s going to smell teasingly of cat treats and Other Cat.