Caring, Warming Blanket

On Friday we received a very beautiful and generous gift from our friends at The Yarnery in St. Paul. Pooling together talent and stashes many of the employees contributed to this body and heart warming blanket.

Caring Blanket

It did come as a sweet surprise and we are both touched by the time and effort (and organizational prowess) that went in to creating this.

Caring Blanket

Caring Blanket

Thank you so much for this. I have already made good use of it, especially during my naps and rests during the day. I’ve definitely been needing extra covering as my body still seems to have a hard time keeping me feeling warm (even during the past 75º days, but especially now since it’s back in the 40’s). And, since I start my second round of treatment on Monday, I have a strong feeling this will be seeing a lot more use in the coming weeks.

Caring Blanket

It’s hard to pick a favorite square, they all offer interesting color and texture. I do have to say, though, the owls on the corners are a nice touch—like watchful sentries making sure the warmth stays in.

Thank you, again, for putting this together.

Log Cabin Blanket

Several years ago I thought it would be fun to give Virginia the gift of the Palette Sampler. I can’t remember how many balls of yarn they included in the sampler, but I think it was one of each of their colors. It just so happened that one of her friends decided that this would be a fun gift, too. Suffice it to say, she had to do some major rearranging to accommodate this sudden (and large) influx of yarn.

Some of you may remember the Fair Isle sweater she created with some of the yarn.  As exciting as it was to design and knit a sweater like that, she could have knit another 20 sweaters just like it, and still have some of that yarn left over. No doing.

Thus was born the Log Cabin Blanket, a garter stitch extravaganza using the fingering-weight yarn doubled.

Log Cabin

Two years in the making, this blanket has seen a lot of television. I believe it made it through PBS’s entire Jane Austen series last winter, not to mention a collection of several complete seasons of shows like, Flight of the Conchords, Jeeves and Wooster… now that I think about  it, the blanket may have actually witnessed Mr. Darcy’s penetrating looks several times over the course of its creation.

Log Cabin

The final push came this weekend. The last row had been picked up (all 250 stitches of it) and all that was required to move it from its basket to the bed was several hours of heavy knitting (and some crochet around the edges).

It’s done. And, now that KnitPicks has refined their color palette to more heathery and somewhat more sophisticated colors, Virginia has (not surprisingly) opened herself up to the possibility of trying something like this, again. Until then, it’s nice to have some space back, and a significant chunk taken out of her stash.

In Full Swing

The blog may have been down, but that does not mean there weren’t any projects being worked on, finished, and made ready to share.

Plaid Runner

This weaving project is finally finished. It’s about 9 feet long and made from cotton “carpet warp.” It’s the perfect length for the library table sitting in our sun room.

Plaid Runner

Now that Spring has been making an effort to stick around, we can put away the heavy winter blankets and enjoy this first major crochet project from Virginia.

Vcrochets_afghan_01b

It’s one giant granny square made from Jamieson’s Spindrift… so many great colors to choose from, and having 75 rows, there was plenty of opportunity to play with color.