Seriously

Erik sent me a link to this....this....this amazing crocheted blanket. You can see more pictures here, including detailed close ups of each panel.

I am seriously wasting my life, if I'm not creating art that is this joyful, and this devoted. This thing makes my eyes water!

She documents the whole process on her blog, and links to the blanket (parts 1 - 4) are in the side bar. She uses tunisian crochet, which I learned how to do last summer. It's a lovely, perfectly square stitch. I made a scarf from some goat wool/silk blend my mom brought back from Wyoming using the tunisian process. The color change looks tricky; it's really no small thing that she did here!


A couple of years ago, I told Tommy that I would make him a hat, and he requested "A Pokeball hat,with a Master Ball on it." Ooooo-kayyyyy. Anyway, I knitted the hat in a dark green yarn using garter stitch. This was long before I learned how to knit in the round using double points, so I knitted a long rectangle, stitched up the back as a seam, and then ran a piece of yarn through the top row of stitches and pulled tight to close it all off. Then, working only off a picture, I fashioned a Master Ball and used purple, black, white and pink felt to make this...thing that you see here. Then I used a blanket stitch and black embroidery floss to sew it to the front of the hat. Tommy loved that thing! We'll have to dig it up, but I'm amazed that it's survived that last two winters in tact.

When I made that hat, I remember telling Erik that it might be the single most creative thing I'd ever done. In that, I didn't follow a pattern, and I made it completely from scratch. I was so dang proud of that hat!

But this blanket. This blanket is perfect. I think I might make one. (For Erik, but don't tell him.) Before I read her blog, I was kind of tripping out on how she made the pictures. I thought, what, did she just single crochet and then cross stitch it onto the top? It looked way too
clean and perfect for that, and the tunisian crochet she used is absolutely the only explanation for how righteous this thing is. But here's the conversation at our house this morning:

Erik: It should be easy to do, right?
Me: Wrong.
Erik: I've always said that crochet is the perfect medium for this type of project.
Me: What are you talking about?
Erik: You know, all the squares, it really lends itself...you know...it should be pretty.... um.... easy.
Me: Are you trying to expert on me about crochet?
Erik: Um...no.
Me: Good. Because you have no idea what kind of creative genius it took to recreate these screen shots, down to the last perfectly formed pixel, using only yarn and a crochet hook.

Just trying to re-create something like this will require 90% of my brain capacity, let alone what it took to create it from thin air. It's mind boggling!