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!

February ....Already????

Oh January, I hardly knew you.

I spent most of the weekend outside, in the unseasonably warm weather. Climate change, ahoy! It seems that everybody is either experiencing unnecessarily ruthless barrages of sleet and snow, or uncharacteristically spring-like weather. That would be us. 70 degrees F has been the norm this week.

My poor tulips and hyacinths are beside themselves...bloom? Should I bloom now? How about now? Now? Not yet? Poor babies.

I spent most of the time pruning back, cleaning up, and putting away Christmas decorations. Ahem. But I also planted a few sprigs of ground cover and a mock orange in the front, which I think will be lovely on the hill off the deck. I moved furniture and weeded and hauled dirt and then I went into the backyard and did it all again. It's hard work, but I needed to soak up some Vitamin D (to improve my mood) and I needed to get it done (to improve my neighborhood) so I'm grateful for the inspiring weather. Now rain, please!

I think it was two Fridays ago that I went to a "crochitting" party with some teacher friends. I love these ladies! There are about a dozen or so, and everybody brings a knitting or crocheting project (hence: crochitting as the combination of the two) and we sit around and talk and laugh and work away! There are experts there in every possible combination of craft and fiber, so good advice abounds to get you over the hump of a particularly thorny problem.

Miss Susan opens her home and her enormous dining room table (seats about 20!) and she makes us breakfast for dinner ~ pancakes and eggs and scones and bacon and could you die? I brought about 5 projects, but ended up working on the one that I've had the hardest time motivating myself to finish (a beautiful but stubborn blanket I've been piecing together for almost a year!) because everything is easy when you're in good company.

By the time I got out my camera we were well past the witching hour when most people had the good sense to go home. By the time I took these three pictures, each of our husbands had called at least once to make sure we were still alive. Good times.

Cat in the Hat

I knit two hats last weekend, as I had gift exchanges on Monday and Tuesday. It's so hard to figure out if a handmade gift is going to be appreciated! In both cases, the hats were stolen twice (the "legal limit") and so that's the ultimate confirmation of acceptance, under the circumstances!

I don't have pictures of the hats, because I wrapped them before I photographed them. Now it's like it never happened. Anyway, I knitted them. (for the crafty inclined: cast on 38 to size 11 needles, knit in garter stitch for 21 inches. One was made from jiffy yarn in light brown and I finished it by seaming the short ends and running a piece of yarn through the loops in the top-round and pulling tight to close off the top. The second was made from wool-ease thick and quick in a very sweet spice/brick orange-y color. This one I finished the same way, but instead of pulling the yarn tight through the top-round loops, I moved down just over an inch and when I pulled tight it was so cute, it had a little "top knot". )

The whole point of this is to tell you that knitting? It takes a long time. The jiffy hat worked up in about 5 hours, and the top-knot took about 4 hours.

For a frame of reference, I also crocheted these two hats this week.*** The pink one took about 40 minutes. The fuzzy sherbert one took less than one and a half hours. Seriously.

(Look at my sick baby! And I'm making him wear hats for a photo shoot. What a trooper!)

One could legitimately ask the question: why knit at all? I have no answer for that. Just to say, knitting is kind of fun anyway. And there's something to be said, in my humble opinion, for taking your time with something you're making by hand. I mean, if I wanted to stop at Target on the way to the party, and buy a hat for 10 bucks, I could. The point about handmade is to embrace the slower pace, to be purposeful and mindful. Some could say that knitting, by it's nature, forces you to do that.

Still, I'm a working mom with two young kids. There's got to be a compromise! So far, my compromise is to do both...hmmm, could be I'm missing the point entirely.

*** These hats are going to the daughters of my friend. Pattern for the pink calls for wool-ease thick and quick and can be found here. (registration required, but it's free) Pattern for the cloche calls for bulky weight homespun, but I used sensations angel-hair that was gifted to me. Pattern can be found here. (registration required, but it's free)