"Your favorite color is yellow."

I actually don't have a favorite color. I just can't pick one. I have color moods where I just become obsessed with a certain color or color scheme for awhile until I become obsessed with a different one. Sometimes it's a seasonal thing, but most times I have no idea where my color moods come from.  They're just... moods.

When I bought this yarn, I was deep into a yellow mood. I just wanted some yellow socks and it had to be this certain exact shade of yellow and nothing else would do. I spent literally hours in my local yarn store going back and forth between shades of yellow- truth be told I didn't want to buy this yarn because I wanted something less expensive and with a higher nylon content- but alas it had to be this one because this was the shade I'd been craving for weeks. 

As soon as I finished these socks I was reminded of the time I met a good friend's daughter for the first time.  She was about 5 or 6 years old and had that awesome little girl sassyness that only little girls can get away with and still be considered cute. She told me she was going to draw me a picture and asked me what my favorite color was and I told her I didn't really have one- that I loved them all. She nodded once and ran off to draw me my picture. A few minutes later she came back with a picture of me wearing a yellow tutu and announced- with perfect seriousness, "Your favorite color is yellow." 

And so it is... For today anyway. 

The main color is called Egg Yolk and the contrast color is called Kelp- which doesn't sound all that appetizing, but at least it looks pretty. The yarn is Hedgehog Fibers and it's kind of a pain to work with, but I think it's worth it. These socks actually hug my feet. 

Unfortunately the camera just can't capture the awesomeness that is this color. It really is the exact color of egg yolks. 

(the famous drawing)

Whole Lotta Knittin' Goin' On...

Oh my!  I have been a busy bee since I was last here...

I am quite proud of these adult size fliptop mittens.  For some reason I struggled much more with these than I did with the ones I made for Mr. Boy.  But in the end they came out very lovely and deliciously warm. 

 Above is my very first successful adventure into the provisional cast on.  This is actually a practice/experimental hat that I wasn't really expecting to love as much as I do.  I just wanted to try out a double sided beanie with a seamless provisional cast on and I didn't want to "waste" any "nice" yarn.  Funny thing is I love this hat! I used left-over cheapy cheap baby yarn thinking that it would just be an "extra" hat to store in the car for when I forget my hat or whatever, and then I ended up truly loving the style, fit, softness, warmth, and even colors so much that it quickly became my favorite.  Perfect for those wishy-washy Spring days when the weather can't decide if it wants to be nice or blustery. Those two layers block out the wind and those bright colors remind you that yes, it really is Spring even if the wind is trying to give you frostbite. 

The pattern is actually for a men's hat, but it is so cute on my girlie head that I couldn't believe it.

Above is the exact same pattern.  This one made for my brother with only a single layer as written and requested.  This is the third one of these I have made for him since he either loses them or claims they don't fit. But I think he's just a hat hoarder. 

The poncho that I started literally years ago and finally finished this winter just as it was warming up. It is lovely and warm and soft as kittens and I plan to live in it next fall and winter.  I don't have it written up in Ravelry yet partly because ponchos are just not that cool anymore and I feel like a weirdo for still loving them as I do and partly because I forgot.  Maybe I'll get to that some day and add a link.  Maybe not.  

 

Socks! Two pair of actual, genuine, bona fide, knitted socks! I am super excited about this new skill of mine because it has been a long, slow, road, of gathering knitting skills like breadcrumbs until I felt confident enough to even try to knit these babies. I think I will just leave this picture up here and make my next blog post an entire post about socks because I have a lot to say about this development. Unfortunately I actually sort of overdid it while making that 2nd pair- too much knitting with not enough rest in between and I have a little Repetitive Stress Injury going on so I'm taking a break from knitting anything for a week or so- which is how I ended up writing up this blog post instead... 

And here are some Irises from my garden because they're pretty and because I am just so darn stoked to even have a garden.  

There's probably going to be a lot more garden talk going on around here from now on. Fair warning. 

I don't think people read blogs anymore... do they?

So... Hey there... Hehhehheh

Who wants to hear the 888 reasons why I totally abandoned this blog?  Anyone? Well, of course you don't.  Who cares? And anyway, excuses are boring.  Let's just say- Life happens.  And I'll end up giving at least a few reasons why this blog went dormant along the way I'm sure, but for now I'll just say- Hey! I'm back! I don't know for how long, or how consistently, but for reasons I'm not even sure I can explain, I've decided to go ahead and revive this silly old blog that was supposed to be about whatever I wanted it to be about, but ended up being about knitting and crocheting and then ended up being about nothing because I stopped writing it. (heh)

So, first things first: That last post was a bit of a teaser so I'll finally show you what it was:

 It was blanket I made for a dear friend who had just adopted a baby boy. These photos aren't the greatest, but they'll have to do because I don't have the blanket anymore to take pictures of it. The recipient loved it, though, so that's all that matters.  This one was actually my own design and I think I had plans to write it out as a pattern and share it here, but well... oops.  I did take a lot of notes and made a graph for the heart and everything, but I lost the notes, found them, then lost them again. So if I find them again I promise I will write this up and post it here.  I was very proud of the fact that it was completely reversible- it didn't have a wrong or right side so it looked nice no matter which way it was laid out or used.

Okay. That's it for now.  I just realized I have to completely refigure out how to post photos and stuff. But I do have lots of new stuff that I'm excited to post here so once I figure all that out I'll be posting some new projects! Yay!

(Also- I'm not sure that anyone is even out there reading this blog, so if you're there and you do want to see a pattern for this, write me a comment and let me know because that will greatly increase my motivation to find those notes and write it up.)

Ravelry link here

Heart shaped things!

As I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day, but I do love me some heart shaped things.  Here's a little something I've been working on...

I was hoping to be finished by today, but no such luck.  Things have been oddly busy around here.  And I've developed an unsettling addiction to Pinterest which has significantly slowed me down as far as finishing any projects are concerned.

Soon I'll do the full reveal.
And if I'm feeling especially generous, there'll be a pattern to go with it!

You are an obsession. You're my obsession.

A few months ago, I wrote this post about shawls and how I finally "get it" about why everyone is so crazy about them.  Well, here's my next confession:  I am obsessed with shawls now.  I honestly can't figure out how I ever survived and thrived without them.  AND I finally knitted one with some of that stash yarn I was talking about in my last post.

Ravelry link  

Araucania Atacama- now discontinued  

I was worried about trying to knit one because as I've said before I am a s l o w knitter.  Also, most of the patterns I see getting ooohed and ahhhhed over are lace knit shawls and despite the undeniable beauty of the lace knitting.  I am just not there yet and don't know if I ever will be. Aside from the mind-numbing complicatedness of the lace stitch patterns,  I'm just not a lacey shawl kind of gal so I'm not motivated to figure out how to do something that's, strictly speaking, not even really my style.  But I found this pattern for the Mara shawl and I thought it was perfect.  Exactly the kind of thing I might actually wear and easy as pie to knit.  Now this shawl consists of a whole lotta garter stitch, so if that's not your thing, then you probably wont like this pattern, but while knitting this one I discovered that I really love the garter stitch, especially with a yummy dk variegated yarn.  For the first time in a long time I found myself enjoying a knitting project so much that I really didn't want it to end.  And of course, I finished this one amazingly quickly because I was enjoying it so much.  

Here's a close up of the color and the stripes I added to make the shawl bigger. It's still not as big as I wanted it to be, but I really used up every scrap of that yarn that I had and it's now discontinued, so that's that.  A word about this yarn:  Yummy!
This is 100% alpaca, which is a very warm fiber.  In the garter stitch it is so squishy and delicious.  I put this shawl on my shoulders any time I'm feeling chilled and in no time at all I am toasty warm.
(I had no idea that just putting a little something warm on your shoulders could make you feel so warm!  I am so in awe of that new discovery.)
Alpace, like wool, can be a little itchy, but so far I'm persevering because I love the warmth so much.

Another confession:  I already bought some more yarn because I want to make another one of these, but next time in a solid color and much bigger.
Yes... obsessed.  

And just to ease my troubled conscience about the abandoned ripple blanket, I also finished a sweater that I started last year and that was languishing in my UFO pile.

Yarn:  Caron Country

I actually kind of forgot I had started this one.   I think I got discouraged because I knew I wouldn't quite have enough yarn to make the sleeves for this sweater long and at the time I really wanted it to be long sleeved, but after pulling it back out I decided that short sleeves would be just fine and in fact I really actually love the short sleeves.  I think for a long time I thought short-sleeved sweaters were kind of silly.  Like those open-toed boots that were all the rage last fall/winter?  I thought, "What's the point?  If it's cold enough to wear boots/a sweater, then wouldn't you need to cover your toes/arms?"  But living in Houston, I'm now understanding how it can be chilly enough to want a sweater, but not cold enough to need a long sleeved sweater.  And if it gets colder I can always wear a long sleeved shirt underneath and really that's about as cold as it ever gets in Houston.  (Still don't really get those open-toed boots, though.)

And that's about all I can tell you about this sweater.  I have no idea what pattern I used or if I just made it up as I was going along. All I know is that it's a top-down raglan knit in the round and that the yarn is super soft and lovely and machine washable and if it holds up well I'll definitely use it again.
Perhaps on another shawl?  

Playing Hooky (no pun intended)

I have a few confessions to make...

I've been playing hooky from my ripple blanket.  It's not that I don't love the ripple, but sometimes, you just need to think about/ look at/ fixate on another project before the one you're working on is finished.  I used to have a real problem with this until I decided that I would only work on one project at a time.  But seriously people, ripple blankets take a really, really long time to finish.  Especially the particular ripple I love to do which consists of nothing but single crochet through the back loop (sc tbl) until the end of eternity.  This magical stitch makes a beautiful fabric that is cozier than should be possible, but that has a wonderful dreamy drape to it.  It even makes really cheap acrylic seem wonderful.  But it is boring! (Of course, if this blanket was for me, I'd probably be finished by now.)

There's also the fact that for about 2 weeks we thought we might be moving to Chicago.  Now as soon as I heard this, I naturally thought about yarn and knitting and making all kinds of things that I don't really have any occasion to knit while living somewhere that only gets cold about 3 times a year.  I was thinking about mittens and wool sweaters, (with real wool!)  And the imagination was sparking all sorts of inspiration frenzies and visions of walking through snow in a beautiful, perfectly knitted cable knit sweater. But alas, the dream died and the job Mr. Man was hoping to get went to some other (undeserving) candidate (who probably has no appreciation whatsoever for hand-knit sweaters.)  And I had to go back to finding things to knit/crochet that I might actually get to wear here in Houston. But by then I'd already raided my stash and found some pretty awesome and some other not so awesome yarns that I'd forgotten I had.  Well, this sparked another frenzy.  This frenzy had to do with finally knowing what I wanted to make with these certain forgotten yarns.

First up we have Nashua Vignette:

It looks like a lovely yarn, doesn't it.
Well, it isn't.
I bought this yarn years ago (it's now discontinued) to make a sweater, but once I started knitting with it, I hated it.  For one thing it is incredibly scratchy.  For another thing it's really... sproingy.  I don't know any other word to use.  What I'm trying to say is that even though it's a worsted weight yarn it behaves like a bulky weight yarn once you start knitting or crocheting with it.  It just... sproings up! I had a lot of this stuff, too because I bought enough to make a whole sweater, (but not a bulky sweater because, let's face it, Kate Moss I am not, and who else would look good in a bulky sweater?)  It's just been sitting in my stash for 5 years or so but a few weeks ago I had an epiphany about what to make with it.  

Can you guess what it is? (See how sproingy?)

Okay, I'll show you...



Yeah, that's right, I made another Half-granny shawl.  This one was made more for warmth than for prettiness.  I don't really have any plans to wear it out in public.  For one thing, it's huge!  I was trying to use up all that yarn (I still have one ball left.)  And I found a surprising amount of other scraps of very similarly colored yarn hiding out in my stash so I threw that stuff in there too.  Now I have a shawl that I can wrap around myself whenever I have to go outside to let the dog out or whatever, but don't feel like putting on a sweater or jacket. Or just for when I'm cold inside, which happens to me a lot. This shawl is very warm, and it of reminds me a little of the kind of thing you might see on an ancient Italian widow. I kind of hated every minute of working on it because of that crappy yarn, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that it's no longer in my stash and it is exactly what I was wanting when I decided to make it.  My favorite part is the little picots on the edge.  I need to use more picots.

Okay so even though I do have more to show you of my "playing hooky" projects, I have no more pictures so it will have to come in the next post.

Meanwhile I'd like to know if anyone else is having this playing hooky problem.  Also if anyone else has any yarn in their stash that they hate and don't know what to do with it.  Anyone?  

Still plugging along...

I wish I were one of those bloggers who could pound out a blanket every 2 weeks.  Or that I had something fabulous to show you every single time I blog.  Unfortunately, I'm still working on this chevron blanket and it is slooowww goooooiiinng...

Even though this chevron pattern takes longer than some of the others that use double crochet, I really just love the fabric made from single crochet through the back loop.  It has such a nice drape, and yet it makes such a warm cozy blanket. Do you have a favorite ripple/chevron pattern?

This one is a gift for the parents of a friend who lost everything they had when their house burned down this summer.

Here it is again, draped over my legs while I work on it:

Every time I make one of these for someone else I want to steal it for myself.
The next one I make is going to be MINE!

Anyone else in the mood to ripple?  Join this Ripple Along on Flickr.

Sometimes I knit.

Not often, but sometimes, I knit.  I really love to knit, actually, but it takes sooooo loooonng to finish anything, which means that I hardly ever do finish anything knitted these days, which is why I just crochet most of the time.  I can crochet like the wind.

However, every now and then someone asks me to make them something, and inevitably that something is usually knitted.

This hat for example was made for my dad.  I made him a hat long ago for Christmas, I think it was?  And when I asked him what he wanted for Father's Day it turned out to be another hat just like the other one.  Really, a hat?  In the summer?  You want a hat?  Are you sure?  Yes.  He's sure he wants a hat, only he wants it to be burnt orange (UT colors) so he can wear it to the UT games.  And let me tell you, that was no easy task finding the exact right shade of burnt orange.  You can't just pick any old orange.  I had to take him to the yarn store and we spent quite a bit of time going over which orange is burnt orange and which is Tennessee orange and which is almost burnt orange but not quite.  (Apparently to show up to a UT game wearing Tennessee orange or not quite UT orange is a major faux pas. Who knew?)  But alas, Dad will have his hat.  (Quite a few weeks past Father's Day, but knitting takes me soooo loooonng!)

Here's the pattern I used for the hat, though instead of a rolled brim, I used a 1X1 ribbing for the brim. And the stripe sequence I chose was based on the Fibonacci sequence because it's one of those math geeky things that men think are cool.

And then once I start knitting, well, I have to make a few of these too:

Now these are dishcloths made of cheapety cheap cheap cotton yarn, and they are magic.  Magic I tell you!  Everyone loves these things, and thankfully they are extremely quick and easy to make.  I can turn these suckers out in a day or two.  Less if I didn't have a toddler to tend to.  They may not look like much, and usually when I give them to people as gifts they look at me kind of like,  "Oh... knitted dishcloths... well... thanks... I guess..."  But then they always come back to me and say, "HEY! Those things are AWESOME! I need, like 100 more of them!"  But really you only need, like, 3 of them because they are damn near impossible to destroy.  Unless you're my mother.  She always finds a way to tear them up, so I made the above for her.  But when Dad saw them, his eyes lit up!  "OH! You made us some more dishcloths! Oh I LOVE these things!"  Really?  Well, that's what I like to hear!

Anyone want the pattern?  Here it is!

(In case anyone is interested, when I make them I change row 3 so that the first knit 2 together is an SKP, only because I think it makes a more fetching dishcloth, but it's really not necessary for functionality.)

South Bay Shawl reveal!

This summer has been crazy so far, what with home improvements to be done and high school reunions to attend.  But things seem to be slowing back down again.  So let's all hope that I actually start blogging more often again.

Here's the finished project that I teased you all with in the last post:

It turned out to be a shawl that I made especially to wear to my high school reunion, but never actually got to wear it because it was never cold enough inside the ballroom.  Just as well probably, because the shawl might have been a little too busy to go with the dress I chose, but I was working with stash yarn, and I didn't have enough to make it elegantly all one color. (This shawl was quite the yarn-eater, especially considering that it's a lace pattern.)

Pattern is called the South Bay Shawlette, and it's a free pattern from Lion Brand (but you have to sign up to their websight to see it if you're not already a member.  But it's free to do so and as far as I can tell they don't send too much spam.)  You can see how gorgeous the pattern is in the above close-up, and it's suprisingly easy to do, especially if you just follow the diagram. This was the first pattern where I virtually ignored the written pattern and went strictly off the diagram, but I'm pretty sure if I'd only had the written pattern to go from it would have been a much more frustrating pattern.  As it was, it almost crocheted itself.  Very easy and very nice results.  I plan to make another one eventually, maybe in all one color, or maybe in an ombre of a different color pattern because even though at first I only changed colors because I realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish, once I saw the ombre effect I really liked it.

I used two different kinds of yarn, both cotton.  The two darker colors were Omega Sinfonia and the lighter blue was Nashua Creative Focus cotton dk.  Now I love me some Sinfonia because I love mercerized cotton and I love not having to pay a fortune for it, but that Nashua yarn was so much more luxurious than the Sinfonia.  It's egyptian cotton and it really is significantly soften than the regular ole cotton that I'm used to.  The only down side to working with it was that it was so splitty, so I had to go super slow on that last section, but after blocking that light blue yarn was even softer that before!

Here's a couple of (really terrible) pictures of me wearing the shawl:

Please everyone, just concentrate on the shawl.  See how pretty that shawl is?
Too bad I didn't get any pictures of me looking fabulous at the reunion in the dress with the shawl, but such is life.

Here's a couple of pictures of the finished floor for those who wanted to see that:

We LOVE our new floors! 

Spring bag!

pring has definitely sprung here in Houston this last couple of weeks, which means that I've switched gears from blankets, scarves, and shawls and moved on to warm weather crochet.  So far that means bags.  I've been a little obsessed with crocheted bags.  I'm sure this has something to do with my purse addiction. Did I mention that I have a purse addiction?  Well, I do.  It's pretty serious.  The only problem is that the money situation has been just a leetle bit tight around here lately so no new fabulous purses for me... Unless... Well, hey! I can just crochet myself some new bags!

I've been flirting with the idea of clutch bags.  The problem is, I'm not one of those women who can just throw a lipstick, a phone, and a credit card in my purse and be good to go.  I have needs, people!  Which generally means that I tend to carry around the equivalent of a small suitcase with me wherever I go. But whatever, clutches are so cute and they're suddenly everywhere so of course, I must have one.

Sooooo... Here's my first attempt at a crocheted clutch:

  

The pattern is called Textured Tweed Clutch from the Fall 2005 Interweave Crochet.  (It's also available as a Ravelry download.)  I changed up a few things:
The pattern calls for a 100% tweed wool yarn which I didn't use because it's supposed to be a Spring purse and that to me means it needed to be cotton so I used Red Heart's Eco cotton blend instead.

The original pattern is all one color, but I didn't have enough of this yarn in all one color in my stash so I used the two colors I did have.  More on that decision later.

The pattern for the base of the purse is supposed to be a seed stitch pattern, but I tried it and it was kind of wonky to work and with the dark color I was using it seemed a whole lotta work for something that you could barely even see so I just switched it up to straight single crochet.

The original pattern calls for a buckle closure, but I didn't have a buckle handy and I had decided that I would not be buying anything new for this project so I improvised with a button hole and a button I happened to have lying around.





So it's cute, right?  Look at those cute little bobbles in the close up.

But here's the thing:
As soon as I finished this purse I thought to myself, "Now what the heck am I gonna do with this?  Where would I ever wear it?"  The colors are, well, all right, but I have almost nothing to coordinate this with.  The size is a little weird too.  It's not really small enough to just be a cute little afterthought of a clutch, but it's not big enough to truly carry all the stuff I need it to carry.  Also because it's weirdly oblong, it's sort of floopy.  I had to stuff it with scarves to take these photos but without the scarves it kind of folds up on itself.  It truly probably needs some sort of reinforcement sewn into it to help it keep it's shape, but I just don't love it enough to do that much extra work on it.  

Here's a couple of pictures with my hand and tucked under my arm so you can get an idea of it's actual size.  I tucked the strap inside to see if that would make it any more usable for me, but it just makes it look weird.  (Please ignore my oh so stylish tie-dye ensemble.)

So, even though I don't hate it, I don't really love it, either.  I'm just going to chalk this one up to a learning experience.  Onward I march in search of a clutch design that will work for all my little niggling idiosyncrasies.

A word about the Eco-cotton blend yarn.  It is a lovely yarn and I will probably use it again, but not with the puff stitch.  Not ever again.  It took f o r e v e r to get those little puffs to work with this splitty yarn.

Oh Mr. Darcy, can you fetch me my shawl?

I must admit that when I first noticed that shawls were becoming the thing in the knitting realm, I was a bit baffled.  I know something had to replace ponchos once those went out of favor, (which I was really dismayed about because I still love ponchos, but that's a whole other story) but shawls seemed a bit too... I don't know... Jane Austenish to carry over into our current modern times.  I mean shawls and texting?  It just didn't seem right.

Don't get me wrong.  I love all things Jane Austen, myself.  I've read every one of her books.  I've probably watched Sense and Sensibility at least 400 times (much to my husbands dismay.) That scene where Elinor's shawl falls off while she's taking one of those oh so English strolls and talking to Edward and he tenderly places it back over her shoulder... *sigh.*

But the point is, I just couldn't really see the need to spend hours knitting a shawl and then where would I wear it and with what?  I mean I'm pretty much a lounge pants/sweats and tee shirt kind of gal.  In the summer I might wear a dress or two, but there's rarely a need for a shawl in a Houston summer.

Then I saw a girl in Starbucks and she had a shawl wrapped around her neck in this certain way so that it was more like a scarf and she looked très soigné, and I thought, well OK, I could maybe pull that off.  And then I saw this pattern on Ravelry and I knew I had to make myself one. It kind of goes along with my whole granny craze that I've been on lately.

So I went for a little stash dive and found some sock yarn that I seriously don't even remember buying and before I knew it I had my first shawl.  Here's three things I finally understand about shawls and why people love them.
1.  They keep you so warm!
2.  You can wear them inside without feeling like you're dressed for outside.
3.  Shawls are like little blankets that are acceptable to carry around with you all day.





I actually did a little research on the shawl (because that's the kind of thing I do when I get semi-obsessed with something new) and I found out that shawls first came into fashion around the Jane Austenish times (1780-1870) along with all things in any way Oriental.  Most everything else soon went out of style (turbans) but the shawl stuck around because it served an actual purpose which was mainly keeping women warm in drafty houses. And to think I used to feel sorry for poor Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood freezing their arses off in the English winters with nothing but a shawl to keep them warm.  Ha!

(This is as close as I get to soigné.)


Here's Mr. Boy in my shawl.  He always gets cold in the grocery store.

By the way, crocheting a shawl is so much less time consuming than knitting one.  I used sock yarn and an F hook and it still went fairly quickly.  I would have made it bigger, but I kept running out of yarn.
There are definitely more of these in my future.  I've just about worn this one out already during this crazy cold winter storm nonsense.  (I seriously have already had to mend it!)  

Granny Square Reveal!

I can finally reveal the project I've been hinting at for the last few posts!

Tada! It's my first full sized granny square blanket ever! Isn't that crazy that I've been crocheting for so long and never made a granny square blanket?! That's like Crochet 101!
(Well, I made a baby blanket for a friend a few years ago, but I don't have any pictures of that one, and it was probably pretty funky looking because I don't think I had figured out how to join them very well, yet.  So like most crafters, I just pretend that the stuff that I did that sucked doesn't exist. If I can get away with it.)

Okay so, stats:
Yarn:  This was a true stash busting project using various acrylic yarns that I had in my stash.  Some that I have no idea at all where they came from or why I bought them.  (And yes I still have A TON more stash yarn left.)  The yarns that I know of are Lion Brand Wool Ease, Caron Simply Soft, and Red Heart Supersaver. The main color that all the squares were edged with is Caron One Pound.  I have previously pledged once before never EVER to buy Red Heart Supersaver again, so let me just renew that little vow here and now.  HATE it.  And unfortunately, I still have quite a bit more left in my stash.  Why did I buy it in the first place?

When I was making the ripple in the picture above I bought some Red Heart because, well, it was so cheap and the colors are so pretty, and even though I knew Red Heart is like the Vienna Sausages of yarn, I just figured that it wouldn't be all that bad.  Heh.  Well, it is. It's that bad.  It feels like cheap carpet, it wants to "catch" on the hook while you're working with it, it actually squeaks it's so plastic.  The only good thing about it is that it softens up and actually feels pretty nice after just one trip through the washer and dryer.  Also it will last forever.  I mean it does not die.  This blanket could be found somewhere, completely intact in an empty field after a nuclear blast had removed all life from the earth. But I digress...

Size:  Throw sized about 59" by 39".  I wanted it to be something that could be put comfortably on the couch  and not overpower everything, but be big enough to curl up under.  It ended up being perfect because I used up almost every single bit of the Caron One Pound.

Joining method:  Crocheted together on the back side using slip stitch.  Sorry, but didn't take any pics of the back side before sending it off to it's owner.

Blocking method:  Just washed it on gentle in cold water and dried it on medium.  I've found that is the best way to block acrylic. Below are some pics before blocking. 

Ian loved this blanket.  I had a hard time keeping him out of the pictures.  

I see many, many grannies in my future.  But more on that next post.