So yeah, I think this is the second-longest project I’ve had going, and it’s not amazing, and it wasn’t difficult, and I guess this is a great example of me going off on a tangent, getting sidetracked, distracted, moving-on-to-other-things-before-finishing-something-else-first, etc., etc., etc. In my defense, cotton is painful to knit and I got the confidence (or my sometimes slow brain started firing up) to move past plain old garter stitch when I was halfway through it. (I still do love garter though, especially since it rhymes with farter).
I first mentioned the blanket here, as one of my publicly declared UFOs I sort of intended to finish that year, and it was also somewhat responsible for the start of my blogging.
In the beginning, I wanted a cotton blanket for summertime sofa use. I wanted it to be reversible, and portable, so I made stripes/strips to sew together – only I didn’t pay attention to how long I made them and ended up with several (stupidly bound-off) in different lengths. The above image shows the way it looked c. 2008, and I don’t even know when I started it, but it was around 2001, and most of it was done c. 2001-2002.
(I’m tempted to go though my actual physical photographs to see if I can find one with it visible – crumpled in on the side table in my old apartment, but that would be yet another massive distraction).
I finally started back to work on it and came up with the plans for its final design in the Adirondacks last year – we traveled a lot when we lived in our last shitty apartment – if not for these fun weekends away, I probably would’ve have been eaten alive by the ner-do-well teens that spent too much time in the parking lot.
And I made a little more progress in the White Mountains last year when the power went out.
Then I put it down for a year while I worked on other things, but I left it in a handy place when we moved this last time so I wouldn’t have “loosing it in the move” as an excuse not to finish it.
I worked on it in the White Mountains again this summer – this time I had a nice chunk of time since I could’t hike.
I forgot to bring the yarn for one too-short multicolored stripe (I actually wondered why I had the stuff, and forgot what it was for!) and just finished it in white instead, which ended up to make for a better design in the end anyway.
And then I f*cked it up – I forgot that I had planned to do the two white stripes in the center (I even had photo evidence of the plan!) and I thought about keeping it as-is, but I ripped and re-sewed instead.
I got back on track, though sometimes I think I prefer the mistake version…
And went I home with most of the ends sewn in and only the border to do. I don’t love that knitting on the border made it no longer reversible, and I considered sewing on the border too, but I wanted the satisfaction of running the last few laps round and round, though they were very long and painful ones.
So it got a simple mitered corner.
And it actually matches our living room again – at least the yellow walls, and the [temporary] beige linen curtains.
Though we already need wool – the cotton doesn’t cut it for more than a few degrees of chill…
ASTITCHMATISM 