The continuing story

of an obsession.

I knit a bit here and there over the long

Isn't that cool?  I am into the long middle and am having the time of my life.   It is silly how much fun I am having with this.  As you can see, it is a double stranded knit, on large needles and I am not really into very large needles.  Is this what they mean by suffering for your art?

It is a good opportunity for me to learn not to tense my hands so much on large needles and thinking about that, consciously relaxing my hands around these 9 mm tips, is making a difference.  Not sure why I do that, other than it is the stress of holding large things with some added 'I can't hold these things forever' thrown into the mix. 

I have made one small change to the pattern.  The second section of white on the border, after the red rows, is slightly shorter (2 rows) than the pattern calls for.  Two more rows would have made that part out of scale just enough to be bothersome but not enough out of scale that you could tell what was wrong.  I don't think it is a pattern issue.  Not at all.  This is pretty clearly a knitter issue. My rows gauge isn't quite what the designer got.  It's a blanket so it doesn't matter.  I guess I did make one other change.  I am making it a bit wider too.  The landlord is tall.  Size matters if you are a big guy in a world of small lap blankets.

He was having coffee while I was working on it yesterday, and a look crossed his face.  He says 'Oh, I get it.  It's a giant sock.'  I did not tell him this blanket was for him.  He had chosen a rather different pattern and I had a different yarn set aside, but I just don't think that in the long haul, a wool blanket is what he needs.  He is  bachelor and likely to remain so unless some smart cookie snaps him up (She would have to do the snapping) and he would eventually launder the wool in the machine and ruin it.  He wouldn't mean to.  He would just forget. 

There wasn't much time for huge amounts of time spent knitting though.  My sister stopped overnight on her way on a long winding vacation with no fixed route and my brother popped in for coffee before he watched his son in his final race of the season.  His son races motorcycles, hence the quick trip up here. 

The rest of the time, was spent getting ready for my munchkins to come visit again for the week.  My darling granddaughter hates me taking her picture and usually I don't (unless she is trying on a sweater) and I  respect that, but sometimes I get  little trigger happy. I want to remember her, just as she is right now, scolding grandma fearlessly. 

More than anything, I hope this little girl, and all my grandsons too, hold on to their childhood fearlessness as they take on the world.  It is a different kind of continuing story, fully their story, but I hope it plays out well and for a very long time to come.