In the Mean Time

I’ve been busy pulling together a project that’s been in the pipeline for about 6 months now, since that fateful day in August when thermalgal (Jenni) came to a Loudoun Needleworkers meet-up and announced that she was (and still is) expecting her 2nd child in March.

We had just finished a blanket for our fearless leader, electricsoup (Misty), which ended up being large enough for her whole family to cuddle under. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but our intention was to make something for behbehsoup, as Zoe was known then. Misty has definitely appreciated the blanket, wrapping herself in our collective love (yes, even I get cheesy and melodramatic sometimes) during the last few weeks of her pregnancy, at the hospital, and during her maternity leave. We also made a Flying Spaghetti Monster for Misty’s son Alex, and by we I mean mainly snarkymarcy (Marcy) and BeadedLaceHoar (Karen), and Marcy’s husband Todd, who mastered the Embellish Knit for most of that I-cord.

So for Jenni, I was hoping to improve on things and do something a little different. Everyone involved agreed on a baby blanket and a family blanket, and many suggested making something for Jenni’s son Henry. As with Misty, Jenni provided a picture of her nursery so we could pick colors that would coordinate well with it. And as with Misty, we ended up using KnitPicks Comfy Worsted. I should have been more diplomatic with my project management, but ended up making some dictatorial decisions about the design. Making something as a group for Henry was going to be too complicated, so we left that as an optional bonus (I’m still working on my item for him).

I decided that hexagons, rather than squares, would be interesting to do, and in early December came up with several different blanket designs using 5 vibrant colors for the family blanket and 5 coordinating, paler colors for the baby blanket:

I ordered the yarn and distributed it along with the designs and instructions for making a basic, center-out hexagon. Even though I planned carefully and spent a day looking for the missing link in my hexagon calculations, I did not come up with the right formula for calculating the sides. I should have asked the LNW hive mind for help, but the hexagons (and blankets) turned out reasonably well.

I started piecing together the baby blanket last Wednesday afternoon and finished all but one hexagon on Friday morning, spending most of my time on the blanket and watching MI5 (aka spooks) on Netflix Streaming. Thursday I sent out email asking for help putting together the family blanket, comprising hexagons double the size of the baby blanket. RabbitSmile (Lisa), HoundHoar (Alana), and AliseKnits (Alise) all came over on Saturday with their crochet hooks to edge each hexagon with single crochet and then join them all in sections. Alana, who took a break to go home and get her 3 greyhounds, stayed until 3am, which is both crazy and the most fun I’ve had in a while – we giggled at the dogs, at IT Crowd, at my lack of piecing prowess as I crocheted the same seam for the 3rd time. I tossed the blankets into the washer and went to sleep.

Sunday: Jenni loves the blankets. They turned out really well, much better than they look in the pictures I took Sunday before the meet-up.

Baby Blanket:		Family Blanket:

Since starting this project, we have two other LNWers expecting, both for their first child. [Insert obligatory but tired joke about drinking the water at knitting meet-ups.] I’m taking a break from blanket project management, which makes me sad/guilty (I could do it! Really!) but also relieved that I can focus on other things, like getting back to the point of this blog or life or some third thing I haven’t come up with yet.