Blankies

I have been very busy working on two afghans and have not been blogging. I have been reading blogs but not keep up with mine. I didn't intend for there to be such a gap in time since my last post but I have actually been making very good progress on so many things. I have been cooking more, painting chairs, getting things ready for a fall yard sale and trying to finish two afghans before I lose interest.

I have talked about the mitered square afghan here in an earlier post. The wool mitered square has blankie has taken on a life of it's own. I am smitten over the whole process including five (yes I did say five) swaps to add different kinds and colors to my afghan. It has over 250 2"X2" squares. The afghan is knit on 2.25mm needles (the smallest sized ones). I usually knit my socks on that size because I like how smooth they look. I thought that since the afghan was going to be knit with sock yarn, I should honor that fact by knitting the whole thing with my sock needles. When I professed this fact in public, someone, anyone who was a friend should have knocked me upside the head. An intervention might have been needed at that point. Now it's just too late.

I have three one gallon bags of mini swap yarns to add to the wool blankie. I think maybe now I might have just about enough to knit the approx. 1,000 squares it's going to take. I have been averaging at least 2 squares per 5gm mini skein. I am very excited to want to finish this blankie whose finish time is estimated at about one year. Yup, one year. I don't want to take that long but there have been a few bumps in route to completion. One bump is blankie #2. I went with a friend to Michael's and they had Sugar and Creme 100% cotton on sale from $1.79 to $1.00 a skein so I purchased 20 skeins. I had a plan in mind and I was hoping to do it cheaply.

I wanted a summer blankie. After sitting with that wool afghan on my lap for hour after hour in the sweltering heat, I decided I needed a cotton version. Nuts, right?? Well, it's been so much fun that's it about half way finished. The wool blankie was temporarily forsaken for the newly loved cotton blankie. This time though I learned from my first mistake. I increased the needle size to #7s to accommodate the bulkiness of the cotton yarn. It has worked beautifully.






I am super pleased at how it's coming along. It's so much easier than the smallness of the wool blankie. Either way I am going to finish both sometime in the next year, but not before I start this blankie. I got invited to a baby shower. So tomorrow it's off to the yarn store to buy yet more yarn to make yet another blankie. I guess knitting on socks right now is totally out of the question...