The Heathen Housewife

I had a really tough decision to make this afternoon.

The i-cord edging on my blanket has been going incredibly quickly. I had been dreading it a bit as I approached the end of the blanket, because I was afraid it would take longer to work than I had remembered from the first chunk I worked lo these many moons ago. But it turns out I was able to get up the right side, across the top, and down a good chunk of the left side in the last few days, leaving only a handful of diamonds’ worth of edge unfinished by this afternoon. Only an hour, two at most, worth of work left to do.

I went ahead and took pictures during daylight hours, still hoping that maybe just maybe I would have it finished this evening. But then we decided to make cookies instead of watch a video, so I had no couch time before the kids went to bed…and Julie had a melt down at the end of dinner, so there was no time to knit while they were in the bath…and yet I still held out in my mind – I could hold of writing up this post until later tonight when the blankie is – dare I say it – done. I can really hardly believe it now that I am to this point. The blanket will, one way or another, be complete later this evening. But I made the decision to post early, finish later.

A few weeks ago, Wannietta asked me if I would feel sad or a little let-down when the project is finished, after being attached to it for so long. At the time I didn’t answer her, but I laughed to myself and thought “yeah, right.” But I knew what she meant at the time, and the question has stuck with me. The answer is yes, I will – a little.

So I will assuage that feeling by holding on to the Blankie Fridays for one more week, and next Blankie Friday we will go out with a big bang. There will be contests! Rules in a moment. The blankie will be blocked and spiffy, not rumply and covered in cat hair as it is right now. We will come up with some creative ideas for pictures. I will take you on a little trip down memory lane and we will give the blankie a little blog-party. I’ll outline the contest in a minute, but first let’s look at some pictures.

There is no big-picture picture tonight. I did take some big-picture pictures, but I’m going to hold back for a couple of reasons. First, the blanket looks so much different now with a nice straight edge across the top. It looks almost like a finished project, and I don’t want to steal next week’s thunder. Because it really is beautiful, if I do say so myself. Second, the blanket really needs to be blocked. As you may be able to tell in some of the close-up pictures in a moment, the corners aren’t very sharp right now, and the i-cord is wanting to roll a bit. The edges need to be told who’s boss. Sorry about that, but if you really need a big-picture fix, go look at last week’s Blanket Friday. It’s pretty close.

I will show you the one remaining edge awaiting it’s i-cord application.

At the top is the ball of yarn, attached and waiting its fate. At the bottom is the start of the i-cord, and one of the last two tails remaining to be woven in (yay!) It has been so gratifying as I work my way around the blanket to get rid of all the nasty little dangling ends and bits of scrap yarn holding my provisional cast ons in place.

Here are the close-ups of the final week’s worth of square knitting (for those of you who love spotting the yarns you sent in).

This little shot I took after the main photo session. I’ve got all the remaining provisional cast-on stitches loaded onto a 000 Addi Turbo and am cranking away on the last bit of I-cord. Can I confess that I’ve been watching old episodes of 30 Rock on Netflix Live in the evenings, and they go together perfectly. It’s very entertaining, but doesn’t require much eye contact. You can see in this picture that I’m working my way up the side that doesn’t have live stitches. At the end of each i-cord row, I pick up the next stitch along the blanket edge that gets knit together with the third i-cord stitch each time around. The live-stitch edges are about twice as fast to knit as the pick-up stitch edges.

Okay, now to the contest. There will be several parts, but for all parts I must emphasize – I *must* have a way of contacting you via e-mail, or don’t even bother entering. The last contest I had, I was incredibly frustrated by the number of people who, despite my request, didn’t leave their e-mail in the comment and had their Blogger profile set to private. I need to be able to e-mail you to confirm that you want the prize so that if you don’t I can offer it to someone else. It’s that simple. Also, it’s really frustrating on a regular basis when someone leaves a comment asking a question and leaves no contact information. Would it be so bad to set your blogger profile to public and list an e-mail address there? I’m even okay with sending a message on Ravelry if you just give me your Ravelry id, if you’re worried about spam.

Part the first: I’ve been wanting to ask this question for a long time – there are several yarns that people sent me that I really love. Ones that I’d like to make pairs of socks out of some day. So following are pictures of the squares I made out of them. The first reader who identifies each yarn and sends me to an online store that carries it in the colorway shown gets a set of my notecards with closeup pictures of my projects on them, and maybe an additional surprise in the mail.

A:

B:

C:

D:

Part the second – in Ravelry alone, there are 90 projects listed for my blankie pattern/tutorial. I know there are more out there. For those of you already knitting blankies who could benefit from additional chunks of leftovers, please comment with a link to a picture of the current state of your blankie, and let me know if there are any specific requests for colors. I will give away my remaining stash of superwash wool/nylon fingering weight just like what went into my blankie.

I want everyone who considers taking any of this yarn to understand something, though. When I started this project, before I was flooded with gifts after the Yarn Harlot linked to me, I thought it was going to be a 20-year project. I wasn’t planning to make it my main knitting obsession for a year and a half. But then I received all these gifts and I realized that I now had a responsibility to show all the people who had generously sent them to me that I appreciated them and that they were being well-used. So I knit them up. I did not hoard them in my stash for an indefinite period like so many other yarns I own. If you take some of this yarn, I expect you to take on some of that responsibility as well. Depending on the number of entries, I will split up what I have into reasonable packages and draw names randomly.

Part the third – this one is for everyone. Simply leave a comment (separate from any other comment entries) saying “Show me the blankie!” (those exact words, please – I’m going to use an automatic sorting feature in Outlook) and you’ll be entered for a prize package including a skein of my hand dyed yarn, some note cards, a set of my favorite Pony Pearl knitting needles, a sock project bag by Messie Craftie (no affiliation – I just love her bags and want an excuse to order another for myself as well , and a copy of one of my favorite sock knitting books – your choice of Nancy Bush’s Folk Socks, Interweave Knit’s Favorite Socks, or Lucy Neatby’s Cool Socks – Warm Feet. It’ll be kind of like the Secret Pal package I would send to myself if I were my own Secret Pal, only the winner will get it instead. I guess I’d better throw in some chocolate as well.

Alright, that’s it. Um, if you’re out there and you’re reading and you have a blog – send your friends here for the party next Friday. There’ll be lots of pictures and fun facts about the blankie. A huge thanks to all of you who have hung with me on this and seen me through this far. I’m off to fire up the 30 Rock and have one last knitting session with the blankie.

Editing to add – comments closed because the contest is over. Check out the wrap-up post for final blankie pictures.

I know you’re just here for the blanket pictures, but I’m too lazy to do two seperate posts tonight, so I’m going to make you sit through my Valentine’s Day pictures first.

I’ve been waiting months for this. I saw this totally amazingly yummy-looking chocolate sauce at the co-op a few months ago and thought how perfect it would be with some strawberries as a special Valentine’s Day dessert.

And oh, my. It was a terrific Valentine’s Day dessert.

The girls loved it. I loved it. Even Joe, who normally does not get into desserts, seemed to love it.

And then Joe surprised me with not one but three awesome VD gifts…

A Takashi Murukami mouse pad to protect my new desk from the laser in my mouse, which left a big old faded spot on the surface of my old desk. Hee hee. I love it.

This funny little guy, which is so totally something Joe would buy. It’s a wind-up toy, and the little plastic heart beats in and out as it swings the clear plastic circle around like a hula-hoop, making the ball bearing inside go in circles, producing a rythmic clacking against the ridges inside. It’s hilarious, and the girls wanted it for themselves. I said no. But I did let them watch it several times.

And finally, a t-shirt, which is also so totally Joe’s sense of humor – it’s an ugly doll, Jeero, wearing a surgical mask. Funny.

And I know you’re all totally “C’mon, give me the blankie pics!” But I can’t resist showing you a couple more chocolate-mouth pictures from today, when we had some friends over for lunch and shared the leftovers with them.

You have to admit that happy chocolate-covered kids can be pretty cute.

The blankie is looking pretty good this week. See those top squares over on the right? That’s the freakin’ top of the blanket. Oh yeah, baby! I knit 33 squares this week, and there are only 24 more to go. I really think I have a chance of finishing the whole damn thing, i-cord edging and all, by the end of the month.

Lots going on at House of Kang today. Mostly involving more barfing, another fruitless visit to the doctor’s office, and a very sad toddler, exhausted mama, and bored pre-schooler. All on Someone’s second birthday. It sucked. Royally.

But. Let’s forget about that for a moment. I’ve had a glass of wine and a long, hot bath. We’ve agreed to have a re-do of Sophie’s birthday when she’s feeling better. Hopefully on Sunday I’ll make a cake and buy some balloons. Joe’s set up her birthday present in the basement, and we’ll show that to her in the morning assuming that she’s up to it.

Here’s the birthday girl at lunchtime, still in her PJs, eating applesauce and Cheerios. She wanted nothing to do with the Pedialyte that I dragged the girls through SuperTarget, to fetch.

Moments later, I was trying to take a picture of Julie to prove that she’s still alive and happy. Um, yeah.

So for now, let’s get on with Blankie Friday and some other fun stuff.

This week marks a milestone – I knit the last big square in the blanket just yesterday. My friends, there is a growing light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s increasingly clear that the light is not an oncoming train. Shown here are the candidates for that last square. I’d used most of my more-favorite samples in big squares already, and I needed something that fit colorwise with the spot. So I cheated a bit and pulled out a few of the intact skeins on my shelf. I did end up using one of the intact skeins, the Opal one third from the right, so I’ll make sure to add it to my plain-sock queue right after the Vesper pair that’s on the needles and next in line.

Here is the big-picture shot for the week. 33 new squares total (yay!) I think the guilt of having played around with another new project really worked to motivate me this week.

And the up-close shots…

Once again, the girls were hanging around watching as I took my pictures, and Julie wanted a chance to play in the blanket. There is a series of Beatrix Potter videos that we sometimes borrow from the library, and one of them includes the story of Samuel Whiskers or the Roly-Poly Pudding. It involves a kitten who gets caught by some rats and rolled up in dough while they plan to eat him for dinner. He is saved just in time, thankfully, but Julie is really interested in the whole scenario. She loves being made into a roly-poly pudding.

Remember how I said I wasn’t going to count how many squares are left to knit? Well, I gave in. I drew myself a little diagram, and counted up the empty squares – 58! Barring some unforeseen obstacle, I should be finishing my last square in a couple of weeks. Happy Dance time!

And finally, something completely unrelated but hilariously funny and cheers me up to no end…There’s this show on the Cartoon Network called Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It’s shown as part of their Adult Swim schedule late at night and is totally not meant for kids. Joe and I used to watch it back when we had cable TV, and he just bought the latest season that came out on DVD. He’s been watching it all week, and last night he called me in to see this.

Two of the main characters, Shake and Meatwad (the show is silly and twisted and distusting and makes no sense, but it is still highly entertaining) are playing a video game.

A knitting video game!

Look at the little old lady face. Notice how purl is misspelled. And they’re saying something like “Knit! Knit!” “Purl, dammit!”

These pictures are from Friday afternoon, and I had every intention of posting last night when I came home from knitting with some friends at a coffee shop. It didn’t quite happen – will get to the why of that in a moment – but at least the square count is from Friday – 29! I really felt throughout the week that I was struggling to keep up with my quota. It seemed like I never got to sit down to knit till at least 10 at night, but in the end I came darn near 30 squares, and I’m still on track to finish knitting at least the squares by the end of the month.

My secret wishful goal would be to finish the whole thing, i-cord and all, by the end of the month, but I will be happy with getting the squares done by then if that’s how it works out. I’m forcing myself not to do the math on exactly how many squares are left, but I think about it constantly. See that topmost large square right in the middle beneath Sophie’s toes? If there were two more squares on top of it, that would be the top of the blanket. We’re getting close.

I sort of forgot to take the up-close shots of the top of the blanket this week – the girls were there just dying to roll around on the blanket, and I gave in and let them as soon as the big-picture pictures were taken. I did put up the full-res image above, though, which should suffice if you click right through to it.

And I did get this fun little picture, which makes me happy to look at. The standard overhead shot is getting a little boring, and I think this on-the-ground perspective give a little bit better idea of what the blankie looks like in person.

Now about the why-I-didn’t-post last night. All this last week, Sophie and I had been affected with a low-grade stomach bug. Sophie actually threw up a couple times over the weekend, and just didn’t eat much during the rest of the week. I never actually you-know, but I had that ooky feeling in my tummy for several days myself. I thought Julie was getting away free and clear, but it turns out it just took a few extra days to hit her.

And really, you don’t want to know any additional details. I will just say that I really should not have gone to knitting at all, and poor Joe was stuck changing the bed several times while I was gone and doing a ton of laundry in the space of about three hours. I ended up going to bed with Julie and snuggling her for a few hours – partly to comfort her and partly to be right there with the bucket if necessary. And I’ll admit – it’s not often that my four-year-old lets me just hold her and cuddle, so even though she was sick and miserable, I kind of enjoyed being there with her. It’s twisted, I know.

Today she’s still not eating much, but she’s keeping the juice down and will be just fine. I had Sophie in the doctor earlier this week to check for an ear infection because *she* has been waking up screaming every night this week, even after the stomach thing cleared. It turns out it’s just her new molars coming in, but the awesome nurse practitioner did mention that this low-grade stomach bug has been all around the community. Julie’s going to be just fine.

Now if we could all just get a solid night’s sleep…

It’s been quite some time since I’ve received a package of yarn bits for the blankie, but yesterday in the mail I got what may just be the last one to make it in time to be included in the current project.

Andrea in Canada had meant to send hers off to me back when the Yarn Harlot tried to bury me in yarn, but was in the middle of a giant move and only recently unearthed these.

I love how she stuck them in an old oatmeal box to ship them off (and then it was wrapped in brown paper with the addresses) but really – it’s so fun to see the French labels on such a familiar product. We USA-Americans don’t always remember that many of our neighbors to the north speak French.

Anyway, look for at least two squares made from your yarn in this week’s Blankie Friday post, Andrea – probably more because I really like the reddish one and haven’t worked it in yet. I will be skipping tonight’s Democratic caucus here and hopefully cranking out some more squares instead. Thanks very much for thinking of me and passing along a little bit of your knitting history to go in the blankie.

Editing to add: uh, yep. I’m a big dork. The caucus is *next* Tuesday. I’m gonna be honest and tell ya that I still won’t plan on going. I could be happy with either Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama as President, and I don’t have strong enough opinions either way to take me out to spend an evening with the political elite versus putting my kids to bed and sitting my butt on the couch with my knitting. Maybe in four years when the kids are a little older.

Yeah, it’s my birthday. Hey all you lurkers, come out and say hello, mmmkay? There’s like thousands of you out there according to the blog stats, and yet I only ever hear from the same twenty or so people. It’s depressing. Not that I don’t love you, you twenty or so who DO comment!

Alright, today as my birthday present to you, I’m including the full-sized blankie pictures – just click on through if you want the big ones. Oh, and there were 27 squares this week. Not too shabby.

Let’s start off with something a little different – blankie with its hair down. I accidentally laid it out with the backside up the first time, and I thought “hey, maybe they’d like to see the backside and all the ends this time.” So there you go. You can also see where I normally lay blankie out, and the toys and crappe that I had to shove aside to get a piece of clear floor space.

Here’s a close-up of the tangled ends. That’s only about a week’s worth of ends – the rest are all woven in.

And the standard overhead shot. I usually stand on one of our dining room chairs to get this shot, and it’s getting harder and harder to fit the whole thing in the frame.

And this week’s close-ups. I don’t know what it is with Photoshop the last couple weeks, but it keeps wanting to rotate these for me. This time I’m going to straighten them back out for you. It gave me a headache all last week thinking of the one sideways one.

And finally, what Julie was doing while I started this post…she had dressed up in all her play clothes, and I let her watch a video while I put Sophie down for her nap and that gave me a few minutes of free time. Now she is busy chopping up paper, pretending to make Valentines and driving me crazy because I’m not going to get the glue out right now.

30! Woot! I’m keeping up the pace, and that’s a good thing, because I’ve been working hard again this week. Thirty squares, plus I wove in all the ends a couple days ago. Let’s look at the standard shots.

Daisy was present and accounted for again.

Ooh, look – the camera software thought this one was sideways and automatically rotated it for me. I’m too lazy tonight to fix it.

And now we get to the crazy-fun part. All week long, I’ve been thinking about how many more squares there are going to be, how long it might take, and just how big is this freakin’ thing going to be exactly when it’s done. And then tonight as I was laying it out, tucking in ends and snapping pictures, it occurred to me that the squares are almost exactly the same size as small post-it notes. The kind that I keep in my kitchen drawer for labeling leftover food containers.

Ahem. Yes, in case my persistence in this project hadn’t already suggested it to you, this probably demonstrates a bit more fully that indeed I am a little crazy in a certain kind of way.

If I continue and complete the layout suggested by the post-it outline, then 146 squares remain to be knitted. At thirty squares a week, that would take about another five weeks of knitting, and then I would have to add on the border after that. It’s also a pretty huge blanket. I’m thinking about maybe leaving off the last two rows, which would mean only 113 squares and only four weeks of knitting them. Lucky me, I have many hours in which to meditate this.

I know, I’ve been remiss on the blankie Fridays. It’s because not a whole lot has been going on in Blankie-land. There may be a new square or two since the last update, but I’ve been busy catching up on the other projects that I ignored for so long while I was doing the crazy-major-blankie push. Once I realized that Blankie wasn’t going to make it to the State Fair this year, I gave myself permission to take a little break. I’m getting right back to it here soon – I do want to get it finished just so that it can be done and over with.

That said, there is some fresh blankie-related news. I got an e-mail while I was on vacation from a knitting magazine in Australia. They want to include my blankie in an article about using up scrap yarn to be published in October. Yay!

Also, I’ll be teaching a class on the blankie – or really, mitered square projects – you could just make a scarf, or you could turn the idea into a sweater – at the Yarnery starting in November. That sample I’ve been working up is a little teeny koigu blankie. It’s not done yet, but it will be soon.

In other news, Season Two of Weeds so far is hilarious. If you haven’t Netflixed this series yet, I recommend it.

Also, I spent a couple of hours tonight dyeing up some more yarn. It’s still cooling off in the steamer. Photos tomorrow, maybe. I am planning to sell this stuff eventually, and there will be an announcement here before I put it up so that people can have a fair chance at buying some.

Today was a much better day. Thanks for all your kind thoughts today, they helped.

So some of you had some very valid questions and requests on the Blankie Friday post. I meant to answer them last night, but I was busy dyeing yarn. So here we go.

Non-gratuitous kid pic on the couch with the blankie:

Blankie all by herself on the couch – well, with the blankie my grandmother crocheted for me when I was a kid. Grandma’s blankie is a bit longer, and I have to admit there have been times when I wished *that* blanket to be longer than it is. hm.

About the border in question – all along the plan has been to add a very small, subtle I-cord border all along the edges. This is non-negotiable, and it is in fact already implemented along the bottom and most of the right edge. It made me laugh hilariously that y’all got all hot and bothered (kinda) about what kind of border I was talking about when it’s all right there in the tutorial! heh.

Additional thoughts and comments on whether to stop or keep going are welcome and encouraged!

Also, this week in the blog – a new project on the needles, and some crazy new hand dye to show off. My house smells like vinegar and wet sheep. I can’t believe my family isn’t complaining!

Oh! and Really, my husband loves me. This morning, I was headed upstairs to take a shower, a luxurious weekend shower in which I take my time and he watches the kids so that I can shave my legs in relative peace and have a tiny little break. I saw a look in Joe’s eyes that was a bit – resigned. It said to me that he was putting up with my silly ritual of time to myself, but he wasn’t enjoying it. So while I was showering, I was feeling kind of guilty (moms out there all know that we feel guilty at the drop of a hat, so it was nothing new).

Then, I stepped out of the shower and as I was drying off, I heard Joe talking to Julie. Julie wanted to come upstairs and see what I was doing. Joe was explaining to her that “Mommy works hard all week. She gives us almost all of her time. She needs a few minutes to herself once in a while, so let’s stay down here.” Ahh. So sweet, so unprompted, so perfectly what I needed to hear. Reason 5,971 why I love my husband.