Remember the blanket that I was making for my mom as a belated Mother's Day gift? The one I hoped to finish in July?
I finished it the day before Mother's Day!
This project still took quite a bit of time, but went much faster than I anticipated. I put in a lot of hours, especially as I finished this up, but the end result was well worth it:
Finished blanket and close-up of detail
I used the F343 Coffee Beenz Textured Throw pattern from Plymouth Yarn Company, which was available for free on Ravelry. I wanted to remain true to the pattern and use Coffee Beenz yarn, so I ordered some from yarn.com. I talked with my mom about what color she'd like for the blanket, and she said she would like either blue or green. The Coffee Beenz green wasn't super pretty, so I ordered Wedgewood. The pattern called for six skeins of yarn. I have only worked with balls of yarn, not skeins, but this yarn was easy to work with.
I spent a lot of time knitting in late April/early May, and I realized that I would be able to finish the blanket for my mom in time for Mother's Day. I turned up the speed on the project pretty quickly once I had an actual deadline, and grew slightly frustrated once I realized I would need eight skeins of yarn instead of six. I placed my order for the two extra skeins a few days before I needed to complete the project, and pulled an all-nighter the Friday before Mother's Day to finish up the blanket.
The pattern is very easy and was quite manageable on large circular needles. I love the texturized look of the blanket, and the finished product is super cozy. The pattern said that the finished blanket would be 32x32", but it's definitely bigger - which I like. I tested it out on my own lap before giving it to my mom, and it was the perfect size. She was very happy with her Mother's Day gift!
I was happy with it too...so happy, in fact, that I decided to make a blanket of my own.
While searching for a pattern for my mom's blanket, I came across one that I liked on Ravelry. It was a little complicated, but I loved the colors used in the pattern. I decided to make myself a blanket using the same pattern that I used for my mom's, but with some of the colors in the other blanket pattern. Instead of being one color, my blanket would be striped.
The yarn I used is called Manos del Uruguay Maxima. The colors I chose are Oxygen (a very light blue), Eucalyptus (a dark green), Foil (gray) and Coral (....coral). Knowing that I would need eight skeins of yarn this time around, I wanted to be prepared.
While I am thrilled with how the finished product turned out, working with this yarn was a bit of a pain at first. I may have thrown a slight tantrum, screamed, "KNITTING IS STUPID!", and thrown my yarn on the ground. Because I'm a child.
See, this yarn arrived in skeins, like the Coffee Beenz yarn. Unfortunately, these skeins were very difficult to work with. The yarn was knotted at some points, and the strands would stick to the rest of the skein as I would try to knit.
Luckily, I have Tom. He suggested that we wind the skeins into balls ourselves and offered to help me do it. This was a huge lifesaver, but took up a lot of time. If anyone has suggestions on how to wind skeins up quickly, I would love to hear any advice!
Once my yarn was wound up, I was ready to rock. This was my first time working with multiple colors in a pattern, but I was confident I could handle the challenge. As long as I attached the new balls of yarn on the same side of the project, I knew that the blanket would look great.
I took my time on this one, as I didn't have an actual deadline. I love the final product, but of course, there are a couple places I could've improved.
I didn't have any set plan as to how many rows I would do for each color. I figured I would simply knit the first color until I ran out of yarn, and then handle the other colors the same way.
The problem was that the skeins of yarn were not uniform in size. They were advertised that way on the website, but there were definitely differences - especially with the Coral, which was my final color. I could've knit five more rows with one of the skeins, but I ran out of yarn on the other skein. The yarn is held double throughout the pattern, so once I ran out of a skein in a certain color, I was finished with that color. This was slightly annoying, but since I was just making the blanket for myself, it wasn't that big of a deal.
Here's the (sort of) final product! I still have to weave in the ends, but I wanted to put up a picture here:
I'm really happy with it! I like that you can see the texturized pattern a bit more, since the colors I used in my blanket are solid. I do think the colors offered in the Manos del Uruguay line are beautiful, and I'm glad that I stuck with this project. I'm so excited to use this for my fabulous Real Housewives/movie nights.
Now I need to think of what I'll do next. I need to finish up a hat that I started making for Tom a couple of months ago, which should take about an hour to finish. I still need to work on my cowl scarf, which I put down once I started working on my mom's blanket.
I think blankets may be my favorite thing to make though. I like having a long-term project, especially one that I can work on while watching movies. I'm currently training for the Chicago Marathon, so my knitting time has been reduced, but I still want to have some things to work on for the rest of the summer/early fall. I may take a socks class at Loopy Yarns, as Bree has raved about making socks, and perhaps I will look into making a sweater as well!
In other news....I have been reading like crazy. If any of you are looking for some funny reads, I have been going through a bunch of good books this summer. Here are some of my favorites:
- Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan: I (obviously) don't have kids, but I thought this book about raising five kids is hysterical. I love Jim Gaffigan (Tom and I went to see him in April) and love his self-deprecating humor about being pale. If you've ever seen any of his comedy specials, some of the jokes will be familiar, but the book has plenty of new material.
- The Potty Mouth at the Table by Laurie Notaro: I love Laurie Notaro. She writes incredibly funny memoirs in a short story format, so they're easy and hilarious reads. I read Autobiography of a Fat Bride last summer and couldn't stop laughing at how suspicious she was of her husband when they started dating. He acted like a gentleman towards her, and she kept thinking that he was obviously some sort of freak. Clearly, that's how I felt about Tom when we started dating. The Potty Mouth at the Table made me laugh out loud and I'm already excited for her next book to come out.
- Dear Girls Above Me by Charlie McDowell: Recently dumped Charlie lives below two twenty-something girls and can hear all of their (not so fabulous) conversations. He details his breakup, trying to decide if his fabulous roommate is gay, and dealing with the annoying girls upstairs. As someone who could once hear a little too much of her neighbors, I thought this book was hysterical. This is a very light read - I finished it in a day - and good for someone dealing with annoying neighbors.
Right now I am working on The Tao of Martha by Jen Lancaster (my favorite Chicago author - check her out!) and Cool, Calm and Contentious by Merrill Markoe. Clearly, I like memoirs - but I am always up for good fiction! Any book recommendations are always appreciated.
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