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Thursday, May 24, 2018

Grandma Projects: part 2, knit baby blanket




This past summer, my step-Grandma passed away. She was a prolific knitter and amazing weaver.  From her, I inherited a lot of yarn and a partially finished baby blanket. This was a more recent project than my Grandma's Jiffy Afghan with the pattern being from the Plymouth Yarn Studio 8-hour Baby Blanket booklet.
It was about a quarter started and I began my part working on it a bit before my baby was born. It also got pushed aside for awhile. Once she was born, much like the afghan, it was an easy project to work on whenever I could find a couple of minutes.

Baby Wendy has her fair share of baby blankets now, so I'll  likely gift this one to the next baby. I can't say it took me exactly 8 hours, but the booklet has a ton of cool variations on baby blankets and it was fun and easy to make.

Finished dimensions: 26" wide by 32 " long

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Grandma projects: part 1, knit afghan


When my grandma passed away a couple of years ago (at age 100!) she left some unfinished projects behind. She was a prolific knitter and crocheter during her day. I still have the Christmas stocking she knitted for me when I was a kid.  Jammed in a bag was the beginning of a "Jiffy Knitted Afghan" in classic late '70s colors.
Afghan version 1
I completed it last year at stated but the stitches were really loose so it got stretched out easily. Plus I didn't like how I attached the panels together and I had run out of the light gold color and had to add a section of eggshell at the end. Overall I wasn't happy with it so I crammed it in my shed and didn't think about it until my second baby was born. Knitting is a good start/stop project to work on when you just have little spurts of time between childcare.

I took it all apart and doubled up the yarn which muted the colors a bit, but also unified them by having the light gold color run throughout the afghan. I alternated blocks of knit and purl so it was more interesting and wouldn't curl up. The doubled yarn is much more stable even using giant size 19 knitting needles. I tried to keep a feeling of the original with the color stripes. I made two panels and sewed them together.

Afghan version 2
The new size is much smaller, about 52 inches wide by 42 inches tall. It makes a good small lap or baby blanket, or in my house, a good cat blanket.