The Best Laid Plans

Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan…

When my oldest daughter (we’ll call her Thing 1) was very small, I had my mother-in-law teach me to knit. I picked it up pretty quickly and eventually decided to knit my little girl a blanket. I chose a very nice cabled pattern and a pretty rose-colored yarn. Unfortunately, I’d never done a cable knit before and I soon found out that I don’t actually *like* to knit, so that thing took me three years to finish! And once I finally sat down to get it done, I couldn’t find all the yarn (or I hadn’t bought enough) and couldn’t find more to match, so the blanket is a bit short. It’s worked fine for her, though, since she’s still fairly short herself and she loves it.

When my second daughter (Thing 2) was very small, I was informed by Thing 1 that Thing 2 would need a blanket as well. She was right, of course, but this time I thought I would be smart. I chose a pattern that was actually no pattern at all. A friend of mine has a blanket that his mom knit him that is simply a knit stitch from one end to the other. It is long and narrow with tassels at each end. The things that makes this blanket even remotely interesting are the yarn and the fact that the stitches run the length of the blanket and not the width.

So, I went out and bought a beautiful blue yarn with hints of purple and green in it. That was *four* years ago! Once again I was reminded that I just don’t like to knit. I don’t hate it, but it’s not something I want to do at night when I’m tired and sitting in front of the TV. At first, I chose to knit it with small needles (I believe they were 10). That took waaay too long. This was going to be a big blanket (I wasn’t going to leave Thing 2 with a too small blanket also)! After about two and a half years, I was about halfway done and I realized that I was never going to finish at this rate, so I started completely over with much larger needles. These new needles were much better and the blanket progressed at my usual snail’s pace.

Last Fall, Thing 2 started asking when her blanket was finally going to be done and I promised it would be by Christmas. Suffice it to say, I didn’t quite make the Christmas deadline, but I finally finished the length of it (without tassels) soon thereafter.

It’s beautiful…and about 8 feet long! I have no idea what happened. I wanted this to be a long blanket – at least as long as me – but not this long! I was so embarrassed about it, that I couldn’t bring myself to finish dealing with the yarn ends and putting on the tassels. Last week, she asked about it again and I made myself finish it. It is now complete. and ridiculous.

Thing 2 can lie on the top of it and double it back up over the length of her body and still have extra. She puts it on her bed and drapes the extra 4 feet across her room like a red carpet.

You probably are thinking, “Oh, it’s not THAT long,” so here:

Yes, it really is. Also note that it’s actually longer on the right side. Not sure what happened between casting on on the left and casting off on the right. Not even I would have picked up that many stitches, guess my knots just became looser, but good grief!

Here are some pretty pictures of it. The yarn really is beautiful:

I’m slightly mortified by this thing, but she is loving it, so I guess I should call it a success. And, if nothing else, I’m sure it will become part of our family’s lore in no time.