An Event and A Blanket

Two things have been missing from my blog lately: me and crochet.

Me?  That’s an easy one.

My brilliant, fabulous, incredible and now highly-educated little sister graduated from law school on Saturday.  I so want to call her a lawyer and send cute little notes with an “Esq.” on the end, but she says I’m not allowed until she passes the bar.  Details, details.  (I still inscribed the book I bought her with her name, Esq.  It’s fun, and I’m freaking proud of her.  So sue me.  I’ll have a good lawyer soon enough.)  So, we were up in Virginia for a long weekend celebrating, watching her speak (yes, she was elected speaker by her class!), and sight-seeing in D.C.  (Pictures of that to follow later…)

Crochet?  Ah, never assume that the absence of crochet from the blog equals an absence of crochet from my life!  I’ve been working for the past month solely on Heather’s graduation present…and since it was in her school colors, I exercised an awful lot of restraint and did NOT post the progress here.

However!  Graduation is past, and the gift has been given.

When I read about Laughing Purple Goldfish’s Event Plaid, I knew immediately that this is what I would make for Heather’s graduation gift.  After a few trips to Goodwill for sweaters to frog and a session with my Wilton’s and Kool-Aid dyes, I had three green yarns and a gold.  Perfect for a George Mason U. grad.  (This is the largest project I’ve made completely of reclaimed yarns.  Yay!)

(Note: The original pattern is out of print, but this blanket is made using the same technique.)

The whole idea of this blanket is to utilize the numbers from an important date to create the pattern.  Heather’s graduation was on May 16, 2009, or 5-16-09.  The numbers I would use to make the blanket, therefore, were 5-1-6-9.  I needed four yarns for this; the first would be used for five rows, the second for one row, etc.  Voila, a pattern!

It was going well, until I got to the third yarn in my pattern, and I quickly realized that I would run out of my third and fourth yarns if I kept up that pattern.  I modified the numbers and ended up with a 5-1-3-6 pattern.  I’m not sure if anything important happened on May 13, 2006, but we’ll just assume it’s around the time Heather decided to move to Virginia for law school and call it done.

I have to agree with Sharon’s assessment that this is an ugly, ugly pattern until the very last bit is done.  The pattern is worked in dc, ch1 spaces for row after row.  It’s not very attractive.  The magic happens after the crochet portion is done and the weaving begins.  Weaving is done in the same row patterns, obviously worked in the other direction.  Once the strands are woven through and the tassles tied, the plaid is obvious and incredible.  I can’t imagine a color combination that wouldn’t look great.

I learned an important thing during this process.  This pattern takes forever.  I mean it.  It just goes on and on, especially when you want a blanket of some size, like I did.  I really wanted to give Heather something she could snuggle under on the couch.  I managed to watch several great miniseries on DVD with Mom and Dad while crocheting this thing.  The weaving took a lot longer than I expected, too.  Thank goodness for Mom.  She spent most of the day and evening last Wednesday working on the weaving, and it saved me a lot of anguish and scrambling.

It was worth it, though.  I finished the weaving on the road on Thursday and tied the tassles that night in the hotel room.  It’s one of my favorite pieces ever.

Here’s an idea of the size…Heather says it will be perfect for her office someday.  She wants a chaise where she can curl up and read briefs and cases, and of course, she must have a blankie for the space.  This one has the added bonus of being very tartan-like, which speaks to our proud Scottish heritage.

She looks pretty happy with it, don’t you think??  It even matches her eyes.

Cozy Girl, Esq.