David's late wife, Marilyn, was a knitter and crocheter. She had crocheted blankets for almost everyone in the family. During her bout with cancer, she was working on a blanket for her sister, Susan, all in shades of blue. Unfortunately, she passed before the blanket was finished (it was almost half done), so the yarn and the unfinished blanket was stored in a box for a couple of years. David's daughter, Teresa, had the box, and in December she asked if I would be willing, or able to finish it. I said I would look at it, and I decided that I would try to finish it for Susan.
So, I figured out Marilyn's pattern - the edge decreases were a little different than I had done (I had made a ripple afghan before), but I really liked the look, and once I got that worked out, I started. The other little problem was the gauge. Marilyn was a very loose crocheter. She was working with a size G hook. I went with an I hook after some swatching. It worked for a color stripe, then I decided that I needed to go bigger, so I just continued working on the blanket with the bigger hook (not a great idea...). What this did was it created a little section in the blanket that was "skinnier" than the new section, so I ripped out everything that I had done, and started my section over. While the J hook was closer to Marilyn's gauge, it was still a little more snug than her gauge, but when I did some swatching with a K hook, I really didn't like the look, and it didn't look like Marilyn's crocheting, so I stayed with the J hook (three sizes larger than Marilyn had used).
I worked on it off and on through January, February and March. And since I was doing it as a surprise for Susan, there were a couple of times when David and I had to run through the house to hide the blanket if Susan stopped by. Once I simply threw my knitting bag on top of the box to hide it, which worked. And she never suspected a thing. She had even mentioned a couple of times about the blanket that Marilyn was making for her, but we said that we hadn't found it. We gave it to Susan for her birthday last week. She was so surprised, and we chuckled over all the times we had to hide it from her! It made her SO happy!
So, here are a couple of pictures. The brown blanket is one that Marilyn made for Teresa's husband, Mark, which I used for reference for the color scheme. The yarn is Plymouth's Encore (75% acrylic, 25% wool).
And, since I got the crocheting mojo on, I made a small lap throw out of some Brooks Farm Four-Play (Wool/Silk) I had in my stash (I really need to start using up yarn - so I can get more, of course!). The colors in the top picture are closer to the real thing.
That's it for now. Time to start new projects!
