When someone in a knitter’s life suffers a tragedy of any kind, I will wager you good money that all they can think to do is knit something comforting for that person. So it is with me. I’ve begun the wrap/shawl that I’m knitting for my Aunt Reeny who, as I mentioned yesterday, recently lost her husband. I didn’t have a lot of guidance on color or style, but I wanted to do something that would both work up fast and be very beautiful. I wanted it to be fairly simple, in the interest of speed, but not so dull as to make me want to do drastic things to make the process more interesting (for example, stabbing a size 10 addi turbo through my hand).
I wound up deciding on a blanket pattern, actually. I’m making it narrower, but longer, so that it will be a large, warm wrap for her. The pattern is the Totally Autumn blanket, from Knitty. I think it’s pretty much exactly what I wanted. Not too fancy or lacy, just a beautiful solid woolly look.
As for yarn, I went to Depth of Field right after work today to pick some out. My dad had told me that my aunt had recently crocheted herself an afghan in southwestern colors- terra cotta, brown, turquoise, red, that sort of thing- so I chose this Plymouth Boku (95% wool 5% silk).
I love the colors. Just love them. It’s rustic, but still pretty soft knit up, and apparently softens a lot with washing. I’m using size US 10 needles, and getting narrow stripes and a nice squishy fabric. Love it. I hope she does, too.
I also made some special stitchmarkers, just for this project. I figure (since I needed just 2) I will send them to her with the wrap and she can either use them as earrings or crochet stitchmarkers.
Tomorrow, Janelle and I are going to a Craftster.org meetup that my cousin organized. My mom will hopefully be there as well. It’s a bit strange, because this meeting of family, friends, and total strangers is happening in a coffee shop that I used to frequent in middle school, with my best friend at the time. They had huge ice cream cones for just $1 apiece. We always got triple fudge brownie. It’s sort of a bittersweet thing for me, because when this friend and I reconnected just before college, we went to this same shop again… and realized that the spark was totally gone. I don’t know what happened, but at some point our paths diverged such that we just didn’t click anymore. At least not the way we used to. It should be interesting to go there again, particularly in such a different situation.
