Perhaps this month, my knitting and crocheting purpose is to serve as a warning to others.

I started on a speed blanket (my 4th, mind you) and happily measured that it would be 29 inches wide. I worked on it a little bit and was happy with the yarn. Then, I flattened it out for a group of crocheters and onlookers and said, “that looks too skinny to me, does that look too skinny to you?” and they all agreed that it should be wider. I measure it and sure enough….it is about 23 inches wide, which is MUCH too narrow.
So, I will rip it out and start again and this time, I think I will start with 35 inches wide in case standard deviation strikes again.

Dear friends of mine had a baby boy not too long ago. He has two older sisters. The girls each have a hand-crocheted blanket.

The oldest little girl has a blanket made by her great-grandmother.


I made a copy for little girl #2 since I have a soft spot in my heart for second daughters, what with me being one and all.


Then, the little boy came along, so he gets his own blanket. A speed hooked blanket ( with a lovely pomp-a-doodle edging (pom-pom parade yarn from Herrschners- it was very soft). I was thrilled to be working in blue and excited to try this new edging (from Crochet Today! magazine). I only did two rounds of pom poms rather than the 6 the pattern called for since I didn’t want to have a lot of white. I have it on good authority that darker colors make great edgings, but this was the only pom pom color I liked with the blue…hope he likes it!!

I started sock number 2 and I took great care to cast-on at the end of a dark aqua stripe so that the stripes would line up well. The third cast on was the charm.

I continued to knit from the top down and got to the heel. That seemed like a good time to hold the socks up next to each other and admire my stripe alignment…..RAT ON A STICK! They weren’t aligned. Somehow, the stripes were off enough to make me crazy and not enough off to look intentional or cute. I was in a state of severe irritation. Surely, the cheap sock yarn was a huge mistake! What could they be thinking to make yarn that was off in such a way!

oh.

wait.

sigh.

I wound the first skein on the sock winder and then decided it was more trouble than it was worth so I didn’t wind the second skein.
Looks like I could not have been more wrong. I am hugely bothered by this. My crocheting/knitting friends assure me that no one other than me will notice and I should get over it; the socks are hand-knit.
I’m already strategizing my options:
A. rip it out – TH hard vetoed this idea.
B. make two more socks – one to match each of these.
C. get over it. As a matter of personal growth, I’m in the process of trying to go this route. We shall see.