mary, alice, sean, and liz

Mary was my maternal great-grandmother. She made this:

A pineapple lace chair-top doily, crocheted with teeny-tiny yarn. My Grandmom says it was made around 1940. I don’t know much about Mary, but I do know she and her mother, Alice Gallagher, both taught knitting to women in the community. I also know that Alice knit a new sweater for each of her grand kids every year- that’s something like 12 sweaters a year. What a lady, eh?

Sean is my newest family member, he’s six and a half months old. My sister Liz and I made him this:

Sorry for the blurry photo- we were in a rush to give him the present. A full 6.5 months late, but we were still hurrying.

Specs: Sort of like Mason Dixon Knitting’s Bunch a Squares blanket, before I screwed it up. Looking at Kay’s original makes me want to try this pattern again, but bigger, and you know, actually following the directions.

Yarn: Elann.com’s Sonata (100% Mercerized Cotton)- 2 different shades of red, 2 greens, 4 blues, 1 yellow, and 5 skeins of beige

Gauge: 22 sts = 4 in

Finished size: 25 x 25″

Extras: 1.24 yards Kaffe Fassett’s shot cotton in green for the back

Notes: Yes, this blanket is hella-wonky. Liz lives three hours away during the school year, so we both knit the squares individually and then I sewed them up. Apparently, we agreed that the blocks would be 9 x 9″, but my brain forgot this at about square number 2, and I began knitting to 8 x 8.” Whoops.

When I pieced them together, I staggered the blocks and managed to make a fairly even square out of them. Liz knit the border in seed stitch, and then I backed the whole thing in the green cotton so we wouldn’t have to worry about having neat ends. That’s right, we cheated big time. What would Mary have said? Good thing we know Sean really doesn’t care.

The yarn, Elann Sonata, is fine for the purpose, but I don’t think I’d ever use it again. It’s machine washable (score!) and is dirt cheap (double score!). But the mercerized cotton is super shiny, and it feels kind of gross and squeaky while knitting. I think Liz liked the yarn a little better than I did, but we both agreed that if money weren’t an object, we would have used Blue Sky Organic Cotton. Next time, next time.

Sean’s going to be the last baby in our clan for a while, so we’ll have plenty of time to hoard Blue Sky scraps for the next incarnation of this blanket. Where, I promise, I will stick to the predetermined block size.

P.S.:  Thanks for all the comments on last week’s sweater!  I’m going to post the pattern any day now….