These are colors that seven-year-old DGD would like in her requested blanket. She was thinking of rainbows, she said. When asked if she wanted a blanket with rainbows on it, she told me she wanted the colors all swirly. Swirly colors with her name in quite large letters and a dolphin and...ummm...one other thing. I can't remember now. So, armed with many colors and this
pretty pattern, I tried using all of them in the lovely cascading effect. My eyes were in shock, so I
just had to do something different!
Since a different pattern might help, I searched through
Ravelry , through my favorites lists, my notebooks, my files, my books and magazines finding some "maybes", a few "possibilities", yet still searching. Then, as I sleepily browsed my email one morning, lighting struck!! And blew my computer! No, not really, sorry. I did see an email from Caron yarns with the perfect pattern for this blanket. It uses several colors. There are patches were I can add her name and the dolphin and the other thing I can't remember. And I was moved to scale down the color palette according to an approach I learned from
Laura Bryant in a class at
Stitches West.
With my charts and yarns and other necessities, I repaired to the deck to enjoy the summer day and crochet this
cutie-cute blanket. Nothing could stop me now!
Nothing...except...
Tangled yarn!! Having come this far after my trial-and-error, my searches, my color sorting, my prepared table on the deck--one word came to mind:
BOBBINS!!!!
As I sat plumping the bare bobbins with each color of yarn, I looked around at the beauty the Lord has made: right petunias to cheer the day,
Clumps of greenery to bring color to a dark spot,
Even a cute ladybug to give me a smile. See her there, right by the lantana bud? Yes, to me, all ladybugs are "she". Certainly there are some manly guybugs around, aren't there? Bring on the entomologists!
And my sweet Lailah to ward off all the squirrels. All is well. The plan is set. The crocheting has begun and a day on the deck is just as uplifting as it can be.
Happy knitting and crocheting to you!
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly book meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
The Bolter by Frances Osborne
Our deck is an enchanting place to knit. The table sets under a vine covered pergola with pots of flowers all around. I also enjoy knitting on our swing at the other end of deck with a slight breeze from the motion of the swing and a different view of our lawn. I've always been a swinger!
When I first saw these knitting dice, I thought that they would be so easy to make with some cubes from the craft store and a Sharpie. As you can see, I eventually did order them via http://www.knitivity.com/diceyKnitting.html.
Well, you can end up with chaos bordering on disaster, so I occasionally adjusted stitches to avoid extreme ickiness. It is fun to use the dice for a strange, unique variety in knitting! I can imagine doing this with a set of regular dice by assigning specific stitches to the numbers on assorted colors of dice. Fun? Silly? Why, yes it is! 
But as he stood in the back corner of the small, plain beige room, swaying in place and flicking the tip of his tongue against the back of his front teeth, the archivist with the scratched black reading glasses knew that the most vital thing in the room wasn’t a classified file or a top-secret sheet of paper—it was the polished, rosy-cheeked man who sat alone at the single long table in the center of the room."
