A New Year - A New Project

Our family visitors have returned back to the US and the house feels all awkward and empty... The kids are crying as they already miss their Uncle, Aunt and Cousins... Complaining that the house is way to boring with "only" us 5 here. To quiet. Not enough love. Not enough laughter... Not enough action. Me and my man on the other hand are enjoying the quiet and the fact that there isn't something going on every minute, every second of the 24 hours of a day... But sure, we miss our family too. It was a good time. We built some great memories during their two week long visit and now we move on and step into a New Year to tackle New Challenges. YAY!

I started on a new project. After staring at my acrylic stash of yarn for quite some time and processing some different ideas for a while I finally started. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of acrylic as I often think it shines funny as it is synthetic (looking almost like plastic sometimes...) and it pills after a short time of use and it tend to loose its shape after a while. But acrylic yarn is cheap and it often comes in a wide range of colors so I have collected quite a lot of it throughout the last couple of years. I thought my acrylic stash would be good for a "scrappy" stash buster blanket so here I am playing...

I started with a basket of mixed colors for inspiration and tried out some different stitching ideas; just trebles back and forth, granny stitch back and forth, shell stitches back and forth, ripple stitches, homemade funny stitches... After playing around and frogging a number of test swatches thinking they were either to plain or to complicated for my taste I suddenly had a picture popping up in my head of what this blanket shall look like.

It will be a colorful blanket, for sure, but I wanted something special for it so I got started with a white and black alternating stitch for a starting border to be followed by simple v-stitch stripes. I am loving it! It is whipping up so quick and I am totally absorbed by the color play. This blanket is making me happy and  I am, for the first time in a long time, even bringing this project with me in bed. That says something right?

I'll keep you posted on my progress and my next challenge in this particular crochet blanket project is to come up with a great name for it. I would love a folksy name, maybe a Northern Scandinavian old fashion name or an Irish, Scottish, Celtic name. A name with integrity and strength, love and comfort at the same time. Maybe something Eskimo inspired... Any suggestions are welcome.

Back to my blanket. 12 rows last night... I am sure I can whip up another 12 tonight. This makes me happy!

Kärlek
Annette