Knitting Sandwich

the end of the rainbow

Hello all-

I am sorry that I have been so absent from the online world for so long.  Truth be told, I am missing you all terribly but have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the changes I’m adapting to at the moment with the new country/apartment/marriage/language/food/etc. etc.  What’s more, every time I sit down to attempt a blog post, I find that I just freeze up.  In truth, there is a story I’d like to tell but am not sure if it’s too personal to share here.  With time, I’ve come to realize however that my voice can’t find any other words until I share these which are still overwhelming my heart.

 

You see, it turns out we came back from our honeymoon with more than just a marriage certificate.  Completely unexpectedly, I was pregnant.  And with our shock came absolute joy and excitement.  We came back to Munich and began the crusade of finding the right English speaking OB/GYN (ridiculously difficult, but that’s another story), and in order to ease my early days of exhaustion and nausea, I had a perfectly soothing companion. 

 

 

Melissa and I joined all these rainbow swaps on ravelry ages ago, in attempt to get more yarns for our blankies.  What ended up happening to both of us though is that we realized the yarn was just too gorgeous and precious and thus it merited a project all its own.  Melissa made an absolutely stunning rainbow blankie for her nephew Henry, and I saved mine for that special time when I one day became pregnant.  I had even brought this precious yarn cargo personally to Germany months before my actual move, just so it’d be safely stored with Georg and I wouldn’t have to put it in a stale moving box.

For my blankie, I chose the zig-zag pram blanket pattern (and thusly got totally addicted to rippling right along with Melissa) and happily knitted away with my precious yarn.  I got almost to the end, with only a whole pile of ends left to sew in, when in my 10^th week, we lost the baby.

 

Of course there aren’t enough words to describe our devastation, I won't even try.  And the strange thing about miscarriage is that, perhaps because it’s so indescribable, you find that friends and family, despite their best intentions, often don’t know what to say to you either and thus it's just not talked about.  Perhaps it’s exactly because of that strange taboo that I feel compelled to share with you here.  Or perhaps it’s just because I needed to say out loud:

 

I had a baby inside me.  I saw its heart beat.  We loved it dearly.  And even though it wasn’t able to arrive, we will always cherish it and it will always be a part of our family.

 

And hopefully someday I’ll still manage to get to the end of that rainbow.

 

Thank you so much for listening.

Love to you all,

-cmvs

my marvelous skein of never-ending yarn

i bought this gorgeous skein of springtree road navarre sock yarn back in june for a fingerless glove kal.

upon finishing the fingerless gloves i found that i had quite a bit of yarn left over so i decided to make myself a pair of turkish bed socks.

upon finishing the bed socks i found that i still had quite a bit of yarn left over so i decided to make a wee baby hat.

(by the way, this is the baby lotus hat (rav pattern link) by john horigan.)

upon finishing the hat i found, yet again, that i still had yarn leftover.  so i knit a blankie square.

and i bet you can guess what happened next...

yep, more yarn.  so now what do make with it?

-melissa

inspired by lindsey

after reading lindsey's blankie post i was inspired to get my blankie out, dust it off (yes, it was actually covered in a layer of dust... poor blankie), and get-a-knittin'.

oh how i've missed blankie!!

the plan for tonight is to sit back, knit some mitered squares and watch some playoff football.  (go saints!!)  what are y'all's plans for the evening?

-melissa

Blankie update- the ecstasy and the agony

First the ecstasy. I've been slogging away for quite some time on the mitered/log cabin blankie and am thrilled to report that all the squares are finished!

Or are they? Here's where the agony comes in.

There are nine glaring examples of wonky direction miters. Here's another one.

 

So what should I do?

1. Rip out the offenders and re-knit them in the right direction

2. Use the nine in a second small blanket and make nine more 4 square blocks

3. Incorporate the squares into the design and pretend I intended this to happen

Honestly option one sounds like a real pain. Option three sounds like something I would totally do, but would I regret it? Would those squares mock me or would I find them charming?  

Does Sabrina need a mitered square blanket of her very own?

-Lindsey

The vertical blankie

I’ve been quietly slogging away on the blankie, inspired by milestones and the call.  The piles are slowly getting higher. 

Since my blankie will be a mitered square log cabin hybrid, I’ve decided to stack up all the squares before the log cabining begins.   

 Ok, so the stacks don't actually stay stacked.  

 

Its more like a jumbled mess of fun.

-Lindsey

the call of the blankie

i started to hear the call when i read about claire's blankie's big milestone, the call got louder when i received a sweet little package of mini skeins in the mail from claire for my birthday.  

those beautiful little gems of yarn have been calling to me ever since, louder and louder, making me twitchier and twitchier.... until finally today, when i needed to grab something to knit during lily's ballet class, i couldn't resist any longer and took blankie with me.

oh dear blankie... how i love your sweet tiny garter stitches and your rainbow of colors.

but really quit tempting me - i have a few crafting deadlines coming up and i can't afford any more distractions!

-melissa

blankie turns a corner

I can't even believe it but I have been working on blankie for over two years.  Well, more accurately, I started blankie over two years ago but have been horribly neglectful for the past year or so.  In the midst of the recent nyc snow and long winter nights, I thought it was about time to give blankie a little love.  And, believe it or not, we have finally turned a corner!  A literal corner!

Of course I needed an extra special yarn for that corner so I picked this koigu (my all time favorite koigu colorway) that I bought years ago to make a hat for sweet baby Lily.

I am knitting my blankie as a square, so this corner means that I am officially (finally!) half done!

Well... technically half done only if you ignore those millions of ends waiting to be woven in or the edging still needing to be applied (details, details!).  I'm hoping there's a mom visit in the near future because she is a very enthusiastic end weaver. 

Until then, it's a good thing that I have trusy lama to do his inspections

and to stand guard over the yarn balls for the next half!

For all you fellow blankie-ers, how's it coming?

-cmv

 

rainbow blankie - completion

 

 

 

 

 

 -melissa

rainbow blankie - progression

for a while now i've been alluding to a tip top secret project i've been working away on.  it is now time for the big reveal.  

it's a rainbow sock yarn blankie for my nephew henry.  over in the blankie group on ravelry they started hosting a series of swaps - one for each color of the rainbow.  the timing coincided perfectly with my sister telling me she and her husband were thinking about having another baby.  rainbow blankie kismet if you will...

so towards the end of last august i cast on:

 

 

 

 

 

i am pretty proud of myself for keeping this under wraps for so long (i have a tendency to get over excited and ruin my own surprises when i make something for someone else).  i'm going to revel in this reveal and drag it out for one more post.

come back tomorrow for the completed blankie photoshoot.

-melissa

calling all blankie knitters!!!

some of you may already know this, but i have decided again to walk in the susan g. komen 3-day.  it will be next august and i will be walking 60 miles in 3 days!

as part of my fundraising i am currently hosting a raffle for 20 mini-skeins of sock yarn:

full details are over here, at my official cancer-hating blog.

i hope all you blankie knitters out there will come over and play along!  it will hopefully be fun, and as a bonus you'll add to your good karma for being a cancer-hater!

-melissa