Usually, during a typical year, in Texas, we get about 12 hours of what the northern parts consider winter. Ok, maybe more…it might be 24 hours but you know where I’m going with that statement.
WE ARE NOT PREPARED FOR ANYTHING MORE THAN THAT.
There is no infrastructure here in our part of Texas to deal with what we experienced during the week surrounding Valentine’s Day this year.
However, what does this recent weather blip have in common with the past year of pandemic catastrophe? It rolled out the carpet for more crocheting time (or knitting if that’s your thing). In fact, yarn is a great insulator even when it is still in skein, cake or ball form.
We were in Fbg when it hit. Tom’s parents were there too but made it back to El Paso before things completely shut down. Ice came first, then snow, then the power went out.
On to the yarn part. I was working on a blanket of many colors that I finished during all this nonsense. I wrapped myself up in another blanket, surrounded myself with the various skeins of yarn and the project. Not too bad, all in all but I did have at least 4 layers on as well as various cowls, scarves, fingerless gloves and beanies.
We literally couldn’t leave. Tom tried to head back to Dallas, made it about a mile from the garage, slid three times off the road and turned around.
The pattern for my finished masterpiece comes from a book of blankets designed by Rachele Carmona. She was, and is, on a blanket binge in her own creative journey and at some point came up with the idea to design blankets based on art work. The book (The Art of Crochet Blankets: 18 Projects Inspired by Modern Makers) introduces the artists and their works that inspired each of the designs. Pretty cool. The blanket I chose to work on first (Layered Waves) was inspired by a paper collage piece by Maud Vantours. Although I didn’t find the particular piece on MV’s site (titled, Landscape) so that I could link you to it, you can get a feel for her medium by looking at her work. If you want to try your luck on finding that specific piece of inspiration , you can try Pinterest or Instagram. Below is a photo of my finished blanket. It is more afghan sized but you could always start by lengthening the beginning chain to make it longer or add more color transitions to make it wider.
It did make for a bundle of skeins of yarn. Even though the skeins were smaller (50g vs 100g), There were 29 colors. And of course the color names were not intuitive. Nope, green was not green. The color names were all artist names….Monet, Miró, Pollack, Kandinsky. Now, I suppose I could have just reached in to the project bag, grabbed one by chance and blown off the prescribed order, but as you can see from the photo, there is a reason to pay attention; the whole dark to light idea. And now I have all those leftover colors to make another blanket (aside from the white and black, only 14g of each of the other colors were used out of 50).
And then once I finished the blanket, I made a cowl and started a sweater. I think that’s all for Fbg. The blanket took most of the snowed in time. I’m in Dallas but heading back and am looking forward to working some more on the sweater I started. I have beaucoup WIPs here… a sweater for which I am designing the pattern (read that as, “making it up as I go along”), a giant wrap made with gradient yarn in earth tones and turquoise, still working on Sophie and a scarf made of lots of little pieces. I was working on the scarf during football games…may put it up until next season, we shall see. There are lots of ends to sew in on every little part.
Now, go rub your face in some nice soft warm yarn. Not quite as nice as dog fur but will still bring you comfort.