3 Years in the Making:

After 3 years, I have finally finished Steve's blanket!! I started working on it the summer before we got engaged. I had high hopes of giving it to him for Christmas 2008; however, it was a bigger under taking than I had anticipated. I had worked pretty diligently on it through fall 2008, however Christmas of that year brought on an engagement and wedding planning. Since I did a lot of the wedding stuff myself, all my time and energy went into planning and the blanket left unfinished.

After we got married in 2009, I would work on the blanket off and on. But soon, school and work took most of my time and the blanket officially got packed up not to be worked on until June 2011!! The blanket came with us to Tennessee, but just sat in a crate in the "office/craft room". I focused more on short term projects like hats, scarves, and baby blankets. I kept looking at the crate with Steve's unfinished blanket and just felt ashamed and overwhelmed with it. This summer, I finally pulled it out and decided now was the best time to finish it up.

For you crochet buffs -- the stitch was a single crochet with an extra loop added between each stitch. I also put the hook through only 1 side of the previous row's loops which forms the ridges in the blanket. The side border pieces were a later addition to the project. Once I got the length I deemed "good enough" it made the blanket look skinny so I added the edge borders to round it out. I just crocheted them with as "scarves" with the same stitch pattern & sewed them on the edges.

I don't remember how many skeins of yarn make up the blanket, but I think it's somewhere between 6-8. Halfway through the process, I had run out of yarn and had to track down more of the appropriate colors. I couldn't find the yarn in stores anymore and had to order it straight from the company. Steve would prefer to have the blanket a little bit bigger, but I am again out of the correct yarn and decided it was good enough ;-).

Oddly enough, the blanket matches the color scheme in the living room perfectly! The room currently houses green curtains, as well as rust & rust/green striped pillows. I did not buy the curtains or pillows with Steve's blanket in mind (I had purchased them when the blanket was tucked away in its crate). I guess this just shows my love for those colors! My plan is for the colors to remain the same in the new house, but we will see how that all unfolds.