NANA BLANKET - nearly half way

Happy July.

After having daughter, son in law and grandkids here for 8 weeks, they moved into their new home last Sunday. Still lots of reno work to be done, but they are all happy to be there and not living between their house and ours. While they were here, I got very little hooking done, but my knitting was happy. 

I have been working away on this blanket - a little time most days - in order to finish while it is still timely.  Want to have it all done by the end of the summer, or earlier, if I get to see Grayson and his parents before then.

So far, I have kept to my pledge of only using Nancy's yarn - not going into my own stash. All good intention, but the contrasting colours were few and far between, and I used the last of the red a few stripes ago.

Also, last Thursday I went to my LYS Needles in the Hay to see about getting a longer wire for my Addi Click needle set. Luckily I found wires - two 60" and a 40" - so I got to see what this monster looked like unfolded. It is 52" wide, and as per the title, I am about half way, if I make it a square blanket.

Here is how it looks thus far. (I didn't stick to the plan from my last post, which is fine. I like being a bit spontaneous when I change colours.) Now that I am at the halfway point, I may repeat some of the combinations that are already in there. 

Back to the part about only using Nancy's yarn, I decided to stretch that rule a little and make it include yarn that Nancy may have gifted me over the years. A good call, since I have nothing resembling red in the big bin of yarn.

A while ago, she gave me a full package of Debbie Bliss chunky marino in a very pale peachy pink. She didn't make anything out of it because she didn't think the colour would look good on her. Not sure why she gave it to me, since we have pretty much the same skin tones, but that's another story.

After watching a yarn dyeing video that Wooly Mason Jar goddess Lucy Richard shared with those of us subscribers she calls the "Dye Hards", I knew I could create a great variegated red from the pale peach yarn. I used red/orange, red and red/purple. Then I over-dyed again with red. And the results were exactly what I hoped for.

If you are not already a Lucy devotee, I can't recommend her system highly enough. If you haven't checked it out, go and visit . You will find lots of videos and dye demos. She is incredibly gracious with sharing her knowledge. 

This is the dye result, together with the original. The actual colours are warmer than in this picture. Turns out that one ball of that yarn wasn't quite enough to do a colour band. So, I dyed another ball this afternoon and it is drying in the sun as I type this. 

The great part of this experiment is that I can probably over-dye this yarn in lots of combinations and use all of it in some project or another. And there is an abundance of "girlie" pink yarn that could turn into another combo that might be more suitable to an 8 year old boy. 

On my frame is a new hooked "moment" which will be a gift for my son, daughter-in-law and Charlie. I am in the home stretch and will have it finished and mounted in time for Charlie's first birthday celebration later this month. I will share once it is done.

In the meantime, I will keep plugging away at the blanket and update that as well from time to time.