Memorial blanket

So a lot of you might have realized that this blog does not outwardly appear to have a cohesive subject. There is crafting, and travel, and notes about living in Spain. In the past I have struggled with that fact that there is no main theme to the blog, but that fact is, there is a main theme: my public journal of my life.  I have started tagging the blog with different key words so that those of you that do not care about crafting can read about my travels and vice-versa, and I will continue to go back and tag the old posts to make reading on a theme easier. If you wish to, please use the tags I have put in the right hand side bar to go to the subjects that interest you. The fact of the matter is that I miss my blog and I am going to start posting more regularly, and it is going to be a true mash up of my life, enjoy.

So back to today's post. As many of you might be aware I recently lost one of my best friends. It has been 5 months now, and it is still really hard to get through a day sometimes. My grief has been profound and it could be, that being so lonely here in Madrid has not helped. Before you feel too sorry for me, know that lot of my solitary feeling is self-inflicted because I know that we are looking to move countries again soon. So, without realizing it, for a while I channeled my grief into something constructive. Something that would be pretty and give warmth and comfort to my family.

I chose to knit the Mystery blanket by Elizabeth Zimmerman out of The Knitter's Almanac. I have always wanted to do this blanket because I love kitchener stitch. The reason that this blanket is called a "mystery" is that it is really hard to see in which direction that it is knit.

This blanket was born when I realized that I a lot of my worsted weight stash was in autumn colors and that I might have enough for a decent sized blanket. The blanket is very heavy and a great stash buster (uses a lot of yarn). It is knitted worsted weight/Aran held double on size 8mm. The finished size is about 4.5-5.5' or 1.5 by 2 meters. I knit the pattern as is except for the boarder which I knit in the round for fear of running out of wool.

I do not have all of the information on which types of wool I used. Some of them were close-outs and some of them un-marked Spanish wool.

Sorry about the photos in my kitchen, it is the best place to get natural light. 

If I was to knit this again I would have added extra increases at the corners by the edge. I added to either side of the corner stitch every-other-row but it was not enough, the corners have a tendency to flip up and it was only with firm blocking that they give the appearance of laying flat. I would also have made the increase yarn overs because they are stretchier.