A Tale of Two Blankets

I brought home an incredible souvenir from my last trip to Indiana.

My grandma told me the story of this blanket, which I somehow had never heard: when my great-grandmother passed away in 1997, she left behind rather a large stash of leftover yarn. My grandma gave it to her sister-in-law (Grandpa's sister, that is, not one of her brothers' wives), as a thank-you gift for housing them in their many comings and goings through my great-grandma's illness, I guess, and also because Grandpa's sisters were prodigious producers of things made of yarn and Grandma thought one of them could put the yarn to good use. (This is a skill none of them bothered teaching me, by the way. I had to learn it from a non-relative.)

One of them did. Great-Aunt Estelle set to work and knitted this massive blanket in something like a couple weeks and gave it to Grandma on their next trip through. She's had it in the house ever since, and when she told me this story, I asked, "May I have it when you're done with it?"

Apparently she's done with it. This pic doesn't do it justice,
nor does any other pic I've taken of it, so you'll have to come
visit me if you want to know what it looks like in person.

So that's blanket #1, now safely ensconced in my house where it shall remain for a very long time indeed.

Blanket #2 has been the subject of much bitter complaint, and a little bit of triumph, for several months here in Su-Land. I've been reliably assured that in the course of making this blanket, I covered in in so much hostility that it was hard for the folks who saw it the most often to really appreciate it. You gotta love a blanket that has a backstory like that.

I posted the finished product on Facebook and someone said,
"That looks just like a temperature blanket!" Yes, very
much like, indeed.

Blanket winner! At least four people
bid on it (I'm not 100% sure because I
refused to look), but she was
determined that it was going home
with her. And so it did.

This was my first attempt at a temperature blanket (using data from 2016 in Cincinnati), and my first knitting project that was any bigger than a scarf. You'll understand why I've returned to another scarf as my project du jour, although I've promised blankets to ever so many people if they'll just buy the yarn for me to use.

In the course of its making, this blanket visited at least three peoples' houses, the Circle Center Mall, a bar, a Megabus, church, Shakespeare in the Park, was carried through a flooded neighborhood park during a downpour, zoomed along in one of Sharlie's panniers, and was basically my constant companion those last couple weeks. Its ultimate destiny was as a prize in a silent auction for work.

I hope Great-Grandma and Great-Aunt Estelle and the rest of my knitting aunties feel that the family legacy of making things is safe on my needles. Although I suppose they would prefer that I carry on their hobby with the help of fewer swear words and less hostility.

Even in the afterlife, one can't have everything.