It's knitted using the instarsia technique. For those not in know, that is just a fancy way of saying that you are knitting multiple colors at the same time in large sections of each color. No big deal, I taught myself how to do intarsia last year. The finished project is approximately 48" x 48". I've done big blankets before. If I were slightly less crazy, these two factors would have warned me off the project. Apparently knitting is like childbirth, though. You block how horrific a certain experience or technique is so that you can talk yourself into having a second kid or doing a 48" x 48" blanket in intarsia. This doesn't even take into account the full-time job of explaining to a four-year-old that this blanket will not get done overnight. Alas, he was so excited that we ordered the pattern, ordered some yarn & got started.
I will admit, it took me a while to figure out how to arrange the 'active' balls of yarn so that I wouldn't just create one giant yarn ball/knot. Since I'm self-taught, I had no one else's wisdom to help me here, so I've improvised. I find that placing the yarn balls on the arms of a chair or the couch is easiest. This is a picture of one of the quieter sections where I only have seven balls of yarn in use. There may be eight though, it looks like my son knocked one off the chair (yet another hazard of this project...). Those are my son's hands in the photo. He was saying, "I love yarn balls, mom." No, I'm not kidding.
Everything was going pretty well, I was hitting my stride & making good progress when I made it to the double lines in the center of the road. That's when, to my great dismay, I discovered that I had failed to order the yellow yarn to make the lines. Arg. Of course, the yellow was backordered in the two cotton blend yarns that I'm using. Bastards. I was beginning to get frustrated. There was a merino wool -- not ideal considering, but I was in no mood to wait & prolong this project. The merino is machine washable like the other yarns I'm using, so I declared it close enough and placed the order. A few days later, it arrived.
Wow. Huh? This is such an exciting story. Anyways, construction began again in earnest when the yellow yarn showed up & has been uneventful aside from the occasional mess I make of my parcel of yarn balls. My son has been remarkably patient. He is satisfied with the progress as long as I manage about one new railroad tie per day, that's about twelve rows. He reminds me when he goes to school & before he goes to sleep that I need to be working on his yarn blanket. He checks my progress regularly. He's a real slavedriver.
All in all, though, I'm pleased with how it's going. I didn't really think through how much work it would be -- all those damn color changes... -- but it's making my kid happy & that's worth it. Of the millions of things I happily do for my kids every day, it's kind of nice to have a visual prop that plainly states, "Wowza, you must really love your kid." Or be totally out of your mind. Lucky for my son, I am both.
For those of you who see this project & are as crazy as me & want to make one, too, here's a link to the pattern. It's only $1.99. Yarn, supplies & sanity retention not included.
