Idle Hands

Humble beginnings, on the floor of the sunroom in the first apartment.

When I first arrived in Uruguay it was still late winter here (in August! Inconceivable!).  It was cold and gray and dreary and I realized about three days in that it was stupid of me not to have brought some sort of knitting project.  The whole point of knitting, as far as I'm concerned, is to keep you warm while you space out and watch TV.  And I'm totally incapable of watching TV without doing something else at the same time.

Within about two weeks I couldn't stand it anymore and I started to look for Uruguayan yarn stores. It turns out there was one only a couple of blocks from our first apartment.

My grand ambition was to obtain some some of Uruguay's incredible locally-produced yarn and make some sort of gorgeous, luxurious... thing.  But what they prefer to do in the yarn stores here is produce the gorgeous things themselves, and sell them--already knitted.  Then they sell expensive bamboo yarn and cheap acrylic yarn on the side. Please note the bright, insane, synthetic colors of this blanket.

"Cathedral" edging

For a while now I've wanted a granny square blanket, because they're so deliciously silly and fun. This turned out to be the perfect project on one hand because crocheting a granny square allowed me to keep my brain busy with lots of different colors, and only required me to buy one needle instead of two (This is the worst. logic. ever. As knitting needles come in pairs).  It was not so perfect because crocheting a granny square blanket means that you essentially make a hundred million little coasters, which you then combine together at the end.  I started this project because I was cold and wanted a blanket.  The only way to be warmed by it during the long process would be to put them all in a big pile and then burrow under them.

Anyway, the pattern I used was this Summer Garden Granny Square, which is not a normal, plain jane granny. It was also sort of interesting because, did I mention, I haven't crocheted a damn thing since I was 8 years old? Even then I'm not sure what I did could be properly called "crochet."

However, through the patient tutelage of the internet (hurrah internet!!) and a decent amount of frogging and re-crocheting, the thing is finally done!

It is now spring in Uruguay and essentially too warm for a blanket, but it's sort of pretty.  I'm trying to decide what to do with it now.  It's not really the granny square blanket I always dreamed of... any takers? Should I donate it? Is anyone pregnant?

Donezo.