Knitting Stitches and Rose Petals

Red rose petals in the air signify one thing for me...my daughter is ready to move on with her life.  High school is over and she is ready to fly.  Come fall she will be living on the East Coast and I will be trying to figure out where the time went.  So like every mom (or dad) who knits or crochets, what will I do?  The obvious answer is knit a blanket in her college colors.  This could not be just any blanket for me....it had to be lovely.  So I started with the school colors....

navy and orange.   I searched the store for just the right colors, in a worsted weight yarn, and found the perfect orange, Madelinetosh Citrus.  Because navy can be such a heavy color, I wanted something with a bit of life to it.  We had Anzula Cricket in navy so I took a skein home and swatched...the perfect color but not the perfect weight.  A call to the fabulous people at Anzula and an order for 14 skeins of For Better or Worsted in navy blue was in the queue.  It is soft, yummy and so lovely to knit.  If I was going to do a large blanket it had to be with yarn that is a joy to work with.  I had to knit... and be happy!

Now my attention turned to the pattern I would use.  I wanted something sophisticated and simple.   A pattern that would fit my daughter's style choices.  A friend had just completed Swans Island Bunkie Blanket for a friend who was having a baby.  The result was so beautiful that she decided to knit an adult size throw.  (This is not her blanket, but a photo from the pattern leaflet.)

So I did a tiny swatch to see if I would like the orange and navy combination in this stitch... and 

ooh la la I did!  I love the tonal variegation of the navy blue even on this tiny piece.  So I took the advice of my friend, Chris, and cast on 277 stitches and began knitting the time consuming linen stitch.  I modified the striping sequence to allow for the large blanket size (4 feet by 6 feet).  I was happily knitting away on my lovely blanket in the evening or when I could spare a few moments to do a row.   It was shaping up just as I had imagined and my daughter loved it.

While I was knitting away, the city repaved the road in front of Monarch Knitting.   This road work was nothing but a small inconvenience to me until I left the store last Monday with my hands full and my knitting basket over my arm.  All of a sudden I heard, "Excuse me, but you are dragging something behind you!"  And yes, I turned around to find my blanket dragging across the newly paved, very rough street.  All I could do was hope for the best as I followed the trail of yarn to my project.  Maybe it had fallen like the rose petals at graduation, ever so lightly, and just needed to be retrieved and dusted off.  NOPE.  The street had pulled up the fiber all over my blanket and it was dirty.  Definitely no longer beautiful or sophisticated.  When I got home, I tried to rescue it but it was not to be.  Time to cut bait.  Out came the scissors and snip, the yarn was free to cast on college blanket version 2.

Even though the linen stitch is a slow knit, it is a perfect stitch for me right now as I remember all the joy, laughter and fun my daughter has brought to our family.  Each stitch will represent a hug that I wish I could give as she greets each day 2,787 miles away from home.