The Making of the Gift, Part II

Like I said before, I was going to do something different for Tayari's afghan, instead of making a "scrap" blanket...

So I sent her an email, asking what her favorite colors were...

She responded "I like all colors."

*Lee bashing head against desk*

She WOULD give the literary answer.

I was able to drag out of her that she likes pink, the rosy shade of pink.

That was more like it. I wouldn't dare ask her the color scheme of her house, because that is too, uh, I don't know... STALKY.

LOL!!

So I ran around looking for rosy pink. I've worked with that color of yarn before, but had a hard time tracking it down. Over a month's time, I hit up 15 stores, mostly as I passed them when going somewhere. I saw it in one of those stores, then FORGOT where I saw it. UGHH.

But, I noticed that I kept seeing a couple of new color combos all over the place, one of which was aspen print... It matched well with a solid color, Frosty Green.

And that was what I was going to use.

So, I was in Michaels, standing around perusing in the yarn section, smelling it (LOL), touching it, and this old woman who had apparently been watching me (she must've thought I was really out of my mind for examining yarn so hard), walked up to me and said... "Hon, they have a sale on this yarn you're looking at over at Joanns."

So I threw my yarn down and went over to Joanns and got all my yarn at a GOOD price. I think I may have spent twenty bucks!

Now, the issue with this afghan is the "motifs", or the squares, or "all them damn squares", as Cowgirl Cre likes to say.

The pattern called for 836 of them.

Since Tayari is 10 feet tall (LOL!), I lengthened it a bit, so I needed 880 squares.

Cowgirl Cre REALLY frowned up at this.

I think she remembered when I made this same afghan before, and how hard I was WHINING once I got to square #500.

But, I made the promise to myself that I would be a MAVERICK and not complain...

So I got busy making my squares.

And was whining by the time I got to square #700. (I only whined a little bit...)

"Cowgirl Cre, why don't you help me make some squares!?"

"Girl..." she would always say.

Let's just say, she didn't pick up a needle to help me out.
Anyway, those squares needed to be hooked together, 40 squares in a row.

Up one side...



And down the other...



Then up the other side again...



Then it all had to be hooked together. I think it took about 4 minutes to make each square, and about 2 hours to hook 40 squares into a strip, and add them to other strips.

I was doing well, hooking my 21 strips together. That was until I looked at the pattern and found that I was a strip short. I started whining hard then. Cowgirl Cre is no help.

"Girl, I would just tell Tayari that it is one strip short."

I couldn't do that, and time was getting short. So I think I just sat down one Saturday morning in the living room, and spent four hours getting the extra strip together. (My sister Kentucky was probably looking down over the banister from upstairs at me, wondering why I was moving so fast, LOL.)

Now, while I was getting the blanket stripped together, I would carry it with me whenever I visited someone. That way I could work on it.

I took it with me to LadyTee's house. She held it on her lap, while we sat and talked. She examined it closely.

"Lee, the afghan you made for me is thicker than this one."

Humph. Hater. I heard a slight bit of sarcasm all through that comment. She gets so jealous. I will never get that. All I could do was smile.

I took it to my Auntie Joyce's house when I visited her for her birthday. We stood in the dining room looking at it. She had one end, I had the other.

"Ooh Lisa, this is so nice!" she beamed.
"Auntie," I said. "I hope she likes it. She likes pink, and I saw pink yarn once, but couldn't find it again, and couldn't find the multicolor yarn either."
"It's still nice. I think she'll like it."

She stood there smiling.

"And it does have pink in it," she said.

*crickets*

She pointed to a pink blanket over in a window in her living room. One of her cats was cuddled so lovingly on it. We both looked back and forth between the pink blanket and the afghan.

I just glanced up at her and nodded. She's an oil painter, and can "see" colors, and I can't.

Although, I do have a picture of the afghan with my coffee table flowers.


Well... I GUESS I can see a little pink undertone in there. I guess...

Anyway, it's always nice to finish a crochet project... All the hours of hard work finally pay off. I remember thinking at times, "Dayum, this is soft! Tayari may not get this!" LOL. I took it to work one day. My cubicle mate Cowgirl Cre even helped me find strings that needed to be weaved in and hidden. "There's one right there, girl. Get it!" Thank goodness management didn't walk up on us that day!

But...

I had a problem with the little guy at home.


Oscar-Tyrone.

He kept a constant vigil over the blanket and, would give me the evil eye if I walked near it. Oscar's not a mean cat, but he had that look in his eye that said...

"Lee, this is MY blanket. You better back away from MY blanket."


Hmmm.

I wonder what that was all about?



To be continued.