Blanket Watch - "The Serenity Special"

Alright, I know ya'll have been tired of me hemming and hawwing about my current crochet project - a chocolate and crimson red blanket for That Original Oldgirl Serenity 30, on the occasion of her official housewarming.

As you can see, I think she may be already adapted to using it as her "cover of choice" while lounging and enjoying a glass of Boones Farm Reisling!

That's how you do the darn thang, Oldgirl!!

I've started naming these big adult blankets, lol. This one is called the "Serenity Special"


Man, I ain't NEVER had to make a LARGE blanket that fast. Most of it was my fault. Goodness. I have WAAAAAY too much stuff going on. Way too much. I must plan my time much better. I'm a lot better than that. I need to make these a 12-16 week projects, instead of an 8-10 week project!

And what was terribly crazy were the following repetitive IMs over the past week:

serenity23: hey chick
original_oldgirl: sup gal
serenity23: you working on my blanket?

Dooooohhhh!! I wanted to throw my laptop across the room. It was if she knew that I was sitting on the bed crocheting, listening to my blog playlist, and working on HER blanket.

I wanted to strangle her... But baby sisters don't know no better. Have to let it go. I kept her updated over the past 2 months ("I'm on square 368", "I'm on square 661", etc.)

My last IM, after being asked umpteen times over several weeks.

original_oldgirl: yeah, I'm done. I washed it, and it's in the dryer right now.
serenity23: yippee

Humph.

I must admit, it came out nice. I wasn't all that happy about the color combos (these are the colors of the accent pillows for her tan sofa), but after I did test strips, it was cool. I like that color combo, and these colors come in bulk and are not hard to track down. I plan on making a couple more as gifts in the next couple of years.

Since the detailing is a bit hard to see, I have a couple of close-up pictures that I took at home with the blinds open and a bit of sunshine to boot.

760 red squares/flowers instead of the 836 the pattern calls for. I got enough dayum sense these days to tailor these blankets to the recipients height or size. Bout time I got some sense in my head concerning such! STILL took 125 hours, due to silly mistakes. I need to cut that down to 120 at least.

The discussion about this blanket in advance were something else, especially since I ususally crochet a blanket as a suprise. These were the test strips for Serenity's Original blanket.

She had this GRAND vision of how she wanted her bedroom: all white, with tan walls. So I crocheted test strips and photographed them for the LBeezy's thoughts. There is a subtle difference between the top and bottom strips (pure white vs. soft white). LBeezy preferred the soft white. I liked that one a whole lot better also. Problem was, it looked dingy against the pure white. (We had thrown a bunch of white labcoats on the desk and threw the soft white on top. It looked dingy. Even our resident dude, Hen-Dog, was a bit disturbed by the dinginess).

But uh, i saved that soft white... will use later. I actually started on the tan and pure white.

Biggest problem: Serenity's doggone painter painted the bedroom walls the wrong color (gold instead of tan). She decided she liked the mistake. The whole idea was lost. Man, if I lived up in Charlotte, I would've gone over to that house on the low-low, make a few threats, and MADE that dude paint the ish right.

So, I ended up telling Serenity that I was crocheting a blanket for her, and that she should just pick out the colors from other tests strips, which were from the following...

I ain't sure what was up with the yellow. It said "gold" on the yarn package, and I decided to get a roll of that and make some testers to see what she thought.






After much discussion, Serenity decided she preferred the deep red and chocolate.

We went through the whole go-around of me yelling "ARE YOU SURE, CHICKEN[HEAD]?" She said yes, and seemed excited. I had to trek my ass all the way back down to the Southside to Union City and trade that doggone white and tan yarn in for the red and chocolate. Hard SIGH.

We found out later that the red was the wrong color. She said deep red, which means dark red to me. What she meant was the red of the color of her dress pictured above.

I called her a blind one-legged chicken[head] and kept it moving. HUMPH. I was NOT going back down to Union City to trade up yarn. The chicken was gonna have to take the dayum blanket and DEAL WITH IT.

Well, as you can see, she was quite happy with it. So much so that she didn't wait to open the gift with her other gifts. She opened it soon after I got there.

And she seems to be happy with it.



Well, I am not sure if she was happy, or if she was a bit tipsy off that wine she's drinking.



To tell the truth, I couldn't tell if she was giddy about the blanket, or just straight up lushed out.
I like to pretend she was a happy chicken because of the blanket!!

So Serenity...

You Original Oldgirl you...

I want to say congrats on your new house!

Just wanted to give you a small token of my appreciation.

I hope this blanket will be something you cherish always.

Hopefully as much as I cherish the freindship you've given me over the years...