The Mellow Yellow

I always name my adult blankets...

And this one is called "Mellow Yellow"

Back on October 15th, The Green Eyed Bandit asked if I could make a blanket for a young lady,  her son's friend who has just been diagnosed with bone cancer.  Yeah, I could do it, but I really need at least a couple of months or more to do that. But she wanted it a little sooner than later, so I set out to get it done in a month.

Normally, I would say no to this. Because if stresses me out to do big blankets on demand. Especially when I am on a time limit. It loses all relaxation for me. That's not good.

But first, the Green Eyed Bandit is my homegirl, so she has special privileges with me. Second, this is for a sick teenager with cancer. I understand the need for something warm in the chemo room, as I got my recent iron transfusions in a chemotherapy lounge. I was just there for a couple of hours at a time, once per week. But I learned just in general conversation with some of the chemotherapy patients that they are there 7 or 8 hours a day.

The room is cold. And the blankets are thin and generic. I was just there for a short time. I couldn't imagine being there all day.  Being warm and comfortable is a plus.

So I am sure this young lady has plenty of blankets. But the Green Eyed Bandit wanted something special. And so I decided to do it.

I was on furlough at the time, itching anyway for something to do since I was finishing up or had just finished The Four Bliss collection.

I have some cafe coffee colored yarn that I was about to use to make something else. We decided on that. She wanted yellow (yellow is the bone cancer official color, much like pink is the breast cancer color).  She had to hear me fuss and holler a bit, because man oh man... I tell you, it's like a scavenger hunt trying to find a specific color of yarn. AND it all has to be from the same dye lot, made on the same work shift. So not only do I have to track down the right color, I have to also check all the lot numbers printed on the label to make sure they will match up right.

Sigh. That means hitting at least 4 or 5 different stores.

I wasn't going to go through all that. Nope. We were going to go with the cafe coffee yarn.

BUT you wouldn't believe what happened.

I happen to be at the black people's Wal-mart over on the east side of town. Whenever I'm in a Wal-Mart, I peruse the yarn aisle. It's not as dense as it use to be... but it is always worth a quick look.

But lo and behold, I came across a new color I had never seen before... a color called "pale yellow".  I scooped all of it up...

All but one of the dye lot numbers matched. This is rare for me. I actually hit up another Wal-mart a couple of weeks later and came across the correct number. I scooped those up, too.  I needed 7 skeins of yarn for this project. I had 8. I would use the odd numbered one only if I needed to.

I told Bandit that I would do a throw. The full blanket is big and heavy. This throw is 20% smaller and a little lighter.

So you know how I like to document my blankets right?

Riiiiiiight!

So here we go...

I had to make some squares.

These take about 3 minutes apiece.

I can easily generate a good size pile of them while watching a good movie.

The problem is that I needed 600 of them. (This is down from 836).squares.

That's a lot of squares...

I made a good amount of progress during those last few days of furlough, but it don't bother me one bit to take a ball of yarn to work and crochet on my down time or during lunch.

(I am sure the boss doesn't like this. Oh well.)

For some reason, it gets a little hard when I almost finished up with squares. So by the time I'd made around 500 squares, I was wondering... geesh, will I ever finish making these squares?

Yes I would.

I had this plan where I would go hard on making squares on the weekdays, then I would hook them together on the weekends. There were 30 squares to a row, so I hooked those together, up one side...

And down the other...

And the resulting strips would be hooked together.




I needed 20 strips. Here it is at the halfway point.

(I placed balls of yarns on top of it. If I don't, that Oldcat Oscar-Tyrone jumps up on it and makes himself VERY comfortable. Sigh.)

Once the strips are finished, I have to do a ruffle on the ends.

I was happy about this. I have been itching to do a girly blanket. But for some odd reason, this "treble" stitch ruffle made my ring finger go a little numb. Uhhh... I was happy for that to be over.

Here is the ruffle.

And voila!!

Here's the final throw.... The Mellow Yellow

Oh how beautiful that turned out. I don't usually like girly colors, but I liked this one.  It was very nice and very soft. And I managed to get it done in 22 days flat. We calculated it taking about 80 hours. Didn't feel like it. But it went pretty fast.

And I still can't believe that I stumbled upon such a nice batch of yellow yarn.

Well Bandit, you better come and get it. I will NOT be driving way out to the boondocks to bring it to you! Better come get it!

And anyway, I would love to see you, Oldgirl.

This is definitely one of my favorite types of seeds to sow.  I am sure that I didn't happen across that specific color of yarn for no reason. Very sure of it.

I hope the young lady likes it.

I pray it is a source of comfort in such a hard time as this.