Hoover Blanket

No, not a bunch of old newspapers to cover up with, but a knitted baby blanket that Herbert Hoover's wife made famous. Personally, I think its name should be differentiated by calling it L. H. Hoover Blanket. Knitty deciphered her pattern and published it:

Hoover Blanket

I'm making one in RHSS Aran Fleck and a Sage green for the contrast panel. I'm making version 3. It isn't really hard to do if you don't mind carrying two colors along and you can do 1x1 ribbing. The end result will be a blanket with a wide border and a double knitted stockinette stitch center panel which will be reversible. I cast on 130 instead of 110 so that I would have an even hundred stitches for the center panels.

Personally, I don't see how she could knit 190 stitches using straight needles without constantly dropping stitches, unless straight needles in her era were longer than the straight needles we have now, because they likely didn't have circular needles back then.

Well, after some digging, I found that circular needles were around at that time, since they were invented post-WWI, so it is possible that Lou Henry Hoover had some for her baby blankets.

Pretty cool, huh?

Mother's Day gift

That's what I'm calling it. My dad came down from NM to stay with his sister in Wesson for a couple of weeks and brought me a bit tub of yarn that he found that belonged to my mom, who recently passed away. The yarn is in all the colors you can think of and there was also an unfinished afghan in there that I assumed she had started, but come to find out my sister had started it, but the yarn was mom's. Since the pattern is a simple 4 dc shell pattern, changing colors on every row, I decided to finish it. I'm not sure if she had any rhyme or reason for changing colors, but I'm using the most recent color changes as a guide. There's going to be a ton of yarn leftover once I'm done and I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with it-either another afghan or smaller projects. I'll let you know.

I also found a handwritten pattern she copied from somewhere, along with some printed off the inet and a book of crochet/knit sweaters.

Last, but not least, I found several of her Aero hooks in there. She's been using those hooks ever since I can remember, and I almost cried when I found them, they were the best find in the whole box.

All in all, the best Mother's Day gift.....ever.

When you have lots of leftovers

Make a Giant Granny! That's what I'm doing with a bunch of leftover acrylic yarn-mostly RHSS. I started out with one round of each color, now I'm just going until I run out of yarn and then attaching another color and going on, even if I run out in the middle of a round. I even have up to three colors in a round. I'll be giving it to my grandson when I'm done-babies like lots of color and this is lots of bright colors.

I tried to use the smaller balls up on the inside, working my way outside with the larger balls and skeins. Maybe when I'm done with the colors I have it'll be big enough for Joseph to be able to use for awhile-he's only 11 months old so I want to make it big enough for him to use into his toddler and beyond years.

I'll have a picture later, when I tie in some loose ends, I might wait until I finish to take a picture.

Oh yes, I'm using a K hook and it's going pretty fast.