A couple of months ago, we lost S's little blankie that I knit for him when he was an infant. The big blankies aren't allowed to leave the house, but the little ones were knit so that the boys could bring them along in the stroller or car when they needed to. And when they were 1, they needed to a lot. Well, little blankie got lost recenly at the mall. S got over the loss very quickly, accepting my explanation that it was now "lost" and he still had his big blankie. He's repeated this camly several times over the last couple of months, but never seemed upset about it. Until this week.

recent blankie activity

The other day, in the car on the way to the playground, he suddenly began insisting that I "get" him a new little blankie, that he had to have another one. He sounded so genuinely sad about it that I told him I could knit him another one, but instead of going to the playground, we'd have to go to the yarn store to buy the yarn. He said "okay, yarn store." Awwww. So off we went. Back to Putting on the Knitz (info here - scroll down) in Newton, the first yarn store I ever visited and the only place I've seen the Plymouth Galway I used for S's blankie. I bought the yarn there over three and a half years ago when I was just learning to knit and the boys were still embryonic. A year and a half later, when I realized that I would have to make smaller versions of the blankies, I was amazed to find the yarn still at Putting on the Knitz. And this week, now two years after my last visit, there it still was. Waiting for us.

S carried it out of the store, hoping, I'm sure, that I'd turn it into a new blankie as soon as we got back into the car. I told him that he'd have to wait until this weekend - mommy needs at least a couple of days! So now everything's on hold while I knit my first project again, this time as the first project one of my boys has ever requested that I make for him.

Sniff, sniff.

About a quarter of the way done. Time for a quality test from S. Looks good enough to cuddle with already. Note thumb moving towards mouth...

S snuck into bed with me this morning and cuddled for about twenty minutes before he remembered... "my little blankie!" He's asked for it first thing the last three mornings, but it was promised for this morning. True to my word, I stayed up late last night finishing it and even managed to lay it out to block a bit before I went to bed. I pointed him in the right direction, he patted it a little and immediately carried it to the sofa to try it out. Looks like it's just right.

I hope he remembers this.

And hey, look what still fits!

Knitting requests, cuddly boys and another season of giraffe jackets - I'm one happy mommy.

This is how the corners of my son's blankie look after almost 3 years of lovin'.

Yikes, I've got to close up those open stitches! While I was waiting yesterday morning, yarn and crochet hook in hand, to see if I could get the blankie all to myself for half an hour, I looked out the window and thought, "heck, if it's gonna be 55 degrees outside in Boston in November, then I'm gonna wear my cardi raye!"

pieces of me

Can you tell that the boys helped take the pictures? I don't think they quite understood what it means to "see mommy" in the display. Kids - you gotta love 'em!

The thing about twins is, whenever one of them poops, the other won't be far behind (har, har). My point is, after cleaning up messes from one, I've learned to go ahead and check out the other.

So a while back, after rescuing one blankie from some near-fatal lovin', I decided to take a closer look at blankie number two.

Just as I suspected. The cast on edge was all but completely rubbed away, and stitches had begun to fall. I had to put a brief hold on the holiday knitting until this was taken care of! And the other day, I find another stitch making a run for it. A mother's work is never done.

But oh the joys.

Just what this mommy on the edge needs - another blankie rescue! As the boys were watching their morning shows last week, S. looks up and casually says, "there's a hole in my blankie." A whaaaat?! I check it out and indeed, a large, gaping hole had formed just under the edge that he'd rubbed away a few months ago.

Back then I added a single crochet edging to that corner to hold it together. Mission accomplished: apparently, he didn't even bother rubbing the edge anymore, but kept rubbing the weak stitches right below it. And now they were gone. Nothing left to do but knit him a new corner. I mean the rest of the edging looked just fine, no reason to rip out a whole inch of 4 feet wide garter stitch border and reknit it, when all he does is flip and rub the corners, right? One new corner, coming up!

I picked up some stitches below the danger zone, knit garter stitch rows to the edge and mattress stitched the new panel to what remained of the old garter stitch border. I pulled out that crochet edge I'd added and trimmed (yes, with scissors!) the holey area, tacking the remaining frayed stitches to the new corner.

I tried to explain to S. that he needs to use the other corners more otherwise this one would keep falling apart. B. heard this and said with a sort of Eureka enthusiasm, "these blankies are old; we need new ones." And in my most sensitive and compassionate mommy voice I replied, "that ain't gonna happen."

No way I was gonna make it through the two-month fix-a-thon without fixing both boys' blankies. I rescued S's blankie at the start of February. B's blankie has been hanging on by a thread (literally) for a while now. He has rubbed the edges down so much that there were at least five spots that were just one snuggle away from developing into holes. Last week, I saw him stick his fingers right through the garter stitch edging and knew it was time.

no denying it, that's a hole

Sure, I could pick up that stitch, patch up that hole, but everything around it is about to go. I'd be fixing another spot in less than a week (and even worse, just look at how thin some of the yarn is in some of the first pattern rows below the edging!). Nope, the entire edging and last pattern repeat had to go.

Of course there was no variegated Baby Merino DK to be found round here no more, but we found some in blue that B approved of.

he's grinning ear to ear behind the yarn

He snuggled with the ball while I got all the stitches back on the needles correctly, then passed it to me to start the reknitting.

Two days after first seeing the hole, the blanket had a new border ready for lovin'.

together again at last

Warning: this will be yet another post about my losing battle to keep the boys' blankies whole!

One morning last week, S comes to snuggle in bed with me, and this is what his blankie looks like. That'll wake you up pretty fast!

This one was easily fixed though. All those neat stitches stayed right where they were supposed to be (despite being dragged around from bedroom to bedroom) and I had merely to rework that cast off row. In order to strengthen some other danger zones, I wove in about a foot of extra yarn over some thin areas. I'm hoping this will keep us big-blankie-crisis-free for a while.

So if we're all lucky, it'll be another month or so before I have to write another one of these posts!!

...and you gotta expect to come home with yarn.

Shireen is to blame. I am totally hooked on Rowan denim! My second denim baby knit (after the pinafore) will be this little Phildar baby sweater (from Phildar #381), which I'm gonna do in dark blue denim with light blue denim stripes. And I couldn't help myself when I saw the Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit buttons. So cute!

Next, I've got Lisa to blame, um, thank for renewing my love affair with Rowan all seasons cotton. Lisa gifted me with this bag of beautiful orange/gold asc. I've got plans to do something cable-y with it (like this maybe), because asc looks so damn good in cables! Afterall, it was Amber's incredible cabled sweater that sparked my last asc crush.

But best of all, waiting for me at the store, was this yarn and these truly beautiful stitchmarkers from Amy C. Amy recognized me and the boys (I think most people actually recognize the boys first) at my local Finagle-a-Bagel and remembered that I had posted about searching the Boston-area yarn stores for more yarn to fix B's blankie. Well, she just happened to have two balls of it that she couldn't really find the perfect project for. She wrote me a sweet email saying that she'd like to donate it to the keeping-the-blankie-alive cause. Isn't that wonderful?! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Amy!

By the way, if you happen to go to the store these days, this is what you're going to see:

nothing but a t-shirt goes big time! (click for a close up)

1. The denim pinafore I finished in May was well received. After visiting the little girl it was intended for, I suddenly got nervous about the size and so sent it off a month before her birthday, just in case it was on the small side. It fits!

2. Amy Lu asked to see some close-ups of katy's neckline. Okey dokey.

left side and right side

And look, no droopy shoulders, no flashdance neck!

3. We've had yet another blankie crisis. Last week, S is cuddling with his blankie while watching Miss Spider and then just holds it up a little and quietly states, " I think this has a hole in it." Funny, this announcement has become so commonplace that it no longer results in the same sort of rush of activity and anxiety as it used to, either in them or in me.

before

I did some duplicate stitching that night and brought the blankie to S while he was sleeping.

after

4. I stopped by my LYS yesterday with the boys in tow and S immediately recognized the big long scarf in the new Harry Potter window. "That's the thing you make and you bring it and it hang there." When we got in the store, he went right over to the window to see the things from the inside. I found him stroking the Nimbus 2000 and then suddenly he looked up and said in a voice of slow realization, "hey, that's my...." I'd totally forgotten that he'd recognize his weasley sweater! He was actually very excited to see it there. (So was B: "look, an H sweater!") I explained that once it was done hanging in the window, we'd be bringing it back home. But then he grabbed hold of the bottom of the scarf and said "can we take this?"

Remember my struggles to keep the boys big blankies in one piece? Well, I fear the battle is lost.

I've found four of these in S's blankie and two in B's. They are so far advanced that there really isn't much darning I can do. I've run a scrap piece of yarn through the live stitches around the hole and cinched it together as best as I can. This is, of course, a very inadequate and very temporary solution. I've started dropping hints to the boys that we'll have to throw the blankies away when they really start to fall apart. Unfortunately, they seem to think this is some sort of mommy threat and not an inevitable event. They've started hiding the holes.

Just when I needed something to get me out of the blankie blues, mom brings me an old Woolrich sweater she got at a thrift store that was in great shape but for a thumb-sized hole in the sleeve. Could I possibly repair it? Luckily, I've practically got a yarn store up in my stash and found almost perfectly matching yarn. I created a few lost rows and voila: sweater and self-confidence saved!

I even felt good enough to tackle that tech guy sock gone wrong, picking out the woven in ends, and opening up a hole to start unravelling.

The holes may be winning the blankie battle, but I will fight on!

S is getting his lovin' in as long as he can. His blankie is not long for this world. Let's take a look at what has happened since the blankie's last visit to the knitting doctor:

I found this run on the plane on our way to Germany. Since we were on the plane, I had none of my notions with me - no stitch markers, no crochet hook, no tapestry needle, no scrap yarn, no scissors. I had to cut some Manos that I had brought to knit an afghan square (cut it with the dental floss I brought with me) and slip it into the dropped stitches as best I could and tie a knot. He doesn't mind the Manos threads, so I've left them in there ever since.

This is S's favorite corner. I repaired this corner about a year ago, leaving it nice and new and thick. He LOVES (and by 'loves' I mean holds and flips and tugs) on that "new" little corner so much that the yarn all around it has become too thin to hold together. Now he says he likes this corner best because of all the holes.

I had let the two above problems go without a lot of life-saving measures, but then I saw this on one of the edges. That could not be left for long. I had a real battle to get the blankie away from S long enough to deal with it. There was no way I could reknit all that - the yarn is too thin to hold for long even if I could - so I ran 'safety lines' through the rows right below the unraveled section (as well as around and under all those holes in S's favorite corner).

We've talked and talked about what should happen when big blankie is finally so full of holes that it doesn't stay together. S gets very sad. He says he doesn't want me to just unravel the areas that are ripped and reknit a couple of feet of the blanket, because then his special corner won't be there. But he also says that I could always just knit him a new blanket. So clearly, we're conflicted. We don't have pets, but I think the boys are learning the same lesson about mortality through loving these blankies. S doesn't want to see his old blankie die and he knows that another blankie would never be exactly the same as this one. Nevertheless, more Plymouth Galway is on order.

S's blankie is officially terminal.

The little holes in his favorite corner have joined to form three mega-holes and the edges are starting to unravel around them.

The cast on edge has opened up again and it's so thin that there's no stopping it. Each morning there's another row in his bed that has unravelled and ripped off in the night. And several of the columns of lace stitiches in the very middle of the blanket have popped stitches and are laddering all the way down to the edges.

I explained to S that the blankie was going to fall apart completely in a couple of days. The rips and holes are too serious and in too many places. But then hubby says, can't you sew some of it? Okay, no DNR order, we're going for heroic measures.

The edging got several rows of stitches.

Then I sewed all around that poor corner. Can you see the crazy stitch lines following the sturdiest remaining pieces of yarn? I guess it's sort of like steeking, only the cutting happened before the sewing.

This is not a cure, but it'll give S a little exta time with big blankie. A few extra days, weeks, maybe even a month to say good-bye.

Much to my horror, a new section of edging opened up on S's blankie just a few inches away from the edging that I sewed up over the weekend. And this section is dangerously close to those dropped stitches that I tied off on the plane trip to Germany.

I knew there'd be more stitching to do on this blanket, so I had left everything ready in the sewing machine, but I didn't think I'd be back at it again so soon.

With all the big holes tearing it apart and all the little tiny stitches holding it together, I can hardly stand to look at S's blankie. It makes me so sad. But he still loves it just the way it is.

Blankie update:

It's still falling apart. He still loves it.

So far the machine stitching seems to be holding.

The favorite corner is still with us. For now.

S's blanket: half blankie, half rag.

The machine stitching I put in months ago is the only thing holding the edge together.

But the favorite corner has torn wide open.

He still loves it though and runs that stringy corner through his fingers every night to fall asleep.

Last weekend, a customer came into the store with a baby blanket that her mother had knit for her daughter. Coindentally it was knit from the same pattern that I used for the boys' blankets. The blanket had begun to fray in a couple of small spots along the edge. Like two spots. And some of the lacy holes had been stretched out by her daughter's loving little fingers. The mom was very anxious to have some knit repair done to save the blankie. It was kind of sweet to see her right about where I was two years ago (before I even started chronicling the death of these blankies), being so genuinely worried about the blanket.

Well of course they directed her over to me for my experience and "help". I'm not sure I gave her the kind of help she wanted though.
- Would the child let you put a backing on it?
- Maybe not, she loves sticking her fingers in the lace holes.
- Is the child upset about the tiny tears and stretches?
- No.
- Does the child love the blanket?
- Oh yes.
- Does the child want a new blanket?
- No.
- Okay then, stop-gap repairs should be able to give her more years with that blanket, but it very well may be that she's going to love it to death. And it's a beautiful thing to watch.

Despite my attempts over the past couple of years to hold S's much-loved blankie together, he is determined to let it fall apart. And he's almost succeeded.

blankie at 5 years
(apparently that's like 150 in blankie years)

entire lace columns are running down
(it's like a blankie clapotis!)

columns are starting to unravel into each other

and the favorite corner is nothing but string

Man does that boy love his blankie! And it turns out B is pretty keen on his blankie too. When it was his first time to do show and tell at school (and we'd forgotten to put something in his bag to show), he decided to tell everyone about his blankie. He said he told them "it is yellow and blue and green and mommy knitted it." (Tissue, anyone?)

Oh, it's going to be tough trying to match that with baby blankie number three!

We were awakened by the crying. It would seem that S dangled his blankie over the side of the bunk bed and when B gave it a little tug, off went the favorite corner.

And the rest of the blankie ain't looking much better.

Since S has been up on the top bunk, the blankie's been pretty much disintegrating unseen. (Which is really how I preferred it.) Each morning though I'd find a little scrap on the floor and toss it. But yesterday was the big one.

We rushed out after school to pick out more yarn for a new blankie. S picked this Lamb's Pride because he said, "it is the softest." (Insert Nanny McPhee "hmm" here.) I wonder if he'd notice if I switched it for some Cascade 220? He says he wants red and blue stripes in the same yo/k2tog pattern that I did his original blankie in. I have a feeling that he's thinking vertical (read, intarsia!) stripes. We'll see if I can maybe talk him out of that too.

But lucky for me, he is convinced that "it takes 90 days to yarn a blankie," meaning I've probably got until late April to get this done. In the meantime, Daddy looped the favorite corner through a large hole in the blanket and knotted it on so S can continue to run his fingers along the edge like he likes to do.

And S promises not to dangle it over the side of the bed anymore.

Wee one woke up from her nap the other day and, with a pathetic little pout, pointed out this small tear in the edging of her blankie. The edging (a bright red Frog Tree Merino) is super soft and is her favorite part of the blankie. She always runs her fingers along it as she cuddles with the blankie. Needless to say, she was quite distraught that blankie was "ripped". We all know, however, that I've seen much worse! While she had a bit of juice to calm down, I whipped out the extra yarn and the crochet hook and put a small row of single crochet stitches over the tear.

That was easy. But I am certain that the battle to keep this blankie whole has only just begun.