My blankie.

[ewt]

I started making this when I was about 12, I think, maybe even younger. To start with I didn't necessarily have a plan to make it into a blanket, and over the years I unravelled it a lot and then wound it all back up again...the last Big Unravel was the year before I went away to university. By uni I had it nearly finished; by the second month of second-year uni it was in the state it is now. I usually worked on it for a few hours a day in spurts of a week or so and then left it alone for months on end. You can see the measuring tape I put on it - the measuring tape is just over 60 inches (152cm). I had to stand on a chair in the corner of the room to get the whole thing in the picture. This blanket is seriously big - and thick too, about an inch thick. It is very warm. Folded in half it makes a very comfortable mattress.

It is made pretty much entirely of mixed unknown fibre. I used whatever I had - small scraps of wool leftover from projects, yarn I picked up in second-hand shops, new yarn I bought with money from my paper route or teaching...yarn other people bought for me or gave to me, yarn I found on the ground outside and washed. At one point I had old nylons in there (washed first of course!) but they were too stretchy and made the shape really weird.

I have no earthly clue how I am going to wash it, so I try to air it out regularly and make sure there is a sheet between it and me when I sleep with it. So far it seems to be okay, despite having sat in a box in my father's garage for the past three years. It does not stink yet and it has not rotted or moulded or got moths. Lucky me!

I suspect that when the time comes, I will have to get it drycleaned. It is far too big to fit in a home-sized washer, and even if it did, how to dry it? I cannot hang it out on a line as it will stretch horribly under its own weight (it does this without being wet, if I hung it when it is wet it would be beyond repair). I cannot put it into a dryer - again, it is too big and bulky for this to be effective, and some of the yarn has wool and cotton, so some bits would shrink and others wouldn't, leaving me with a very lumpy blanket. I could try to lay it out on the lawn in the sun but I think it would take quite a few days of very hot sun, and I dread to think of the bugs that would get into it.

For now I will just snuggle in it and sleep in it and lay about on it and so on. It feels Nice to have my blanket back. I've missed it.