My title says it all except gorgeous. I couldn't squeeze the word gorgeous into the title, but it is. It started out as a simple scrap buster, but then like a little caterpillar it turned into a beautiful butterfly. It's watercolory soft squishiness make it my new number one favorite blanket to grab. I've got plans to make another one, but this time I'll be aiming for dark and moody.

This is one of those versatile patterns that you can either give to an absolute beginner or to a seasoned knitter who hast a lot of stash to consume. I am the latter. I held one strand of pastel fingering weight yarn with a strand of white lace weight mohair/silk blend. The two together made the most gorgeous watercolor effect and you can see by the pictures how pretty it came out!  We are loving blankets around here especially since we are trying to keep the thermostat a little lower than usual. Interested in making one for yourself? Read on!

Look at this! I could not stop taking pictures. She is very photogenic.

The knitting is entirely garter stitch which I love--love the look and love the squishy texture. It's a mindless, de-stress kind of knit that I enjoyed very much. I'll admit this is a boring project, but I actually like boring, and knowing that I was using up stash kept me going. Then about halfway through I realized it was going to turn out pretty, so that helped too.  I had several other projects going on at the same time and picked this up when I couldn't concentrate on anything more complicated. When you have several works in progress going on at the same time, it's nice to have at least one mindless one .

The pattern works for any yarn and any gauge, you'll just have to adjust your needle size. 

I started by lining up my colors that I thought I might use, although I did not end up using them all. Once thought I could create what I had in my mind, I threw the whole lot in a basket and knit color by color keeping to my very informal plan.

Diagonal Comfort Blanket, a free pattern from Lion Brand

My Ravelry project page with all the juicy details

I have 6 skeins of a dark charcoal lace weight mohair/silk to make another blanket. It might look awesome paired with purples and reds. What do you think? I had fun gathering it but won't start it until next year. I have some VIP gifts and tests to finish before I can cast on another thing. Must. Be. Disciplined.

We have zero plans this week except to do the last bit of shopping for stocking stuffers and then the wrapping of everything. I'm hoping my kindly live-in chauffeur will drive us to "Christmas Tree Lane", a street the next town over that goes all out with decorating for the holidays. I wished I lived on a street that did that. We had a Candy Cane Lane near our neighborhood growing up and I dreamed of living on that street. Every single house on our street puts up Christmas lights which is nice, but no one goes all out with lawn displays, including us. I'd love to go crazy with all that but my husband would never go for it. Yesterday afternoon I felt very tired and I plopped down on the sofa to do some knitting and was even too tired to do that. I think all the activity these last weeks have finally caught up with me and just plain pooped me out. I'm going to cure that today and have a big day of nothing but sitting and knitting to get me back on track. I have two hats to knit before Christmas and since I haven't watched one Christmas movie yet, today's plan sounds as comforting as chicken noodle soup. I have made my grocery shopping list for our easy Christmas Eve dinner, Flat Iron Steak, if I can find one, also asparagus, corn pudding casserole and for a certain little someone, a cubed red and green jello "salad" my aunt used to make--something she called Broken Glass and I remember loving it as a child. For Christmas Day we are having New England Cod Chowder. It's so quick and easy to make and we all love it so much. We have done a lot of entertaining this season and for our own family gathering I just want it to be chill and easy. Carter is coming over on Friday and we are planning on making cut out sugar cookies and maybe he would like to help with the jello thing. I'll share the recipe if it turns out as good as I remember although it's been about 50 years since I've had it. (Edited after posting, I just googled it and it seems the whole world makes this recipe, and all this time I thought it was an old family secret 😀) I hope you have a great week and have good long bits of time to watch TV and knit. If I'm not back before Christmas I wish you the merriest of the merriest! 

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