SE*Well Borns Xena [Pedigree]

🐱 LaPerm

📸 SE*Well Borns

I was unknowingly working on a 35 foot long blanket for years

I started a blanket 10 years ago and put it down shortly after starting. It was on 30” circulars and I just kept casting on until I couldn’t fit anymore stitches. I was new to the hobby so I figured it would just be “blanket sized.”

I picked it back up about 6 months ago determined to finally finish this thing. I transferred it to 60” circulars to give myself more working space, and during that transfer I counted 450ish stitches, but that would just be a big king sized blanket right? So I kept going. But after about 9 balls of yarn and only 2 feet in length finished, I gave up and decided I would just crochet the blanket instead.

Halfway through my crocheted version, I ran out of yarn and made the sad decision to frog the knitted project for salvage yarn. After removing the circular needles, I thought it’d be interesting to see how wide the blanket actually was.

After straightening it all out I stared at my work, utterly dumbfounded, that I had been working on a 35 foot wide blanket this whole time. I am SO GLAD I did not finish this project as I would’ve cried at the monster I had brought into the world.

tl;dr - You should really pay attention to the size reference chart on your yarn and count the stitches when free-handing as a newbie.

And finally, the blanket:

I'm obsessssed with Poppy she's so gorgeous and sweet

I finished the first 2ply turtle already after three days of spinning (mostly the past day as I was watching youtube videos). There were some issues though. The first single I spun was pretty inconsistent compared to the one I plied it with. It broke early on in the process, but I just ended up tying it back together with a square knot. Also, the first single ran out quite a bit before the other one did, so I tied the two ends together. Not the nicest fix especially since it messed with the gradient, but it worked and I didn't want to waste what was leftover. Hopefully once I go up to a 4ply the knots won't be that noticeable.

Ready to ply! I'm excited to see how this comes out. The color changes don't have a lot of contrast, so i don't know how the fractal will look but it's practice anyway.

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.