Baby Blanket

There are a couple of events that happen in the late spring early summer in Minnesota involving yarn shops.  There is one in Minneapolis/St Paul called the Yarn Shop Hop.  This involves going to a number of yarn shops over the course of a few days.  All of the shops have door prizes, special patterns, deals on yarn, etc.  If you go to all of the shops during the alloted time you get your named entered for a grand prize.  This year there were 16 shops involved. 

A co-worker and I decided to take the Thursday of this event off of work this past year and try to go to all 16 shops in one day.  I had googled everything, and figured out the best course of action.  We figured it would take all day - some of the shops are in the northern suburbs, some south, etc.  I calculated that we would need to drive a total of 250 miles.  It was further complicated by the fact that she lives in the western suburbs and I live south.  But I mapped everything out, and thought with a bit of luck we could hit all but one on that day, and the following day at work we could go to the last shop, which wasn't far from work.

Unfortunately, we had a huge snowstorm the day before the event, and decided we would never make it to all of the stores.  (It would have been tight even with good weather.)  And in order to be entered for the grand prize you had to attend every store and get a card stamped, so it wasn't like we could split up and each go to half.  Well, we could have, but then we wouldn't have a chance for the grand prize.

In June, a number of yarn shops in southern Minnesota had a similar event.  It was the Minnesota Yarnventure.  This only involved 5 shops, but they were quite a ways apart from each other.  I was pretty bummed about missing out on the Hop, and David was sweet enough to go along with my plan to do the Yarnventure.  We chose a Saturday and made our plan.  Which, if you know David, is pretty huge, since Saturdays in the summer are pretty sacred for bike rides.  

After we had this planned out, my sister decided to come down to the cities.  Her daughter was receiving an award on Sunday, so they decided to come and visit for the weekend.

My sister is not a knitter.  But she is a shopper.  So we decided that she and her daughter would go with me to the first two shops - one in my home town, and another fairly close.  We drove to the one in Cannon Falls first - What in Yarnation.  (Don't you love the names of yarn shops?)  As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, all of the shops had door prizes.  I had my sister and her daughter enter their names as well as me entering mine.  I figured that gave me a better chance of winning someting.   We then went back home, and went to the yarn shop there (where I bought a bunch of yarn) and went to an outdoor summer market that happens on Saturdays.  

This had the added benefit of allowing David to ride in the morning as he didn't have to drive around with me until after lunch.  In the afternoon we (David and I) hit the other 3 shops (which involved much driving as they were not so close) while my sister and her daughter visited my brother and his wife (who live in town). 

You're probably asking yourself right about now what this has to do with a baby blanket. 

Well, lo and behold, my sister won the door prize in Cannon Falls.   (I did not win anything in case you were wondering.)  However, her winning was pretty much me winning since she doesn't knit and the door prize was a kit for a baby blanket.  I have been working through may of the projects in my closet and I finally got to this one a couple of weeks ago.  I don't know anyone who is having a baby, but it's always nice to have something on standby just in case. 

I finished it this morning.

It was a lot of fun to knit.  I did it on big needles.  The kit used this fun fluffy yarn combined with a regular half cotton half acrylic yarn.  It reminded me when I was knitting it of the fake fur vests that were all the rage 40 years ago.  Or those funky rugs.  It was sort of matted looking at first, but after washing it, it is so soft and fluffy!  Some little baby is going to love this some day! 

Thanks Sandi!!  Glad you're lucky.