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As a baby I had a blanket that was "precious blanket" and nicknamed "precious b" well this has become "precious b 2". We've travelled, walked and now share many memories. I planned to do two like this - well the reciients are twins. One I would call fauna and the other flora but when I realised how long it was going to take it became so precious and is now "A few of my favourite things".
There are times when it is really sad to say good-bye to a knitting project even though it is more of an adieu or au revoir as I know I will be visiting. I have been knitting this for a year and the blanket has come everywhere with me. It is the 5th blanket I have knitted and the 6th to be completed. It began life at a workshop given by Debbie Abrahams at Sloane Square's Peter Jones - an auspicious beginning. I already had Rowan green cotton glace and decided to work in the gold rather than terracotta. I had inspiration from Debbie's books, the Stitch Companion by Melody Griffith and Lesley Stanfield as well as various other knitting books from which I was prepared to borrow the motifs. I owe the greatest debt to Sasha Kagan.
The first square to be completed was the toadstools (Lisa Richardson from one of the Rowan children's books). It was this that first gave me a clue that the blanket could take sometime as it was fun, fiddly and the back looked like spaghetti. I fell in love with the pattern of the sunflowers and it reminded me of the joy of seeing sunflowers in the kitchen garden of the Provencal asylum that Van Gogh had once been confined in. The cat was knitted in the USA during the second Presidential debate and I was curled up in an armchair in Boston enjoying its casual progress when the earthquake that happened two hands beforehand struck. The cat had to be ginger in honour of my cousins' first cat - a glorious ginger tabby - Nelson. It has no eyes as the original Nelson was named after the Admiral as he also had one eye and to be symmetrical the knitted cat had to have either two or none.
My cousin's wife has the most lovely watercolour of poppies painted by her mother and - while the original pattern from Sasha Kagan had 4 colours and the petunias are purple in this version - that picture was the inspiration. The blue tulip - labelled a bluebell in the book reminds me of Spring, the book the Black Tulip and the glories of Kew Gardens. What is there not to love about balloons - a reminder of childrens' parties and of the time when my aunt opened the door to a parent at my 3rd birthday. The Mother looked shocked and commented on how I (the 3 year old) had grown - a bit remarkable as my Aunt is 21 years older than I am! Music my great love. The texture on this is lovely as the notes strand over the stripes.
The tree has become one of my trademarks and has gone into 3 blankets and will feature on my next picture knit. The seedheads remind me of my Grandfather who was a GP but when he retired took on a Sussex smallholding looking back to his family farm roots in the North of Ireland.
The ice-cream - here is my one bit of total originality. I was convinced I had seen a pattern for an ice-cream but I couldn't find one so I spent part of the flight to Boston drawing this one out. It had to be yellow ice-cream on top as I loved the lemon ice cream I got in Boston and Italy and have wonderful memories of fruit ice-cream from my childhood in Brazil. The trailing flowers and leaves I knitted on the return trip to Margate with my Mother to see a Turner exhibition. The lavender takes me back to Provence. I had fun with the cherries.
So, farewell my blanket. We've had fun. The Southwest Coastal Path, the North Downs Way, the USA, Gemany, Avignon and we will always have Paris. I have knitted on trains, tidied ends on planes, edges on Ways - I will miss you my favourite things!
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| A few of my favourite things and a North Downs Way Milestone - Dover or bust! |
