July 2007

I've found the local Stitch'n Bitch group! It's delightful to get together once a week with other people who love to work with yarn, to just sit and chat while we each work on our own projects. We meet at a local bakery/sandwich shop that doesn't mind our taking over a corner for two hours.

It turns out that over the years the group has gathered an impressive array of afghan blocks. While many were assembled into blankets and donated to local charities, I discovered there were still a few bags of blocks hiding out in various members' closets. I volunteered to take the blocks and have started assembling them and adding borders.

The first batch I got were very diverse. I picked out 40 that seemed to work together, found a coordinating variegated yarn, and exercised my puzzle-solving skills to piece them together. This first one was challenging because the squares are all different sizes and yarns, so I had to do lots of fill work to make relatively uniform rows. In the end, they came together beautifully, forming a large afghan that we donated to the Wellness Community. Some of the cancer patients who attend support groups there chill easily and were delighted to have an afghan big enough that two of them could wrap up together in it.

Afghan 1

This close-up shows the one block I had made, as well as the detail in the border.

Afghan 1 detail

Meanwhile, I continued to make chemo caps. They are small and easily carried, unlike the afghan, so odd moments away from home still gave me time to work on them. The next batch was ready in time for another event at the Wellness Community, so I was able to promote their distribution to those in attendance. I'd made quite a few from cotton yarn this time, as some people find acrylic a bit too warm for summers here. I chose two large skeins of variegated cotton with small skeins in solid coordinating colors. It was fascinating to see how different caps from the same yarn could look when made up in a variety of sizes and combinations.

Chemo Caps July 2007

I actually finished one more while sitting in my car outside the Wellness Community, waiting for an afternoon thunderstorm to blow through! This style cap only takes me about 45 minutes to make.

Last minute completion