I wrote this the other day, instead of updating my resume, cause I assumed kingmudsy was gonna post at any time. It wasn't until I finished updating my resume that I checked Hubski, and now here we are. Mudsy is just looking out for me, I guess, making sure I get my work done. Thanks bro. I appreciate it.

By the way, to answer your question, companionship doesn't buy your boat. Companionship helps you crew it. Jeeze. Read a book or something.

I worked quite a bit on the blanket last weekend and while it doesn’t look like a lot, trust me, this was a lot of threading. It’s amazing what a three day weekend can get done. That said, my neck hurts from all the looking down at this thing, so for a while it’s gonna stop being a project and go back to being a blanket.

The whole thing is turning into quite the learning experience. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seriously worked with yarn as a medium and I gotta tell you, I’m not a fan. It’s pretty, yeah, but because it likes to flex and come undone and it doesn’t have a consistent tension, it’s pretty hard to work with. When you couple that with a blanket that started out in life as pretty loose, got looser over time, and now is inconsistent in strength and tension throughout, this is a project that’s gonna take patience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to give it the patience it needs, but it’s amazing how arts and crafts teach me how to be patient over and over and over again, because each medium requires its own type of patience. So I’m learning that.

Random aside, I think on the first day of working on this, I was telling Dala how in grade school we learned a lot about Native American cultures and their stories. I remember learning about a particular culture, I wanna say one from the American Southwest because a lot of them have Spider Woman stories, and how they were often extremely skilled weavers because they were taught by a weaving goddess and if they wanted to, they could weave flawlessly. However, as an act of humility, they would always deliberately put in at least one flaw in their work. If anyone knows the specific culture, please let me know. My Google-Fu is weak and I can’t find anything concrete. Regardless, that’s something I’ll never have to worry about having to do, cause as you can see from this project and my past ones, my works are very, very flawed.

Back to the blanket though. The blanket itself is made out of cotton I believe and I’m using Dala’s scrap yarn (saving a blanket and yarn, craft eco win) which is pretty much all acrylic. I was consulting with my mother on this, back and forth through text, and we were talking about the mediums. Before she knew what kind of yarn I was working with, she was telling me that it would probably be a good idea to wash the yarn beforehand, to pre-shrink it and keep the blanket from puckering. Yeah. aintnobodygottimeforthat.jpg Upon further consultation though, we figured that the blanket is probably as slack as it’s gonna get, acrylic yarn doesn’t really shrink all that much, and if I just do a bit at a time and use and wash the blanket before adding more, it oughta be pretty safe. Which, all sounds good to me. Besides, the blanket is half ruined and I’m using scrap yarn, so if this experiment fails, it’s not major loss.

As you can tell, there’s no real plan behind this blanket. Really, colors and pieces are just kind of getting added into it completely on impulse, but a few lessons are being learned. Horizontally, the blanket stretches a lot less than vertically, so while vertical lines for reinforcement will be needed here and there, they’ll probably be a lot less frequent to try and protect the natural stretch of the blanket. Additionally, as can be seen with the little green heart, any shapes added in are gonna need to be bigger to be clearer and more discernible. The threads and the stitches are just too blocky. As can be expected though, the part that has already had yarn added to it is a lot sturdier than the blank parts. Even better though, that little section is nice and thick and just lovely. That alone is enough motivation for me to do the entire blanket. At this rate though, this might not be a “winter” project but a “2020 and beyond” project, and that’s okay.

I’m turning the whole thing into less of an art project and more into an experience project. I’m taking my time, enjoying the struggle, and just not fretting about what happens to it one way or another. I rubbed a bit of Bergamot Oil onto the part that I’m working on and it gives me a lovely fragrance to enjoy. I have on my desk a mix of Cedar and Pine Oil, and I think what I’ll do is swap back and forth between the two every time I wash it and start working on it again. My wife got me both, because she knows I love Earl Grey Tea and she knows how much I love the woods. I don’t really have a use for the oils other wise, but somehow, this feels really fitting. Additionally, as a Baha’i I’ve never been good at doing the whole obligatory 95 Alláh-u-Abhá, don’t know why, just haven’t. But I figured here would be a good place to start. So every stitch, where I thread the needle, I say in my head softly “Alláh-u-Abhá” and the phrase just flows, like gentle water, so soothing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a project where I created something and not really cared how it comes out looking. It’s liberating. If it weren’t for sore necks and the need to dedicate my time to other activities, I’d probably work on this blanket for hours on end every day. But for better or worse, that’s not a possibility, and that’s okay. Besides, I still have to make something for my friend that has a Bald Eagle on it.