Someone Else's Star

Shortly after I left my job, I had lunch with a former coworker, now just my friend. When her son said he was expecting we picked out a pattern for a baby blanket for her to make. We found a very interesting Ten Stitch Star pattern by Frankie Brown.

She bought the yarn and we started the pattern one day while on lunch. And we restarted the pattern the next week on lunch. And we restarted the pattern the week after that in a lighter color so we could see what we were doing. Alas it went home with her and sat in the bag from the yarn store. Cough for a year and a half cough. 

Yeah it seems like the projects you want to do the best on just sit there sometimes. 

Anyways I brought lunch to her the week after I left my job, and we had a lovely chat. We solved all of the world's problems and I knit on a sock. She sat there and finally got up the courage to ask...could she pay me to knit the baby blanket? 

No! You can not pay me to knit it, but I would consider knitting it for you but reserve the right to give up and return it to you. 

I took home a nice bag of yarn and pulled out some needles and started knitting. I had been looking to do something besides socks for a little while and could not land on anything. I could have knit on a sweater that has been on the needles for a while but nope. I really need to try the sweater on and see if it will work for me before I progress. But that is a story for another post.

I cast on the next day and soon had a star. It required a little bit of seaming but it was pretty interesting to knit. Time to move on to the next color.

I have found that rewriting patterns can sometimes help me make what I am doing, clear in my head. I do have to be extra careful I don't misunderstand something and keep on with an error. But that is always a risk you take. It is just as easy to think you understand reading something when in fact you misread it and have totally missed the point. But my star still looked like a star part of the way through. Keep on knitting.

I of course was heavily supervised. The kids were getting used to having a full desk to sprawl out on since my work computer went back to the office.

They kept me fortified with tea and supervision. They even allowed for bathroom breaks and snacks. What more could a working cat mom ask for?

As the star grew so did the time it took to knit a full star. Such is the joy of knitting?

Once the third star was done it was time to check and see. So the star is 14 inches (I think) from point to not a point. This thing is so hard to measure. Then I started really reading the pattern and thinking about what we have. Yikes how big is this thing going to be and am I really willing to knit it?

So the pattern picture shows 12 stars. Uhm each of my star stripes is about 2 inches. No I did not do the math at this point because ppppttthhh, I don't want to. It is going to get pretty big. We discussed a plan and I knit a stripe of ten stitches on smaller needles. That stripe was slightly smaller than 2 inches. The command was given to knit on as is. Next color is a maroon so we shall see. We may need to eliminate some of the rounds but now is not the time to make that decision. 

So yeah, I am knitting a baby blanket for a toddler. And Mellie keeps stealing the yarn. It only took three times for me to relocate the yarn bag for safekeeping from a stripy kitten star.