Talk About Progress

My blanket has grown by leaps and bounds once again. One of my friends once said to me I probably don't see the progress in my blanket because I look at it everyday as I'm adding squares. She is correct. The growth of this blanket just hits me from time-to-time.

The latest growth is partially due to the fact I purchased one of our newer Limited Edition Kits.

Normally, we do not incorporate the minis from our kits into our blankets. We put these special kits together especially for you first and foremost. However, this time I couldn't resist! I had to have these yarns in my blanket. Then of course, I had to take pictures! (That's part of the fun!)



There is also . . .

AND

You get the idea? They are really pretty colorways! Well, it's time for me to get going. Time to knit up some more squares!

Hope everyones blankets are coming along nicely!

Summer May Have Come To An End

But we're not going down without a fight!

That's right! The temperatures may be chilling out a bit, but we're still keeping things warm with our new Salad Days Mitered Square Blanket Kit.




This latest mitered square blanket kit give you a tasty mix of Cherry Tree Hill, Opal and Araucania sock weight yarns. Each mini-skein of this Knitters Dozen (14) is approximately 20 yards long, makes one if not two squares and comes in a variety of colors.

It's the perfect ingredient for your mitered square blanket!

To purchase one of these delightful treats, check out the Tadpole Knits Esty shop.

Leaps and Bounds

We've been so busy coordinating new colorways and products that our blog has been very quiet. However, that doesn't mean our blankets haven't gotten attention.

My blanket turned 100 last week. I was so proud! I marked the occasion by using yarn that was very special to me. Also, I added my first big square. The funny thing about this milestone is that 100 square is exciting, but then you realize it's just 100 squares and there are so many more to go. Then, you go back to the feeling of amazement. Wasn't it just yesterday that I made the decision to embark on this journey?

Yes, journey. I feel like this project is a journey. The hours of work that have been put into this blanket have been many hours of deep soul searching on many parts of my life. Many hours of fun conversations and laughs. Many hours of memories. In the end, it will be a physical record of one point-in-time of my life.

When I first started, I would joke about its alternate uses. Coaster, laptop cover, shawl. I could practically put it down on most anything to photography it without a problme. Now the best place I've found is the floor or my sofa.

At the end of the day, I am in awe of how it has grown . . . . kind of how our life changes and grows. . . by leaps and bounds.

Hope your blankets are progressing nicely!

Mitered Square Blanket Club

We’re dropping by to share

some BIG news with you!

We are excited to announce our Mitered Square Sock Blanket Kit club. We’ve partnered with three talented Independent Dyers who will be creating unique colorways just for club members. That’s right! As a member of the Tadpole Knits Mitered Square club you will receive colorways that no other knitter will have in their Sock Yarn Blanket. Additionally, club members will have the option to purchase full-size hanks of featured club

colors for six months.

Club Specifics:

• Three Months – October, November and December 2009

• Three Independent Dyers – To be announced each month

• 14 Exclusive Colorways, made of 75% wool/25% nylon or 90% wool/10% nylon, Fingering (or sock) weight yarn

• Option to purchase full-size hanks for six months after the colors are first released to club members

• Priced at $80 (including shipping and handling).

To join the fun e-mail us at tadpoleknits@yahoo.com by September 8th. In turn, we will send you 3 fun filled boxes of yarn to make squared for your blanket!

We look forward to having you join the club!

What to do when it is over?

I have been thinking about this. Should I let my kids use my blanket?? I have 3 kids, they range in age from 9 to 3. They tend to eat sticky foods on my sofa, and use blankets during the winter. They pretty much destroy everything.

My kids will want to use the blanket, it will be warm and snugly. I don't heat my house very high. We live in the arctic that is Chicago, and I am super frugal and we don't heat our house above 62 degrees. Yes, if you are cold you can get a sweater.

I digress for a moment, but I was gone for a weekend came home and the house was warm and toasty. My husband who is always cold, had cranked the heat up to 70 for the weekend. I was ready to kill. He is afraid to use the thermostat in our new house.

Back on topic, I imagine because the blanket is warm AND special, they will want to use it. Should I let them? It will probably have 100's of dollars worth of material in it and hours of time... Granted, I have a long time before I get to the finished/fighting over using it period in my blankets existence, but I was just wondering. Your thoughts??

Ivan turned 50 today

Well, it is a bit of a milestone. I finally completed 50 squares. I decided, or rather committed to a width. 17 squares across is how wide my blanket will be. I didn't really want a bed covering, but rather something 2 people (one adult, one smaller person) could snuggle under. It always seems someone wants to be under my blanket.

I choose our favorite blanket and have been using that as a size guide. 16 squares wide was the same as the favorite blanket, but then I noticed that Shelley Kang's blanket was 17 squares. I pondered this for like 2 weeks, and finally decided to go the follower route and add the extra square. I think this will add about 20 or 30 extra squares to the whole finished project, and heaven forbid I not do it right.

Some day I will learn how to take a picture of the blanket and get it all in one frame. Some day my blanket will be longer than 3 rows. But for now, it is 3 pictures to get the whole of it!

Left side:

There is Tadpole Knits kit yarn in this section. But more importantly, this section has Fire (dyed by M), Pony (dyed by H) and S Lost a Tooth (dyed by S). My kids loved dying yarn and it was so much fun to knit their artwork into my blanket.


Middle Section:

Nothing very notable in this section, but it does contain my very first squares.


Right Section:

There is some squares made from Tadpole Knits kits in this section too.


Does anyone else feel that this blanket is sort of like a blog in yarn? Every square has a story, every section reminds me of what was going on when I knit it. I started this blanket when I was in a very bad point in my life, and it is a reminder of how much better things have gotten for us. I am looking forward to what other stories this blanket will tell.

Anyone Got Fiber?

One of the things I love most about the summer is the many fairs and festivals that take place. Especially when the weather is nice.

This past weekend I went to a Fiber Festival. It was such a lovely day! Upon my arrival, the first thing I did was head to the marketplace. If I had all the time in the world, I would just spend hours at a time staring at the beautiful colorways and petting the soft yarns these colors adorn. Unfortunately that isn't the case. Over time I have come to develop a knitting show routine when it comes to the marketplace. First, I do a lap of the marketplace floor to see what catches my eye. I take note of the vendors I want to go back. After my first lap, I proceed to take another lap around the marketplace floor. This time I spend more time looking at the goods. Somehow I managed to make it through the festival without purchasing a single hank. This is not normal!

I think a call to my doctor's office is warranted so I can get this problem fixed.

Sock Blanket Saturday

It is rainy and yucky here. A depressing 4th of July. We aren't going to fireworks, because it is so wet and gross out. So I had a ton of time to work on my blanket. Some stats on Ivan:

Width: 12 squares (needs to be 16, I measured it against the blanket that I am using as a size model, and sure enough, it isn't wide enough... so I guess I am not done knitting plain squares.)
Length: 2 rows complete, 3rd row 1/2 way done.
Squares completed: 30
Approx. # of squares left to complete: 768 - 30 = 738

Below a picture of the blanket. I am pretty happy to hit the 30 square milestone. If you look carefully there is some yarn from the Tadpole Knits kit in my blanket! :)

I hope everyone else has a wonderful 4th!


This picture has the Tadpole Knits yarn in it! Very exciting to have our yarn in my blanket! :)

We have returned

My blanket has come back home. He enjoyed his trip to California very much. A number of things have happened to blanket while in California, he acquired a name, Ivan.

Ivan's photos from his trip:





Random sheep pictures. Ivan really likes sheep.


At the Sheep exhibit at the zoo.


Ivan at the beach. Riding the pony.


Swinging at the park.

Blankie Bling

My sock club socks are finished and I immediately added a square of the yarn to my blankie. Since this particular shipment had beads I altered the pattern slightly so I could add in some BLING to it. If my socks had beads so would the square that represented it!

Get Those Socks Finished

I belong to a sock club and have received three of the six club shipments. However, I'm still working on the first shipment I received.

My reasons for not starting this particular month's shipment sooner has to do with the intimidation I felt when I saw the beads included in my package. Then to top things off there were charts detailing what looked like complex cables. I had only worked on one project that had cable - it was a scarf. Cables on socks. . .SCARY! Like I said, I was intimidated.

Then, back in April I took the bull by the horns. I strung the beads and attacked what I perceived to be a difficult pattern. It wasn't hard at all. Then I got to a part in the pattern that looked hard so I put the sock down and started a new pair.

Every time I looked at that half completed sock it taunted me. However, it wasn't the part of the pattern I perceived to be difficult that taunted me. It was the beautiful colorway of the yarn. Every time I saw it I thought about how nice it will look in my SYB. Now don't get me wrong, I want to have a beautiful pair of socks as well, but I have to admit I'm also looking forward to having leftover yarn that I can incorporate into my SYB. I will even have some leftover beads to use as well. . . it will look fantastic!

And then there was two. . .

Two Sock Yarn Blankies that is.

Anytime I pull out my Sock Yarn Blankie (Or, as I affectionately refer to it as my SYB), I get compliments. I'm not even looking for compliments - it just happens. So many people thinks it's amazing. One of the last people to compliment me on my SYB was my mom. It was the project I was working on the last time I was hanging out with her.

After she complimented me on it, she asked me to make one for her. "I'll pay you," she said.

I paused before responding to her. I wasn't sure how to tell her the project took 716 square. Oh, and what was this about paying me? I couldn't imagine charging my mom.

My reply to her request was simple, "I'd be happy to make you one, but know that this takes 716 squares so it will take awhile for me to make it."

Her eyes widened somewhere around 716 squares. At the end of the day of course I would make one for mom! I just had to set the expectation that she most likely wouldn't receive it for awhile. We both agreed it would be a her 70th birthday present. This gives me a few years to complete it and if I finish early - Bonus!

So, this past weekend I started mom's blanket. Hers is almost caught up to mine. My SYB has 12 squares knit together and another 4 ready to be added. Mom's has 7 squares knit together and another 3 ready to be added. I hope to get mom's caught up soon so I can knit our squares simultaneously.

Pictures of our SYBs will be posted to the Tadpole Knits Flickr site soon!

Happy Knitting All!

Blanket goes on Vacation

First, before I begin, I need to come up with a better name for my blanket, so post your ideas!

Blanket has left the building.. no he has not just gone to knitting group, but gathered all his mini-skein friends and headed out for not-so-sunny Southern California! After a long trip tucked away in my suitcase, he has arrived without a problem.

There were many tense moments while waiting for the suitcase to come down the belt to the luggage carosel, but arrive it did. I am certain I was the only person thinking, my yarn is in that suitcase, you best not loose it.

When we go out to see the various attractions of the area, blanket will join us for some pictures. I will post them when I get back. Till then, I hope everyone is making good progress on their blankets!

LoJack Anyone?

I am notorious amongst my group of friends for misplacing things. Keys, jewelry, my cell phone, etc. You name it, I probably will lose it. Often I feel it's a good thing my head is connected to my body otherwise there is a chance I might misplace that too! Unfortunately, my Sock Yarn Blankie has become the latest victim to this bad habit of mine.

Saturday was the first time I had misplaced my blankie. It was a dull day so I figured I would just curl-up on my sofa and work on my blankie. No such luck! I couldn't find it. I looked all around my place - top to bottom! All I could think is "Oh no! This can't be." It wasn't until the next day when I was taking some shopping bags out of my car that I found my blankie. Phew!

Fast forward to yesterday. We got together to hangout, have a some coffee (or tea in my case) and work on our blankies. Expect, when I went to get mine there was no blankie. No big deal this time as I had faith it would reappear once again as it had the other day. I would just knit some more mitered squares to be attached at a later time.

After last night's "incident" it has been recommended to me that I put my blankie and mini-skeins in a plastic zip lock bag as a way to avoid future problems. This recommendation has been duly noted and is currently in committee for review. However, I kind of like the idea of getting LoJack instead.

Orders Have Shipped

We are so excited that our first orders have already shipped! So those of you who already ordered, keep a watch on the mailbox. We hope you are as thrilled with your package as we were! We can't wait to knit our mini-skeins into our blankies!

As a special thank you to our first customers, we are inviting you to join our exclusive Frog Pond Club. Frog Pond members will get exclusive sales, first dibs on our up-coming mitered square mini-skein club, and other special opportunities.

We are also very excited about some of the conversations we have been having with some very important people. We should have more information on our club shortly! So stay tuned. Those of you in the Frog Pond, watch your email for more information for your opportunity to join us first!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Tadpole Knits blog!

We love the mitered square blanket by Shelley Kang. We started working on our blankets and quickly realized we would need more yarn, and FAST. Sadly, neither of us were able to make socks fast enough to keep up with with our desire for more squares. Who wants to go out and buy an entire hank of yarn for just 25 yards. So, one night, after a lovely day in yarn heaven, an idea was born... let's sell the kits so folks like us can have instant gratification.

Let's take it a step further and offer kits from independent dyers all around the country. Let's have a club. There is so many things we are looking to do, but for now, we have started small, just like a tadpole, and we are offering our kits, a knitters dozen (14 - because 13 is unlucky, for sale at our Etsy Shop. Stop by and check it out.

Below is sample of the types of yarns included in the kits -