Saturday, August 15, 2009

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!


Sunday, August 2, 2009

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.