So Mom... don't freak out but...
When my daughter went off to college last year she wanted a big chunky Hygge blanket for her dorm room. A blanket that looked like this...
(not my photo)
After some research I found that the original blanket seemed to have originated somewhere in Russia and was made with Merino wool roving, arm knitted into a big chunky blanket. While it all looked wonderful, I had a couple issues. One, they cost about $500. Not kidding! Second, I really had doubts about how well a blanket made of wool roving would fare in a college dorm room. Not only was it NOT machine washable but it would fuzz.
My compromise was to make one out of chunky acrylic yarn. We also wanted a blanket larger than an arm knit size one so I found instructions where a larger blanket could be made by using PVC pipe as knitting needles instead of your arms. Hence, last summer, I settled on the floor with two five foot sections of PVC pipe and proceeded to knit a big chunky blanket for my daughter. She happily took it to school with her in August and told me she and her friends loved it because it was warm and big and stretchy - big enough for four kids to wrap up under at once while watching TV.
Several months later though, she broke the news...
Apparently the big stretchy blanket was hanging off the edge of her lofted bed when it came in contact with a candle and caught on fire. Thankfully the flames were immediately stomped out and the dorm didn't go up in flames and I didn't receive a call saying my kid was getting kicked out for having a candle in her room... Arghh, the things you find out about months after the fact...
Anyway, my daughter did have the sense to keep what was left of the blanket rather than trash the remains as she had a sense of how much the thing cost. Big yarn is not cheap and I used 10 skeins of yarn to make her blanket... and she knew it. Darn good decision on her part as it definitely made me less mad once she delivered the news.
Since then, the blanket remains had been in my "to do" pile.
Recently though I discovered instructions (HERE) on finger knitting with big yarn. The concept is very similar to "knitting" with the loopy yarn that has now hit the stores... except it's done with regular yarn. This weekend I decided it was time.
I took the burned blanket apart, cutting away the charred yarn and tying loose ends together. The nice thing about chunky yarn is that it hides knots fairly well.
This was the yarn I was able to salvage. I put a roll of cake yarn in the picture so you could get a sense of the volume of yarn. Quite honestly, it took me longer to take the blanket apart than to finger knit it back together. Two days to take it apart. Two hours to finger knit it back together!
Finger knitting on the floor = instant gratification!
Done!
Finger knitting also allowed me to make the blanket a bit denser than the original. What I lost was the evenness of the stitches as I had to eyeball the loops, but overall I was really pleased with the results.
Ta dah!
Shhhh.... I'm wrapping this puppy up and giving it back to my daughter for Christmas!
