giganto blanket progress

It’s been over 2 months since I’ve shared an update on my Aspen blanket that I have lovingly dubbed “the blanket everyone wants” (well, they seemed to be all the rage this winter).  You hold the yarn double so I don’t know why I got an odd number of balls, but I’ve finished 16 balls of Garnstudio DROPS Andes in 0100 Ecru and this is what I have:

Far from my estimated 60″ wide, it’s about 45.  Granted, I wasn’t stretching it at all and I think it will grow over time, but still, I was off on that guess.  Also, I thought 16 balls might be enough to finish the blanket.  It is not.  It’s only about 36″ tall (again unstretched).  I MIGHT be OK if this was 2/3 of a blanket, meaning I might be happy if I ordered 7 more balls to go with my extra 1.  At $7.15 a ball, though, that’s $50.05 not counting S&H, and I just can’t do that right now.  That’ll put this blanket at over $150 worth of yarn.  I hate putting that much into one project because I’ll be so worried about it getting messed up that I might not use and enjoy it, but this was one of the cheapest super bulky yarns in wool that I could find.  Maybe I should keep blankets acrylic, but wool blankets are so much warmer!  Guess there are pros and cons to both.

I’m really sad but I guess this will have to go into hibernation mode for a while until I can get the yarn.  The plus side is that I still haven’t broken my New Year’s Resolution to not buy yarn (although when I do buy the yarn to finish this I’m not sure it’ll count against me, since it’s to finish a WIP that I thought I had enough yarn for).  Also, Chris and I both needed a pair of new shoes this month so unfortunately that has to take precedence over yarn, hehe.  We got Chris some new kitchen Crocs because his current ones are old and literally falling apart (they’re heavy duty Crocs made specifically for working in kitchens, without holes in the top and with extra tread on the bottom and padding on the inside), and I finally had to replace my Rainbows sandals after about 9 years of constant wear.

My Wing Chun lessons are going great — we got to stay about 20 minutes extra last time and our teacher taught us the first 5 steps of the wooden dummy form, which was really cool.  I’ve been trying to practice at home on a wall but it has corners, which hurt my arms, and it doesn’t have arms for me to practice blocks.  I’ve looked at practice dummies but even the ones made with PVC are over $500.  Why does everything from yarn to shoes to practice equipment have to be so expensive?  Ugh.

Sorry, I’m a bit grumpy, so I’ll sign off for now, but I do appreciate you stopping by!  I have plenty of other WIPs going too so hopefully I’ll see you soon with updates on those, or maybe something even cooler!