Mother's Day Present? Check!

So I had totally wanted to make socks for my Mom for Mother's Day, but I just couldn't find the motivation. Once I had cast on the stitches, I decided that I hated the pattern, and then set out to find a better one... etc etc, until it was about 5 days before Mother's Day. And I work 3 jobs- so it was pretty unlikely that I was going to finish BOTH socks in time.

So I set off in search of a pattern that could be completely quickly and easily, and would be useful to my madre, in May (ie, no hats, scarfs, shawls, sweaters, etc). I decided on an afghan, since the 'rents have a place up North, and it gets very chilly there at night, and my mom usually snuggles on the couch with a book at night. I also happen to know that there is only one throw blanket in the living room, and it's fleece and doesn't match the decor at all.

Luckily, Lion had a free pattern (I know I seem like a HUGE Lion fan lately, but honestly, I don't think I've used any of their patterns before, I just have been stumbling across them alot lately.) for a six hour afghan. "6 hours? But that's impossible!" you say. Ahh, but Lion makes these goofy "speed stix"- size 50 needles. That's right, size 50. They were hard to work with, very awkward, and according to various observers- ie, my boyfriend, texas shawn, and Kat-I looked comical, like I should be in a Mario Bros video game or cartoon, while using them. They did, however, allow me to knit a lovely afghan, in under 6 hours. I'd say I might have hit the 6 hour mark somewhere around the time I was making dvd-box fringe. (The pattern called for using 20 inch fringe, 4 strands of each color, 35x on each side. I didn't feel like measuring that much yarn, so I measured each side of a dvd box, and I think it was like 17 1/2 inches or something-close enough! Wrap wrap snip!) (I'm using a lot of parenthesis in this post.) (It's getting old quickly, like finger quotes.)

I had meant to take a pic of the lovely 'ghan, before boxing it up and handing it to Mom (who cried, btw), but I forgot. Cuz I suck. So here is a pic from the Lion website- and I assure you, my 'ghan looked EXACTLY like the pic. Except my fringe was approx 1.5" shorter on each side, which is soooo noticeable.


When I was buying the yarn for this, I thought the pink-ish color would look totally goofy with the other colors they recommended. All the way through the store I was looking in my cart and thinking the whack-jobs that designed that bitchin' lamp shade cover were probably the same craft-impaired people who had chosen the colors, and that the picture on the website was probably waaaay off. It actually took me until I was about 3 rows in before I decided that the pink-which was actually fuschia, says the label-blended really nicely, and added a pretty jewel-tone to the entire 'ghan.

I'll see if I can get a pic from Mom this week of the actual 'ghan, but no promises, Mom has a hard time with the digicam.

My next proj. is a sweater sampler, from the book The Sweater Workshop. I hope to have this done @work tonight, so we'll see what happens!