Lockdown Blanket Is Complete
What a year it has been. There have been yarn shortages, heat waves and wrong colours. Throw in a global pandemic, lockdowns and homeschooling and I think it’s fair to say that the last twelve months have been a bit of a roller coaster. Finally there seems to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The kids have gone back to school and, finally, it is time to say TA DA! My lockdown blanket is complete.
In March last year I spent some of my birthday money on five Caron cakes to make a blanket for our bedroom. At that point life was still “normal”, although we knew schools would be shutting, and lockdown was likely. Naively I thought that five cakes of yarn would would be enough to a) make a blanket for a double bed and b) keep me busy until lockdown was done. Wrong on both counts.
When it became obvious that I would need more yarn, I quickly discovered that the colour way I had chosen was pretty much impossible to locate in the UK. In the summer, after weeks of scouring my favourite online yarn shops, I found two cakes in our local hobby craft. Cue: happy dance. Until we got home and discovered that although they were the same colours, they were entirely different shades.
Let’s face it, 2020 was a year that nothing panned out as it should. Why should my lockdown blanket be any different? I decided to plough on and embrace the randomness.
Those two cakes didn’t last long, and the blanket still wasn’t big enough. I started the hunt for more but it was rarer than hen’s teeth. I managed to track down one last cake at the end of October. It was another pale version, but by this time I was just glad to have some in my possession.
Eight yarn cakes in, the blanket was useable but not done. With the yarn out of stock everywhere I had to be patient.
Just after new year I managed to find some, in stock and on offer online. I quickly added four to my basket and felt that 2021 was clearly going to be a better year. Wrong again, Rosie. Two days later the UK was put into full national lockdown for the third time, for at least six weeks. At least now I had yarn.
Last week, exactly fifty one weeks after I started it, I made the final stitch of the border. Twelve cakes of yarn later, my lockdown blanket is complete. Apart from some ends that need darning in. I was planning on getting that done at the weekend so I could do a big TA DA post, but then I went and fractured my wrist. The ends will have to wait, but I couldn’t.
I can’t tell you how much I love this blanket. The monotony of the granny stitch has been like a therapy for me over the last twelve months. No thought required, my hands have just got on with it while we have watched films or I just wanted to quiet my anxious brain. When I had no yarn, I genuinely missed having it to work on.
Although I loved working on it, I am glad that my lockdown blanket is complete. It is time to move on, to make other things (once my wrist is mended, obviously). Maybe I will leave the ends to darn in once we know lockdown is actually, definitely finished though. Just to make sure.
