Early Morning, A Quilt, And Incoherency

I was still awake at five-thirty this morning.  My brain wouldn't shut up, and I wasn't physically tired enough to use my body's inclination toward sleep to calm my mind down.  So I got up, made myself a cuppa (TJ's Mango Black Tea with plenty of cream and sugar), and ventured outside with a blanket thinking I would watch the sunrise.  Instead, I ended up watching a lot of clouds.

But that wasn't bad.  I could actually watch different layers of clouds blowing across the sky at different rates, which was fascinating.  I also caught glimpses of a gibbous moon when empty patches in all the layers lined up just right.  And of course there were the birds.  I heard plenty of chirping from seven or eight small birds that looked like they were setting up some sort of aerial football (soccer) game which eventually dissolved into flirting, a few annoying crowing noises from the ubiquitous grackles, and at least one mourning dove said good morning.  The mourning dove in particular made me smile, since one of my brothers taught himself to imitate that call on an ocarina, so perfectly that I could never tell whether I was listening to an actual bird or a plastic potato.

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So the crocheted thing from my last post.  The one that kicked my ass with embarrassing ease?  It's a blanket.

What, you already figured that out?  Okay okay fine, let me give you some more detail.

At least a year and a half ago, probably closer to two years, I promised Ian that I'd send him to college with a blanket if we were still together.  In August, he moves approximately 200 miles south to start his junior year, and when he does... his blanket will absolutely not be finished.  But I should have it done for his second semester.  I think the wait will be worth it, considering how much symbolism I managed to cram into one blanket.  Here's what it should look like when finished:

Let's start with colors.  Red and purple have been "our" colors since I gave him some silly marker drawing in my favorite color (purple) and what he told me was his (red) for his fourteenth birthday.  He also chose black and silver (actually gold, but switched to silver for me because gold was impossible) and decided on the arrangement.

Next, the actual design.  I picked this up by Googling "complex quilt patterns" and tweaking one of my favorites.  The quilt block is a traditional Friendship Star design, but I've modified the edges to make the purple bits form a Celtic knot (I am unabashedly in love with Celtic knots).  Ian's family has many quilters, so he's extremely familiar with the basic blocks.  When I showed him my tentative design he told me he'd seen this block around all his relative's houses since he was tiny, and it reminded him of home.  Since that was just the reaction I was looking for, I settled on this.  Making it requires my two-color solid squares, and watching it come together is nothing short of magic.

Last, notice how many Friendship Star blocks there are (three down and five across, fifteen blocks).  Since we started our relationship early in high school, we fell into a tradition of noting/celebrating/counting the passing months rather than waiting for entire years to go by.  The date I recognize as our anniversary is somewhat arbitrary (there wasn't really a clear day to pick), but if you do something long enough it gains a form of legitimacy, so it has stuck as the 15th.  He thought at first the number of blocks was a delightful coincidence, but I'm too good at details for that.

Here's what it looks like at the moment:

As you can see, I beat the disobedient square.  Also, I started this thing on Saturday night.  I'm already 21 blocks into it, and that's counting four mini-squares as a block.  Counting squares, I'm 33 in.  Definitely not bad.

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Tonight we're going to a production of Much Ado About Nothing presented in a park.  It's going to be fun.  We will sit on blankets, there will be a picnic, and I will be knitting on Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey, E's TARDIS shawl birthday gift.

Right now, I should be packing to stay with my grandmother for two days, or sorting laundry, or washing dishes, or some other sort of productive work.  Instead, I'm probably going to take a nap.  I'm finally exhausted.  Only twelve hours too late.