Travel Blanket: Rodanthe-Prius Block

Continuing in the theme of the Family-Life-Travel-Map Blanket (you can see the last post here), I present to you the Rodanthe-Prius block.

This trip was a whirlwind.  We took a red-eye out to Boston, rented a car, and drove out to my grandparents on the Cape for 24-hours.  The next morning, we drove ourselves on up to Albany, NY, where we were picked up in my hubby's parents' gold Prius and whisked into the Adirondacks, where his family owns a house and we connected with his Grandmother and cousins.

Rodanthe-Prius Block

And that night it rained.

The following day, we got into that same Prius, squeezed in the back seat with Hubby's brother, and drove for seven hours.  We stopped.  We stayed in a hotel.  We got up.  We drove 9 more hours.  In the rain.

And we arrived at a giant, 12-bedroom house in Rodanthe, NC, several hours into the Outer Banks, and crammed in there with Hubby's 31 cousins for a week.  We were on the Bay Beach, and less than a five minute walk from the Ocean Beach.

And it rained the first two days.  And drizzled on and off.

We were splashed with rain, splashed with sea spray, and splashed with sun.

And then we packed up, squeezed back into that Prius, and drove up to Pittsburg, where we flew back home, and the other three continued on their way.

While in Rodanthe, I purchased a skein of yarn at Knitting Addiction to commemorate the drizzle.  I adapted the pattern from a few others and used the following strategy to make the raindrops.

Bobble: y/o, insert hook into next stitch, and pull loop through.  y/o and pull through 2 loops.  *Y/o, insert hook into the same stitch, and pull loop through.  y/o and pull through 2 loops.  Repeat from * 3x.  There should be 5 loops on your hook.  Y/o and pull through all 5 loops. 

Row 1: Foundation Single Crochet to desired length
Row 2: 1sc, (sc, hdc, bobble) to last stitch, 1sc
Row 3: sc all the way across
Row 4: 1sc (hdc, bobble, sc) to last stitch, 1sc
Row 5: sc all the way across
Row 6: 1sc (bobble, sc, hdc) to last stitch, 1sc

Blanket at Current Stage

Row 7: sc all the way across 

Repeat Rows 2-7 until desired size.

Of course,  I ran out of yarn.  Surprise!  I decided to compliment by using a nice, golden yarn from the Beverly's near us (where I get a nice teacher discount!) to compliment, and to remind us of all that driving time!

I think the square came out alright.  It's not blocked quite correctly, and so I'll probably re-do parts of it, but it goes well in the general blanket.

Ravelry Project: Block
Ravelry Project: Blanket

Travel Blanket: San Francisco Bay Area Block

As many of you know, just after our wedding and honeymoon, I moved out to the San Francisco area to be with my new hubby, who had been living out here since he scored a job in Silicon Valley about 8 months prior.  Well, it seemed more appropriate to put the block to represent that move after the honeymoon, because that's when the stuff came out, and that's when we moved into an apartment together, and that's when this place started to be more than just a place we slept and ate.

Almost.  It still doesn't feel quite like home.

It's been long enough, though, that we can distinguish this area and this part of our lives, and therefore add a block to our blanket (details).  The block I chose to make was based off a pattern on Ravelry called San Francisco, which featured a silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge (which honestly we never go on, we just use the work-horse Bay-Bridge), against a rainbow setting sun.

We'd never seen a rainbow.  We'd never seen the setting sun.  We'd seen fog.

And so I adapted the pattern for a better size, changed the background to be of a single, marbled silk yarn in seed stitch, that almost gave the look of fog rolling in, and stitched it up.  I'm pretty satisfied with the result.

Ravelry Project

I also wanted to make a general public service announcement.  Firstly, I just realized that many of my ravelry links are probably inaccessible if you don't have a ravelry account.  Please let me know if you have issues with the project links, as I can certainly fix those!

Secondly, the school year started up a few weeks ago, and to those who don't know, I'm a teacher, and so I've gone back to work and am busier than ever.  From here on out, the blog will probably only be posting about once a week, simply because I'm not sure that I can craft much more than that!

Let me know what you think of the block, or if you have any suggestions for the blanket!  I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out, but you never know!

Travel Blanket: Wedding Block

I've recently finished all of the blocks for my Travel Blanket that I've needed to date (you can see my last post about it here).

Firstly, I finished the block that represents our wedding (not strictly a place or trip, but important enough to add)!

The pattern, Royal Romance, was easy to crochet, and fit well into the general form of the blanket, although this is by far the stretchiest and thinnest block we have.  I used a hook size larger than what it asked for, and the block was almost too big!

The yarn was some chocolate sock yarn I had left over from Dad's Double Helix Socks and a cream and gold weave I got at the local yarn store.  The combination was absolutely perfect!  The colors were creams, tans, and browns, (with gold accents) and all of the decorations had candles, which shimmered jut like this block does!

Tune in next time to see more about the other blocks I've done!

Ravelry Project: Wedding Block
Ravelry Project: Family Travel Blanket