Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Making Time for a Little Creativity~Lambswool Blanket

Lots of studying is happening at our house these days: with the anticipation of a spring full of fun social opportunities and an early end-of-school date in mid-May, Tayta and I are bearing down hard on our studies--logic, chemistry, writing, and Arabic for me, and logic, great books, writing, math, chemistry, French, and SAT prep for Tayta.

Both of us look forward to our "creativity breaks". Along with the study discipline, Tayta and I have adopted some new eating disciplines, and so Tayta's creativity breaks often have to do with trying a healthy new snack recipe. My breaks usually have something to do with wool.

The past few weeks I made my first lambswool blanket, using the same patchwork technique I've used for my cashmere blankets here and here. This blanket is a wedding gift for my dear friend's son and his bride, who were married at Christmastime.


This blanket used about eight felted sweaters, all lambswool except one which was an opossum/wool blend from New Zealand--really! That is my most unique "wool" find yet.

Now that I see the blanket in a hanging position, I notice some blocks that I might have laid out differently. I think I need a design wall! On the other hand, I utilized almost every scrap of wool from the sweaters I used in this quilt, so I'm not sure that I could have laid it out much differently, even if I had wanted to.


Dear Husband and Tayta noted that this blanket perfectly coordinated with family room furnishings, as if I had made it for our home...did I really want to give this one away?

This week's creativity breaks found me re-organizing all my wool with future blanket projects in mind and laying out my first cashmere baby blanket. Wool-buying season is about over in Jordan, so I have until next November or so to work down my stash.