Home Stretch

Call me a woman ahead of her time.  Truly.  The 2014 blanket is in the home stretch.  The edging started today.  It took a lot of thinking to decide how best to end this wad of warmth.  Not the first part of the thinking; that was easy.

Because of the construction and changing of stitches without regard to that five letter word [gauge] the edges needed to be harmonized with good old single crochet.  Working single crochet around the whole thing went a long way toward straightening out the dips where knit met crochet and the curly edge of the Tunisian Simple Stitch.

Digression for an observation:  I often forget that Tunisian crochet curls in the same way that knit stockinette curls.  I have to remember that because normally I use crochet to combat curling.  Oh, well. 

The quandary became what to do after the single crochet. It needed to be easy to work in the wool boucle I was determined to use and a stitch pattern that worked up flawlessly because frogging  boucle is not a thing that makes one happy.  I knew  this final edging would be worked with Mama's crochet hook.  After all, the whole point of the Ida blanket is to use Ida Mae's crochet hook and blend in my love of knitting. 

Owing to my total disregard of gauge, the blanket has stretches of wonkiness.  Nothing more than two or three inches in a spot.  But there are a few places that need to pull in a bit.  What, I asked myself, stretches and contracts?  Crochet post work!

That's right.  The whole edging is being worked in basic front post/back post crochet so that it adjusts to the blips in the stitches.  Round and round I go.  There is almost 800 yards of the super wash boucle, so the border will take some time.  I'm happy, and Ida Mae is happy.