The blanket of babel for Isabel

A few weeks ago a group of knitting friends and I had a terrific few hours of actually really knitting together. And I mean really working together. So you know when you are with a group of knitters, usually you are all working on a different project or sometimes using the same pattern but you are in fact working alone. The creation of "The Babel Blanket" aka 'Isabel's blanket" was completely different. A bit of background. Isabel has recently been adopted by our friends Sandy and Chris and really Isabel has the best knit wardrobe of any baby in the Bay Area. But I digress.

Months ago, our knitting group, the Just Knitters, decided to knit a blanket for Isabel and our friend, teacher and group member Julie gave us our marching orders as to the size of square we were supposed to knit. Tana, Sandy and Julie chose the origninal colors of the yarn but when we ran out, Sarah Jane added in many other colors. Hadas and I made the yarn into balls. Actually to be more precise, I did the winding while Hadas commented sotto voce on the color choices. Kate and Christine distributed them to each one of us including Peggy, Betsy, and Ricardo. We were on our way. We knit our squares plus or minus according to the Julie directions and then we got together to sew it in one piece.

This is where the group knitting took place. Each one of us had a task but of course the biggest challenge was how to piece the squares together so that they looked as if they were part of the whole. And as you might expect, some of the pieces were not knit exactly according to specifications! I will not name names---they know who they are. Tana had the brilliant idea of making little pieces to fill in for the small squares, Julie created a pattern for an edging piece which Hadas, Tana, and Ricardo got to work on right away. Christine, Sarah Jane and Kate made a few extra squares because we were a few short. I sewed in errant pieces of yarn, Julie and Betsy started the heculean task of sewing the squares together. Our friend Peggy gave us encouragement from afar---she had just had hip replacment surgery and Margot fed us and encouraged us in our labors. We all loved the process. I have included a few pics of the work in progress and in a few weeks, I will let you see the finished masterpiece!

Isabel in one of her many knitted wonders---this knit in Malabrigo

Mmmmm.. ....do these go well together?