nipperknits

Thanks for being with me for all of it, kids! You've been incredibly supportive and loving, I honestly don't think I could have done it without you. I love that I've been able to meet a lot of you and form real friendships. But even those of you that I've only met in passing or haven't met in real life have been amazing and are very valuable to me.

So, when I sign my posts, "Love you all," understand that I mean it.

[Rav link]

In April of 2007, I made this red and white block on a bus to Boston. The very first time I'd ever been to Boston, actually.

In the 21 months since then, my life (and the world) has changed quite a bit. Though the world has taken a down turn in many things, is looking up in others, my life seems to be getting steadily better. I mean, there have been bad days and bad months, but for the most part? Pretty damn awesome. While I'm knocking on wood as I'm typing this, it is true. And this blanket has been a constant companion for that. I realize it's a little perverse, but part of me didn't want to finish it. It's been everywhere and done everything with me. The idea of letting it go was difficult. The many, many small blocks have been knitted in many places and provided a lot of small feelings of accomplishment. What would I do if I weren't doing this? But yesterday, I decided it needed to be done. Once and for all.

I spent all day finishing the seaming and then weaving in all the seaming ends. Luckily, I was smart and wove in the ends of each block as I went along, or that pile would have been as big as me. There were *a lot* of ends to weave in for this thing.

I wouldn't give up this huge feeling of accomplishment for anything though. The blankie is beautiful, warm, soft and comforting. Looking at the blocks and the colors reminds me of everything that's happened while working on it over the past 21 months. The emotional reactions I'm getting from it are also very strong and interesting. Partly bittersweet, because most of the time I was working on it I was with a boy I'm no longer with. Though I know it's for the best, I'm sad he's not here to enjoy this with me. Partly it reminds me of other knitting, because it's been a nice project to work on between work-knitting projects. But it mostly just makes me very, very happy to see it and touch it and have it finally finished and in a show-able state.

I've wanted to hug and snuggle my bed a lot ever since I got my new mattress (which is fantastic, btw), but now I just can't stop.

Apparently Fred can't either. I managed to get two photos in before he jumped up on the bed. He just couldn't get enough of the blankie snuggles. So we had a kitty model photo shoot. These were the only ones that were close to in-focus. He's a big spaz.

But, of course, despite how amazing this is and how great the accomplishment feels, I keep coming back to the same question: What now?