(This is getting posted after midnight but its for Wed).

I didn’t go to work today. Yesterday I visited my surgeon, and for the 4th time since April we played a little game I like to call “find the hernia(s)”. It involves him poking and prodding all parts of my belly while I either stand or lie down, neither position seeming to help in either finding the hernia, or hurting me less. I leave these visits feeling battered and bruised, and rather dejected.

I wasn’t able to sleep last night, so, tired, and still sore, I stayed home. (I picked a good day for that, cus Yannick only installed my winter tires tonight!)

I know I have projects on the go: my Linden only needs 1.25 sleeves and a border, the HABS cloth only needs a test knit of the medium size, etc…

But I wanted something else to work on. The crafty equivalent of comfort food. And I found it.

Meet Epic Granny 01.

I finally figured out what to do with my yarn ball!

The yarn ball is a big (6″ diameter) ball of yarn to which I tie on a new strand every time I finish a project, assuming there is yarn left over. I’ve been trying to think of a project for it, but nothing appealed to me. This is it!

I rewound the ball so the outer strand was the oldest yarn. I started knitting/crocheting again back in 2000, but the oldest yarn in the ball was a green placket neck sweater I’d knit for Jakob and finished just before he was born. I finished the project in May 2007, and my project list tells me that no other project was finished earlier in that May. Perfect!

I took a 4mm crochet hook, cus I know that I tend to work most often with fingering through worsted yarns, and cast on for a granny square.

I’m going to make squares about 12″ square. (This one is about that). When I have enough squares to make a blanket-sized rectangle I’m going to sew them together and to a sheet backing. After Yannick’s suggestion I’m going to embroider the backing with the dates of the projects contained within. So this blanket will say “May 2007-” whenever I finish it. Then I’ll start another one, and keep going.

The blankets will be a reminder of all the projects I’ve done. I’ve already had fun reminiscing about the different projects as their yarns come up.

I was worried about what the effect would be of all the different yarns together, but I really like it so far. It’s scrappy and colorful and reminds me of the scrap quilts Yannick’s grandmother had made.

So one day I will leave behind these scrappy blankets…my “epic” grannies. I call them epic because as long as I keep crafting, there will always be more scraps to attach, and this project will go on forever.