Before I Jet

Well Santa comes a "Ho, Ho, Ho'ing" in just two days. We definitely got that winter storm this past weekend to make it feel more like Christmas. DB and I were out walking in the storm on Saturday night around 11pm. We were leaving a friends house and only had 1 block to walk home. Even though the snow was blowing in our eyes, turning our cheeks bright red and sinking our feet in the snow up to our calves, it was truly beautiful. Being the first ones to walk on the untouched snow was awesome. This is what it looked like outside my door Sunday morning.

There are steps under there somewhere!

While we are thawing out from the snow, my needles have been flying. I have spent the past two days furiously trying to finish up my Hemlock Ring. For those of you counting, that is definitely only one finished by Christmas. There is a good reason though, I decided to do some of the extended chart to make it a bigger blanket. Thus I used the other two hanks of yarn I had set aside for the 2nd blanket.

I call this blanket my sea creature. In it's folded up state it looks like an something you'd see frolicking around in the deep water somewhere.

Can you see how heavy this blanket is on the needles? That's over 800 stitches.

Finally, here it is in an unblocked state. I finished it up last night. I tried to take it to the Dry Cleaner this morning to get it steamed blocked, but the substitute cleaner guy looked at my like I had three heads. I decided that I will attempt to block it myself. However it will have to wait until I return from my holiday in NC. As promised to Marsha, I will get a picture of someone under it after it's all blocked to give you a perspective of the size.

I hope everyone has a beautiful Christmas holiday! Safe travels to all who will be braving the skies or roads. I'm off to NC to be with my parents tomorrow morning.

P.S. If you ask me if I would knit this blanket again my response would be, "Not any time soon!". I am VERY happy to be done with it.