It is done. What a joyous ride this past year has been on this delightful project. I spun 26 breeds, used 25 of them, knit 43 squares but one was too small so finished it is 42 squares. It is spun entirely with my Jenkins Turks, plied entirely with them also, and put together with Jenkins spun yarn. It was a stress free goal, let me try wools I had never heard of or handled along with many I already loved. One huge thank you goes out to Lisa who started following my progress after I bought a Jenkins Finch spindle from her destash. She is in Sweden and sent me the spindle packed in Helsinge wool. When I posted about it in my blog, she sent me enough more to make two more squares with it, then when I mentioned in my blog I needed darker squares for the last two months, she sent me Jamtland and Gotland lamb. There are two Jamtland squares and one Gotland lamb square in the blanket with more to spin for another project, so she provided 1/7 of the fiber for the blanket. Now I need to find a new project. There are lots of small balls of left over yarn from this project that can be used.
As I knit the squares, I pinned tags of the breed on the squares. Tonight, hubby helped me make a chart in order by row and I removed the tags. A larger chart, perhaps a photo of the blanket with each square labelled on the picture will be made and taken with the blanket when I go to do demonstration spinning.
The last two squares were knit on Wednesday and Thursday in the car as we travelled part of the way across the state to meet up with Son 2 and most of his family for an evening at Busch Gardens Williamsburg Winter Wonderland. This gave us the opportunity to chat with the adults and their oldest daughter and get to know the younger ones better while also meeting the newest granddaughter. They have a beautiful family. The oldest wasn’t with them because he was near where we live at a multi day swim meet. Today we went by the aquatic center hoping to run into him, but there are 1000 swimmers so only the ones scheduled for time blocks are there. His mom sent us approximate times he will swim tomorrow and Sunday, so we will go back and watch him compete.