fantasticmio.com

The story of how I came to be known as fantasticmio is actually quite uninteresting; but it sounds superhero-y, doesn’t it? Every superhero has an origin story, and so do I!

I was born in 1977, but our story begins earlier than that. The details are a little bit fuzzy now, but as best we can figure it, it begins in the early 70’s.

My aunt gave my parents a blanket for their anniversary. It was a granny square blanket, in Christmas colours (I’m not sure if she intended it to be a Christmas blanket, or if she just figured it would go well with their decor; either way, it featured in a lot of our Christmas pictures!).

Mom loved it, and so my aunt taught her how to crochet and gave her the pattern.

Mom made one in those classic 70’s colours: yellow, orange, green, and brown. That blanket had a home on Mom’s rocking chair for as long as I can remember. I loved that blanket; I just thought it was so pretty!

We searched through all of the photo albums, and the packages of non-albumed pictures and couldn’t find a decent picture of it; one that really showed off the handiwork (I know, right?). This is the best we could find:

(Don’t mind the fuzzed-out face of my adorable niece… and that knit blanket on top of it was made by Mom’s Mom. Just to round out this Crafty Family story, Dad’s Mom made beautiful quilts and she made my grade 8 graduation dress)

As luck would have it, after resigning ourselves to this scrap of a picture, Mom thought of a place the blanket could be hiding, and sure enough, we found it in Dad’s workshop!

All I can say is, Mom must have really liked crocheting! I mean, just look at the size of this thing!

Mom also made a baby blanket for one of my brothers, but I’m not sure if she ever made anything else. It may be possible that my brothers and I were a bit of a handful… ^_-

Anyhow, by the time I came along, she seemed to have long stopped crocheting, and by the time I was old enough to wonder how this wonderful blanket was made, she had forgotten how to do it.

After that, I was a woman on a mission, determined to learn how the blanket was made and recreate it. I swore that I’d learn how to crochet so that I could make a granny square blanket.

That was 13 years ago… you may have noticed that the only granny blanket I’ve ever shown here was one big, hole-y square (well, and the Eventually Granny Blanket, but it’s not really the same thing). It’s not that I don’t know how to make a granny blanket; I have, in fact, started many!

But now… now is different, for I have finally found the perfect yarn for it!

(Bernat Satin: Tangerine, Mocha, Fern, and Banana)

I guess the only question now is, what do we do with the old one? You can see from the pictures that it’s falling apart (that thing saw a LOT of love!). I might be able to take off the squares that are ripped and scavenge enough brown yarn off of them to sew the intact pieces back together to make a smaller, but still useable blanket, but I’m not sure where we’d ever use it.

Mom doesn’t have that rocking chair anymore, and the colours don’t go with her decor anymore, but it would be a terrible shame to get rid of it. Any ideas?