January 26th, 2009 
mio On Friday, the day before Dad’s birthday party, I was desperately trying to come up with an idea for a present for him. I’m finally in a financial situation where I can buy birthday presents again (for the last several years I’ve been skipping them and saving the money for Christmas) and I couldn’t think of something for my own father.
In my defense, he’s never been that easy to buy for. I mean, ok sure, he could always use socks, but where’s the fun in that? (No, I won’t be knitting him any socks… men’s size 13 wide. ‘Nuff said.) I used up all of my best gift ideas on him at Christmas. So what to do?
Naturally, I thought of a really excellent gift for him: a memory blanket! 24 hours is plenty of time to whip up a warm blanket for a man who is over 6′ tall! Right-o.
Clearly this idea was more of a Christmas idea. I told Dad that I wanted to get him something, but instead he’s getting a really kick-butt Christmas present.
I’d better make it now!
Here’s the plan so far: I’m going to make it in squares, probably mostly 12″ squares. He likes blue, so that will be the main colour. So far my memories list to use for possible squares (all ideas might not be used) are as follows:
- braiding my ridiculously long hair
- a car up on blocks
- fixing things (maybe tools?)
- a toy plane made out of a spark plug and Popsicle sticks (yeah, I’m probably going to have to chart this one out myself, that’s ok)
- car racing (TransAm)
- anosmia
- cake decorating
- Smallville
- piano tuning (he tuned my upright as a kid and I still don’t know how he did it, being unmusical as he is. lol)
- cooking (specifically something to do with rice)
- Star Trek
- living on the beach
- Made in Canada
- vacuuming a cat, or spraying water at a cat (she loved both! I think an existing square with a cat would work and I could add the details)
- elephant butt (probably a square that has the front of an elephant would be easily modified.)
-macrame
- Boy Scouts
- (edit to add) a model plane made out of Coke cans (I can’t believe I forgot the Coke plane!)
Do any of my loyal readers know of any existing squares that would represent any of those things? Or of patterns that could be modified to create them? Or of a site that makes for easy crochet charting?
I’m thinking that the hair braiding one could be some kind of cabled border around the blanket… I do have ridiculously long hair, so it would make sense. How well do blue and brown go together?
For those of you who are only in this for the pictures, here is my progress on the yellow and green striped baby blanket:
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11 Blankets in 2011
Trans Am racing? I knew your Dad was alright! As for made in Canada, you could alwasy go with something iconic like the CN tower, or a picture of yourself ;)
I was hoping to go for a Canadian flag, possibly with “Made in Canada” embroidered on, but I’ve been trying for years to chart that maple leaf and it never looks right!
As for the racing, he worked on the crew for my uncle (his brother) who was the driver. I remember wondering what my Dad was going to do on Tuesday nights when my uncle retired from racing!