(Pudgy beaglish guy added for Scale)
Download Julie’s Pinkie Blankie pattern. (If clicking the link doesn’t work for you, try right-clicking and “saving link as” to put the file somewhere on your machine where you will find it again.)
Okay, the story behind Pinkie Blankie is this…
I had a security blanket when I was a little girl. Its name was pinkie blankie. It was a wool bit of a blanket, with satin edges. And I hung onto it for a very long time. A Very. Long. Time. When I was 8, and Pinkie Blankie wasn’t very pink any more, and we were preparing to move overseas, Pinkie Blankie… disappeared.
The story told in my family is that Richard Jason, the hateful and hated bully who lived next door, stole Pinkie Blankie and threw it into Glen Creek. It floated away, probably to the ocean. Anyway, it was gone forever.
Have I mentioned that my mother was a great fictionalist? A fictionalizer? A fabulist? Someone who used fictional devices to effect change in her family? She was a gifted liar. Always for good reason. For instance, there is the portrait of a Chinese mandarin, which hung in every house we ever lived in, who, mom claimed, was our great-great-great-great grandfather. She said later she lied so that we would never be prejudiced. Not bad, eh? It is unnerving, however, to know that most of our family history may be fabricated. We have no idea, actually, who we are, or what is true. But we are comfortable with mystery.
It wasn’t until I began, a few weeks ago, to think about a security blanket for a friend of mine, and stumbled over the large stash of pink Tahki I’ve been sitting on (which reminded me of this amazing gift of knitting)and put these things together, that I even remembered my Pinkie Blankie. And then began to wonder about the Richard Jason incident. How did he get into our house, upstairs to my room, steal my blankie, remove himself from the house, head a block away up the road to the creek, and throw it in, all without anyone noticing?
And it wasn’t his style. He was capable of terrible things, much worse, in fact, but he enjoyed torturing each of us in person. He wanted to read the humiliation in our eyes. This secret swiping of the blanket just didn’t add up. And that my mother delivered the news? How would she be the one to know? As somebody’s mother, she would be the last to know. The very last.
And the timing… just as we were going through a great purge in preparation for a move overseas… and my age. And… well… I think I’ve been blaming the wrong person for Pinkie Blankie’s demise for, oh, 40 years.
Mom’s gone. Pinkie Blankie’s gone. I will never know the truth. But I can raise Pinkie Blankie from the ashes. Maybe several, given how much of this yarn I have in my silly-big stash. The first will go to a friend who needs it even more than I do. The second may go straight into the creek I now live on, to float out into Lake Michigan, where my mother’s ashes rest. I’d like to let her know I’m on to her, finally.
And here are some photos of work in progress on the Pinkie Blankie projects.
Here is the security blanket for my buddy, half knit in Tahki Baby. This one will follow the chart exactly, stitch for stitch.
And here, for my sis, is the beginning of a scarf, following the chart pattern, except that I will add many, many repeats, to make it scarf length. Thinking this will take 4 skeins of Koigu KPPPM. It will block out to be quite a bit longer and wider. What you see is just about one skein knitted up.
Once this pattern is in your brain — and it goes there easily — this pattern is a lovely, brainless bit of craft. Add the intrigue of the Koigu color changes, and you have some pretty entertaining knitting, friends. Will show these again when they’re done. The sister scarf is overdue, and the blankie, due presently.
Coming next, a peek at the Twin Tomtens, which are being boxed up now. They make me very happy.
She would have, no doubt!
I laughed………… and I cried! I completely LOVE your pinkie blankie resurrection! We are after all the ones that are completely in charge of what makes and doesn’t make it into our lives!!!! My daughter had a blanket that she adored. Her father, my now ex thank heavens, just went into her room one night and threw it away. I did not know of his heinous actions. She was devastated especially when he told her that he threw it away. The B)#E**## didn’t even make up a lie, which while not very nice, does at least give some sort of something that allows us to believe that the perpetrator of CRAP didn’t do such an ugly thing. So. My daughter now 22 still remembers this and misses her blankie. I now much older have divorced his happy butt and knows that his day is a’comin honey!
GET KNITTIN’!