Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Grab your partner, do-si-do....

I wanted to do something special for my mother-in-law. She was an amazing source of support while my husband was spending his year in Korea, and I wanted to make her a little something to show her my appreciation for that. I settled on Happy Yellow House's Do-Si-Do Lapghan pattern to use, but, of course, with colors that stood out to me as "her." In hindsight, I think I should have used a soft white (or off-white/aran) instead of the country blue. I think that would have made the colors flowed better and not looked too…overdone? But I know she'll like it, just the same. :) And as it’s rare that I do a pattern as written, anyhow (lol), in this one, I tweaked it to where there are 5 solid blocks and 4 multi-colored ones instead of the other way around. I'm pleased with the overall effect of the 4 "pinwheels" instead of 5. I think that has a lot to do with my elementary school days, oddly enough....

When I was in 2nd grade, I was so excited...in P.E., we got to learn how to square dance! I'd looked forward to that my whole 1st grade year! lol And when you square dance, of course there's 4 people per group. Unfortunately, I don't really now remember the steps in square dancing, but I remember that "do-si-do" was my favorite. (Hmmm...maybe that had something to do subconsciously with why I picked the pattern....I wonder...) And I remember that it was the part when you and the person across from you skipped to the center, hooked elbows, swung around and skipped back into place, and then the other pair copied. Or maybe it was with the person next to you...I don't remember that detail, now. LOL But that's my excuse behind having only 4 multi-colored squares instead of 5. Four makes more sense to me. There were 4 people in each group (or "square") that danced together. So why have 5 "spinning" blocks? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with how the pattern's written. In fact, when I started out, I had every intention of following that pattern, to a T. It just rarely ever ends up being that way. LOL I made a block of the purples swapping places and decided that I liked the dark purple as the "pinwheel" better, so I wanted to even out 2 of the dark pinwheels with the light. And that meant, unless I was going to undo the blocks I'd already finished (which I most certainly was not!), I'd have to alter the pattern and change it to 4 pinwheel blocks instead of 5! :) Since I got that order of yarn in the mail, I can finish it now, and then send it on it's way to my MIL.....

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