Here it is, folks, my modified Mason-Dixon baby lap blanket. The blanket is actually nice and square. It looks funky because of the way I was holding the camera… trying to not create a shadow, blah, blah, blah. The changes I made to the pattern ran like this. I…

• used much fatter yarn—leftover Brunswick’s Windmist (100% acrylic) from various projects over the years, but mostly from the now unraveled, six-hour sweater project that I started twenty years ago and never finished
• doubled the size of the needle to a size thirteen circular, Addi Turbo
• halved the number of stitches and rows in each block
• changed the color of the blocks around a bit, because of the severly limited supplies of two of the colors (the two lighter pinks)—there was less than a ball left of each pink—so had to place colors where I thought they’d fit with the quantity I had available
• knit a two ridge garter border around the whole blanket
• did a single crochet bind off

One of my goals with this project, in addition to creating something warm to snuggle under when I’m at my desk this winter, was to use up some old yarn I’ve moved to countless new homes over the last twenty years. I didn’t know if I’d be able to finish binding off in the dark color. I was down to bits and pieces, probably used up five or six one-yard long pieces of yarn. As you can see, it was a close thing. There’s the cow looking at the end of one piece. I had one more.

This is all the yarn I had left. Total. I think I did fairly well in using things up! See those little bits of yarn. I was a little worried that I’d make it to the end of the row a time or two, let me tell ya.

I say that my two part mission, to make something useful out of the sweater yarn and to use up as much of that and other yarn from my stash as possible, was a total success. Yippee!