LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN.

Or, alternately, I am an idiot (part 3)
 I never thought that my idiocy would become a running subject, but apparently I make enough hideously awful mistakes to merit regular use of this title.

And man, oh man, did I earn it today.

I washed the sheets and comforter cover today, and as I loaded our apartment's incredibly bad washing machine a thought floated across my brain.

"This seems too dense to be just sheets and a comforter cover."

LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN.
40 minutes later, when I opened the washer I was greeted by a smell that I love, and a smell that simultaneously broke my heart. I knew, just from that single whiff, exactly what I had done. The smell was wet wool.

I had washed my wedding afghan.
The afghan made of squares knitted by my dear Michigan friends who are now a continent away from me. The afghan which reminds me that I am dearly loved, that I don't need to fret too much about the small things, that brings back a hundred memories of sitting in Lola's shop, laughing and chatting about nothing and everything. I may never see many of those women again, and that thought alone is enough to make me get all misty. I treasure those memories as closely as any other college memory. That's how deeply those women impacted my life.

And I just destroyed the afghan they made me--their cooperative effort to shower me in affection. I killed it.

LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN.

This afghan is made of  various animal fibers which felt at different rates. It was bunched up oddly, so it was not agitated evenly. If I had to give its current shape a new name, I'd hedge my bets with trapezoid... or maybe be even more conservative with rhombus (it still has 4 sides...)

I'm reblocking it into a square-er shape. Unfortunately, this means some squares will be stretched at odd angles. Some squares felted completely--you can't even tell what the old stitch pattern was. Some didn't felt at all (guess who gets to stretch.). Some are felted Alpaca, which apparently still possesses Alpaca's propensity to stretch and drape, in spite of  being a completely different fabric (Alpaca is weird, folks.)

So, my beautiful, gorgeous, love filled blanket which graced our bed for the past 2 winters is a bit smaller, a bit less square, and a lot more heartbreaking to look at.

I have it pinned to "near square"

The brown has felted into the white

This is the felted alpaca... It's clearly felted, but it's also stretching.

The central basked weave was one of several cables...

"stretching to compensate..."

The central one used to have welts

Ruffled edges that didn't felt

Cables + Lace + Felt. Someone has to lose 

There were cute embossed leaves here

More missing cables

Formerly even squares stretching for neighbors

 I wish there were more of a take-home message from this. You know, aside from don't be an idiot. Apparently I can't get that into my thick skull, though. I don't think I've ever done something that has made me kick myself as much as this...

LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN.