So after two months I finally finished this blanket..but first, a back story..
When I was a wee girl, I saw a Hudson Bay Blanket in the LL Bean catalog. Something about it, the cream colored wool, the perfect primary colored stripes, just spoke to me. Its simplicity was beautiful, and it's coziness reminded me of crisp autumn nights, apple cider and my favorite time of year. Long ago, and I don't know whatever happened to it, we had an ancient Bay blanket and I think it was eventually thrown out, moth eaten and bedraggled.
And okay, confession: my older brothers introduced me to the McKenzie Brothers and the movie strange brew. Hey, I was 10 and I lived in Central Illinois, Canada was exotic to me. Don't judge.
My parents replaced the original Bay blanket with a ginormous king-sized blanket which I believe weighed no less than 900 pounds. It was put in a closet after my mom realized that there was no way in Hades that a menopausal woman could get a decent night's sleep under it.
Fast forward to now. We went to Canada for a summer trip--it was my kids' first "international" trip; shocking since we live about 30 miles from the Canadian border. We took them to Niagara Falls and Toronto. One of our stops was The Bay--the department store that served as the original Hudson Bay company. There you can buy all kinds of things with that iconic 4-stripe--from blankets to bikinis. So I got an idea....why not crochet and felt a blanket inspired by my childhood love of all things cozy and Canadian?
So I assembled what I needed, which was 3 large skeins of natural Lion Brand Fisherman's wool, and 2 skeins each of blue, yellow, red and green Patons Classic Wool. What eventually came out of all of that was this:
The happy part? I have just enough yarn left over to make a matching hat, which I will wear on my daily trip to Tim Hortons with pride.
