Pinwheel Blanket

I was inspired by ravelry member JavaMama - she made a beautiful pinwheel blanket for her soon to be born baby girl - I took the pattern she used, designed by Genia Planck (this link only works if you can get on ravelry; sorry) and chose this large crate or neutral colored yarn that I have been collecting:
This collection has lots of different yarns in it, including hand spun from a friend in VT, as well as yarns from VIP fibers that were made with Winky's hair (my cat) and Dakota's fur (our old doggie) - After starting and doing a few rounds on the blanket, I decided to get organized -

I laid out all the yarns in an order that I thought worked well - sort of a color arranging order - moving around textures and colors to try to get a nice even mixture of colors - once I was happy with the arrangement, I took some Ziploc baggies and stuck a piece of paper in each one, identifying the order of yarns by number (if I intended to carry 2 yarns together, then those 2 went into one bag) -

There are a total of 36 bags in this collection - once I'm done with the 36 bags, I'll probably stop and look at what I have and re-arrange the colors again - doing my best to ensure that I have enough yarn for the rounds needed - the larger this thing gets, the more yarn it'll take (obviously) - and I'm nor sure how far it'll be before I have to buy some more yarns... I hope I can make it large enough to suit me; since establishing a repeat, most of the colors I have been doing 4 rounds of... some of the harder to deal with yarns (or more flashy glittery yarns) have been getting used only 2 rounds... I like the way it's coming along - this "in progress" photo doesn't show the colors very well - it's pretty earthy though; browns, greys, creams, and just a hint of metallic golds and some indigo and deep olive greens...

I think I'm on the 20th color now (farther along than this photo) and I'm at around 340 stitches around - (34 stitches per section) - every second row the thing increases by 10 stitches - it's taking longer and l o n g e r and l - o - n - g - e - r to even make it around the circle! I still love it, and I'm happy with the idea of using all these different yarns in a round throw - Gregg still doesn't "get" how one would actually use a round blanket, but I know that if I can trick myself into making it about 5' across (it'll only take 100 years) and then if I add a neat ruffle using the manos colorway that's in the center piece, it'll end up being a beautiful blanket - I had a great time with the blanket and I'm not quite tired of it *yet* - I do know that I need to finish one of the sweaters that's near completion - before I get too far along into this monstrosity!

I hope everyone had a good weekend? Easter was nice for us - we went over to my sister-in-law's house and she had a kids easter egg hunt/party for little 1-2 year olds - they were VERY cute - but I can now confirm that age 2 and under is too young to attempt egg dying! - no photos, but definately funny! (I don't have to tell you that I stayed clear of that!)

OH! One other mention - today (day after Easter) all that easter egg dye is going to be 50% off- go get it - buy it up from your neighborhood stores - and use it to play with yarn dying! I have yet to mess with dying yarn, but this is a good (and cheap) way to dye yarn... so try it out!