Weaving, knitting, and new crochet projects

I've been dying to make this entry.  On Saturday afternoon, my sister's soon-to-be-inlaws hosted a beautiful wedding shower for her.  I finished a very special gift for her a few weeks ago, and even though she doesn't really read my blog, she knows about it and *might* have read it, so I refrained from posted about the gift on here.

About 2 weeks ago, while we were swimming during some particularly hot weather, she made a comment that she had not received any towels.  She found this odd, since towels are such a typical wedding shower gift.  She'd received lots of much larger and very beautiful gifts, but not a single towel among them.  It wasn't a complaint, just a comment.  So I decided she needed towels.  I'd just gotten my new and very beautiful floor loom, and I decided the best way to break in my new loom was to weave a set of handtowels for my sister.  I'd never done it before, and I had some amazing purple egyptian cotton that was just dying to be woven.  They turned out so much more beautiful than I'd even expected.  I finished them on Wednesday and had to keep my mouth shut about them until Saturday.  It was more difficult than I anticipated.  She was, needless to say, entirely appreciative of them.  When you give a handmade gift, you never fully expect the recipient to appreciate the time and effort that goes into such a thing, unless they are a crafter themselves.  She is not a crafter, but was very appreciative of every stitch and all the love that has been woven in to these towels.  Which makes me want to weave for her again.  :)

I am also still working on the latest version of my mother's sweater.  Currently ripping back a single row to fix a tiny error in the sleeve that has thrown my stitch count off very slightly.  At the rate I am going, I expect it to be finished or very nearly finished by her birthday.  I haven't worked on it this past week on account of the weaving project taking priority.  This week, the sweater will regain priority and I will redouble my efforts on it.

Once the sweater is done, I have promised H a very special gift!  This one will take me at least a year (possibly 2) to complete.  Last year, on a whim, I created an 8-bit Mario afghan chart.  It is comprised of 3" squares, each square representing a pixel.  I finally crocheted my swatch to calculate yardage.  It will require a whopping 6600 yards of yarn.  That, as H immediately pointed out, is a stunning 3.75 MILES of yarn.  That's kind of a lot!!!  So for the first time in years, I will willingly be picking up massive amounts of very cheap acrylic yarn.  Otherwise, we're looking at a few hundred dollars to complete this blanket. Nevertheless, it's going to be very fun when it's done!  Certainly one of my more ambitious projects.  Let's hope it turns out!! :)