Rom & Jen’s Christmas Stars Throw

After finally finishing my mother in law’s Haruni shawl while I was in Canada I was ready to get started on my next project.  It was timed quite well as the project I had in mind called for yarn that I’d have to buy in Canada, so my mom and I hopped in the car and set off to get my supplies. She liked the project too and got yarn to make the same thing for my sister for Christmas.

The project was Red Heart’s Christmas Stars Throw which I made for my father-in-law and his wife.  I started it in October in Canada and finished it almost two weeks before Christmas.  It took longer than I expected because of my unexpected surgery and a few other things that had come up that distracted me.

It started by making the diamond pieces that make up the stars.  They weren’t difficult, just time consuming and it took a while to get them all done.

Once I had all the diamond pieces made, over 180 of them, it was time to start putting them together.  This is where things started to get difficult.

The pattern says to start from the top right hand corner of the blanket when putting the pieces together.  This turned out to be confusing and frustrating. It wasn’t so bad in the beginning but once the blanket started getting a bit bigger, it was hard to tell where I was.  There turned out to be more than one five-sided star that needed to be taken apart and fixed, and a few swear words to go along with it.

Hoping she’d learn from my frustration, I advised my mother to put hers together differently, making the stars first and then putting the larger pieces together. It seemed to take her less time and caused her a lot less grief, so the pattern instructions could really do with some changing.  I don’t think there is any real purpose for them saying to put them together in that specific order.

She did say it was still a pain to assemble, but not as bad as it would have been trying to do it piece by piece from the top corner as I had done.

I think doing the border was probably the easiest and most enjoyable part of the whole thing.  That was probably because I started seeing the finished product.  That’s the best part of any craft project, I think.  No matter how much you pull your hair out while making something, it’s ALWAYS worth it, especially if it’s a gift.

I was really pleased with the finished product and was glad that I went with more everyday colors than the full on Christmas red and green like the pattern called for.

Oh, but the assmeply aside, ya know the most frustrating part of the whole thing?  The fact that it didn’t get to them in time!

During my recovery from surgery, I worked day and night getting the blanket done so we had enough time to get it sent out before Christmas.  It was going to France so we figured a week to ten days would give us enough time.  It was mailed out on December 17th and arrived in France on December 21st.  Sounds good, right?

WRONG!

It arrived alright, at a drop off point in a village 25 minutes away from my in laws.  Even that wouldn’t be so bad if someone had bothered to let them know it was there, which they didn’t.  So their Christmas present sat in a tobacconist over the Christmas holiday.  Nice.

When it hadn’t arrived by Christmas, my husband looked it up and saw that it had been dropped there on the 21st. There was collective swearing among us all at that moment.  So now my FIL and going to put in a complaint on his end, as we will do on ours.

Oh well, they did end up getting it eventually and that’s all that matters… and that they liked it, that helped too.