I got the idea for this project because I love beautiful, unique yarns, and I love to travel. The idea is to collect yarn from (or that represents) each place I go in my life, and make each skein into a blanket square, to eventually create a blanket of my life.

Shortly after deciding to do this blanket, I got engaged, so I decided it would be a great family tradition and a great start to marriage.

I am using the flat braid join on all of these blocks.

Below depicts the progression of blanket and ideas:

• March 25, 2014 - Completed the Erie Canal Square (August 2013) This yarn was the first purchase and inauguration of the idea.

• April 8, 2014 - Completed the Bahama Honeymoon Square (December 2013). This yarn was purchased after-the-fact and is 40% Sea-cell.

I decided that since some of the squares were knit and some were crocheted, I would single-crochet around each square with a basic black yarn to make them easier to seam together. This would also help with adjusting for slightly differently sized blocks.

• June 15, 2014 - Completed the Boston Cobblestone Block (September 1991+), which represents my origin, growing up outside of Boston. (Frogged and re-done July 11, 2014)

• June 17, 2014 - Completed the Worcester Woods Block (December 1990+), which represents my husband’s origin, living in a tiny little town in upstate New York surrounded by trees.

I went ahead and seamed together the squares that I had already made, even though they weren’t in order. It goes in a spiral around out right from Randall’s block (he was born first), then mine, all the way around. I have to make three more blocks to finish off the spiral to where we are now.

• July 12, 2014 - Completed the Roberts “R” Block (August 2011-May 2013), which symbolizes where Randall and I met, at a school in Rochester, NY, called Roberts Wesleyan College.

At this point, I decided to rip all of the black edging off, block all of the squares, and then re-edge them. I also did a flat-braid crochet join on top of the single-crochet edging to make the blocks less pucker-y. Each side has 46 stitches, with no corner stitches, or 45 with 1 corner stitch, depending on how you look at it.

1. July 16, 2014 - Completed the Ocean City Block (July 2014), which represents our trip back to the place of my family’s heritage for a reunion.

2. August 17, 2014 - Completed the Wedding Block, which represents our wedding, on December 21, 2013.

3. August 23, 2014 - Completed the San Francisco Block (December 2013+), which tells of our move to the San Francisco Bay Area, with its rolling fog.

4. August 29, 2014 - Completed the Rodanthe and Co. Block (August 2014), representing the whirlwind trip we took via the Koutnik’s gold Prius, with a day in Plymouth, a day in the Adirondacks, and then about a week in North Carolina, all of which was vaguely drizzly.

5. April 6-8, 2015 - Decided to frog the outside of the Rodanthe and Co. Block because it was puckering and poorly designed. I redesigned elements of it and replaced it in the blanket.

6. January 9-17, 2016 - I completed the Huntington Beach Block (November 2015) to represent the Thanksgiving trip we took to my Aunt and Uncle’s new beach house.

7. January 20, 2017 - I completed the Las Vegas Block (March 2016) for the trip we took to my Uncle’s surprise 60th birthday party in Las Vegas.

Notes for Block order and future blocks:

1. Randall Woods
2. Lily Cobblestones
3. Roberts R
4. Erie Lake
5. Wedding
6. Bahamas
7. SF Bay Bridge
8. Ocean City
9. Outer Banks
10. Grandma/Long Island
11. Brantingham
12. Huntington Beach
13. Las Vegas
14. Cape Cod
15. Portland
16. San Diego
17. Point Reyes
18. Gwen
19. Moving
20. Florida