Tiger blanket

It's finally finished! And it's huge! I made the body piece big enough so that we can wrap the boy up in it but to keep the porportions right, the head and legs are HUGE!! In the photo it's laid out across our queen size bed . . . you can just see Gennie's hands in the top corner . . . it fills up the bed! Oh well, when he gets older he can tie the top legs around his neck and use it as a cape.

And here's a photo of Gennie's blankie. (No, we don't have this hideous blue futon anymore!) I had made it for the Project Linus kids but when I got it finished I showed it to her and she wouldn't give it up! She hid it in her room and refused to tell me where she'd put it . . . quite a stand for an 18-month old. We've always vowed to never give the kids toys or buy them stuff just because they won't let go of them at the store . . . seems to me that it leads to spoiled and expectant kids, not thankful . . . but this one time I couldn't resist. I had been planning to make a blankie for her at the time anyways but had another design in mind. But since she liked the watermelon so much I made the other one for PL and let her keep the watermelon. Every night since then she can't fall asleep until it's laid out beside her . . . just so . . . on her bed.

This is the original Blankie . . . the reason why I make them and donate my work to Project Linus. This is my blankie from when I was a kid. The story goes that it was a shower gift from before they had me, but it never even came out of the package until I was about 2 1/2. I became really sick and they had to take me to the doctors in a rush . . . my grandma just grabbed whatever she could lay her hands on to wrap me up. And from then on, we were inseparable. I changed it from "it" to "He" . . . not sure why . . . and we did everything together. A flying carpet, a boat on the high seas, a picnic blanket, an island from which I escaped the alligator-infested waters . . . you name it, we did it. He made a great sunshade for the long car trips to Albuquerque every summer, before they made sunshades for kids in the backseat. Made it all the way thru high school and college, and I still have him. My mom offered to cut a chunk off and keep it with my baby stuff and throw away the ratty part. I threatened her with beheading. Some people give their own blankies to their children as heirlooms . . . not on your life. They now have their own.

I guess I just believe that every kid should have a security blanket of their own. I never had any fantastically traumatic incidents happen in my life, really . . . with the exception of my sister getting run over by the moving van . . . but my blankie was my favorite thing. I couldn't sleep without it as a kid. I can only imagine what it would be like to be terminally ill or lose a parent or something equally drastic and not have anything to remind me of happier days, something totally my own. That's why I love the idea of Project Linus . . . providing handmade blankets for kids who HAVE gone thru trauma or illness. Some of mine have gone to kids of people deployed to Iraq last summer from our area including very close friends who at the last minute, THANK OUR MIGHTY GOD, didn't have to go . . . some have gone to babies of teen moms abandoned by their own parents who had nothing, I mean, NOTHING, for the new baby when it arrived . . . some have gone to kids in our local hospital. I guess if a blankie I made brings some comfort to a little kid . . . even if I never hear about it . . . it's a ministry in some way and that's what's important to me.