Spectacular Shades Of Pink: A Tribute To Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Remember back on May 31 when I posted this plain, little chair. . . 

And this pile of pink yarn and told you I was going to. . 

add yarn to chair for a Yarn Bombed Chair for the Chairity Auction which is part of Adrian's Artalicious celebration of every thing art?  I have finished the chair and dropped it off today to be part of the silent auction.  IT IS VERY CUTE! (If I do say so myself.)  Like every project we begin, it took much longer and was much more difficult than I thought it would be, but HERE IT IS!

I am so proud of it and learned a great deal about what should go into a project like this.  "What?," you might ask should go into a yarn bombed chair.  PLANNING, PLANNING AND MORE PLANNING!  MEASURING, MEASURING AND MORE MEASURING! I just sort of serendipitously jumped into this, deciding one piece at a time what I was going to do and not considering how it would fit in.  I learned this can be a way, but it's not the best way.

"Let's start at the very beginning, that's a very fine place to start."  I don't think anybody said it better than Julie Andrews.

This is the seat, the first thing I made.  This is a double knitted pattern called Parallax that someday I want to use in a scarf, so I thought I would practice it here.  Once gain, I love double knitting.  It has such a rhythm.  When I finished this, I decided it wasn't big enough and was a little blah, so I decided. . . 

to add a ruffle all around.  What do I need to do to make a ruffle?  I practiced one way then another and finally came up with a pretty presentable ruffle.  It's better than "pretty presentable," it's adorable.  (If I do say so myself.)  

​Then I started working on the rungs on the back of the chair.  First I did the right side and then I did the left. . . 

The big curved back is made in five pieces that I had to work around the spindles that go up and down.  I got those five pieces done then Dick's surgery intervened and I began working on my hospital knitting shawl.  I must say there wasn't much Zen in this chair.  I needed something a little more soothing to help me through the surgery.  All of a sudden it was August 17 and I had less than a month to finish Spectacular Shades Of Pink and pretty much a whole chair to finish minus the seat and the big curved back.  Next I decided to tackle the spindles.  After the five sections on the big curved back took like forever, I decided to look for knit stitches that weren't quite so time consuming.  Those two little pieces on the upper right have lots of dropped stitches which went pretty fast.  Then I did the little piece on the left.  That yarn is filled with little pink stones.  The most consuming part was winding.  

I decided to sew on what I had to see what I needed. Sewing it together was when I learned the importance of careful measuring.  Most pieces were too big and I had to be painstakingly exact to make it look perfect.  You know me and perfection! What I learned when I put these  nine pieces on the chair was I needed a lot more pieces! So I just have the seat, the curved back and those two little right and left pieces.  What next? I did the long center piece.  Then I called Linda.  My thought was to leave the legs and the rest of the spindles bare.  I had hit the wall.  The Spectacular Shades Of Pink Chair had become "have to" knitting.  Linda talked me down from the ledge and said the legs needed something, too.  I took a deep breath, went to Hobby Lobby (not for yarn!) and bought a hot glue gun.  All of a sudden things began to fall into place.  

I remembered the quote from Vogue's 2015 fall magazine, "If you want to knit faster, crochet!"  Then I did the legs.  I went back up to the Stash Studio and started looking through my ten tubs of pink yarn for a new inspiration.  I found about 20 feet of a thick and thin with flowers every so often.  As a matter of fact, there was four flowers.  Out with the hot glue gun and that 20 feet of gorgeous fiber.  That became the top spindle below the seat and the two bare spindles on the back.  Immediately the chair was transformed from something that was ok to something that was over the moon WOW!

I even put little ruffles on the bottom of the crocheted legs then decided the legs needed some foo-foo's.  And then TA-DA!

My chair!  The Spectacular Shades Of Pink: A Tribute To Breast Cancer Awareness Month!  Linda came over Monday to see the finished project.  She loved it!  She loved the little details like the ruffles on the bottom of the leg to match the ruffle on the seat and the little flowers.  She asked me if I would do it again next year.  My answer was to ask me next spring.  My answer right now would be, "ARE YOU KIDDING!?!?!?! NO!!!"  But next year when I have a plan and I have learned from my mistakes, I just might do it again.  I made a commitment that I would just use yarn from the Stash Studio.  I would not buy any yarn, and I lived up to that commitment.  In two weeks, I'll be writing about another project I've doing using my 10 tubs of pink yarn.

If you happen to be in the Adrian, Michigan area, drop into the Adrian District Library in beautiful downtown Adrian and you can see Spectacular Shades Of Pink in person.  You could even place a silent auction bid for Artalicious.