This is happening.
March 12, 2013
Do-Over
I learned a difficult lesson last night. I had finished my scarf, sewn in the ends. Done. It was a bit shorter than it should have been, but I still had to do the hat, and needed to have yarn for that. The hat I started yesterday at lunch and I finished last night. Once done with that and the flower that goes with it, there was at least half a skein of yarn left over that I could use to lengthen the scarf. Yay! I looked at the scarf and couldn’t find the top end.
Oops.
I studied it, tugging at stitches, looking for the woven in end, the right spot to snip to unravel the edging to lengthen it the proper way. Eventually, I thought I found it, picked up the scissors and cut. As I worked the stitch out, it seemed to take more work than it should have. After a bit, it came. And along with it the starting chain.
Crap!
I guessed the wrong end. Stitches don’t unravel well from the wrong side. I had to snip the other side and unravel it from there, but there was no way to just do the border, I had to do it all. I have no idea how to fix work from the foundation. I’m sure there’s a way. But I ended up frogging it all. The scarf will work up quickly, again. And I don’t have many projects queued, so… Do over!
March 7, 2013
Keep Calm
Last night a few friends came over and we had dinner, laughs, wine. A girl’s night in instead of out. We crafted and had some nail fun too! Inspired by an article on Momspark, we made some St. Patrick’s Day shirts. C has a Cricut and made the stencils for us. And some Fauxstess cupcakes. And her nail stuff. She’s so awesome. I supplied the fabric paint and made some crock pot chicken. K brought the wine, T some fruit (the watermelon was amazing!).
Once we had eaten and settled in with some wine, we started the shirts. C helped peel the vinyl stencils she had made, and we placed them out the shirts, being sure not to forget the inside bits of the letters. Oh, and to make sure we shamrocked on and not shamrocked no. LOL!
Sharing a shamrock
Painting the shirts was quick and fun. We needed to space out the painting and wait a bit between, as we only had one shamrock, but it all worked out just fine.
Painted
And still had enough time for K to get her nails done.
Skull mani
C did some lovely skulls with pink and purple bows for K. If I hadn’t broken my thumbnails to the quick last week, I would have asked C to do mine as well. It feels such a waste when they’re that short.
Done!
They turned out fantastic! I may need to get myself a cricut.
The shirts may end up being a bit too big for the girls, but they can grow into them. And there must be a bit of the luck of the Irish, there was a set of stencils left on the table after everyone went home. I can do at least one more shirt! Yay for me!
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February 20, 2013
Curtains!
Look what we did! Finally. After almost three years, I found a third curtain rod and we put it up. And put up the heavy drapes from the old house.
Finding a matching rod – metal Shepard’s crook – was not easy, as it’s been discontinued. But I found one, at a Lowe’s store somewhere in Massachusetts and they shipped it to me. I have curtains for the other windows, but haven’t put them up, thanks to the babies. With the cold just oozing through that french door, I thought it might be worth the potential risk of destruction. The girls, so far, haven’t even noticed it. It may help that their kitchen is right in front:
Yes, the Valentine’s decorations are still up
We had a busy weekend and then a lovely President’s Day. Aunt NayNay come out for the afternoon! The girls were ecstatic when she got here, jumping and shouting when the door opened. NayNay got a sofa snuggle fest, hugs, kisses and huzzahs. Ashlin read her a book:
I’m so happy I was able to capture Ashlin telling the story! Every time I tried to tape it when I had her on my lap, she would just stare at the camera. It was a little spooky.
Teagan played dolls and games with her.
NayNay and nieces
It was a good day.
Last night I started the hat for Stu. I’ll post that once there’s a bit more than a coaster :)
February 1, 2013
All Done!
All done!
In just about a month, give or take, I finished my afghan. The body was done last Wednesday, and the edging took three days, once I figured out what to do. Very happy with how it turned out, and how lovely it looks on the sofa!
And it’s snuggly warm, and goes well with the sleepy sofas… I fell asleep last night before I could read mail and blog about being done!
Almost all…
Because it’s hard not to find flaws with our work, even work that we’re very please with, I have a few with the afghan. Looking at the full blanket on a table, I see that I probably should have blocked it before starting the border. It’s not completely flat in the picture, but you can see the dip. It’s not too bad, but it pulls in a little, just off square. A little shaping is all it needs, and I could probably still do that.
Dream Weaver…
I think it took three days to weave in all the ends. I wish there was an easier way to do that. I suppose I could have tried to work the spare colors up the side, like I did with one of my friend’s baskets. The baskets that I gave my friend for Christmas, that I haven’t blogged about yet. I promise to write that up soon!
Flattening the bumps
Then I needed to flatten out the ripply edge. I worked up a test piece to try out a few things, and the easiest one worked – double, half-double, single crochet with a slip stitch, repeat.
Close-Up
For the border, I ended up picking something simple, but interesting. Once the white foundation was done, and then one round of light brown in half-double crochet, I did a chain with single crochet motif in white, then double crochet in each stitch/space in green. Second time around was white with the dark brown on top. I finished with a final round of half-double crochet in brown to make a solid edge.
I’m really quite pleased with it. I may have mentioned already.
While I’ve been finishing up the afghan, I had an anniversary:
Happy Anniversary!
I’ve been on WordPress for four years now! I can’t believe it’s been that long since I migrated my blog from Yahoo!360. Although I started blogging over there back in November of 2005, I knew I had to move when the site started getting funky, eating posts and basically being unreliable. After a bit of research (thanks Stu!), I moved here. I’ve never had any of those problems here, thankfully!
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January 21, 2013
One more foot…
So, I have about a foot left to go on the crazy stitch/brick stitch afghan. It’s really working up fast, you almost don’t realize how quickly it does go… But it’s now a bit too big to bring to and from work, for the “Ya ya yarn” lunch sessions, so I needed something smaller, more compact to work on.
A while back, I found this heart garland, thought it was pretty cool. Hello new pin! With all the leftover red yarn I had from the Angry Bird amigurumi presents, it’s a “free” project. Gotta love when you already have the yarn and don’t need to buy any new supplies.
Anyway, the pattern seems pretty straightforward, but I must be reading it a bit wrong. On the third round I needed 8 or 9 stitches (not 5) to get back to the alternating single and 2x single crochets. Making that small change seems to work pretty well:
First Heart
I have my project bag all ready packed!
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January 18, 2013
One of my Christmas presents from Stu was a subscription to Dabbler, a site that will send information once a month about a new craft, hobby, thing! The mails are sent on the 15th, and I laughed when I saw it in my inbox:
It seems as if the universe is aligned against me. People at work, on line, friends, all are trying to talk me into learning to knit. Now. After crocheting for a little bit, I knew I’d eventually learn to knit, as much as I protested. Saying one hook was fine, no need for two needles.
So, I’m still not ready to learn to knit, but this mail was very nicely put together. It explained about yarn, needles, stitches… it had links to videos, information resources. A beginner’s pattern and step by step instructions. I know that now isn’t quite the right time to start, but when it is, I’ll have a great resource to use.
Thank you. It’s a great present. Now, I can’t WAIT to see what they’re going to send next!
January 13, 2013 ~ Progress
I’m about a third done now, and really enjoying the stitch. A crazy, or brick, stitch. I’ve also done my first Russian join. Twice! I think it works very well for same color joins, not sure how to place it exact enough for a two-color join.
Anyway, the soft yarn is calling! Happy Sunday.
January 9, 2013 (Not December, sheesh!)
Progress on the afghan as of lunch today. I’m doing to need a bit more chocolate brown and maybe off white…
January 7, 2013
Christmas presents to be!
Two of the crochet projects I made as presents were a hat for my sister and a scarf for my mom. Over Thanksgiving, my sister joked that if I made her a hat, she would wear it. So, I made her a hat!
After much googling, I eventually found a pattern that I liked, and thought she would too. All the yarn I had picked out for my sister was not as thick as this pattern calls for, so I needed to increase the stitch counts, and play with the number of rounds. After much trying on my head for size, I got an “adult” size, and one I thought would fit her head.
Hat with flower accent
While searching for a pattern I thought she would like, I came across an interesting way to accent a hat – to make interchangeable flowers, or accents. I chose a button that would be small enough to button an accent flower over, but not too big.
As long as the center chain is about 6 stitches round, it should fit over the button. I made three flowers, using different colors from the ones I had selected for her “pallet,” wine red with grays.
Hat with flowers
The scarf I did for my mom was done with the colors I had picked out for her. Purples. The stitch is a stacked shell, from one of the books that a co-worker lent me when they pushed me to start crocheting.
Once I got the hang of the stitch, the scarf worked up easily and quickly. It’s a bit of a yarn eater, so I actually ran out of yarn before finishing. NOT fun at all. Then I couldn’t find the purple I needed at the local stores. Waiting to get to the big store where I got the original skein gave me the time to get the hat and another project finished, so, I guess it was a good thing. Knowing how much yarn I’ll need is something that will come with practice. I knew I had enough for one of my mom’s presents, but not the two combined.
Yesterday, when we met up in the city to celebrate Three Kings day (without telling Teagan!), my mom was wearing her scarf. Made me feel great!
Purple shells
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Whatever! 