Busy, busy, busy

Have you been busy?  I know I have.  Summer seemed to race by (when it wasn't roasting me).  Mine was busy for many reasons, but my favorite reason was to finish crochet projects.  Remember that blanket I photographed last March?  The one I was making for Joanie?  Well after a few false starts and pattern adjustments, this is the blanket:

Joanie's blanket

rounds and rounds of double crochet

It took me forever to do this blanket!  I am not completely happy with the finished project because I noticed a mistake made too early to change it.  I am hoping it will please my eleven-year-old niece anyway. 

Then I began my next project which went faster.  Much much faster.  I completed this in two weeks!!  I promised a blanket to Cynthia's daughter Olivia for her high school graduation and wanted it done before she moved on campus.  Well, I was a week late, but she is now the owner of the "crayon blanket".  What color blanket do you give an artist?  Olivia had four colors that she recommended and I found those, but for some reason, it just needed more color.  So I explored my "stash" (aka, my personal store) and added more colors.

Here it is:

I played with stitches so that each color change was a stitch change too.  It is not ROYGBIV (for all the artists out there), but it is a variation of each color without being in rainbow order.  

 

 

Waldo got into the middle of things while I was photographing the blanket. (I did wash it before delivering it.)

Olivia, I really hope you like it!  Have a wonderful college experience!  Become that fine tuned artist you hope to become.  You are so very talented already it should be a piece of cake, right?











My next projects will be a plethora of baby things.  I know two women having babies this winter and one that had hers over the summer.  And a one year old that I want to make something special to wear.  I am planning to make two blankets for 6 month old and 4 year old boys.  I am also involved in sewing handbags and other things getting ready for some fall craft shows (and hoping for a little cash to fee my yarn habit :o)  And then there are all those squares we are still sewing together for our church's stitches group to donate.

Peace to you all!

a traveling project

Hello blogger world!  Remember me?  I am the other half of TwoLuLa that has been rather inactive for too long now.  Cynthia has been nagging me to post, but I just never get around to it.  So today when she said "post your motifs" I actually reacted!

Cynthia and I just recently had the good fortune to spend some time with our friend Karin on a trip to Florida.  Karin and Glen own a home there.  Karin invited us to travel to Florida with her [and another friend Kathi who came down with the flu and was too sick to travel :'( ].  So we did!  The challenge was to pack for a week in carry-on (something I have never done before) INCLUDING that must-have traveling crochet project.

Hmm....what to bring?  Well, a while back, Cynthia showed me a blog that had challenged us to make motifs from the book "Beyond the Square" and I already owned the book. See the blog made in K-town . So I bought many colors of those cotton sugar and cream skeins, gathered a few hooks, and the book and thus had a traveling project.

You would think that I would have accomplished more than seven motifs, but not so.  Here they are:

 

the group

 Up close of each motif:

Happy stitching!

Carol

      ps.  and I did manage to pack everything in airplane carry-on!

Lily's new hat

 Baby Lily will be receiving a new hat for Christmas from her grandma Karin (a friend of mine and Cynthia). 

Karin commissioned a hat from me and this is what I came up with.

This is the back view ============>

I really loved creating this hat!  Baby hats are so much fun to design.  I hope to get a photograph of Lily wearing her hat to post after Christmas!


                                                   Carol

Snowflakes and Violets in Winter

 I am working on crocheting snowflakes and doilies.  These are blocked but not yet starched.   

I love the snowflake on the right side of the picture to the left.  It looks like I expect a snowflake to look.  That said, did you know that there are no two identical snowflakes? 

The one to the right is my favorite doily style so far. 

This one on the left is called a snowflake but it has eight points.  I thought that snowflakes only had six points.  

While I am thinking snowflakes, my violets that sit on a shelf over my kitchen sink decided to bloom.

Carol

The first of many unfinished projects -Daniel's Blanket

I'm afraid I may have more unfinished projects than finished.  What does this say about me? On one hand my unfinished work shows a wide array of interests - crochet, knitting, punch needle, needlepoint, cross stitch, quilting, drawing, sewing...  On the other hand - they are all UNFINISHED!  Yet if I walked into a yarn or fabric store (or visited ebay where I bought the most delicious Kaffe Fassett fat quarters this summer) I would be inspired to start something new.
I have made an agreement with myself to finish at least three projects before Christmas - I can't say what they all are incase they get finished and become gifts.

 This is project number one.  I started crocheting a simple blue blanket for Daniel when he was just a preschooler. Life must have gotten busy, and the unfinished blanket was put away and eventually forgotten. I unearthed it again a month or so ago while in the beginning stages of our basement redo. But I couldn't find the rest of the yarn. Stuck in the world of matchy-matchy I fixated on trying to find a blue that would go. A few attempts and much frustration and ripping out later I was ready to give up. Inspiration came while browsing some favorite crochet blogs, especially Little Woolie. I loved the multitude of colors and textures I saw. No more plain blue blanket for Daniel!  Unfinished project number one is back under way and I am loving it!

Cynthia