FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!

Well ladies and gentlemen, it's official! I have the information for our flight to get to The Husband! I can't post anything time related publicly, but I'll be disappearing this week and I don't know when I'll get to be back on! The Husband doesn't have Internet set up at our new house yet, and I hear it takes a while....as in months....so I'll only be getting online when I can get to a public computer! Anyhow, I finally am taking the "leave of absence" I've been talking about for the past 2 months! LOL I'm so excited!!!! See you when I see you!

Beret Madness

It all started with restless fingers. Yesterday. So I found a quick and easy crochet pattern, and tried to make a beret for the first time. It actually turned out pretty well. Unfortunately, my head is larger than the "average" (because of my super thick hair) and the pattern also turned out a little smaller than it was supposed to....so I just figured I'd give it to one of my nieces or younger cousins. The dilemma: if I make one of them a beret, I've got to make all of them berets! LOL Well, okay, so I don't have to, but it's a good excuse to make a fun, quick project to fill my time! Counting the first attempt, I've got 3 down and have 2 to go! I'm a crocheting machine! LOL

Killing Time...

So I was supposed to have been going and getting a bunch of stuff done today in OKC, but as C broke out into a nasty rash last night, I didn't want to make the poor little guy suffer through such a long car ride. His rash had disappeared by this morning, but I wanted to keep an eye on it to make sure it didn't make another appearance. So we sat around doing a lot of nothing today. Right about the time I laid C down for his nap, my fingers got itchy. Itchy as in restless. So I picked up a crochet hook and yarn and whipped out a beret. First time ever trying it, really. I think it turned out fairly well. I couldn't try it on because a) my head is 1/2" to 1" larger than "normal" (though it's mostly due to how thick my hair is, and I'm not even exaggerating...) and the finished product was about 1/2" smaller in diameter than it was supposed to be....LOL But here are some pics of it:

And then I tried to get A to model it for me, but he wouldn't keep it on his head long enough or be still enough for me to get the picture! LOL So I used a ball to "model" it instead. LOL:

I think I'm going to make a couple more, but experiment with it a little bit....

And the winner is.....

I was able to easily enough pick the first style of granny square I wanted to use for the friendship blanket. Simple, quick, easy and pretty, all in one. But I wanted the second one I made to be different enough from the first one, and that ruled out every other granny square pattern that I have memorized. LOL So began the search....who knew there were so many different ones out there?! I sure didn't! One night, all I did was sit at my computer and look at online granny square patterns, trying to find "the one." I thought I'd found it....but then there was terminology in there I'd never heard of before, and I didn't feel like fumbling through it. The first one I actually tried turned out pretty cool, but I didn't have near enough yarn to make enough of them, so I scrapped that one. Then I tried another one, but it took waaaaaaaaaay too long to do. Then came try #4. It looked simple enough. And cool. But then it wouldn't end up at 6" no matter how I tried to adjust the pattern. Enter option #5. It wouldn't lay flat for anything.

Then it hit me: I'd just find a cool-looking stitch and make that into a square! Something with a cool effect that makes the color change stand out. I spent another night looking through the few patterns I still have here (and not on their way to Italy...). I found one that was close to what I had in my head. So I googled that particular stitch (I'm an avid google-er! LOL) and found an even better one! It's called "static." And it's "the one!" The winner! Yay for Static! LOL

I just got a phone call...

THEY'RE IN, THEY'RE IN, THEY'RE IN!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUR VISAS ARE IN!!!!!!!!! It only took 2 and a half months, but THEY'RE IN!!!!!!! So now The Husband gets to go in and request our flight information, and then I'll know FINALLY when we're on our way!!! I'm so happy I could cry!!!...What am I talking about? I've been on the verge of crying since the phone call...lol Anyhow, I just wanted to let you all know! I'll probably be relatively quiet because of being busy to go and then leaving, but I'll let you all know once I get over there safely! YAY! Now I'm off to get stuff done!

It Changed Again...

Turns out that now we're only going to be making 2 squares for each person in the friendship blanket group! That's really such a relief...I was freaking out a little bit about making 90-some-odd squares and have them sent out by March 1st! LOL So now I just have to decide which design I want to use for my second block. Who knew there were so many different ways to make granny squares?! I sure didn't! It's been very interesting sifting through the different patterns, trying to pick one that's both easy and fast. I guess I'll get done eventually!

Friendship Blankets Update...

So I thought it was only making one square for each other person in the group......no, we don't have enough people. So we're supposed to make five squares for each other person! That's like a total of something like 95 squares! Yikes! I've finished 20 so far. I wasn't expecting to make that many. My first thought when I heard how many I needed to make was "Shoot! Forget that! I'll just make my own squares and my own blanket!" (And it was funny, because when I told my husband's grandmother about the change in the situation, she said basically the same thing! LOL) But that's really the point of sending them to each other. So that everyone ends up with a decent-sized blanket, but with different squares from all kinds of people from all over...shoot, the world, actually. I was going to say "the country," but I know there are moms on Cafemom from more than just the US. It'll be so interesting to see all the different squares with all the different textures of yarn and everything else.

Hopefully there won't be too much taking my time away from working on all these squares....

There's a lot that goes into being a parent of two toddler boys. Especially when their father is overseas with the military. My younger son is fast approaching the age my older son was the first time he had an ER-worthy injury. (Aidyn was running in our then-apartment that had very tight corners, and ran head on, at full speed, into the corner of a wall and ended up needing 10 stitches in his forehead....before he even turned 18 months old!) Just the other day, in fact, Calen took off running from the kitchen to the living room, from linoleum to carpeting, and the carpet is higher than the linoleum. So in his hurry to run, his foot got caught on the carpeting, and he fell, face first, into a china cabinet. His mouth hit the leg of the (for him) immovable cabinet. (It really is movable, but certainly not for someone his size! LOL) He cut his lip and even his gums were bleeding! Poor little guy. But no swelling, and with the injuries I've seen from Aidyn, I knew better than to be too alarmed. There was a fair amount of blood, but not enough to freak out over. So now I'm just wondering how long it will be before we have our first ER trip with Calen. He's only a month younger than Aidyn was for his first trip....I guess only time will tell....

Friendship Blankets

I'm so super excited for this project I just started! At Cafemom, we started a new group revolving around making blankets as a group. We all make one (or two, if we can't get enough people in the group) square(s), send it to each of the other people in the group, and then use each of the squares we get to make a blanket! I just started mine today, and have decided that I am going to use the colors red, white and blue. I think it's a good color choice for a military wife. :) And I've decided that I'm going to try and make each square different from each other so that each blanket is even more unique! I can't wait to have my finished blanket!

Oh! And to top it all off, I went to a small town Wal-Mart looking for some more pink yarn to work on a current project, and they didn't have it (bummer) but what they did have was expensive yarn on clearance! I bought some specialty yarn that's normally $3 a "skein" (and I put skein in quotes because they're the itty-bitty ones...the ones I normally wouldn't pay that much for so little yarn).....I got for $1 a "skein"!!!! AND on top of that, there were a couple of crochet booklets (with 15-ish patterns in each) for $1 a piece! And if that wasn't enough, there was a whole box full of just free patterns! (You know, the kind that you tear off and take one for free? Yeah, a box full of those "booklets"!) I really hit the goldmine tonight! I am one happy "hooker"! ("Hooker" being a term, in this case, that is synonymous with "crafter," not "whore"! LOL)