Gettin' My Craft On!

So I have been home from the States for over a month, and I still haven't blogged about my BFF's wedding, nor have I finished blogging about my trip to Paris with Elphie, not to say mentioning my amazing birthday weekend! But I will get there, I promise. And those are not just empty words. I just have...issues...with finding a balance. There tends to be a lot of extreme behaviors one way, and then the complete opposite (and many times back and forth a time or two more!) before I get back into my "groove." And the past few months have been anything but regular!

And in the "extreme behavior" toward the negative, for a week or two, I was completely ensconced in the silly Facebook games. Frontierville/Pioneer Trail, Mafia Wars 2, Cafe World...all that crap. It was like a trance I couldn't be pulled out of. But Monday, I finally reached a decision that I had been mulling over. I decided to stop playing them. All of them. (Well, okay, I still have Words with Friends and Scrabble, but those only take, like, 2 minutes to make your move and then you wait on your opponent to go. No big.) And in the time that I have not been playing those time-sucking games, I have done the following:

Completed the WestKnits Mystery KAL:

Started and completed a stitchmarker Lariat:

Started and completed a pair of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Wristers:

 

Started and completed a hat for The Instigator's aunt:

Made my own mitten blockers:

Blocked the Bella mittens for Tara:

 Baked a batch of zucchini muffins and 2 loaves of zucchini bread (this is all that was left of the muffins after 24 hours...they were completely gone in less than 48! LOL):

Started and completed a cowl (for trading for an apron from a fellow crafter!):

Finally finished a blanket to donate to a patient of Nephrotic Syndrome 

that has been a long time in coming!:

And have done some super-top-secret HSKS swappy items. Plus,that's to say nothing of finally getting my crafting supplies slowly migrating upstairs to my new craft room (used to be the boys' toy room, but we moved those upstairs to the large closet and their bedroom), catching up on housework, participating in running a knitting swap, and actually cooking meals! I have really been on fire! LOL I'm really hoping that this is less of a swing of the pendulum in the productive segment of my balance and more of a trend leading to habit. :) I guess only time will tell, but all in all, not bad for a week's worth of effort. :)

Interesting fact...

I have never made an afghan with less than 3 colors. I don't know entirely why. Maybe it seems too simple or plain for my taste? I don't know.

I started teaching one of my friends that is also stationed here in Italy how to crochet. She's a little forgetful, though...I show her, she works on it, she puts it down, goes to pick it up the next day...and has forgotten how it goes! LOL I think she's getting better at it, though. She wanted to learn a round ripple right off, so that was what I was trying to teach her on. She instead used online tutorials to teach herself the basic single crochet and has been going from there. I'm sure she'll be busting out that round ripple in no time!

Another spouse that is over here also showed an interest in learning to knit and crochet. We're starting with crochet. She said she was a quick study, and I believed her, but wow! She shocked me with just how fast she picked it up! The first day I went over there, I taught her the single crochet (having learned from the first instance, lol)...I went back the following day, and she had made a scarf! So I showed her how to do the fringe...then I taught her double crochet. Went back the next day, and not only had she completed the granny square I showed her how to do, but she had begun an afghan (sans squares, though)...and not only had she started an afghan, but it was an afghan of her own design!!! So we were watching the show Charmed while working on all things yarn-y (I was knitting a scarf), when I had this sudden urge to start an afghan! It's been quite some time since I've done an afghan (it's pretty much been hats and swap-themed things the last....well, since October...), and I just had the urge to start one! (Honestly...who starts an afghan when warmer weather is coming?! I must be nuts!) I didn't have any worsted weight with me (except for the scarf I was knitting), so she let me dip into the small beginnings of a stash that she's got...which isn't much...which is why I am only making it 2 colors...which brings me back to where I started this post. I've never before made an afghan with less than 3 colors! LOL So this is clearly a first for me. However, I was able to do the whole beginning of the round ripple from pure memory! I guess I made more than I realized! Enough times to have it embedded into my brain, evidently! So now I have a beautiful, albeit "plain," afghan in the works!

My Hermione hat is not going according to plan at all. :( I'm actually sorely disappointed. It's not anything to do with the pattern, it's all to do with the fact that after finally figuring out my gauge (which turned out to be size 2 needles, by the way), and finished the ribbing, and finally got started on the pattern part...I took a look at how much yarn I had left...and I don't think it's going to be enough to finish the whole hat. I am seriously bummed about that. I was so excited to have found the perfect pattern for my yarn from Edinburgh, and I may not have enough. A clear sign that I should have bought more while I was still there. ;) LOL We'll see what happens, though. I'm still not decided on whether or not I want to continue and see if I can make it or if I run out. If I were to do all that work and run out just before it could be finished, I think I would quite literally cry...but, as I said, we shall see...

Ahh, that's better...

Whew! Some of the pressure has been let off! I finished the round ripple tree skirt last night.

You can't tell from the pictures, very well, but the middle red, green and white section is done with the Red Heart Holiday Yarn...it's got silver sparkles in it...never again will I buy that yarn! It's too painful!!! The overall effect once it's done is nice, but in my opinion, not really worth it. My finger felt like steel wool was being rubbed across it. Ouch!

But as of this morning, it went off to join the other donations for the deployed troops on the front range. I didn't make it very large, but that's because their tree is only 4.5' tall...I hope they like it!

In other news, I finished another hat!

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and I've still not heard anything about S.P.E.W. through HSKS for this term, I've decided to do my own little chapter of S.P.E.W. I'm making hats free for cancer patients undergoing chemo, and I am also going to sell some on eBay, with the proceeds going to cancer research. Here are all the hats I've finished so far:

I also got my Trick or Treat package sent off to my Ravenclaw "spoilee" yesterday morning. My owl, Sylus, took off dutifully and purposefully. I hope they get it quickly!!! :) I can't wait to hear the reaction to my trick...it's absolutely priceless!

So now I'm just down to working on the Special Olympics scarves and finishing up on Draco's package! Yay! ::scampers off to work on said projects::

It's about darn time...

Finally, finally, finally, a project that I started in mid-June is about to be finished!!! A fellow mom who has a son and daughter-in-law in Iraq for the Army asked me to make them blankets after I had given her one. I had picked out the colors so fast, and actually found the green I used at the craft store on base. Maybe that was where I goofed up. I got the first one done relatively quickly. I was plugging away at the second one, and, horror of horrors, I ran out of the green!!! Eight rows away from being done, 3 of those rows being green, and I was out of the color I needed!!! I figured that, while it was irritating, it was no big deal. I'd just go back to the craft store on base and get more, right? If only! The green I bought on my first trip was the wrong shade. It was too dark. They were out of my forest green. And they don't place new orders until their supply is all but depleted. Even then, there was no guarantee that they would order the color I needed. So instead, I had to hunt a place down online that I could order it from. Thank goodness for Joann's!!! They had it, I ordered it, and about 6 weeks later, I got the yarn. Unfortunately, that put it too late to finish the afghan for the WIPs Wrestling I'd entered it into for the Ravelympics. I sat down to finally finish the blanket, and.....it was still the wrong color!!! At first I thought it was a dye lot issue, and if that were the case, I was completely and totally hosed. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that big of a color difference would not be a dye lot issue. It turned out that the yarn I got from Joann's was soft forest green, not forest green. It made a huge difference! I don't know if it was a mistake on my part or on theirs, but either way, I was a bit annoyed. Well, I placed the order again, quadruple checking that I ordered the right color...and it came in the mail yesterday!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!! DH wouldn't let me open the package until we got home from being out and about in Sacile, so I didn't even bother to try and get it from him until this morning. I was so happy when I opened the box and saw the right color!!! YAAAAAAY!!! I've already knocked one row out of the way and am on the second green row...then there's a bit of claret, soft navy, and natural business going on before the final round of green. And one row may not sound like much, but when you're working a round ripple that's this size, one row can take a good 20-30 minutes...I'm just so happy and relieved to finally be able to finish this project! I was beginning to think I wouldn't get it done before their deployment was over! LOL And now, back to my hooking and your regular scheduled programming.....

IT'S DONE!!!!!

I am soooooooooo excited and happy and thrilled and just.....I love the feeling of accomplishment when I finish something. It's indescribable. I finally finished my "Starry, Starry Night" blanket!!! I don't really like to work on a project for that long. Not when there's so much dead time in there where I don't even touch the project. (Like this time, the whole time Arick was home in the in between from Korea to Italy....didn't touch it. I barely touched it when I was in Colorado for Thanksgiving...then there's the whole moving thing...I've not done much with it during the moving process, either.) But now it's finally done! I only started it in October! LOL But I'm actually quite proud of it! I think it looks phenomenal. (I almost don't want to give it away....LOL) And it's huge! In fact, I went to take an overhead picture of it, and the camera was touching the ceiling before I could even get the whole blanket in the shot! LOL So I had to do one from an angle too, but then you can see that I couldn't get it to lay flat....lol But here are the pictures of it:



Another accomplishment.....I finished the pair of crocheted socks! My first ever attempt! I'm incredibly proud of how they turned out! I made them as a part of a crochet-along on Cafemom, and I decided that since my mother-in-law was the only one that I hadn't been able to find anything for at that time, and she's always cold, I figured it made sense to give her the slipper socks for Christmas! And I was right. :) Turns out, she was very pleased with them, and her reaction of "you made these?!" was one I love getting as much as I love the sense of accomplishment of finishing a project! (I need to get a picture with better lighting, because they look a lot darker than they really are, but here are a couple of pictures of the finished pair):



And here's a better picture of the actual color of them (back when I only had one sock done):



Needless to say, I'm incredibly satisfied with my latest creations, and am very much looking forward to starting and finishing whatever pops into my head next! Merry Christmas to all!

Almost....there.....

I'm so close to being done with the Starry, Starry Night blanket, it's unreal! Well, almost as in number of rounds I have to finish. (About 4.) Not so much, if you actually count the stitches....the row I just started the other night...well, let's just say that that round itself will be pushing 750 stitches....(744, to be exact) How crazy is that?! Now, I know there's some non-crafters out there saying, "uh...ok..." so let me put it this way: it's taking me about 30-45 minutes to do just one round. And I've got about 4 more to go. Yikes! I really wanted to get it done in time to send it to her for Christmas, but I don't see that happening. Because a) it most likely won't even be finished by then, but also b) it sure wouldn't get through the mail in time for Christmas and c) I don't have the money to send it right now, anyway! LOL And I won't until the next paycheck. (I get money in my account once a month...) *sigh* Oh well. I really could have had it all done and on it's way by now, but instead, I kept myself busy with this whole moving thing and visiting my family in Colorado for the last time (until who knows when), going to my husband's family's Christmas parties here in Oklahoma, oh, and don't forget our recent ice storm that threw everything (and I mean everything) off for about a week. And it's not like I have 2 toddler boys to take care of all day long, either. lol And they're actually clamoring for my attention right now, so it looks like I'm signing off for now...hopefully, the next time I post, it'll be to say "IT'S DONE!"

Starry, Starry Night

So I have a friend that absolutely fell in love with all the round ripple blankets I've been working on. I promised her one when I was done with all the prayer/Christmas blankets for those kids whose parents abandoned them. But now that I'm finished with those, I decided to go ahead with her round ripple. They usually only take me 2 or 3 days to do one. If I were able to sit down and crochet at will instead of having to chase around and feed and change and bathe the 2 rug rats I have....then it would only take me probably about a matter of 8 or 9 hours per blanket. Anyhow, when this friend and I had lived together, I had made her a pink blanket. And I don't mean just pink, I mean pink! There were at least 3 shades of pink. And that's my absolute least favorite color! LOL So she said she wanted pink and black. (Hey, at least there would be black to break up the monotony of pink this time!) But she changed her mind. She decided she'd rather have the color used in Van Gogh's Starry, Starry Night instead. I think I picked adequate colors....I guess I won't really be able to tell, though, until it's completed and I get the full effect of the blanket. I really hope it turns out well!!!

The Prayer Blankets

Since I've had people asking for the story behind it, here's what brought about this massive wave of prayer blankets I've been up to lately.

I made the first one when I'd heard from a friend at Cafemom about Sister Dennis losing her husband. I think I felt I kind of, in a way, identified with her kids. My childhood best friend (who I actually still speak to, to this day) lost her father when we were about 9 (she may have been 8). He father had battled cancer for years and he'd been doing well. He'd gone horseback riding and was thrown. I don't remember if his cancer came back then and it was the combination of the injuries from the horse accident and the cancer, or if was that he'd beaten the cancer and wouldn't you know a horse accident took his life. Either way, that's something that's pretty traumatizing for a child that young. (She also has a brother that's about 2 years younger than her.) So my heart broke for those children, and I just felt that God laid it on my heart to do something for them. I had JUST (and I mean JUST....as in earlier that day or the day before) seen a new crochet pattern that I'd wanted to try. So I made a prayer blanket. And, as I'd never met Sister Dennis, I met up with that online friend, Tara, to pass that along to the Dennis family.

When I met Tara, something about her captivated me. I'm not even sure what it was. There was.....SOMETHING. A silent crying out? I'm not sure. I do remember though, that I really wanted to give her a big hug. But I didn't because I had read her blog about being a germaphobe and not liking hugs too much. I mean, I give hugs freely anyway. As "hi's" and "good-bye's." But there was just something about her that made me want to just hold on to her and try to...maybe comfort (?) her. So instead, after seeing the comment she posted on the picture I posted of the Dennis' blanket about her wanting one, I decided I would make one for her, no matter how serious she was about wanting it. I got part way into it, and her Nannie died. It was the instant I heard that when the blanket it officially became a prayer blanket. Oddly enough, I'd already been praying over it as I was making it. But once that happened, I had so many more prayers for Tara, so much more urgency in getting it done. Only a couple of stitches separated the prayers, if that. They just kept coming out of me. And I think it was strategy on the devil's part that I couldn't get it to her right away.

Well, after I finished that one, there was another Cafemom friend that I felt I'd grown pretty close to. I decided to make her a blanket as well. I'd originally tried to come up with something creative to try and weave her family into it. I was thinking maybe stitching in her sons' names....but I couldn't leave out her grandson....but there's a grandson that's not hers by blood. What about him? And there were two or three other things like that. That family has been through so much. So I decided against the name idea. Then it hit me. They're Jewish and all have matching Star of David tattoos. I'd make a 6-point star blanket for her! That one ended up being HUGE. LOL To give you an idea, the first two blankets were about 40-ish inches across, point to point. Hers was close to 60 inches. It sounds kind of foolish to say that I just follow what the yarn does, but that's the best way to describe how God speaks to me in making it. Like Tara's. It was originally supposed to be a lot more purple, but green INSISTED on being the main color. I don't know why. Anyway, so I got part way into her blanket, and she finds out that she's not going to be able to make it to her son's wedding. Her oldest son. The first one to get married. They couldn't make it. (Her son and his now wife are active duty Army and getting deployed to Iraq about the time we're moving to Italy. They're stationed in WA state, and she's in OH.) Wow. Let me tell you. And then her second son's life got a little more complicated. The prayers wouldn't stop coming out.

So I finished the 6-point blanket and set it aside to send out when payday rolled around. Then there was another lady at the Cafe that had posted a blog saying she felt led to make prayer blankets. Talk about an epiphany!!! LOL I had such a one right then. I volunteered to help her. She's making them specifically for children with Nephrotic Syndrome. She said she felt led to make 3 girl and 9 boy blankets. I thought, "Hey, I can do a boy one. There's more of those to get done and I have more blue and green yarn than pink and purple." But God had a different idea. He led me to make a girl one. So I get about halfway through that one....and all heck broke loose for me. The overwhelming feelings and overinformation about what I needed to be in the middle of doing instead of just starting for us to go to our next duty station overseas. That kind of cemented to me that I NEEDED to be doing these prayer blankets, because I had to fight to get to work on it. Aidyn got sick. I had appointments right and left. A friend of mine and his wife separated and he was calling or texting me every spare second he had. (I had let him know that I was there for him to lean on. I hadn't quite expected that much of a response from him. LOL But my sister-in-law had said when she was going through her divorce, she spent HOURS on the phone with one of her friends, so....) I got a little further on the blanket. Then I saw a post in another group at the Cafe.

A lady in TX (who has an 4 y.o. daughter, 2 y.o. son and 5 week old daughter) was going to pick up her nieces and nephew for some time at their home....and walked in on her SIL having sex with some guy (NOT the husband....I guess it's commonplace for this couple to cheat) while the kids were in the other room playing. So she grabbed enough stuff to take the kids overnight. Went to take them home the next day, and the kids' mom was gone. Everything was moved out of the house, it was up for sale/rent. The mom completely DITCHED her own kids! I was in tears, reading this post. So without any extra clothes or diapers or anything, she took them back home with her. So now she has an 8 y.o. niece, 4 y.o. niece, 3 y.o. nephew, and 1 y.o. twin girl nieces, plus her 3 kids all living in her 2 bedroom trailer!!! I guess they worked it out now to where the kids' maternal grandmother (not this mom's mom....the kids' dad is her brother) is going to get full custody of the kids and move into a 3-bedroom trailer next to this other mom (who is also going to move up to a 3-bedroom) and they're going to raise the kids together. The thing she asked for above all else in this post was simply prayer. I got to messaging with her. She and her husband are going to Bible school to become ministers. So for their Christmas, I'm making each of these kids (all 8 of them) prayer blankets.

That's pretty much it! :)

The Home Stretch!

So I took onto myself making round ripple star afghans for 8 children for Christmas. As we're getting ready to move overseas for my husband's next duty station with the military, I really wanted to get them done before we left the States. And I'm almost done! I'm three quarters of the way finished with the 7th of 8 blankets! So close! But I'm having a hard time keeping motivated to finish them. I don't know why. I really do want to do this, but it's almost turning into a chore. I'm soooooo close, and the end is in sight. For both these blankets and for my husband coming home from his year tour in Korea. The end is in sight!.....But for some reason, those last few inches to the finish line look more like miles.........

5-point-star Dilemma

So I admit it. I'm a perfectionist. And this is not looking enough like the pictures of the lady who posted the pattern in her blog. So I'm taking it all apart and starting it over. (I know, I'm nuts! But I'm not satisfied with it. It's got to be redone.)

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So now I'm using an I hook instead of the H and not using any of the modifications to the shell stitch that I had done on the 6-point star. I'd thought the modifications would help it lay flat, when really all it did was make it look like less of a star. (At least to me, it did.) I'm only 8 rows in, and already it looks better to me!

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And now that I'm almost halfway done, it's looking sooooooooooooooo much better! It's taking more yarn with the larger hook and more stitches (and I knew it would), but it's well worth it. Even if I have to go out and buy more yarn to finish it (which, with my stash, I highly doubt I will), it's worth it to have a blanket that's done well.....Dang my perfectionism....