Oh the Drama

Yup.  Who knew that picking up something I'd gifted and taken back to finish 2 months ago was going to cause me such stress.  Crocheting is supposed to de-stress me for crying out loud!

You would have also thought that since I knew I was going to be giving this away and eventually getting it back to finish that I would have taken some notes about hook size, turning chains, etc.  Did I? Nope.  You know why?
1.  It was 2 days before my wedding that I was weaving in ends and the day before my wedding that I was wrapping the gift.  Even if I had made a note about hook size, I likely would have lost it between the wedding, honeymoon and unpacking.
2.  I told myself that I would not forget that it was my favorite green lighted crochet hook.  I mean I kept the 3 colors of yarn bagged together (mostly because this stayed at my parents until I was home Labor Day weekend vs. lugging with me on the honeymoon when I didn't have the project to work on!)

Should have been soooooooooo easy last night at 8:00 when DWTS started and I got my butt in gear to crochet.

Turns out that my lighted J hook and lighted K hook are "shades of green"

damn.it.

Worst design idea ever.  At least if you're going to have 2 shades of green make one like a F and the other a K - that I could tell the difference on when looking at a project I haven't touched in 3 months.  frick

So, I did a row of white with the K, started the first row of veregated with the K, decided it was wrong and switched to the J for that row, the 2nd row of veregated and started the next white row before thinking it was too tight.  I switched back to my K and did the rest of the white and 1+ row of yellow before my 2 hours were up.  You can't really tell the difference and I'm still not 100% sure which I was using!!  I even got really anal and tried to measure the height of my stitches (during the stretch with the J) but because this has been wrapped, gifted, used, returned to me and moved around my apt. for a month and a half the older stitches have sort of settled and it's impossible to tell.  Everything is measuring about the same so  I'm sticking with the K at this point unless I get further and start to see the blanket grow.  The 2 rows of J just feel a little tight.  Not enough to frog them cause you'll never be able to tell once it's finished, but they're not as "squishy" - seriously, that's the technical term for determining correct hook size.

You can tell what's new by the tails.  Doesn't look like much for 2 hours of work (minus the time I stopped to watch them dance, Maks' ridiculous meltdown and wine).  I obvi did all the way across each row....Hopefully now that I'm more settled I'll get more done tonight!

What ELSE have I been up to you ask?

Seems I'm in the business of making flowers

No clue what these are for really.  It started with one for a coaster at my office in fall colors and turned into many over the weekend while playing with different colors and trying to see how to make them bigger or smaller.  The biggest one was just made last night after DWTS for my work coaster and is here today.  The smaller one of the same color was sent via "snail-mail" to my Momma to use as a Fall coaster.  Jonathan's suggestions as I took pictures this morning were to put on hats or scarves which were the exact same ideas I'd already been having.  Need to master making them a bit smaller still to do a variety on a scarf and I'm thinking now that I've gone bigger I could probably do smaller with success!  I also thought the purple and pink one would be cute on a headband for a little girl.  Anyone interested?  I'd happily take orders for Christmas presents and my prices are reasonable - leave a comment (or send me an email).

My Sunday afternoon trip to AC Moore meant 3-Pound of Love colors for Christmas presents, some other yarn found while browsing (so I obviously needed for Christmas presents) AND a pretty awesome (at least I think so) bag of mill ends!  I loved the shade in this 1 lb bag so much that I started something for me on Sunday night:

I'm getting my own Time-out Cowl!  yeah!

You can't see the detail in the yarn with this horrific cell phone photo while hovering over my chaise on a cloudy morning while already late for work, but there is a thin shimmer through this chunky yarn AND pink sequins!  Seriously, it doesn't get much better than that!  I'll be sure to keep the quality of the above picture in mind when I take another one for an update and will get more detail to share!


On a slightly more random note.  I am in search of some good trivia questions!  I'm working with a co-worker on this team "stress-breaker" and we're doing trivia.  There will be pumpkin-y baked goods made by me and prices of the crafty variety to help the team "de-stress" during year end.  Please leave a comment with good trivia you have to share - we're learning so much just in pulling these questions together!!