Two on Tuesday

Things making me happy as I head to bed this evening:

1.  time to crochet after work this evening, allowing me to catch up on Mood Blanket!

Here's my hexagons from week 5

 Still not fully caught up for January, but here's where I now am!  Totally having some anxiety over the order when it comes time to start connecting these - between similar colors and patterns that I don't want next to each other, I'm not sure what I'll end up doing!

2.  Our puppies are just the BEST

Osa and Copper were both very interested in hanging out with me while I crocheted this evening

Clearly, they were exhausted after a day of playing in the snow

Can't imagine he was chilly when laying that close to the fire, but Copper found himself the warmest location he could! LOL he cracks me up

Wouldn't it be great if there were enough hours in the day that I could work, crochet and still be able to take pictures when it's daylight vs. everything being dark, fuzzy and not quite the right color overall?  #agirlcandream

Sneak-Peak Sundays

I thought it would be fun to share glimpses into the projects that I'm currently working on; new patterns or the just variety of things I'm working on.  

In the past I haven't been great about blogging over the weekend, and I often work on and finish new projects without ever finding the time to post on here....

Here's to hoping that these sneak-peaks hold me a little more accountable ;-)

I worked on a couple of different projects this weekend, but here's what I'm working on tonight.  New [to me] pattern, and I'm loving how it's turning out!

Do you think it's genetic?

My mom and I have joked for years about the number of "projects" my Grannie starts, or purchased over the years w/o finishing the one she's currently working on.  I seem to have picked up this trait from her for I often find myself thinking about the next thing I want to make before the project I'm working on is finished!  What's worse is when I let these thoughts get the best of me and I put down when I'm currently working on/finishing and go find new yarn from the closet!  This past weekend is the perfect example of this:

Now don't be fooled.  The ends have not been woven in, and it has not yet been blocked.  All I did was tuck in ends where they could not be seen, and placed it nicely for an early morning photo opportunity.  I LOVE the colors and think the pattern turned out great, which is why I wanted to share today.  I just think that the fact that it's 80 degrees and sunny here today means I'm not dying to wear this like I was over Labor Day when it was 50 and rainy in WNY.  That, and I hate weaving in ends!

Once I got my fall scarf off the hook on Saturday morning, I quickly pulled out my new "Guilder blue" yarn.  I love this shade of blue - hell I'm wearing it right now!  Ok, I'm sure many of you, well all of you who are NOT from Jamestown, NY are saying to yourself, "what the hell is Guilder blue?!?"  This! - below, this is my beloved Guilder blue:

Fine - call it Royal blue if you want to, but my brain doesn't associate those words with a color as well as Guilder blue does!  After all the ugly attempts I made to produce a fall scarf with ILTY, I'd all but given up on having a Guilder blue scarf.  Then, over Labor Day I was in Walmart and saw the above Red Heart Shimmer - a light bulb went off right there in the craft department and I knew I'd found just what I needed!  I'd been thinking about hook size, pattern and width all last week while I was "finishing" up the scarf above and I'd barely set that one down before I'd pick this up and starting chaining to my desired width!  I actually think that after a testing of proper length on the first scarf in the bathroom mirror, I stopped and found the new yarn on my way back to the couch to add a few more rows!  The Red Heart Shimmer is working up nicely in my favorite pattern from Marie Anne.  I think I chained 30 (or maybe it was 40...can't remember) instead of the suggested 20 and I think it's gonna be great!  I even sent my mom to pick up more in the same dye lot and ship to me so I could keep the color the same.  Unfortunately, this is a bit difficult to work on at night.  The lighting in my living room is just not bright enough for the darker color, finer yarn and H hook.  This means I only can work on it Saturday and Sunday mornings sooooooooooooooooooo

I naturally started working on something else last night!  I know, it's a sickness, medication should be administered.  I dug this yarn out of my stash on Saturday night when I realized I couldn't see the Guilder blue in the evening, and I have probably tried 15 different patterns, hooks, widths, etc and hated every one of them!  I'm still not 100% on this, but am hoping that as I go it gets less bumpy (and that blocking in the end will also help).  This is actually what I'm using for the Crochet Along (CAL) that I signed up for.  Ok, so I'm already a week a head of Rachel's schedule, but I already know how to crochet, and I had the pattern sitting on the couch with  me last night (addicts always have a reason for the way they act right?).  I just couldn't get the Red Heart "berries" variegation to look nice with anything else so I gave it a try.  Actually, I first tried with 2 strands (because I happen to have 2 skeins of this) with an N, then M, then K hook before deciding I hated it.  I frogged it and started single strand with my favorite K.  No, it's not really the pattern for the CAL, but I struggled through finding a way that I liked the pattern, and the yarn so I find that a plus.  It's also going to be a perfect birthday/Christmas gift for someone I know who loves "raspberry"!

Patriotic Crochet-a-Long

I came across a GREAT blog last week and I couldn't resist trying out this Star Coaster pattern!  Now I must admit, I see loads of great patterns online, but most of the time, I print them, get home and I find them impossible to follow for one reason or another.  That or the pattern is so close to something I already [at least think I] know how to do well, that I just use the pattern that I've already committed to memory.  This past Friday night that changed for once (or maybe for good!)  These stars are so easy to make!  With just one color they only take me about 10-15 min to make (I'd say 15 if we wanted to include the time it takes me to complain about weaving in ends and then actually doing it).  Megan talks in her post about having until July 4th to make the 4 coasters....well over the weekend, I not only made a set in R-W-B but I made a 2nd set in my favorite shades of pink!

These have been wrapped and sent home to my Grannie has an early 4th of July gift.  She decorates her house in red white and blue for the summer and I just know she'll love these!
Those who are Guilder Alumni reading this - am I the only one that really thinks the ones with the blue on the outside looks like it belongs on a Guilder costume?  LOL not sure why I think that on one but not the other but I see what I see :o)
I didn't have all 3 colors in cotton for these, so the Red and Blue are RHSS and the white is the speckled ILTY with the silver thread.  Really adds something extra to them!

Set #2 are not quite finished yet (as you can see, I've left my "favorite" part yet to do!).  I actually made these ones first because the cotton was close by.  One of the veregated ones I tried to use a magic circle on thinking I could get the center hole smaller.  The whole is just as big regardless and it actually made the coaster a bit "flimsy".  Now I know.  The plan is to have these finished up and wrapped to give my Mom while I'm home over the weekend.  She was here this past weekend and has already seen them, but it'll be a surprise for her none the less!

I got to work this a.m. and ordered some veregrated R-W-B IKTY from Hobby Lobby and then loads of cotton in new shades (well new to me) from JoAnns so I can continue to produce these!  I don't think I've ever made 8 of anything without hating that I was stilling making them so I I think I'll keep going and stock up on gifts for use throughout the year!


As for my other crochet-a-long that I mentioned last week, here's my progress on my ripple:

This little Swedish girl is LOVING the color combo and while I didn't put any work into it until this a.m. before work, I plan to make some progress this week while I'm waiting for my new stash for the Stars to come in the mail!  This one started with Pammy Sue's ripple pattern.  This is also a perfect example of starting with a pattern on find in a blog, and frogging it to use a pattern I'm more comfortable with!  Pammy Sue yours that you posted looks great, and the pattern makes sense to me, but I was crocheting too slow trying to remember what I was doing, which was just about enough to drive me crazy! :-P

the start of something new (and big!)

I seem to be in a bit of a "funk" as far as getting going on a project since the holidays.  yes, that sounds ridiculous, it's almost March and I'm still not over all the craziness that was last minute crafting for Christmas.  Forget about getting up early to continue the crocheting to the Today show before work - most days I'm lucky if I wake up in time the shower...don't worry I've moved to showering at night and wearing my hair up  most days, I promise I don't smell funny.

I also keep realizing that I never posted pictures of Jon's finished blanket.  I finished it towards the end of January while Jon was in Belize but this is what happens when I decide to want better quality pictures on my camera vs. my phone (i.e. I never upload the pictures onto my computer so that I can share them).  In case you haven't noticed, I never blog on the weekends, I'm rarely on my laptop at night or on the weekends.  After spending 40+ hours a week starting at this box at work, I have zero desire when I get home at night.....has made some of the wedding planning a bit tricky, but I'm trying to be better and at least continue the planning at night when I get home!

So this is already getting a bit long winded.....sorry about that.  The point of my title today is that I think I didn't a bigger project to really be excited about!  I made some scarves for me in January and did finish up Jon's blanket.  Then February has been a bit of a mess.  I made the birthday presents I showed you all in my last post, but other than that all I've really done since re-organizing my yarn stash is keep wanting to make something with the yarn I've rediscovered, but never get started, finish something or have the energy for everything in between.  I just have so many great ideas while I sit here on my lunch each day.  I print patterns and go home in the intentions of making it a better night.  Then I get home, have dinner and I can't make the yarn colors work for the pattern I'm looking at.  You saw my stash, I have no good reason to buy ANY yarn right now.  So I give up, curl up on the couch with Jon and just try to relax from the craziness that is work in 2011 and wedding planning at the same time (seriously, planning a wedding that's happening 400 miles from where you work and live is more than a full time job, and I already had one of those before getting engaged) 164 days to go and every day it's always something new.  I'm trying to stay positive and enjoy it while it lasts, I'm only doing this once and don't want to look back and regret not enjoying the planning.

Ok, honestly, I'm not going to ramble on anymore about the afghan I started last night.  I have no pictures to show, it's only 2 1/2 rows and still the first color of the pattern.  It took about an hour of online searching to come up with this baby, and now I'm looking forward to working on it more and seeing how it looks in my colors of ILTY (which was purchases to be a blanket back in August....no pattern in mind other than a ripple back in August so I'm pretty happy with what I picked).

I really think working towards something bigger like this for me is going to be great.  Jon constantly expresses how much he likes the blanket I made him (honest I'll get pictures up one of these days) and I really enjoy using it.  I'm hoping to enjoy having something this special made by me for me and that this will help me pick it up each day and work on it just a bit more.

Happy Wednesday everyone!  I'm enjoying how fast the week is flying by when I didn't work on Monday....now, if I only had all the work I need to have done at this point done!

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Sorry to have disappeared since the start of 2011 (really before Christmas since I was home) but between the holidays, travel and then trying my darnest to get caught back up at work I've had NO TIME to ramble!  I've still been crocheting, and taking some pictures, just no time to tell you all about it!  Most of my crocheting has been happening in the mornings vs. at night after work.  My late hours in the office last week meant I had no energy after my evening commute.  It also seems that after getting up 30-60 min. early most mornings in December I now can't get out of that habit!  I've slept in a couple of days this month but usually when I do I half pout as I leave for working looking fondly at my yarn on the couch and then I spend most of my day at work  (the spare seconds that I can find) looking at patterns online, reading about all the wonderful crafting you are all up to and ordering yarn online (which is RIDICULOUS!  the last thing on the planet I need to do right now is order MORE yarn!!)  So, I get up and crochet in the mornings so that I can get my "fill" and am more productive in the office.

This morning I finally pulled these back out for the first time since I worked on them at Christmastime

This is my first attempt at mittens, crocheted or otherwise and they were going along really well my last night/morning in Busti.  Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to finish them before we had to drive back to MD so into a bag they went along with a print out of the pattern and chicken scratch notes on a paper towel of all things.  In the time between returning to MD on 1/2 and this morning (1/12) I never once get them out of their plastic bag...I barely even thought about them.  I had moved onto this knitting/new challenges "obsession" and wanted to challenge myself with something new.  Yes, mittens were also a new adventure but I just have had too many ideas rolling around in my head of projects I want to make, things want to try/revisit and things I want to keep for me...it's just too much all at once!
This of course means that when I opted to try and work on these this morning the chicken scratch paper towel "note taking" was hard to decipher and by the time I left for work I realized that the 10 or so rows I'd crocheted up past the thumb gusset were wrong and will have to be pulled out tonight.  I just need to make sure this actually happens tonight while it's all still fresh in my head.  Besides we got about 2" of snow last night and it would be nice to enjoy a lovely winter item such as jacquard pink mittens while the weather's still right!

My other "work in progress" (which is actually non-existent now...) is a knitted, yes you read that correctly KNITTED ribbed scarf!

This no longer exsists.  While the Vanna's Choice yarn does still exsist but it's been frogged and wound back into a ball that was thrown into a bag of yarn that (still) needs to be put away.  On Friday night (after a date night downtown, where I came home with this to help fine-tune my new obession, I got distracted while watching Jon play Mario Kart and inadvertently added a stitch.  I've read in the book how to rip out a couple of rows or drop a stitch to fix this sort of problem, but unfortunately I couldn't actually FIND where the added stitch happened.  So it was frogged.....all of it.  It was wound up to be put away due to company on Sunday.

I still have plans to make this scarf and it's going to be knit and ribbed (I first attempted a crocheted rib back on like 1/3 but was unhappy with what I was getting), just not with this yarn.  It'll also be "Guilder blue", but I'm waiting on an online order from Hobby Lobby to arrive with some more yarn to try for this instead.  This order had to happen because I ran out of yarn for the one below!  It's also much longer than that now.  This is what I worked on over the weekend while watching the breaking news reports from AZ.  It looks great and I can't wait to start wearing it, but it's too short right now.  So the Hobby Lobby order was placed on Saturday afternoon with this, the blue and some other goodies which were shipped out this a.m......hoping to have by this weekend but given the crazy East Coast weather right now I'm not holding my breath.

I also started (and finished) an infinity scarf for myself (started it when I ran out of the yarn above)  I don't have a picture because I got all the ends woven in this a.m. and threw it on as I walked out the door.  I can't remember the brand of yarn used either, but it came from Hobby Lobby (not ILTY) and is a Bamboo blend in cream.  I used the same pattern as the black Infinity I made for my boss' birthday.  I wasn't 100% sold when I started it, and kept asking Jon what he thought.  I think it's a success though because it's hanging with my coat in the office today and 3 people have stopped and asked me if I made it, told me how pretty it was and told me I should sell them because they would totally buy one!  I guess it's not too shabby after all :-)  This also tells me that I really need to get my b-u-t-t in gear and get an Etsy site up and running!

So that's all for now - I'm going to try my best to keep updating and blogging more than once a week as it makes my posts shorter.....I like to write here on my lunch break, but I have to actually take my lunch break for that to work!

Join in the fun!! (click on the picture below to see what the rest of us are working on....)  What are you working on?

WIP - Election Night recap

I made the trip to AC Moore on Monday evening for more Vanna's Choice Baby (Lamb) but thanks to a ridiculous night of DC traffic it was 8:30 before I got in the door and changed out of my suit...just to find out that I had NOT taped DWTS!!! I sat down quickly and started watching and eating what was left of my dinner - I really wanted to get started on crocheting! At this point I should have had an hour and a half of uninterrupted crocheting before Jon was home from class. It seems that boy has a 6th sense about needed attention as soon as I'm focused and putting work into a yarny project...

Turns out that little was crocheted before he was home (2-3 lines tops) because I ended up dropped everything into my lap as soon as the dancing commenced. Some weeks I only glance up from my project but for some odd reason this week I just couldn't bring my eyes away from the TV as soon as they were dancing again, good or bad!

Thanks to Election Day and Election night results with friends yesterday evening, I had myself a good long chunk (like 3 hours) to crochet away. Once I was home and the apt was picked up to a point where we wouldn't be embarrassed by anyone coming over, we quickly had dinner, I got myself a drink and started crocheting.

Somewhere around 10:45 after a drink and a glass of wine I was too sleepy to keep going, it's still a work in progress so it's my WIP this Wednesday. Here is the picture I stopped and took this a.m. before leaving for work:

I only have 3 more things to say on this today:

1. I LOVE THIS BLANKET! Just becoming obsessed with how pretty the colors are together...

2. I seem to find working on this in the mornings IMPOSSIBLE since saying that I would starting doing that. The temperature in my apartment has finally regulated itself with the change of seasons and it's a nice cool temperature in my bedroom every morning and all I ever want to do it wrap myself up in the comforter and stay there forever! Today was the worst day yet this week....I could have stayed there forever (or at least until I was ready to crochet!)

3. My lack of morning crocheting and need to clean in the evenings means I am longing for the weekend so I can reunite with my new favorite project that I'm going to have a hard time giving up this Christmas season!

Oh and Kait's coming to visit so yea! There's that to look forward to as well :-)