Lastly we made a pretty sweet card for Bug's Granddad. After tracing his hand to cut out the foam pieces and cardstock I helped Bug cut the long strips for the inside. We glued three sheets of paper together because Bug kept saying it was too short . . . I had to cut him off after we hit three. I added the yellow strip around the whole thing to keep the hands together. *Inside reads: "THIS MUCH!" |
Bug and I spent the week before Father's Day crafting. We've got it down to a science... Bug plays while I get things set up and I call him over when I got to a part that he could help with. He loves his safety scissors, helping with the gluing, & "coloring." I loved this card design so much I used it for my own father! This was another post I started abut a week ago...technical difficulties and life got in the way!
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Another month starts...time to learn from January's mistakes and make less of those for February. I really love the way my new pattern for my sister's legwarmers turned out. The only thing to decide right now is which way they should be when I close them up. I'm leaning toward vertical lines but I'm just not sure yet. I figure I'll wait until the month is almost up before I make the final decision...and maybe my sis will weigh in with her opinion by then. Anyway, I also added another crochet goal since the legwarmers went so quickly. For a while now I've been looking for camouflage yarn. I asked my friend, Jenna, what color scarf she would want if I made her one and she requested camouflage with possible accents of "safety orange" if I could find it. The orange was the easy part but none of the green & brown yarns looked right to me. I found one skein that I figured would have to do a couple weeks ago and have been looking for a second skein since then. I went to A.C. Moore on to use a 40% off coupon that was about to expire. I walked down the aisles not expecting to find the yarn for Jenna's but then I struck gold... That's right, it's for real camouflage yarn! So freaking perfect. Now I just have to find the right pattern and figure out where the orange is going to go. I'm thinking either fringe or a border. Any thoughts?
Beyond that crochet project I've got several other goals this month. First off, I'm going to start on the first of at least two short stories for the month. I've got a really sketchy idea for the story but I figure I'll just start writing and see where that takes me. I'll keep you guys updated on my word count and possibly the subject matter... Second, I've got a few websites I plan on updating/revising this month. One of those is for my sister but in order to get started on that one I need her to answer my fb message...hint hint if she's reading this! Last, I plan on conducting two family history interviews. One with my grandmother, Mimi, and the other with my father. I should have done Mimi's yesterday while she was over but the Super Bowl kinda made that not so possible. On that note, during the 3rd quarter the Super Dome (where the game was played in New Orleans) lost power for about 34 minutes. The Ravens had been dominating the game, which honestly made it not so interesting since I wasn't really rooting for either team, but when the power came back on the 49ers made an impressive comeback attempt. Unfortunately for the 49ers fans they didn't quite make it all the way and the Ravens won 34-31. I just wanted a good game and the second half was definitely that. I plan on giving all the crochet gifts I made last month to their owners soon and after I do I'll post up the pictures and patterns on my Brag Board! Bug is waking up so I'll say bye bye and catch you guys up on Wednesday!
Since Sunday is the day of rest I took the majority of the day to do just that. Wasn't feeling well and my wrists/fingers were aching slightly. Some of that is due to all the crocheting but the weather being so cold doesn't help at all.
While Bug napped today I started in on the first legwarmer. I'm not entirely sure about it yet. The pattern had me chaining so many to start then double crocheting for x number of rows before finishing it off by stitching it together to make the tube. I've done about half the rows required and I think it'll work out but I'm thinking I might add a cuff to the top and bottom but again, we'll see. It's kinda nerve wracking to start a pattern you've never tried before. You've got a picture in your head and on the pattern of how it's supposed to end up but the in progress can be kinda confusing. Just gotta push past it... After I posted the last blog I was able to finish the 16th row before I needed to head to bed. On Friday while Bug napped I made it to the last edging row before he started to wake up. Those four rows went extremely fast actually. It was a relief after what I've struggled with making this gift. I know in the end it will all be worth it though! When Bug woke up it had started snowing again. By the end of his snack there was about an inch or half inch on the ground and driveway. Not enough to go sledding again unfortunately but enough to play with. I got the shovel from the garage and we pushed it around the driveway in rows collecting snow. It was very very powdery so it came up easily. Bug loved it! I love watching him enjoy the snow. When I got home after work I didn't have time to start working on that last edging row instead I had to run out and get some baby gifts. My friend Judith's baby shower was Saturday and I pushed back getting a present for way too long. Thankfully the main roads were pretty much fine and I just had to take extra care on the neighborhood roads. I started out at Target. Judith had a little girl (she came early so the shower turned out to be after her birth) and I kinda went overboard with the adorable little girl clothes. But it was so much fun! After that I drove over to McKay's were I pick up several board books. They have an amazing selection for super low prices (some I bought were only 75 cents) and I love helping to build baby library's! When I finally made it home for the night I tried to find a gift bag to fit everything and failed. At first I kicked myself for not picking on up while I was at Target but then I saw some fabric bags hanging on my doorknob. My friend Dana is an amazing artist and seamstress and for MAGFest this year she made several things to sell at her own booth. Among them were these really cool bags. My favorite are her Mario Bros bags that have a large Mario Mushroom on them...honestly I cannot do them justice so head over to Dana's etsy shop, Creatively Tinkering, and check them out. I tried one of the mushroom bags first but it was too small so I moved on to the loot bag. Perfect fit! And Judith loved the bag and the presents! The baby shower was awesome. My friend Summer picked me up so we could carpool and the shower was at Judith's grandmother's farm near Leesburg, Va. Snow started falling when we got there and continued throughout the entire party. It fell super slowly so the picture it made outside was beautiful. Icing on top of the cake is that I won the door prize. They had everyone self address an envelope so Judith could send out her 'thank you' cards easier then during the gift opening portion they had Judith pull one envelope out and she picked out mine! I got a super cute travel mug and some packets of hot chocolate. It's so funny that this year a travel mug was one of the only things on my Christmas/Birthday wish list so now I've got two!
After Summer dropped me off back home I picked Kiki's present back up. The last edging row took longer than the previous four did combined but Kiki's present is finally FINISHED!! After I publish this blog I'll start on my sister's legwarmers. I'm thinking I might do a couple more searches before I settle on the right pattern. I've never made legwarmers before and since she lives in Long Beach, California I can't exactly get her to try them on while I'm making them. Although I guess I could make my mom model...hmm, we'll see. Oy vey. one of these days I'll get it right. The yarn I initially wanted to use for Kiki's present is not working out. I fell in love with the yarn the moment I saw it at The Red Thread a few weeks back. It's actually the banner photo at the top of this blog. You might be able to tell that the yarn changes from super thin to very thick which looks very cool and the color/sheen is perfect.
At first I thought it was just going to be a little harder to work with it but when I got to the 16th row of 18 I stopped and realized the yarn was not laying flat at all. And that's when I felt like crying. I pulled it back and figured out that I had completely misread the pattern on several rows. Yeah, wanted to cry again. Instead of attempting it again I went out a bought normal yarn and the progress is going so much faster this time. I plan on using the yarn I tried first at some point but I'll have to do a little research to figure out what pattern to use to make the most of that yarn. On Friday Bug turned 2. Kinda blows my mind that he's two already. On April 18th we'll celebrate our 2 year anniversary and I've loved every minute with him. Saturday my mom and I went back to Bug's house for his birthday party. We were happily surprised to see some friends down from New York and it was a great party. On Sunday I grabbed up my nephew since he didn't have school on Monday and his parents still had work. Yesterday my mom and nephew came with me to Bug's house. We got to start the day off a little late because Bug had a routine doctor's appointment. Again we got to see our friends from New York before they left for home. Our plan was to go swimming at a local aquatic club but that was squashed when we found out they weren't open for public swim in the morning. We then decided to try the play area at Ikea. I have very fond memories of the ball pit there when I was a kid. No such luck. First off Bug is in the process of being potty trained (and rocking it!) but he's not there yet and my nephew was 2 inches too tall. Instead of trying at a new place we walked around Ikea. My nephew and Bug had a great time trying out the furniture and then the toys in the kid area. And when we got back home Bug basically passed out after lunch. Today we got back into our routine. During Mason's nap I got several rows of Kiki's gift behind me. It looks great. I'm only on row 7 but already it looks longer and lays like it should so that's a huge relief. And maybe it's because I've basically done the whole thing once before or maybe it's because I'm using the right yarn this time but I find the pattern a whole lot easier to follow. I actually don't have to check the pattern every few stitches for once... So that's the long & short of it. I sincerely hope I don't keep this kind of thing up all year! Right after I posted my last blog I started in on Katii's scarf. I got half of what was left done before I had to pack it in for bed. Yesterday during Bug's nap I finished both Katii's & Jamie's scarves. Whew! Not only did I finish those two scarves but I was able to add three rows to my gift for Kristy before Bug needed to be woken up. That's where my progress stopped for the day because right after work I headed to Jammin Java in Vienna, Va to see Pierce & Grace Pettis. On the way I stopped by Haymarket to pick up Tam then Leesburg to get Erin. My cousin Julie met us at Jammin Java to finish out our group.
Today it was back to the grindstone. I made good progress on Kristy's gift...I got about 1/3 done during Bug's nap, which is good considering I have to refer to the pattern almost every other stitch. I didn't get much done after work again today because my nephew had his first every choral concert. It was adorable. I'm thinking I'll make it through at least two rows before I head to bed. And I don't want to go to bed too late. We'll see!
I have no excuse on Katii's except to say that when I bought her yarn I bought one skein of sparkly purple on a whim and then when I asked her she said she wanted that to be the main yarn. I really thought I would have had enough. No such luck. When it comes to Jamie's I used a sparkly grey (gray?) that I've had in my stash for at least a year. I'm fairly sure I had two skeins way back when but used the first up along the way. Sonofabitch.
The moral of the story: Always buy two skeins. At least two skeins. When I ran out of yarn for Katii's I set it aside with Jaime's unfinished scarf and moved on to the gift I'm making for my aunt Kristy. Kristy, my mother's sister, is one of the most loving, generous, and kindhearted women I've ever known and I'm blessed to be able to call her family. I won't share exactly what I'm making for her on the off chance she's reading these posts so she'll be surprised when she gets her gift in the mail. I will say that the pattern I'm using for her gift is way more complicated than I've used before. Most of the time the patterns I use have at the most five different instructions that get repeated until you reach the end. This pattern has almost no duplicated rows. That means I can't run on auto-pilot, which isn't a bad thing...just takes some getting used to. After work this evening I went out a remedied my earlier mistake. Of course I had to go to both Michaels and AC Moore because it's raining and nothing can be simple. Oy. Here's hoping I don't repeat this mistake too often. I knew I'd hit this at some point...the scarf that I'm working on is for my awesome friend Jamie. While it's a gift (late Christmas) she already knows it's coming and picked out the yarn so I'm not spoiling anything by sharing the picture and story.
The pattern for the cascade scarves I've been using says to chain 170. Most of the time I follow patterns. Most of the time that works out just fine. But I like my scarves long and so some of the time I add a few chains on to the start or keep going for a few more rows. I've been adding several chains to this particular pattern but with the last one, for my friend Jade, I joined the ends to make it an infinity scarf. The longer I look at it the more I love the look it creates. The cascade scarf itself is very pretty but I personally think it's even better in the circle. So here's the problem. I started Jamie's scarf yesterday while Bug napped. The biggest downside to taking care of a child is the very real possibility that each time he gets sick I could get sick. As of Jan 18th I'll have been with Bug for 1 year 9 months and up until this week he hadn't gotten me seriously sick. This week he gave me the flu. I still love my Bug even when he's giving me bugs...bad pun, I know. Yesterday I was starting to feel it during his nap while I was chaining Jamie's scarf so instead of adding my extra chains I stopped at 170. I didn't notice my mistake until earlier this afternoon. I had the day off work because Bug is with his paternal grandparents, thank goodness cause this flu is kicking my butt. When my momma got home from work she showed me that she was wearing the cascade scarf I made her for Christmas and asked if I could join the ends to make it an infinity scarf since she liked Jade's so much. At that point I was starting in on the second to last row on Jamie's scarf so I paused for a few moments and got the yarn for my momma's. When I laid down my momma's scarf next to Jamie's I realized just how short Jamie's was and I wanted to hit my head against the wall. Instead, I finished my momma's then pulled back Jamie's scarf. Which means just a few hours ago I started Jamie's scarf all over...when it was basically finished. I love and hate that. Hate that I've wasted hours almost finishing a scarf that has to be started over but I love that I'm going to make it right this time. And I'll love it even more when it's finished. I'm gonna keep on working, hopefully get it at least halfway done tonight but first I've gotta go take more meds. Fingers crossed this flu goes away real quick. Much thanks to my sis, Erin, and Fiona Apple for my title today. It's funny that Erin picked the line holding that phrase to put as her facebook status today. See, back at Christmastime I received a brand new laptop computer as my Christmas bonus...seriously, my job rocks. It came with Windows 8 which has many new features and one of those happens to be a free subscription, at least for right now, for Xbox Music. With that I can type in any artist and hear music just from that one person/band or pick the dj option where the program also plays music similar to the artist/band I selected and I've been listening to straight Fiona for the past two days actually. When I'm crocheting it provides a great rhythm and I can sing along without losing count. When I'm just watching Bug, almost 2 yr old little guy that I've been nanny to since he turned 3 months -not his real name = duh, it's nice background music, with little to no swear words depending on the song playing, that we can dance to in between playing with the million toys this kid owns. Speaking of my day job, one of the big perks is the downtime. At least at this moment Bug is still taking a fairly long nap for me...up to 4 hours! During that time I've been able to bang out a lot of projects or at least a lot of progress on projects. Yesterday I used it to complete the second of my four cascade scarves, today I made it almost to the last row of my third cascade scarf. Now this downtime has a downside, (see what I did there?) from time to time Bug gets me so tired during the morning that all I want to do during those hours is sleep. Most of the time I push through that cause I suck at taking naps...I almost always wake up more groggy than I was before and that is not a good thing when you've got to take care of a kid, but it can take a little while for me to buck up & get to it.
So as of tonight (provided I actually finish messing around with this damn site) I'll have four of the six scarves finished with the fifth scarf started. If I can actually keep a deliberate pace then I will actually meet my goal for this month. Money can't buy happiness but it can buy yarn which is sort of the same thing... So I meant to post every other day and I missed the 5th. I'm gonna blame it on the fact that it was Friday, I got off fairly late, and I was exhausted. Thankfully I did not fall behind in my crocheting. Thursday I finished my first scarf while watching West Wing and some movies on netflix on the big tv. My folks were out of town for a wedding which meant I had the house to myself and it was nice to spend it just working on my scarves and watching some tv while the dogs slept underfoot. I really got into a groove starting by finishing off the scarf that only had last touches to do and moved on to my second scarf which was over halfway done. This scarf is a gift for my friend Tam and it's honestly been a real pain in my ass. I pulled it back three or four times before I settled on a final design and then at the last minute I changed it again...at least I didn't have to pull it back and start over and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Lunchtime on Friday I met up with three other ladies who are participating in, what Jules calls, the Year of Writerly Pursuits at Wegmans in Fairfax. The plan is to meet once a month to check in with progress and such. It was really neat to hear what their plans are for the month and hear their reactions about my plans. Jules also set up a wiggio which I had never heard of before but turns out it's kinda like a message board, calendar, email thing so we can all keep in touch. And I like the fact that we've separated from the NaNo website. After lunch I headed back home for a few hours and got started on my next scarf. By 5pm I had to leave to head out to Sweetwater in Sterling to meet up with Erin & Liz. They are both amazing ladies who offered to help me get an entertainment I found on craigslist from Alexandria. Dinner was amazing as always. Seriously, Sweetwater is my favorite. After dinner we took the long way to Alexandria since we finished way earlier than I had anticipated. When we finally made it to the house we were picking the entertainment center up from we found out that the way that my car curves slightly in the back meant that we could not get the damn thing in the car. Completely disappointing. The night wasn't a complete wash though cause I got to hang out with two awesome ladies. Take two happened Sunday. Liz & I met back up and took her van to pick up the entertainment center, good thing cause it took up the entire back of the van. Erin had to work so she couldn't join us which also meant that when we got it back to my house we had to leave it on the front porch. I got more than halfway done with my third scarf before my folks got home. My father, just so you know, is Superman and a genius. He turned it upside down and pushed it up the stairs alone. I took a break from crocheting to watch the Redskins in the playoffs. It was a game we ended up losing and RGIII, who was playing with an injured knee, took a bad twist trying to get a crappy snap. Sucks cause I know that we would have had that game if he was playing at 100% but I am so excited for the future of Redskins football.
After the game I set up the entertainment center in my room and I love how it looks and that it gives me more storage space. Before I went to bed I was able to finish up my third scarf. That means I've got three more scarves, two legwarmers, and a shawl left for this month and I'm feeling great about that. Tonight I'll go to Barnes & Noble like ever other Monday to hang out with the rest of the Borders Refugees. I love Mondays for this very reason! My plan for tonight is to ball the rest of the yarn I'll be using this month so I can get that out of the way and start on the fourth scarf. |