Yarnification

Last night I got the first strip of seven squares for the wine & roses afghan joined. Then I laid the the strip out on the bed and found that it was just too long. I measured the bed first, then went with seven by seven 12″ squares because I thought six by six wouldn’t give enough overlap, and I do not enjoy wrestling for the covers. But I was counting on the 12″ squares staying that size, more or less. They would have if I’d edged them with sc and then whipstitched them, but I’m using the flat braid joining method and with the size hook I’m using, that makes the squares close to 13″ when all is said and done, adding about 6-7″ across the strip. I folded back one square and found out that six would be just right, both across and lengthwise.

So I’m going to un-join the strip I’ve already done (should be no trouble; I’d worked in the ends on the squares themselves but not the ends I made when I joined them) so I can rework the design. I’m now planning to make it six squares by six squares, laid out like so:

I honestly like the original layout a little better, but there’s no way to get close to it with a 6×6 layout since there’s no center square. After going through a bunch of possible layouts, this was the one I like best, so I’m going with it. (I gave about ten seconds’ thought to trying to unwork the ends from the finished squares and make them one round smaller so I could go with the original design, but, well, no.)

The silver lining here is that I’m a lot closer to done than I was before I rethought the design. I only need 36 squares now (20 in claret and 16 in country rose), not 49. I’ve got ten done in country rose and almost five in claret, so I’ve only got a little over 21 squares (plus edging/joining) to go.

Well, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much to say about my projects the past few days since I’ve been working on the wine & roses afghan to the exclusion of everything else since I finished the belt. I’m also woefully behind on my blog subscriptions. The new Crochetville board is such a joy to use that I’ve been spending most of my online time there since it opened up.

I’ve also been feeling a little run-down, sleeping more than usual and struggling to get my work done, so I’ve been feeling a little rushed and behind on things in general. (Well, more so than usual, that is.) I’m on the mend now, though, and with any luck my energy level will be back to normal before long.

But I thought I’d drop in here and post this. Check it out, I’ve won a Major Award! (Well, not that kind, but I couldn’t resist the link.)

I won this through some drawing I entered. It’s got all these adorably girly tools. When I started going through it I immediately squealed, “Oh, how cute!” to which Don replied, “Yeah, that’s the first thing I look for in a hammer.” There’s a tape measure, a hammer, a screwdriver (with two sizes of standard heads, two sizes of Phillips heads, and two nut driver sizes), a level with a detachable mini-level in it, a bag of assorted hardware (mostly of the picture-hanging variety), and an 84-page booklet on simple home repair for soft flowers such as myself. (Remind me to tell you all the “soft like a flower” story sometime. In retrospect it’s pretty funny, though at the time it was the closest I ever came to actually murdering a customer during all my years in retail.)

There’s also that cute little zippered bag, which I’m probably going to use to tote my smaller crochet projects around/keep the cats out my projects seeing as it’s a touch classier than a grocery sack.

Here’s the best photo I could come up with for the belt. It just did not want to have its picture taken! All the other ones I took were really blurry or too dark to see anything.

It’s done in RH Tiki (Naturals) and Aunt Lydia’s denim (black), one strand each. I ended up not using the pattern I started out with and just did 5 sc per row until it was the right length. Well, I hope it’s the right length, since I couldn’t measure Sara to find out for sure. I planned at first to fringe it but then decided against it since I think she might like it better without fringe. It’ll go out in the mail tomorrow—I hope she likes it!

Thanks to Deneen and Trish I knew to let Adagio know I’d linked to them, and they sent me some free tea :) They sent it pretty fast, too—I was surprised. It showed up in today’s mail.

There are little tins of oriental spice (which I tried as my wake-up tea today and really liked), cream, mango, and strawberry and also some some paper filters, which will be nice when I don’t want to have to be bothered with cleaning out the tea ball afterward.

In crocheting news, I finished the belt but still need to take a photo of it. I’ll try to get to that shortly & post it tomorrow—I’m hoping to get it mailed off tomorrow. I did take a photo, but it came out awful, so when I get a few minutes I’ll try it again. It’s a moot point right now, though, since I’m having a little trouble with my web host—I can’t seem to get an FTP connection to update my project status bars, so I wouldn’t be able to upload the photo just now anyway. Weird. I was able to upload the tea photo a couple of hours ago with no problem.

I’ve also got seven squares done for the afghan, with four of them edged/joined. But I goofed with the edging/joining of the last square to the strip I had going; I did it off-kilter so I need to frog that part and re-join it. Oops! With this project, I’m being good and weaving in ends as I go along. After all those ends I had after leaving them till the end on the throw rug I made a while back, I’m trying to change my ways so I don’t have all that tedious work left for the end. We’ll see if I keep it up…

I also used a little of that birthday money to order a 4-ounce tin of cinnamon tea from Adagio since I’ve been hearing such good things about them. It came about an hour ago. I’m so glad I had it shipped to work, because I was really wanting something yummy to drink when Don told me a package had just showed up for me. And I have a single-burner electric thingy (like an electric stove burner, but it’s just the one and you plug it in; I’m pretty sure that’s not called a hot plate but the word is escaping me right now) and a teakettle here at work, and one of my tea balls is here, too. (But not the more excellent one that Don got me, which is shaped like a little teapot and has a little tea tray to set it on. It is beyond cute, and I must bring it to work now since I’ll probably be keeping the tea here.)

Anyway. So I opened the box, was duly impressed that they shipped it in an airtight clamp-top tin, and sniffed it. Mmmm…cinnamon… And how cute is this tin? (Bad picture, I know. This camera doesn’t seem to like to take photos of shiny things.)

So I made up a cup of this stuff, and it is absolutely divine. Usually tea from a teabag I have to sweeten like crazy for me to like it, but I only put about a quarter-teaspoon sized blob of honey in it and it tasted wonderful.

I am hooked. I’m so impressed that I even put a link to them over there on my sidebar. (It’s near the other link buttons below the calendar.) Maybe this will get me off my coffee habit finally; coffee tends to bother my stomach but before now I hadn’t found any tea that was so yummy that I’d be willing to trade my morning coffee for it. Mmmmm….

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone! :)

I have new-project-itis again. Besides the things I was already working on, and there are plenty of them to begin with, in the past few days I’ve started a belt, which I’m making out of one strand each Red Heart Tiki (in the neutrals colorway) and Aunt Lydia’s Denim (in black). When I saw Sara last, Don and I took her out clothes shopping for her birthday, and she mentioned she was looking for a cool belt but didn’t find one while we were out. Then I saw this gorgeous belt that Tiffany made and got inspired. I started doing the same pattern that she used, but then I changed my mind because long rows tend to be a major test of my attention span, so I started over doing a simple 5 sc per row pattern, and it’s coming along nicely and looks pretty nifty. Looks like I’ll have enough left over to make one for me, too.

And then I went and spent some birthday money last night (my mom and mother-in-law both gave me cash, which I’m supposed to be spending on me but feel like I ought to be putting toward bills, so I’m compromising and doing some of both). So far I’d spent a bit of it here and there, but last night I decided one of the things I wanted to do was buy enough yarn for a lightweight afghan for my bed. For the past couple of years we haven’t had a suitable blanket for spring, so when the weather starts to warm up we either swelter under the comforter, freeze under just a sheet, or end up using one or two of the blankets we have that aren’t wide enough for a queen-size bed and either get all tangled up in blankets or have a tug of war over a too-narrow one.

So. I bought a bunch of Red Heart in claret and country rose (I wasn’t so sure about the country rose, but it matched the claret really well, and then when I got it home and away from the harsh fluorescent lights at Walmart I liked it much better) and brought it home and thought about what I wanted to do with it. I decided on this square pattern (I’m going to try that joining method, too—it looks pretty) in 12-inch squares. (The pattern for the squares on that page is way down at the bottom.)

Don and I put our heads together and drew up a bunch of grids and filled them in all different ways. Don came up with some really cool designs that would probably come out great in Tunisian crochet, particularly this really neat interlocking rings design he sketched out. (Really need to learn Tunisian one of these days.) After playing around with layouts for a while, this is what we decided on (colors are only vaguely approximate):

Because of the color scheme and the color names, I’m calling it my Wine and Roses afghan. (Disclaimer: That is off the top of my head and I would not be the least bit surprised if there were a published afghan pattern by that name. Also, don’t think I’m saying this is my original thing since I’m using someone else’s square pattern and all.) Here’s the first square (without edging, because the edging is going on as I join them):

The squares are working up pretty quickly, 8 rounds for a 12-inch square with my L hook.

Quick post—I’m trying to get everything I need to do here at work finished early so I can leave early and have fun for the rest of my birthday. But I wanted to put up a picture of my very pretty birthday present:

It’s a size S hook from Turn of the Century, and it is just gorgeous. I can’t wait to make something with it! And TOTC has fantastic service, BTW. I emailed Bill on a Sunday and paid him later that day, and the hook came in the mail on Tuesday! I didn’t actually see it in person till today though. I had showed the page to Don and told him what a great birthday present one of those would make, and he told me to go ahead and order it, then forget all about it :p So he confiscated the package as soon as it came in the mail, and I spent the last two weeks dying to get a look at it…

Last night I re-did part of the heel of the first sock I did to make it match the second one. I changed to hdc for the last few rounds; it made the heel cushier and made it take fewer rounds total to finish. I also ran some elastic sewing thread around the top of the ankle by threading it around the inside, putting the sock on, tightening until comfortably snug, and knotting it. The knot doesn’t show or feel lumpy because the elastic is so thin to begin with, and I can’t see the elastic at all unless I turn the cuff inside out and search for it. So I’m happy about that.

My other projects:
beaded shawl: still awaiting blocking. I’m planning on doing that tomorrow night. Still searching for those beads to attach the tassels, haven’t made it to Sally’s yet.

ribbed booties: got distracted from these a while back, really ought to pick them up again.

pineapple squares: I’ve got two out of four done and joined, and I’m on round 12 (out of 17) of the third one.

summer cloche: I keep starting this one and frogging it. I just can’t seem to get the gauge right—it keeps looking like a doll hat no matter what size hook I use.

Celtic bookmark: I have better lighting in the bedroom now, so I keep meaning to give this one another try.

According to blogthings, I’m a man:

Last night I wanted a break from thread while the swatches I made to test stiffeners for the beaded shawl were drying, and I wanted something that would be done fast. I leafed through Cozy Crochet, which I still have out of the library, and came across a cute cat toy pattern. It’s a mouse made in bulky weight mohair. I have no mohair (and if I did, I would not be giving it to the cats!), but I did find some pink bulky weight yarn in my stash box, so I whipped one up. I stuffed it by sprinkling some valerian in there, stuffing some yarn scraps in, sprinkling some valerian, and so on until it was stuffed. I didn’t get a photo of it because the cats smelled the valerian and came running within seconds of my opening the tin where I store the stuff (valerian is like kitty crack—like catnip, only more so) and proceeded to stalk me until I was finished, so I had to give it to them straight away.

Cat got it first and had a grand time biting its tail and smacking it around and chasing it, and surprisingly enough he actually decided to play nice and share with Lena, but I’ll probably make a second one anyway.

I did leave out the embroidered French knot mouse eyes, though. I figured that sounded like an awful lot of work for something they’d probably lose under the bed in a week.

A quiz I found at Trish’s:

I am sweet, like Sugar. I am all sweetness and light; fluffy bunnies and dancing fairies; happiness and joy. Too much of me will make you sick. What Flavour Are You?

Though I’m entirely not sure how I turned out “all sweetness and light” when I gave such answers as “When I’m angry, I work it off by…Being a grouchy bastard.” (Not pleasant, but it’s probably true.)

Um. Sorry about the depressive tirade. It was a bad day.

I got out of work about quarter after midnight, then when I got home I ended up finishing that pineapple square. I decided to try to join them in the last round as I make them, which I’ve never done before, and it worked out pretty well. The final round is all 3dc, ch2, 3dc v-stitches with a ch2 between most of them. I figured joining in the ch2 in the middle of the v-stitch (actually, I always thought of a v stitch as being a little different than that, but anyway it’s what the pattern calls them) would look best, so on the joining side of the final round of the second square, instead of doing the ch2 in the middle of the v-stitch, I took the hook out, hooked it into the chain space in the corresponding spot on the other square, picked up the loop again, and kept going without making the ch2. I don’t know if that’s how you’re supposed to go about joining squares like that in the last round, but it seems to be working out nicely.

No photos yet. I want to get the whole thing done and blocked first.

Speaking of done and blocked, I finally finished up the beaded shawl, and now I just need to make some test swatches to see what I want to use to stiffen it and then wash, stiffen, and block the shawl and attach the tassels. It kinda ought to be done by Sunday, since that’s when we’re going to visit Sara (her birthday was yesterday, but getting together then wasn’t workable for her or for us). I hope it comes out nicely. I also still haven’t found those damn hair beads for the tassels, either, even though I’ve looked everywhere. Jewels suggested dollar stores, which I hadn’t tried, but I haven’t been able to find them in any of the dollar stores around here, either. Oh, wait, I still haven’t tried Sally’s, so maybe they’ll turn up there. If not, I’ll figure something out.