Sports Blanket

This is how the Sports Blanket is looking during after completing the first two rows. I should have said in the previous post what yarn I'm using but I didn't. So, I am using Red Heart worsted weight yarn in black, white and hot red.

Something Different For A Change

Well.....I decided a few moments ago that I am tired of working with the baby yarn at this time. So....I went through my yarn stash in the closet to see what all I had and how much of each color and I decided to do a big blanket for when we are freezing to death at the baseball games here in the Spring. Let me tell you, it gets COLD. Our school colors are black, red and white and I have quite a bit of each of those colors but if I should run out, I know that the dimestore here in town carries each of these. So I won't have to travel to buy some more.
I'm using this pattern (again) http://www.craftbits.com/project/charity-pattern-4-1-2-hour-crochet-afghan and modifying it to my needs. This is the pattern I use for the Ugly Duckling Blankets. It is a free pattern found on Craft Bits. What modifications am I making? Well, first off....I'm using three strands of yarn held together instead of two. I'm needing something good and warm. Then, to make sure it's plenty big enough for at least me and my daughter to snuggle under, I chained 128 instead of 64. This is quite big! I am undecided on the number of rows that I will do, but I will just have to play it by ear. This is a very easy pattern and the three skeins of yarn held together make it very bulky. Perfect for what I'm wanting. I will post a photo of the beginning of the afghan here in a little while. That way you can see what it's looking like. For future reference....I will call this my Sports Blanket.

Baby Afghan #5

This baby afghan is my own personal design. The pattern can be found in a previous post. I wanted to share the photo of the beginning few rows that I have done already. Hope you like it.

Baby Afghan #4

Here is the photo of Baby Afghan #4. Isn't it pretty? The first photo shows the detail of the afghan. You can barely make out the bobbles, but they are still there.

Baby Afghan #5

I've changed my mind on the color of the stripes.....I'm not going to do blue and pink now. I'm going to do green and blue. Then when I do another one, I'll make the stripes purple and pink. Of course, the main color will still be white. What do you think?

A Great Crochet Blog

I never post about blogs that I like, and I don't know why. One of my very favorite crochet blogs is THE DIARY AND BLOG OF A CRAZY CROCHETING FOOL and here is the link for it. http://madcrochetingfool1.blogspot.com/ She has some great ideas and free patterns. My favorite one of hers is the Magic Ball Afghan. It's wonderful for using up all that scrap yarn.

I hope she doesn't mind, but basically, here is what she does:

Magic Afghans
Made with two strands of yarn held together. One main color and one magic ball (big ball of scraps of yarn tied together).
(a magic ball is just a bunch of yarn in different colors,no order or sequence rolled into a ball)
This uses a N hook

chain 104 stitches
single crochet in each stitch across
ch 2 turn, double crochet in each stitch across
ch 1 turn, single crochet in each stitch across
repeat those two rows until the afghan is as big as you would like it.

**Remember, this is not my pattern....it belongs to her....and make sure to give her credit where credit is due.***

Posting one of my own patterns

I am now working on Baby Afghan #5 and it's one of my own patterns. So I decided to share it with you.

Basic Baby Afghan

white Baby Bernat yarn (MC - main color)
blue Baby Bernat yarn (stripe color)
pink Baby Bernat yarn (stripe color)
G hook

Note: You can make the stripes any colors that you wish....or you can make it a solid color instead of putting in stripes.

Note: This is also a fairly good sized baby afghan meant to be used in the crib.

ch 153.

Row 1: dc in 4th ch from hook and in each ch across.
Row 2: ch 1, turn. sc in each st across.
Row 3: ch 3 turn. dc in each st across.

Repeat rows 2 and 3 for pattern, ending with row 2 when it's the size you want. I aim for about 40" long.

I will do 6 rows of the MC (white), then do 2 rows of a stripe color, alternating colors, then 6 rows of the MC, then 2 rows of a stripe color, etc., ending the afghan with 6 rows of white.

Edging:

Row 1: ch 3, do not turn, working down the side of the afghan, dc evenly down the side, put 3 dc in the corner st, dc evenly across the bottom, put 3 dc in corner st, dc evenly up the side, put 3 dc in the corner st, dc evenly across. When you get to the corner, put 2 dc and join with a sl st to the top of the ch 3.

Row 2: ch 1, do not turn, working down the side of the afghan, sc in each st, put 3 sc in the middle dc of the corner, sc in each st across, put 3 sc in the middle dc of the corner, sc in each st up the side, put 3 sc in the middle dc of the corner, sc across, putting 2 sc in the corner and joining with a sl st to the beg ch 1. Finish off.

Note: For the edging, I like to do it in the two stripe colors that I used in the afghan. With Row 1 being one color and Row 2 being the other color.

**Feel free to share this pattern.**
***It is my Original Design - I wrote it at the table this morning.***

Baby Afghan #4 ....

Is FINISHED! This is one much bigger than I thought it would be. (I will post a photo soon) But it turned out wonderfully! I ended up shortening it by about 5 rows of bobbles and 5 rows of dc but it's still plenty big enough. I did it all in white Baby Bernat.

What I've Been Up To...

Well, I finally found my crochet hook today, thanks to my daughter. She reluctantly volunteered (pressured by me) to look under the sectional sofa area where the recliners are for stray socks, etc. (wonder how they get there???) and she came out from under there with my gold "G" crochet hook. Hallelujah! So I'm back to crocheting on baby afghan #4.

I also got my husband (after many days of nagging) to finally go out to the garages since the snow is finally starting to melt away and get out all the Christmas boxes so I could take down all the decorations from Christmas. This includes the tree. I know, I know....I couldn't believe we still had it up at this date either, but we've had loads of snow since Christmas and I didn't want anyone having to do a lot of shoveling just to get to the boxes. But, we now have everything down that is Christmas related, except for the lights outside. Those will have to wait until Spring when the guys can get on the roof.

I also cleaned off the book shelves on my side of the fireplace (built in shelves on both sides....one side for my husband and one side for me) so I could add a lot more books that the family got for Christmas presents or at the Jan. 1st book shopping expedition. I have to say that our personal library is expanding fairly rapidly. I may have to beg my husband for the use of some of the shelves on his side of the fireplace before too much longer.

My daughter cleaned out her closet and her dresser today and anything that didn't fit or that she wasn't interested in wearing anymore has now been bagged up (by me) to be taken to the Sheltered Workshop in the next town over.

And something else that I've done, but didn't do today, was to read these two books that I blogged about earlier in the week........from the Sookie Stackhouse series.......

All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse

My husband and I also went on an unplanned shopping trip this past Saturday to a bigger town to look for some of the clothes we will be needing on the cruise. We've got all our Cruise Formal clothing now and we'll need to work on some shorts and short sleeved shirts when they come out in the stores sometime in February. Plus I have a few other things like shoes to look for as well.

Other than that, we've been doing the normal household cleaning stuff like laundry and dishes and every now and then fitting in something else that needed to be cleaned up. Otherwise, I've been being lazy this past weekend. What has everyone else been up to?

Traffic Accident

Well....I had my very first traffic accident today. In my husband's pick up truck. I was not hurt, the kids were not hurt, the people in the other truck were not hurt, and neither was my husband's truck, but the other truck was dented up some. All of it was my fault. I was backing up out of a parking space at the school and backed into a parked truck. My shoes were wet from all the snow and my foot slipped off the brake pedal. *sigh* So I made sure the owner of the other truck had all my insurance information and that she checked out the damage to her vehicle, then came home and told my husband what had happened, and then called our insurance company. *sigh* I guess I should count my lucky stars that it wasn't any worse than what it was.

Missing Crochet Hook

Ugh! I'm having trouble with losing things lately. The latest lost item is my "G" Crochet Hook that I'm using in my current project. I have no idea where it went. I had it in the truck when I was crocheting while waiting to pick the kids up from school this afternoon and then when we got home, I pulled my crochet out of the bag to work on it some more, and....no hook. I've gone through my purse (big bag) twice plus looked in the truck as well as around the area where I put my purse when I first came in the house. It's so frustrating! I usually have two of each size hook that I use the most as somewhere along the way, I've misplaced one, had to buy another, and then found the original one I had....but in this case, the other "G" hook was lost about a week ago by my youngest son. He was moving my crochet around the house from one spot to another and who knows where the hook landed at because we've not found it yet. Anyway, I do not enjoy losing things and now I will have to put this baby afghan off to the side and work on a different project that takes a different sized hook until we go out of town again to a store where I can buy a 3rd size G hook. Ugh!

Recipes

I've found a few recipes that I am wanting to try out soon. Here is one of them:

Bubbles and Squeak
1 ounce butter, margarine or bacon fat
1 onion, finely chopped
1 lb potato, cooked and mashed
8 ounces cabbage, boiled
ground beef (optional) or lamb (optional)

Melt the butter in a large frying pan, add the onion and fry for a few minutes until softened, stirring frequently.
Add the potatoes and cabbage.
If you are including the beef, add this as well.
Fry over a medium heat for about 15 minutes until brown then serve.
Omit the beef and lamb and bacon fat for Vegetarian.

Here's another one:

Broccoli Salad

1 large head of broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup sunflower kernels
1 cup raisins
1 cup crumbled crisp bacon

Dressing:
1 cup mayo
2T vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

Mix together and combine with previous ingredients... chill...

We're Going On A Cruise...

the last day of February to several ports in Mexico. We'll be gone 7 days. I've never been on a cruise before so it should be quite an experience. I have been on an airplane, but not since 1987. I'm a bit nervous about the ship and the airplane, but I guess I'll just take a bunch of dramamine with me and hope for the best. I get air/motion sick sometimes.
This trip is just for my husband and I. We'll be leaving all the kids at home under the supervision of my youngest sister and probably my mom as well. I hope that we have a house to come home to when it's all over with. LOL
We called over to the post office see about getting our passports and we were told that it would be around $60 each. When we went to get them today, we called ahead again to make sure that they were open, and found out that it's $195 each. Good grief! Obviously, they need to get their heads on straight as we've had two different prices in two days.
We will also need to go shopping for some clothes, shoes, etc. to fill out our wardrobes as we will have to dress for dinner each night on the ship. Other than that, we've pretty much got everything else we might need, other than a haircut.
My husband is really looking forward to the cruise, which was his idea, so I will be happy about it no matter what happens. He even booked us a fishing excursion when we get to one of the ports. So we are supposed to be going deep sea fishing somewhere. This is something else I've never done. So this trip will be taking care of a bunch of "firsts" for me.

Yarn, Yarn, and More Yarn

Since I'm working on baby afghan's right now, I decided I should do a quick look in my yarn stash that's in the house to see exactly what all I have in the way of baby yarn. I was surprised by a few of my findings. I have enough white baby yarn to do the afghan I'm working on now plus enough to do a ripple with white as the main color and pastel stripes as well. I even have enough single skeins in various colors to make many pairs of booties as well as some hats. You never know, there may be enough leftovers to make either a magic ball baby afghan or an ugly duckling baby afghan.

Then, in my regular yarn stash, I found enough yarn in one color that I bought over a year ago to do a lapghan or a small afghan. I also found 3 or 4 skeins of several other colors that I may be able to use for the smaller projects but just not for a larger afghan. So, I will just have to plan out my projects carefully around the yarn stash so I don't have to purchase any more yarn for awhile. I just wonder if I can do that. LOL

The Book Nook

Well, I thought I would list some of the books I have read over the past few weeks since Christmas. I was the lucky recipient of several books as gifts, plus we went on our annual early Jan. book shopping expedition on Jan. 1st. I was upset during the shopping trip as several of the books I was looking for were unavailable because they were out of stock. So, I had to do some quick revising and I even gave in to a few requests of the kids. Anyway, here is what I've read lately:

Changeling
Darkling
Dragon Wytch
Night Huntress

These books are the follow-up to Witchling which I read earlier in December. They are all by Yasmine Galenorn and are of The Otherworld Series. I love these books but they are definitely for adults.

The Last Apprentice - Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney (Book One of the Series). I have the first five books. My youngest son talked me into this series during our book buying trip. This is a good paranormal type fantasy book for young adults.

Another new series for our house (and definitely the adults, not children) is:

The Sookie Stackhouse Novels by Charlaine Harris

Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead

These are the first 6 and I've read them all. I enjoyed them immensely. I am currently reading the 7th book:

All Together Dead

And I have book 8 waiting in the sidelines to be read:

From Dead to Worse

Most of the reading I've done was during last week when I was holed up in bed sick. Although I do have to admit that I go on book reading spree's every now and then and honestly, there's nothing like a good book, in my opinion.

My Sunglasses

What can you do with my sunglasses? Look and see? LOL My family passed them around the dining room table and challenged each other to look silly. Apparently we do not have enough to do!

Cousins....and Best Buds

Cousins. What would we do without them? My kids sure love some of theirs!

Best Buddies...And What They Will Do For Each Other

My youngest son and his cousin (one of my many sisters' boys') are separated in age by about a year and a half. They are best buddies. Well, my nephew, the cousin, needed to find a beauty shop that was open the last time he visited so he could get his unibrow waxed. But nothing was open. So my son helped him out and plucked his unibrow for him. I am still amazed at what they will do for each other! LOL Here's a photo. Or two. The light source is the light off my son's cell phone.

This weeks dinner menu.....so far

I thought I would post this week's dinner menu (so far). I am going to work backwards from today as I won't remember it otherwise. It's been a weird week for meals as we are trying to clean some odd bits from the freezers so we have room for the hog that is now ready to be picked up at the butcher's. Between the whole beef and the hog, we have little freezer space left for the necessary items like chicken, fish, and any frozen veggies, etc..

Thursday - Shake and Bake Chicken Breasts, cornbread dressing/stuffing, brussel sprouts
*This was a treat as we've not had anything shaked and baked in ages. We did use the store brand instead of the expensive name brand stuff. Doing so, saved 74 cents per box and we used two boxes.

Wednesday - Leftover night and also the night you could microwave anything out of the freezer that was in an already opened box or package. Like burrito's.

Tuesday - Baked pork chops, Rice A Roni (generic), a bag of frozen carrots thrown in with a partial bag of frozen California Blend veggies.
*The pork chops were a treat as we've not had any pork for several months now. I refuse to pay the price for pork in the store when we can get it so much cheaper through the butcher's. But, they weren't doing hogs at the butcher's until January, so we had to wait. But my hubby couldn't wait any longer and he bought the chops at the local store. Yikes! Very expensive....2 packages for a total of $20. One package might have fed the 7 of us, but we use the leftovers for lunches, etc., so he bought and cooked two packages.

Monday - Baked chicken legs, thighs, and a couple of leftover boneless, skinless breasts, Four Cheese mashed potatoes, Peas and Carrots.

Sunday - Fettucini with Garlic Butter sauce and fresh steamed Cauliflower and Broccoli mixed in.

Sneak Preview - Baby Afghan #4

I started working on Baby Afghan #4 last night. It is not a free pattern, which is unusual for me to use, but I just happened to have a booklet of patterns from many years ago, so I decided to use one of the patterns I had never made before. Here's a sneak preview of what it's looking like so far. I'm using Bernat Baby Coordinates Yarn in White. I think it's quite cute. And since the baby it's being made for is due in May, it should be just right in being not too warm and allowing air to circulate with the holes in it.

Baby Popcorn Afghan (Baby Afghan #3)

This baby afghan is quite pretty. The stitch used makes it a closed work afghan and it will be warmer than the other baby afghan's that I have made so far. So I would suggest that this be a cold weather baby afghan. Plus, the afghan took me a long time to make compared to the previous two. I've worked on this one on and off for almost two weeks. I used Bernat Baby Coordinates Yarn in Iced Mint. It took just over 2 skeins of yarn, so 3 skeins are needed to complete the project. These were 5.6 oz skeins. The pattern is a free one and can be found here http://michaels.lionbrand.com/patterns/30190AD.html .

Little V-Stitch Blanket (Baby Afghan #2)

This baby afghan is quite cute and very easy to make. I used Baby Bernat, Sweet Delight Baby Yarn in the color "Froggy", and it took just less than two of the 4 oz. skeins. The pattern is a free one and it can be found here http://michaels.lionbrand.com/patterns/70119A.html . This afghan is just a bit smaller than what I was looking for, so I think that next time I make a blanket, I will add a few more rows to it. Otherwise, it's beautiful!

Photo - Delectable Shell Afghan (Baby Afghan #1)

I have finished the Delectable Shell Afghan or as I call it "Baby Afghan #1" out of my projects that I have going. I've posted a photo of it here and the details of the afghan, including where to find the pattern, are in a previous post. I've included a close up photo so you can see the detail of the pattern. I like the way this one looks and I will be using the pattern again for another blanket at some point.