Friday, June 29, 2012

Busy As A……….

HAPPY FRIDAY!!! :o) Today is going to be very busy for me so I had to get this posted early.

This is the start of my free form collection….with the exception of the big blue flower, which is my very own and which I did not write a pattern for! Not all of the little stuff though will make it on my free form garment. I had it all stacked up together and laid it all out to take a pic. I finished another one after I took this pic of the African Violet motif. In thread it’s really pretty. For now I’m pretty content to just piddle with small motif’s. 

free form little stuff

Although, I have other things that I have crocheted just to switch it up. Hats! And a wip that I started a very long time ago is finally done! The hats are from a good sized stash that was given to me last weekend. Me? Refuse good stash?? No way Jose. :o) The girl that gave me her stash is going to be moving to VA and getting divorced. She knew I crocheted and asked me if I wanted everything she had. She had tried a couple of times to crochet and knit and it just didn’t work for her. She said mainly that she wanted to make her son a hat in lime green, shocking pink and black. Wellllllll…………guess what I did? First I gave her, her pick, of a hat out of my hat box. Which by the way is full and I’ll have to start another one. And then I made 3 hats out of the lime, pink and black. And then I attempted one in the chunky bikini (color name) that was in the stash. Only to make it interesting and so that I could see the stitches, I crocheted with another strand of RH turqua.

I had the turqua out still from finishing the scarf. This scarf is kind of stiff. I need to wash it. I’ve had it in my wip’s forever it seems because the stiffness of the turqua was hard on my hand. I was using a G hook and it was killing me. I’m glad it’s done. :o)  I also crocheted another hat that the pic turned out pretty blurry so I didn’t include it here, but it was made with blue and oceana that I am making the tunic out of. (Yes, I put the tunic down….did you expect different??? lol)  Ohhhh, and I did receive a nice email from RH about their site. They didn’t find anything wrong but attached the pattern for the tunic. OK. That wasn’t what I wanted. I was alerting them to site problems with searching for patterns. ANYWAY……………in the stash were 3 sets of knitting needles and two large double ended crochet hooks. Here soon I will be having a give away because I am getting close to 100 followers! I think I may be including a couple of these sets PLUS yarn, thus more than one winner. So stay tuned for that. :o)

green pink black hat   greenpinkblack 1   greenpinkblack 2

bikini turqua hat   scarf done

The turqua bikini hat is very thick, so thick in fact that it will stand up as a bowl.  The first lime, pink and black hat is thick too from crocheting with 3 strands. I really like them both. So this is what I have been working on.

Our weather……I just don’t know what to say. It’s not indicative of the normal weather that we have. Yesterday morning we set a low and the first pic is when I was leaving home. The second pic is when I was leaving work. 59 and 95. And they are saying today is a 99 day with 100’s this weekend!   Wow, I just noticed something in the dashboard pics. My mph goes up to 140!!  Holy cow. I wonder if it truly does?? I doubt I will ever find out but isn’t that interesting? A question that comes to mind is, why, if none of the speed limits in the US is that high, would you have a topped out speed of 140mph on a vehicle??  If anyone has the answer please enlighten me. Thanks! :o) 

yesterday morn low   yesterday noon high

So that’s all I have for you today. I am off all next week and have planned work at home around the house and yard AND a trip to the boro to visit one of my favorite places to give them money for my crafting…….the place called Hobby Lobby. lol. Like I need more yarn right?? Actually Petco is in the same strip of stores as is one of the bookstores.

Ok folks….keep cool on this glorious Friday and I will cya soon!!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

PS/ I so wish we could cart a bunch of the flooding in FL to CO to dump on those wild fires. I feel bad for people in both locations. From one extreme to the other.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Ahhh

 

Happy Friday!! My favorite day again has arrived. What a week it has been. I’m glad it’s almost over. One more week and I am having a ‘stay-cay’. My company will be on it’s annual summer shutdown. I am not going anywhere.  Mister Lick Lick and I are staying home. He will be a very happy camper for the week. I am hoping to do some weeding and cleaning out – we’ll see how my back holds out for that. I know I have to go buy a dang lawnmower. Mine gave out this last weekend. Or maybe I can get my friend’s hubby to take a look at it. It’s old.

So on the hooky front I haven’t done a lot really. The below motif’s I have worked up are for my experiment in free form crochet. I’ve been looking at a lot of Russian crochet sites and continue to be blown away by the awesomeness of their crochet. I want to try it myself. Some of the dresses I have seen are so beautiful. Also, if you get a chance, I have on my blog roll over on the right, a blog called Outstanding Crochet. She is from Russia but lives in the US. She has some lovely crochet also. I don’t know if I can pull it off but I’m willing to try. So pictured are the motif’s I have done minus one I finished last night after taking this pic. I can do two a night and it shouldn’t be long before I have enough to try to piece them together into some sort of garment.

I also have been reading Crochetology.net – also over there in my blog roll.  She is from the Philipines and crochets a lot of garments too. I was amazed at her skills. She has a couple of posts on measuring and making your own pattern to follow on paper for upper garments. Seems easy enough to me. We’ll see how it turns out. I was thinking of making my daughter  something, as she is a lot smaller than I am.  Like I said.….we’ll see.  :o)  I am going to use those two colors in #8 thread and I’m using a #3 steel hook to make the motifs. I also have some other green (two shades) motifs done in Irish Crochet that will likely be incorporated. I’m not sure what color I will use to tie them all together. I was thinking black but once I get more motif’s done and laid out  I will have a better idea. Those motifs you see there are from Jan Eaton’s 200 Blocks book. I used just the inside of some of the blocks and changed the outside rounds on a few of them to make them all about the same size of 2.25 inches square.

 

free form motifs

I also have been working on a Red Heart pattern to make myself (gasp – I hope it fits) the Hip Granny Tunic. I’m hip granny, right??? lol  I have the front and back done. All that’s left is the shoulders, assembly of those parts and then finally the sleeves.  I was going to put a link to the pattern but the Red Heart site is down. I tried 4 different searches, even once using their Apparel link and nothing worked. I alerted them to that fact also. :o( Anyways, the front and back are the same. Below is one of them. I am using Caron Paints Oceana for the motif and sleeves, and using Bernat Satin Sport Blue For You for the rest of it.  I hate that I get so bored so quick. They actually worked up fairly quickly but I still got bored. Maybe I’ll work on it some this weekend…who knows. I’d like to be done with it so I can wear it this winter.

tunic front

The weather has been weird here again. It’s funny that the last couple of days it has been hotter up north than it has here and further south. Yesterday or day before it was 79 in Miami and 90’s in NY, PA and surrounding states. I have been taking some spectacular pics of clouds. One of them that I took I sent to our local news station and they aired it with the weather. I had a grin going for sure when they did. That pic was the first one you see.  The weatherman said that the formation was caused from ice crystals. The second pic you see I took this morning at 6:15 as I was going out to check the mail from yesterday. I sent this one in also. We’ll see if it makes the news or not. :o) I love looking at the clouds. If I didn’t have a day job I could sit for hours gazing up.

sky 1     sky 2

I hope your Friday is the kick off to a wonderful weekend for you! Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

It’s In The Eyes

Happy Hump Day! It’s a steamy morning in SE Georgia this morning. We’ve had some rain. I’ve received over 5 inches since Sunday evening. I thought I was going to get more last night but the storms managed to circle me. Which is fine. I had two nights of Leo shaking and pacing. He shakes so hard it’s a wonder he doesn’t have a heart attack.

Anyways, I wanted to show you Betsy all done. She has eyes! I crocheted the blue for her eyes but that just didn’t do it for me. She looked like a zombie! So I added jiggly eyes with pink pupils. :o) I think that’s much better. 

betsy with eyes

 

I am not done yet with the little man. I’m having a hard time getting started with his hair. I have two strands in the back of his head done.  All that’s left is his hair and his face. Oh, see Betsy without her jiggly eyes? Zombie for sure.

little man

And last today I wanted to show you a flower I made from Crochet Garden by Suzann Thompson. It’s not exactly like Suzann’s. I had a problem with the inner part of the flower, frogged it, and opted to just do a hdc stitch in the same amount of stitches needed to complete the outside petals. However, I love the look of Suzann’s flower and I just couldn’t get it to look like hers. User error. Also, somehow I managed to get one more petal than she did and I’m not quite sure how that happened.  I thought I followed directions. :o( But it turned out ok and I’m in love with it. I have her first book, Crochet Bouquet, and liked it. When I saw this flower on her blog I had to have the second book. There are definitely more of these in my future. :o) Maybe the next one I can get right huh? lol

crochet garden flower

I was laying in bed sometime during the night, I think it was the first time I was awake at quarter after 1, and remembered that I had not posted a pic of the afghan my grandparents made. (It’s funny the things you think of in the middle of the night when  you can’t sleep!) I made an attempt to find it but it wasn’t where I thought it was. I now think I know where it is for real but it means unloading a bunch of stuff out of my storage room to get to the box it’s in. Right now that isn’t happening. I do want to get it out to show you but I think it will have to wait until I can go through the rest of the stuff and get rid of a bunch of stuff. I apologize. I was also thinking that in that same box are some other afghans that my ex mother in law made , that I have in one of the plastic blanket bags with the zipper. I haven’t looked at them in a long time. I didn’t want them out with having dogs. Didn’t want dog hair to get in them. When Leo is gone I can bring them out again. Which by the way, he is hanging in there. He has his days, some good, some bad.

So that’s all that’s going on with me at the moment. I hope your hump day brings you joy and laughter! We are on the down side to the weekend. Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

Friday, June 8, 2012

On & Off My Hooks

Happy Friday! I popped in to show you a few things that I have going on crochet wise. Sorry for not posting much lately. It’s that life thing again.

Below please meet Betsy! She is done with the exception of her eyes. The hardest part of all of my dolls has been the face. I can’t tell you how many eyes I have crocheted only to throw them on my table because I wasn’t satisfied with them. My table is full of eyes!! :o)  And I also have to tell you that out of all the dolls I have done I did not enjoy doing the hair on this one. I bought the skein on sale at Hobby Lobby, can’t even remember the brand but I had a heck of a time getting my hook stuck in the yarn with almost each strand I pulled through the stitches. Betsy’s grandma will be picking her up  next week so her eyes will be on my agenda for the weekend. 

pink n yellow baby

 

Below is my very first boy doll that I am working on. His pants are done and as you can see I am working on his shirt. All that’s left after that is his face and hair. He is my third thread doll (I think). In my opinion the head and body are the easiest parts. The arms and legs are the hardest parts, besides the face that is. I’m not sure yet what his name will be. I love the two greens I’ve used. The pictures don’t do them justice. I will trim the top in the darker green that I used for his pants.

green boy boy standing

And lastly on this Friday morning is a quick little heart that I loved crocheting. It was so easy. You can find the instructions for the circle part here. The granny heart part can be found here. I love this! So quick, so easy, so darn pretty. :o) And I didn’t realize it until just now…look how the colors in the heart go with the colors on my tissue box.  I wanted to go around the outside of the heart with white but didn’t know if I had enough to sc around or not. I used cotton for this heart. The pink is the scented cotton. I found out that I am allergic to it. My head filled up and I had an instant headache. I won’t be buying anymore scented cotton. :o(

pink red white heart

Ok folks…time to buzz on out of here. I hope your weekend is warm and bright and everything you want out of it! Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo