Sunday, September 30, 2012

Sunday Love And Did You Know?

Happy Sunday!
Just wanted to send you some love today. We all could use a little extra love right? :o)
And did you know that crochet has made it's way into country. It's small but something you may or may not know. If you are a country music fan, which I am 40% country, 40% classic rock and 20% a mixture of other music, crochet is involved in one bands' almost every appearance, and a crochet amigurumi animal is in another's video.
Zac Brown of Zac Brown band always has a different crocheted cap/hat on. I noticed today on a clip of his on CMT that he had a cute blue and brown one on. I'm always checking out what he's wearing now since I have a love affair with hats. :o)  I like the band and their songs. I just wonder who it is that makes his hats. Just curious mind you. I think it's pretty cool. :o)
Taylor Swift's new video has a part where she's talking on the phone to someone and there on the bed  next to her is a cute amigurumi animal, it looks like a bear but I could be wrong. But how cool that our craft has made it's way into country music?
On the crochet front, I started a lapghan for someone for Christmas and was so stoked because it was flowing so smoothly and quick. Smoothly......yea, so I thought. I feel like a complete moron but I finished the 1st half of the second part of the pattern, Drop in the Pond by Elizabeth Ham, and held it up and discovered that I erred, somehow, how I don't know, but after the 1st row of the second part you would have thought that I would have noticed it. I am so ticked with myself that I am not and have not crocheted today. If you have been reading me you know that I love little projects and just struggle badly with big ones. The enthusiasm and energy I had for this one was being utilized quickly, that is, until I discovered my error.












So today has been a laundry, cookie making day. I baked some cookies for a back sale for a family going through a rough spot in life. I originally thought I would make some muffins. But then I opted for easy because I had planned on finishing the aforementioned project. Procurement of dough was had yesterday morning with the intention of baking today. Which happened.  And I was a good girl. I only had 4. 3 Peanut Butter and 1 Chocolate Chip.
It's also a rainy day in Georgia. We are receiving weather that's coming from Texas. It poured last night and guess what??? My venture on the tin roof was not for naught!! NO water pouring through my porch roof directly in front of the door. Hallelujah!! :o)  We are supposed to have rain for the next few days. Which is fine with me. We need it and the temp is moderate. And I think all of my hummingbirds have flown the coop. I haven't seen any in a few days. I'll keep my feeders up for a few weeks for the stragglers headed south.
I hope your weekend has been everything you wanted. Cya soon!


TTFN
Kat
xoxox

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Kat On A Tin Roof

Haha……….yes the title is correct. I, the dumbo that I can be sometimes, got up on my roof this weekend. Believe me, I paid for it and am still paying for it. I actually did a lot of work outside this weekend and between my back, hips, legs and arms, I don’t know what hurts worse.  But I digress……….back to the roof.  Since I moved here I have not cleaned the roof off except to get up on the back of the bench closest to the house (I have a bench that goes around the whole back deck, with the exception of the stairway down, and the bench has a back ledge about 6 inches wide) and with my rake, rake off what I could reach. I am surrounded by pines, oaks and sweet gums. The majority over the house is pine and oak. So I had a large build up of pine straw, oak leaves and acorns. We are talking 13 years almost.  The last 3 times it’s rained I have had water leaking on my front porch right in front of the door. And that is due to the fact of the buildup of pine straw, acorns and leaves and it was backing up under the flashing. I had to do something. And I’m too proud, stupid, whatever you want to call it, to call on one of my guy friends to come do it for me. I hate asking for help.

So, here I am, up on the roof. I got up there real easy. Just put the 10 foot ladder on the back deck up to the roof and climb up. The tricky part for me was getting down. Yea………….    And I couldn’t even trim up all the trees over the roof because every time I tried to get close to the edge enough, my head and my stomach would start doing whoopdeedoo’s and my legs would turn to jello. AND to top it off I had the wrong shoes on to do the job. The tennis shoes I put on, to do yard work in, were slippery on the roof. Early on I took them off and tossed them down to the back deck so that I wouldn’t slip and fall. (Oh, and I did have my cell phone in my back pocket) I am also paying dearly for that too. Even though I sprayed myself all over before starting yard work on Saturday, I am covered in chiggers. :o( For those of you who do not live in the south and don’t know what chiggers are, consider yourself lucky.  They are little microscopic bugs that make you itch. BAD.  They live in the trees and spanish moss.  I think I was ok on the ground but once I got on the roof is when I think I got them. My ankles are covered, I have them on my legs, I lot on my underwear line on both legs and top, and a couple on my torso. Uh huh. Yea, sux to be me now doesn’t it?

And to top it off I couldn’t get off the roof. I had to call one of my friends’ husband (because she didn’t answer her phone or text messages as she was taking a nap) and plead with him to come get me off the roof.  He laughed, and he came to help me down. And while he was there he got up on the roof and finished off what I could not. Lesson learned. NEVER AGAIN WILL I GET UP ON MY ROOF. Now I’m waiting for it to rain so I can be sure that nothing else is going on up there. I’m pretty sure it was the buildup. It was pretty bad.

                                                                 rooftop

My view from almost the peak, looking toward my driveway.

                                                                          backporch leo

My boy, Sunday after I got done cleaning off the back deck of roof debris.  It was kinda funny, while I was up on the roof he was pacing down on the ground looking for me. I had both doors open to the house and he was constantly on the move. I called to him several times but he couldn’t hear where I was calling from and he couldn’t see me up on the roof. I felt sorry for him.

                                                                  milk snake

Another snake. Saturday morning when I was just getting started on the yard work I happened to look down and there was this baby snake. It was chilly, 50’s, so he wasn’t moving too much but I had no clue what this snake was. So I smushed it’s head. Come to find out it’s a milk snake, a non poisonous one. How was I to know? I wasn’t taking any chances. Leo can’t see but he likes to smell them, which he did with this one when I was standing on it’s head. Well, he’s a dead milk snake now. I was on the lookout all day for more. I sure hope Leo doesn’t come upon a rattlesnake while I’m at work. They’re looking for food now to hibernate soon.

                                                                 yarn sleeves

So I thought this was interesting. See that see-through thingy at the top? A while back, I don’t remember when exactly but it’s been quite a while, I started folding the sleeves from the yarn and putting them in this container. I pulled them out Friday night to throw them out and thought I’d see what all I had. These are a lot of the yarns, not all, that I’ve either finished a project with or started and the sleeve fell off. It looked like a lot more when I was sorting them out but now it doesn’t look like much does it?

So that’s it for me for now. Our weather is awesome right now. Not too hot, not cold. Goldilocks weather.   I hope it comes to you soon, where ever you may be.

TTFN
Kat
xoxo                                                              

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

FO’s……mostly

I realized not long ago that a lot of my posts show UFO’s, not FO’s. So I thought I would show some FO’s with one UFO in the mix. :o)

                                                          beret top

This is the top of the beret in my last post. It’s ready to go, along with the others, to be donated.

                                                            beret for donation

This is the band on it.

              toadily handmade                                 inside card

I hand made my cards. A while back when I was in Hobby Lobby I came across some stamps that I loved. So I bought some heavy paper and cut it up into sizeable pieces. I stamp my stamps, make a cute little flower to attach and put my care instructions handwritten inside.

                pink full close                                pink full face

I had quite a range of comments when I posted this pink full face hat on FB. In my mind I envisioned something totally different than what came off the hook. Oh well………it’ll keep someone (female), who rides a motorcycle in winter, warm.

                kylies book bag w flower                          flower

This is my UFO. I had started this as something totally different, a pillow cover for a pillow for Kylie, and trashed the idea and put it away (because it didn’t work out like I planned). A week or so ago it came to me that I had this in my bin and I could use it to make a book bag and fill it with books for her birthday (instead of the stupid pillow idea). She loves to read and I think that’s a better idea anyways. :o)  So I crocheted both ends up. And it was interesting the way I did it.  I made a sc, ch 1 all the way along and then when I got to the end I came back up with sc on each side post of the sc’s. Then when I got to the top I chained 2 and came back down the other side repeating the sc on each side post and fastened off at the end. I should have taken a pic, darn it. The way I did it reinforces the seams. This is a rather large book bag. I wanted it to be strong enough to carry the load that she would put in it.  Like my flower for the side? I got the pattern for it from Crochet Garden by Suzann Thompson.  I have to tell you that this is the second flower I’ve made from this pattern and I’ve changed the inside of the flower both times. BUT I had the same number of stitches required before starting the petals of the flower. Do you know that both times I ended up with 11 petals instead of 10??  I don’t know how I did it but I did. It’s a pretty cool looking flower too.   Also I bought a couple of straps for this bag from Jo-Ann’s but now I am thinking I won’t use them. The only reason being that I want her to be able to wash this and I don’t think the straps are washable. :o(  So it looks like I will have to come up with something else.

Hey…….it’s hump day!  I hope you are able to get over the hump with relative ease to the downhill slide to the end of the week. Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxox

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Happy International Crochet Day!

I know I will have my hook in hand when I get home today. Gotta do some crochet on International Crochet Day right? :o)

I’ve been the bad blogger but we all know about the life thing. If I was independently wealthy I would be blogging daily in my jammies. :o)

So, on to a little bit of what’s been on my hooks. The below beret was a spur of the moment whim with some yarn that I purchased online, a while back, that was on sale. I was disappointed when it came because it wasn’t what I thought it was but oh well, it was on sale. It’s called Sunday’s Best. It’s a finger weight  yarn that is wash only, no dryer. I bought quite a bit of this yarn. I only used one gray and one navy to make this beret. Turned out not bad though huh? I like it. Not on me, but I like it. I will be donating it to BG LRC along with the next two hats you see for the next run. 

                                                                      beret front view

                                                                      beret side view

I love this next hat and scarf. The yarn is ILTY and the color is jazz stripe. The scarf originated from the leftovers from the hat and then I wanted to finish it and rummaged through my stash and found a skein of ILTY Terracotta.  It matches really well. Of course the colors in none of my pics is true but it’s pretty darn close in this one.

                                                            hat and scarf

I finished this hat last night. I worked on it  for 2 nights total. These colors are not true in the pic. This hat is so warmy.

                                                     red and green hat

I sent my niece the hand puppet from my last post for her first born, and I crocheted this little chew toy kinda thingy for the second born, I think Noelia is 6 months old now.  I made it from cotton. It’s funny because she can hold onto it and chew it. The arms kind of curled as did the legs. Almost like it’s posing. But look at that face…..lol.  I am horrible with faces. You may recognize the pink hat from a previous post that Mr. Lick Lick was posing next to it. The hat was sent for Noelia too. My niece said she looked adorable in it and the oldest of her children, Cece, said the puppet was her frog. LOL.  A frog with teeth! I added teeth and hair to it before I sent it. What a goofy looking thing it was, but she loved it.

                                                      noelias chew baby

I started this shell hat the other day. I really need to sit down and finish it. Maybe when I get home today. It’s the rest of that Terracotta.

                                                       shell hat beginning

I had also started a real frog puppet in cotton but I put it down for a little bit. It was wearing on my nerves. :o) Sadly I don’t have a pic of it.

That’s all that’s going on with me as of this moment. Busy as all get out. Leo is hanging in there. We take it day by day these days. We have felt fall in the air here FINALLY! It’s been 60’s/50’s in the morning and 80’s during the day. My air hasn’t come on the last two days at home. Glorious weather!

I hope the rest of your day is better than the first part was. Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo