My Favorite….

Day of the week is here! :o)  Happy Friday y’all!

Also I have been working with a couple of my favorite colors too. The last time I was at Hobby Lobby I bought a pillow that is long and round. I think it’s 20 inches long and 6 inches in diameter (which is actually an 18 inch circumference). I decided that I would make a cover for it for Kylie’s birthday in October. It’s almost done being crocheted, except I made a boo-boo. Dang it.

When I made my foundation row it was the size of the length of the pillow. Unfortunately I didn’t check the length again until about 5 rows into it and guess what? It’s too long. I was bummed to say the least. So I put it down in frustration. Then I started thinking that maybe I could just make a little ‘addendum’ to the pillow, that is to say, another small round pillow to take up the space that is lacking inside the cover by the extra length. I’ll make a little smiley face pillow inside, sort of as a surprise for when my daughter goes to wash the cover. :o) I hope I can pull it off.

So anyways…this is the cover, shy of a few inches of being done before I assemble it. And ya know what? Darn….I’m such a ditz. I forgot to get a pic of the ends of the cover. I crocheted 2 African Flowers for the ends. One in pinks and one in purples. 

This pic above is my ‘bin of color’. I put all of the colors I am using in the bin to 1)contain them all in one spot nice and neat, and 2)be able to coordinate the colors so I can see what should go next, pinks are at one end and purples at the other.  This worked out real well  because when I was ready for the next color I just pulled the end up from the bin. The bin saved space and time for me. I had gone through all of my stash and pulled out my medium #4 yarns in purple and pink. I have a mixture of RH, ILTY and another yarn that I can’t remember the name of right off hand. I had more purple than pink but oh well. Kylie will love it because it has so many different shades of the colors that she loves.

Speaking of Kylie…..here she is at swim team practice. She is growing so quick. 8 years old and looks 3 years older. Look at those long legs! She is going to be tall like her daddy.

Another project that I started is to the stage of making a lining and assembling it. Another purse. The body and strap are crocheted. I love these colors together. I used a lilac, purple and bright yellow in a 3 row lilac, 1 row purple and 1 row yellow sequence. The strap is 3 rows lilac on each side with one row each of purple and yellow in the middle. The pic is blurry, sorry. The material with it is what the lining will be made of. It’s a lot darker in this pic than in actuality.

Do any of you have electricsheep.org screensavers? OMG. I have it on one of my computers at work. There is crochet inspiration of a different kind.

     

See what I mean? And there was one that I did not capture that I sooo wanted to, because it would have made an awesome motif. One that I’ve never seen. And it happened so quick that I couldn’t get it.  Twice actually. That’s when I decided to sit in front of it for a bit with my camera on and see if it wouldn’t come up again. Sadly it didn’t but I caught these two.  I know, I’m weird. If you’ve followed me for a while you know that. :o) I’m so weird that I could have sat there for hours waiting for good ones to come up to get a picture of. Some of the colors were so awesome.

So last today, I gave my friend that moved to VA her son’s hat and I also made her a going away little something. She loved it.

I hope you have a wonderful Friday and weekend too! Pray for those affected by the jerk who took other people’s lives in his hands when he decided to go to the movies with the intention of killing people. Such a sad state of affairs. What is our world & country coming to???

Cya soon.

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

PPPPPiggy

Happy Monday! I am back to work. It’s not where I want to be but if the boy and I want to eat it’s where I need to be. It was so hard to get up this morning and get in gear again.

The rest of my week last week was pretty much uneventful.  I did manage to work out in the yard a little. At least I got inside and outside of the fence mowed. That was a job in itself.  I also managed to clean my closet up some too. That needed to be done for a long time. So my vacation wasn’t a total waste of time doing nothing. I’m happy to have accomplished a few things. 

I went to Hobby Lobby on Friday. I shouldn’t have because I always spend way more than I should. This time wasn’t any different.  The Oh Baby! Crochet book was one of the items that came home with me. It has quite a few patterns that I’d like to attempt. One of them is already completed. Of course it’s not totally like the pattern but almost. The colors, ears and snout are different. And I think where the head attaches to the blanket is not how they attached it but I kind of like how I did it because it makes it pretty secure to the body. The blanket itself is not that big because it’s a security blanket, it’s only 10 rounds plus the 2 round edge. I think it’s pretty cute myself.

                                               

 

  

I couldn’t resist this pic of my boy. He never even woke up when I took his pic. This is his couch and his blanky. This blanket came from his daddy’s. He had it before his daddy died. It’s a crocheted blanket that looks like it’s done in tunisian stitch. Sometimes he will lay on it like this and other times he’ll lay at the green end on the couch and scrunch up the blanky for a pillow. He’s hanging in there for now. His eating has dwindled down again. He sleeps a lot too. He did drink a lot of water while I was home last week. But he won’t drink any while I am at work. I just don’t understand.

I hated leaving him this morning. Oh, I did manage to move his dog house out front underneath the carport thingy. He wasn’t using it out back anymore so I moved it. The funny thing is that when I came home from Hobby Lobby on Friday he was laying underneath it, instead of in it.  I purposely brought it out front so he could get in it and not lay in the dirt. I even constructed a front stoop out of 3 cinder blocks covered with an old truck mat from my old Ford Ranger. I guess he’d rather lay under the palace instead of in it or on the porch. Go figure.

Well I best get to it here. It’s going to be one of those days for me and probably a pretty full week. Here’s hoping your week is a good one! Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

Happy Independence Day!

Hi! I hope this finds you all well and content with life. I just wanted to pop in to say hi and ask you to stop for a minute today to think of and remember those who fought for our independence in this free nation of ours. Remember those who sacrificed their lives, their limbs, their time with their families, and all they did to make sure we are able to live our lives free. Remember those families who lost their loved ones and gave up so much for their loved ones to fight for our country. Most important - remember that freedom is not free - ever.

I have had one heck of a week so far. Sunday morning I went kayaking with two girl friends and loved it. I may be buying my own! It was so serene and peaceful. It's a wonderful de-stresser. Then after we got done kayaking we got dressed and rode our bikes to the Harley shop to meet up with another friend and ride with a bunch of people to Brunswick to escort the Patriot Flag to be handed off to the next destination. It was sooooo hot. It really was too hot to be riding a motorcycle but that's what you do sometimes. I barely made it home as I felt heat exhaustion coming on. It took me about an hour to get hydrated and cooled off. Even though I was not doing anything physical, the heat of the day and the heat off of the bike and pavement made for a very hot ride. When we got to Brunswick we went to the restaurant next door and ate salads and hydrated before getting back on the bikes and heading home. We stopped about halfway at a McDonalds to hydrate again and it was almost as hot in there as it was outside. Two of the girls made another stop and I and one of the others kept going to go home. I was worried about Leo being outside in the heat. It seems he endured it much better than I did. I was about 10 miles from the house when different parts of my body started hurting and I knew it was because of the heat. All I could think about was getting home and getting inside with the AC.

On Sunday evening a really bad storm came through that knocked out power for almost 24 hours. There were people that were still without power last night in my area. I lucked out that it was only 24 hours for me. And those were not easy hours either with the heat. There are those that are STILL without power in VA because of the system that went through. There was more than one violent storm that hit the east coast.

I stood at my bedroom window just after the power went out and watched my trees sway so furiously that I thought I was going to have a lot of snapped trees and feared for my and Leo's safety. I thought I heard trains twice. I went to the living room, which is in the middle of my house because I have large oak trees and pine trees on the east and west corner of my house. If one of them came down I needed to be somewhere safe. Leo of course was freaking out. I ended up not having any trees come down on the house but I did have two across my driveway. They were a good size but not too big that I couldn't pick up the ends and pivot them around to get my car out. I had to charge my phone in my car and had to go to my friend's to charge my iPad and take a shower late Monday afternoon. What did we ever do without our electronics?? I had to have my iPad and phone to communicate and be able to watch the weather and news and maybe learn when my electric might come back on. When I was on my way home from her house I noticed a couple of houses not far from mine that had electric. I prayed the rest of the way home that I had power and voila!! I was sooooo happy to have my power back. I managed to save everything in my fridge and freezer. I only opened the fridge once for water to drink and brush my teeth. There wasn't much I could do with the power off. I did go out on the porch and crochet until it got too hot out there. Then I came in the house and laid down and actually took a lengthy nap. I guess I was tired. I'm normally not the nap type of person because I feel worse when I get up than I did when I laid down.

Yesterday morning we finally put Norm to rest in the Veteran's Cemetery. It was a small gathering of closest friends. I think it was fitting that he was laid to rest the day before the 4th of July. He was a Vietnam veteran and was very vocal and participated in every event he could up until he left us. I felt his presence there with us.

We had another storm go through yesterday afternoon and I was so fearful of losing electric, but we did not. Yay! It was not near as bad thankfully.

Today I am sitting here chilling out so far. Well I say chilling. I have crocheted, made macaroni salad and picked up a little bit. I went outside and picked up a lot of branches and debris from the storm before it got hot out. So I have been a little bit productive. I haven't gotten near what I wanted to get done on my stay-cay but ya know what? It will be there when I get to it. :o)




I am 3/4 of the way done with this awesome piece! I am using double strand size 10 to make a size 3 thread and a B hook. This piece is out of the book below that I just got in the mail yesterday. I have wanted to make one of these for a while and just having the pattern in this book made ordering it well worth while. :o)





More motifs in thread. :o)




When I was at one of the girl's house Sunday morning after kayaking we hydrated and she didn't have any coasters on her tables. I made her two. :o)



And I had started to make all of the motifs for a soccer ball from Crochetbug's blog (over there in my blog roll), but I have a problem. :o( They are all different sizes!! I used a G hook for all of them. And all RH yarn except for the light pink on the one African Violet. Gauge.....what can I say? I was just reading Doris Chan's blog the other day when she posted about gauge. And it hit home on this project. One skein of yarn might have different gauges within the skein. Even though all of the RH skeins that I used say the same type #4 medium. All of them are different gauges, some skinny, some thick. And in this project it requires 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons. I don't think it's going to work with the different sized motifs. I wanted to make a purple and pink one for Kylie for Christmas. I think it will be big. I'm going to keep plugging away at it and see what happens. :o)

Ok folks....that is what's going on in my world. Leo and I are sucking up precious AC as of this minute and we want to wish you a wonderful and safe 4th of July. Cya soon!!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

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. 

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)

     

  

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) 

  

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

    

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

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

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. 

 

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.

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

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

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. 

 

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.

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(

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