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

Memorial Weekend is Almost Here

Half of the year is almost gone! I can’t believe how quick it goes. 

 

The flags are done and ready to go. This holiday weekend is all about stopping and taking a moment and remembering those who have served and are presently serving in our military/armed forces for our freedom. Some came home, some did not. If it wasn’t for them who knows where we would be today. They and their families made the ultimate sacrifices for the rest of us. Please think about what they have given up for us….a lot.

My heart is with all of them. We still have so many overseas. I hope that soon they can come back home and be with their families. Please say a prayer for those that cannot be with their loved ones, to keep them safe and return them back home as soon as possible.

Have a wonderful, safe weekend y’all. Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxox

My Weekend

 

Happy Monday!

I don’t know if you heard or not but we had a tropical storm off our coast this weekend!! Can you believe it? Already. It hung off of the coast all day yesterday and today it’s going to be zinging up the east coast. At my house I had some winds but no rain. I went into Rincon to Wally World early and it was raining there. That’s only about 12 miles from my place. And weird too…when I left to go to Wally World it was clear and sun shiny behind me – maybe not even a mile up the road, and it was ominous and dark black clouds in front of me. Alberto was a small one but if that is a sign of things to come this summer I hate to see it. It’s no doubt with all of the weird weather our country has been experiencing. I just hope no life is lost due to a hurricane this summer and none of them hit land.

So….I was sitting out on the front porch yesterday enjoying the still-spring-like day. And got this awesome pic of one of my hummingbirds. It’s a tad blurry from trying to get as close a shot as I could but it turned out pretty good I think. Best pic of a hummingbird I’ve ever taken! I was hoping some birds would come and visit my birdbath but Mr. Mouth was out there roaming the confines of the compound.

 

I got all of my flags done, with the exception of the hearts and a way to attach them to the trees. I think I want to do ties so that the flags can hang down, like they would if they were on a horizontal pole. But I was thinking that if I do that then I need to make the hearts sit so that they are right side up, instead of laying on their side. I’ve got a couple of days to finish them. I have two hearts done, they only take about 10 minutes to make.

I used different cotton yarns and different hooks, that’s why the difference in size. I also ran out of dark blue so I had to use some RHSS on one and although I didn’t like it real well, mixing the two yarns, I had to do it to finish them. The last two were made while watching Harry Potter movies. They had a marathon of Harry Potter on the ABC Family channel this weekend.

  

Two pics of my boy. Check out his tongue in the first one. It’s almost like it’s bent! And I love this close-up of him. He has his little head cocked at me. I took a bunch of pics of him yesterday. A lot were blurry because he was moving but I did get some good ones. 

I hope your Monday is a nice one! Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

It Runs In The Family

Happy Friday Eve y’all!  I hope this post finds everyone well.

I posted the pic in my last post on FB before I posted here. My older sister came back with a comment - ‘Seems you’re walking in your grandfather’s footsteps.’  When I read those words I had a shiver. She proceeded to ask me if I remembered the large flag grandpa made. And I was like no, I don’t. I knew my grandfather made many potholders. And both him and my grandmother made afghans from the potholders. But I had no clue he made a flag.  She scanned this article and sent it to me. I don’t know the exact date of the article but it had to be in the 70’s.  I tried to take a pic of it so that you could read it if you wanted to.

My sister also told me that this afghan was on the wall of the nursing home he was in, and it remained there and it was still on the wall when my aunt (my mother’s brothers’ wife) was in the same nursing home. I asked one of my cousins (who had lived next door to my grandparents her whole childhood) what happened to it, if it might still be there, as my last uncle (her father) is in the nursing home now.  She hasn’t replied yet. But it floors me to see this article. I miss my grandfather, and it makes me feel good to know that I am like him in yarny ways. :o) My cousin asked if any of us had any of grandpa & grandma’s afghans, and I was sad to think that I didn’t. But then at the coffeepot at 4 this morning it hit me. I do!!  (It’s hard to remember sometimes)  I’ll have to dig it out and take a pic of it. I had it put away because I didn’t want any dog hair to get in it.

Isn’t this just the coolest? I’m beside myself. I just wanted to share that with you.

So this morning here at work I went to get the mail. I normally take my phone or camera with me because you never know what you’ll see early in the morning. One of the pics isn’t clear but it shows relativity to size. I don’t know if these are black birds or crows but they are very big. There are always two that hang around in the mornings looking for food. Check out the cardinal…he’s thinking the big boys are on to something. I tried a couple of times to get close but they flew away.

So that’s all I have today. Thanks for the input on my flag. I’m undecided yet but I’ve been contemplating making a heart out of red, white and blue #10 thread and putting that in the blue on the flags. I know I need to hurry up because I’m running out of time. Memorial Day is coming up fast. Man this year is flying…….isn’t it???

Have a wonderful day! Cya soon!

TTFN
Kat
xoxo

Opinions Needed Please

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that twice a year I crochet something to go on 4 trees at Warrior’s Walk for the 4 adopted soldiers of the Bomber Girls LRC.  I try to do something different for each time and this time I came up with an idea of crocheting a flag for each tree.
What I want your opinion on is – instead of stars in the blue do you think it would be a bad thing to put a white heart in the blue? I honestly don’t think I can do 50 stars and make it look right. And my thinking on the white heart is that these guys have the Bomber Girls’ hearts.  I think the white hearts would look awesome on the blue. 
The below flag is my own pattern and it’s ready except for blocking. All I have to do is make 3 more. 

Thank you for your input!
TTFN
Kat
xoxox