Lovely Ripples

I haven't worked on Big Blue, the granny rectangle or those itchy socks, but I have been working on my lovely ripple blanket. I'd be a bit further on if I hadn't had to frog it a couple of times, due to the colors. I finally had to ditch the light yellow (actual name was Carmel), it just wasn't working. And I started a completely new project - stripping my kitchen table. I've been sanding it down to the natural wood. It has been such a huge eye sore for such a long time. I have no pictures of the ugly table, just picture the Walton's table and you've just about got the image...benches and all.

Crochet WIPS

I have to admit I haven't been doing too much with my quilting projects, but I have been working on crocheting things.



Granny rectangle love! I started this for my 12 year old who loves blue. He doesn't know I'm making it for him. Every time he sees me working on it he grabs it and and say's. "This is mine because it's blue. When are you going to finish my blanket?" I keep telling him I'm making it for my bed:)I don't think he's buying it since my bed is king sized.

Socks!



I'm teaching myself to knit socks, its slow going. I've made it to the heel flaps though. I read that socks aren't as hard as the pattern suggests and that all you need to do is trust the pattern and not think to much about how it isn't making sense. I'm hoping this doesn't end up as a second sock syndrome.

Lovely ripples



And then I was perusing my favorite crocheting blogs and found that Lucy of Attic24 and Heather of Little Tin Bird are having a ripple along and I couldn't resist. I don't like the first three colors together though. Navy blue, a light yellow and red. It looks a little patriotic and I like patriotic, but I didn't want to start out that way and then drift into other colors. I'm going to have frog it back to the the blue:0/

Those socks (maybe if I think plural, the second will get finished) are being made from a wool blend and boy is wool itchy! It's my first time of working with wool. The granny and the ripple are Red Heart supersaver yarn. My favorite acrylic is Lion's Vanna's choice, but I'm making both of these for my younger boys and they drag their blankets everywhere. I don't really like Red Heart supersaver yarn, but it's cheap and comes in a huge array of colors and as everyone say's, it wears like iron. I also noticed that after it has gone through the dryer with a few dryer sheets it softens up pretty well. It also doesn't make my hands itch like the wool does. I would like to try Style Craft acrylic yarn, but I've never seen that in a store here in the US. I'd love to be working with the yarn, Lucy and Heather are using, but I can't afford Debbie Bliss Cashmerino...sadness!

Edit!

I completely frogged the ripples. I measured it on the intended bed and found it a little too wide for a twin with he ripples going across the bed and a little too short for ripples going the length of the bed. I started over with green and my first row has 280 stitches with 20 peaks and valleys.



Do you see the crochet hook? Hands down, it is the best hook ever. I'm going to have to buy another set of these.

Resized and Squared

Yay!! I finally finished the squaring up of all those blocks. I was doing then one a time, but found if I was careful in aligning everything I could do two at a time. I really didn't enjoy fixing my mess:0(

Mistakes

I've been very neglectful of my blog...pretty much from the start. I had good intentions about blogging everything I created. It didn't quite work out like that. I'm going to try and do better, not that I have a huge following, but it is a good place to document my creations.



Anyway I decided my butterfly quilt really needed to be finished. I've had that project hanging wayyy to long. I laid them out and found I need to make 6 more blocks, so I did that and then began to square them all up. Yeah - something went dreadfully wrong. I'm not quite sure how I managed it, but about one third of my blocks are a half inch off. I tossed them in my basket feeling a puzzled about how I managed that horrible trick and frustrated that I'd done that. As near as I can figure I must have cut the them wrong. I didn't cut everything out first, so I'm thinking I cut those 1/3rd separately and measured wrong. Funny thing is that I when I cut out the last 6 blocks I couldn't remember and had to check the tutorial for cutting dimensions - those 6 were perfect. So now instead of putting my blocks together I'm trimming 2/3rds of them down to 6 inches.

Headbands/ear warmers

I've been making these cute little headbands that keep your ears warm. It's been fun falling back into crocheting again. I've started a pair of fingerless gloves - we'll see how they turn out since I'm not using a pattern.

And as usual...I really need to use something other than my cell phone camera.

Crochet!

I have been crocheting.

Pure!

I really really really want to own some of this fabric. I love it and have plans for it...unfortunately I don't have any of this in my stash. ~sadness~