here there be dragons

 Melissa has been busy crocheting - she said that i can have the dragon stuffie now,  but i have to wait till christmas for the shawl

i can do that...

so fiddly...

itty bitty bunnies ... crocheted by my mom many, many years ago

one bunny for each of my (surviving) babies

she's gone, but not forgotten

more about more than a concept of a plan

well ... that wasn't much fun

stitching down the doily puff was a bear, lemmetellya

i took a break because this is supposed to be fun

 but it wasn't any fun...

no, not at all

anywho...

sempre avanti

i gave the card another look

dandelion puff - check ... little black bird - check

next thing to do is stitch some fluffs*

i knew that i wanted to use purple floss and white floss and tiny purple heart buttons 

but i was stuck on just how to go about stitching what was living in my head

so i whined about it to asked Melissa how she would stitch the fluffs...

she said she would stitch samples on a scrap of fabric and see what there was to see

which was just what i didn't want to hear cuz i'm kinda lazy 

 but she was right...

we both like the one on the left 

doesn't look like the fluffs are gonna be any more fun than the puff was

sigh...

*the botanical name is the pappas ... i like fluff better

i think that i will try to link up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching ... here goes

more than a concept of a plan

 black bird singing at the break of day

yeah, i can work with this

turn around, little birdie

you talkin' to me?!? you talkin' to me?!?

what if?

i'm what iffing this morning...

this is a Mothers Day card that i gave to Melissa a gazillion years ago...

(i KNOW that she's not my mother ... not in this Life, anyway)

and i immediately took it back because ... i mean ... LOOK at it!!! 

what is more awesome than a black bird singing to a dandelion puff?!?

what if...

what if it grew? 

and what if it grew from fabric?

i'd much rather use this frosty morning what iffing about this than what iffing about ...... that

that is not something i can do much about - other than point out the obvious and have Faith that we are better than ... that

new recruit

except-ional

i'm a Yes ... But-ter...

and i argue with myself...
just about anytime that i say anything, it will be followed up by 

yes ... but
there's almost always a but in there somewhere...

Melissa is Except-ional...

which is the same as saying yes ... but

but (you knew there was gonna be a but, right?!?) nicer and more politically correct

last year i found the Gerbera Garden pattern and used it to make a leftover throw...

the leftover yarns made a pretty throw, but (there it is) it was worsted weight and there are very, very large spaces between the petals - my knees can fit between them...

so when i decided to crochet a field of daisies for my room, i knew i was gonna hafta buy smaller yarn (like the pattern SAYS to use)... 
i like the colors of the original Gerbera Garden pattern, and i LURVE orange...
 but (another one) my room doesn't like orange...

so i went to Hobby Lobby and bought a bunch of sports weight acrylic yarns (there would be no crocheting or knitting going on if i had to use wool ... there WOULD be a lotta Benadryl lotion slathering) in colors that i thought were gonna play nicely together
 and started crocheting... 
but (were you waiting for it?) then i remembered that  i didn't like the pattern's directions
At. All.
 so i changed the way the flowers were connected to each other and crocheted some more...

yuck

in the meantime, Melissa decided that SHE needed to make a field of daisies, too 

except she chose peaches and purples and greens
 (to go with her birthday roses quilt)

by that time, i had given up on making THAT afghan, and finished off the mess i'd started by making a scarf...

still yucky

i whined for a while...

i still wanted to make a field of daisies for my room

but (there it is again) i wanted it to be pinks and purples and blues...
so i went BACK to Hobby Lobby, bought some more yarn, and then crocheted for a couple of months till i had this...

better ... MUCH
in the meantime, Melissa was working on hers ... 
she, too, had a hexagon-shaped lovely afghan... 
except she decided that HER field of daisies needed to be a STAR...

 it's EXCEPTIONAL, innit?!?

"There are always exceptions," replied Flea. "They are what makes you exceptional."
Mo Willems, The Story of Diva and Flea

leftovers

there were lots and lots of partial skeins of yarn leftover from Auntia's sunflower throw...

she was DONE with them...

and i do mean DONE...

like, totally DONE...

she put them in the donation bag and said that she didn't ever want to see them again...

so i rescued those bits of skeins and tortured her for a few weeks while i made this...

daisy, daisy, give me your answer true

it was adapted from this pattern at Craftsy and it was fun to make cuz it was all leftovers...

and didn't cost anything 'cept time...

 and i had absolutely no expectations...

and we all know that expectations are premeditated resentments...

Oh, you're dating my ex?!? Cool ... I'm eating a sandwich - want those leftovers, too?!?

anonymous

outdone

and so...

remember this sunflower throw?!?

Auntia decided that she, too, needed a sunflower afghan...

and with her new status as a crochet artiste with intermediate skill level she decided that she would make her own...

SO much cooler than the one i made!!!

it seems that not so long ago she was crocheting the World's Longest Chain That Would Never Be Anything and i was trying to convince her to let me show her how to work a single crochet so she could actually Make Something...

sniff ... sob ... my baby is all grown up

yes, the Force Is Strong in this young padawan...

the pattern is fall sunflowers afghan from Herrschner's 2010 Treasury of Crochet Afghans... 

Auntia substituted a variety of worsted weight yarns for the bulky yarns that are listed on the pattern...

it is an amazing Piece of Work and i am happy to have been totally outdone!!!

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Yoda

upgrade

Auntia wanted a new scarf to go with her new plaid jacket...

a new crocheted scarf...

a fancy shmancy new crocheted scarf...

and she wanted it before the end of winter...

when she showed me a picture of the fancy shmancy new crocheted scarf that she wanted before the end of winter 

i rolled my eyes and shrugged...

so she made it herself...

not for beginners, nosiree!!!

she is now officially upgraded from beginner to intermediate crochet skill level in the World According to Me...

Auntia adapted the pattern Liffy in a Jiffy from the book Contemporary Celtic Crochet by Bonnie Barker and used Glacier Lion Brand Heartland yarn...

and when i told her that i'm waiting for her to make a  fancy shmancy new crocheted scarf  before the end of winter for me

she rolled her eyes and shrugged...

People seldom do things to the best of their ability. They do things to the best of their willingness.

anonymous

sun of a...

flower...

remember when i whined 

(and don't say which time?!? cuz i'm about to tell you) 

about the crocheted snowflake afghan and how much it bothered me that the pattern called for octagons instead of hexagons and i ended up giving it to Auntia?

no?

doesn't anyone ever listen to what i have to say?

no?

what's up with that?!?

anywho...

i was wandering around JoAnns a year or so ago and found a pattern for a crocheted sunflower afghan in the book This Land Is Our Land by Lion Brand ... the entire book is afghans made with Lion Brand Heartland yarns with color names like Black Canyon and Yellowstone and Joshua Tree and Glacier Bay and Kenai Fjords ... so i took the book with me and wandered over to the yarn ... oh yeah, the yarn colors were just as awesome as their names ... but, as is ALWAYS the case at JoAnns, they didn't have enough of any of the colors except the brown to actually MAKE an afghan ... so i found the yarn on line at Fabric.com - and ordered it... 

and received the wrong weight (it comes in worsted and chunky - i needed worsted) of yarn... 

and sent it back and reordered it and received the wrong weight of yarn... 

and sent it back and reordered it and received the wrong weight of yarn...

and sent it back and reordered it and received the wrong weight of yarn...

and by that time i had made all of the brown centers and needed some stinking yellow and green...

 i was getting really, really frustrated...

so i ordered it from JoAnns online...

the yarn arrived and all the dye lots matched and all of the skeins were the correct weight and the colors were awesome and i put it all away cuz it had been months since the original wander and i just didn't care anymore...

and then we painted the walls that buttery yellow and our crocheted afghans really, really didn't go anymore...

and it was autumn and it was getting colder and colder...

and my fingernails were being bitten down to the quick watching my Broncos play football and i needed something to keep my hands occupied...

so i brought out all that yarn and now i have this ... 

pretty little sunflowers all in a row

woo hootie hoo!

The sunflower is mine, in a way.

Vincent Van Gogh

another snow post

but not the kind of snow that means you get to stay home and eat chocolate chip cookies fresh outta the oven whist sipping sumpin sumpin in your favorite mug... 

nope ... this one is about more snowflakes that i don't have to shovel...

crocheted snowflake afghan - done

i've wanted to make this afghan for YEARS ... i first saw it in a Herrschner's catalog, sold as a kit ... i am not good with kits - especially kits that are made up of yarn with dye lots - because i ALWAYS run outta yarn ... eventually they sold the pattern, along with eleven other patterns in a calendar format, which i DID buy ... and when it arrived, Auntia fell in love with a sunflower afghan pattern in the same calendar and...

well... 

i forgot all about the snowflakes...

  

fast forward a couple (or five) years ... i was going through the Great Pile of Stuff and found the calendar again ... and remembered how much i wanted to make the snowflake afghan ... i ordered the yarn and, after reading through the snowflake part of the pattern, started crocheting snowflakes... 

thirty of them...

they were fun to make - but something seemed wrong ... it wasn't till i had to make the first blue background block that i realized the pattern's snowflakes are octagons and not hexagons ... i dunno why i didn't notice it before ... i kept making the blue blocks, and getting more and more bothered by how wrong it was to have eight-sided snowflakes ... and, seriously, if i hadn't spent so doggone much money on the yarn, i think i might have just bagged it all up and left it out for the neighborhood cats... 

but it's done now... 

and it STILL bothers me... 

so i gave it to Auntia...

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.

Mae West

makin' bacon

i make lists ... lots of lists

lists of things to do

 and lists of things to buy 

and lists of things to sigh about

or cry about

or worry about... 

a few weeks ago i made a NEW list for the things that absolutely HAD to be done before tomorrow...

it was a long, loooooong list...

have the furnace serviced

and the swamp cooler serviced

and the dryer vent cleaned
and renew my passport (no, i'm not going anywhere ... sigh)

and the garage door repaired

and the gardens bedded down for the winter

and winterize the outside faucets

and take flowers to the cemetery for my mom's birthday

and hang the shade in my bedroom (the one that has been waiting for me to get to it for at LEAST eight years)

and get the wreaths ready for the cemetery

and have the leaky toilet fixed

and the broken bathroom fan replaced

and the back porch light, too

and bring in the patio furniture

and paint the front door
and renew my driver's license

and have the house power-washed (this isn't gonna get done till next year)

and paint the garage door (this isn't gonna get done till next year, either)

and rake leaves

and rake leaves again

and again
and again

and remember to be GRATEFUL for those leaves

and have the lawn aerated

and fertilize it

and over-seed it

and mow it

and mow it a few more times

and put away the lawn mower

well ... you get the idea

the list was getting shorter and shorter 

and i was almost at the end...

so what do you think i did?!?

i ADDED things to it...

things like this...

a crocheted bacon scarf .. i kid you not

which is for Michael Myson

because he LOVES bacon
 and because he ASKED for one
 and because i love him enough to work with gawdawful chunky yarn that looks like bacon fat...

that's all?!?

this is what i ended up with...blue baby afghan for Whatisit if he is a boy and bindings for the last three pink & orange BOM quilts

after starting with this...four rounds left on the little blue afghan and a pile of binding fabric
i use the pink sticky arrow to show me what round i am supposed to be working on ... it moved off of the last page of instructions ... back through the first page ... and onto the middle of the second page...flashback
i wasn't sold on making a big yarn doily and calling it an afghan, but flashback
will be my fourth one after it is finished ... so i guess i like the idea more than i thought i would

and that's what i did with my friday night ... yep ... that's all!

preemptive multitasking

it isn't just for computers anymore

it was friday night and i crocheted...preemptive crochet - for babies yet to come
and prewashed the fabric that may become the rest of HPV not the virus...from preemptive shopping on Black Friday at the FQS whilst halloween fabric was 50% off ... and preemptive color-catching
and we made a quick trip to The Quilt Store for Camelot fabrics the new Jason Yenter line and the book ... but they didn't know if they were gonna carry the line or not ... so we did some preemptive on-line shopping...
oops - no pictures of on-line shopping, but there was a bit of it going on, lemmetellya

dinner was spaghetti and garlic toast ... dessert was marshmallows ... times flies whether you're having fun or not!!!

bound too bee

there's been a binding bee frenzy around here, lemmetellya...

the Eff Quilt, and 2 baby quilts ... 592 inches of binding at $.25/inch for a total savings of $148 - ha ha ha!!!
the Eff Quilt needed to be outta here and, after waiting more than a month for a certain someone to hand sew the binding to the back, i caved and did it for her ... i think i'll negotiate some kind of trade with her for the $76 worth of binding inches - maybe breakfast in bed or sumpin - ha ha ha!!! ... the small quilts are for baby girls...pink camo crocheted afghan - i HATED the yarn - and a bassinet-sized quilt
Little Miss Baby Girl For Sure will enter the World on Valentine's Day and her great-auntie dianne sent those little squishies to keep her warm ... the other baby quilt is a bit bigger and is temporarily named Vice Versa and will be joined by a mostly blue flimsy that will be temporarily named Versa Vice cuz some people could make life easier for a nonna, but choose not to ... i'm just sayin'...

and ... drum roll please ... i finished this...i HATED this yarn, too
and i hope that no one ever asks me to crochet another non-flat thing again ... ever

not counting the Eff Quilt (which i only did about 40% of and Auntia's 60% rounds up to 100%, right?) that is ... uhmmm ... a total of eight things so far this year to cross off the to-do list ... not too shabby, eh?

we interrupt the serious news...

to bring you this bit of fluff ...... today this quilt...flower power

went to live in its new home ... it needed to be purple ... and it needed to have flowers ... and it needed to be girlie ... Auntia chose the fat quarters for me since i have a lotta trouble getting my fabric choices to quiet down and stop shouting ... it is a Happy Hour pattern and the piecing only took a few hours - the quilting and the binding were a totally different story...
and this afghan...totally impractical
blossomed from this ... and joined flower power...now jump into the gift bag and begone!!!
for the past few weeks, Auntia and i have been putting together fun stuff for the baby shower for Mrs. Blakesmom ... look at the beautiful diaper cake Auntia made...oooo!!! and no calories!!!
she found a tutorial here ... Auntia's version is pretty doggone impressive ... it was a LOT of work - diapers were not meant to be rolled up like that and it gave me a whole new appreciation for cigar-rollers letmetellya ... i only rolled twenty or thirty and i thought my hands were gonna fall off ... Auntia also made this pretty little daisy cake...basket weave is not for the faint of heart
it was a white layer cake with seedless raspberry jam filling and vanilla butter cream frosting ... the leaves are from the peppermint plant that lives in her room - who grows mint inside?!? the cake was dee-licious ...... and now that the baby shower (i have more pictures - do you want to see them?) is over, we will return to our regularly scheduled program ... i have really, really missed reading blogs and posting......

done ... done ... done ... done ... done ... knot done

last night was another Friday Night Sew-In ... i didn't need to work on this...

Le Witche Boutique - seven of twelve
cuz it was done ...... and i didn't need to work on these...Paper-Pieced Saturday Sampler BOMs -
Handy Andy - Crossed Canoes
Jack in the Box - Cross and Crown
cuz they were done ...... so i put this together...a wibbon bwanket for a wittle baby
but it didn't take as long as i thought it would ... so i sewed together the black flannel that was on sale at JAF last week for $2.50/yard for the back of The Ghastlies ...... and then i put this together...NoJo's burger pocket
so this guy...NoJo gives a whole different meaning to the term meat head
can finish his first-ever-cross-stitch-project ... he has been working on a Cars bookmark...who says real men don't stitch?!?
instead of doing his summer reading ...... anywho ...... i searched high and low for the pattern that i made for mug hugs so i could start working on the 23 that i need to make as party favors for a brand new baby girl's shower in september ... but i couldn't find it anywhere ... and that made me too pissy to start on the 23 tea wallets ... so i took out the yarn for a daisy baby afghan for the same little baby girl and got this far...loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me knot
before i decided that this is one more thing that just ain't gonna get did any time soon ... but it will make a lovely fifth or sixth birthday present, won't it?

not so sew-in

i told myself that i should not and will not read any blogs this morning till i post about the Friday Night Sew-In ... so here goes...

i had plans ... i was gonna finish loading Mr. Husker's Homestead on the frame and start quilting the red borders ... i was gonna make the SS3 BOM block ... and then if there was any time left before the sandman came to visit i was gonna crochet a little on Auntia's coat or embroider a bit on Morgana's Apothecary ... in the meantime, i was gonna feast upon homemade soup and angel food cake with strawberries...
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley
whatever would we do without Robert Burns (whose birthday is coming up, by the way, on January 25)
even though i am neither a mouse nor a man ... my plans do often go askew ... the batting went on the frame ... the backing went on the frame ... the top went on the frame ... but when i tried to roll the backing onto the top leader it was upside down ... gasp ... i unrolled it and rerolled the other way ... it was still wrong ... i unrolled it and rolled it the first way ... still wrong ...... and then i remembered that if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got ...... so i whined for help ... Auntia took a look
you've got it backwards
how do i fix it?
you'll have to take it off and re pin it
groan
i'll help
so we unrolled and unpinned and she stood there while i turned the backing around and started to re pin just to make sure i got it the right way ... after it was re pinned, i rolled it up and tried again ... now the fabric was pointing the right way, but it wasn't coming off the roller the way it should kinda like the toilet paper roll ... by this time i was more than whining - i was groaning and whimpering
what now?
it still isn't right - wah wah wah
you've rolled it the wrong way
do you know how many times i've done this?!? i'm tired and my back aches and i just can't do this again!
okay ... okay ... okay ... i'll help you mutter mutter mutter
by that time the last thing in the world that i wanted to do was quilt ... so i sat down and crocheted a few stitches on Auntia's coat/sweater ... she took a picture...those are some raggedy looking nails
my nails kept catching on the yarn, so i stopped and filed them and put on some lotion ... then i made a pot of tea* and got out my ME little peace of quiet mug...whenever my kids would ask me what i wanted for christmas, i always told them peace and quiet
i sat back down in the red chair and crocheted a few more stitches ... but i couldn't concentrate cuz rasslin' was on upstairs and it was loud ... so i asked Auntia for her CD player and started listening to An Echo in the Bone ... i've already read the book and i know what happens but i like being read to ... so i crocheted and listened ... and then Auntia brought me a basket of kettle corn and i ate it like i hadn't eaten in hours ... oh wait - i hadn't eaten in hours ... realizing that i was ravenous and i needed to wash the sugar off my hands anyway i warmed up a bowl of soup and scarfed it down while Ms. Porter read Willie out of his problems and crocheted some more ... and then i ran out of yarn...no side seams ... one swell foop
i'd added five inches to the frontbackfront... and i didn't want to crochet anymore ... so i took out HPV not the virus and started to work on Morgana's Apothecary...Morgana may not have an apothecary, but she does have steps now
the next thing i knew it was one in the morning ... i'd listened to five CDs and my hands were tired...i love my red chair
i locked the doors and turned off the lights and went to bed ... i dunno what Auntia accomplished but i do remember a flurry of activity in the background and some flashes from the camera ... so i'm sure she'll fill us in

and now the house needs cleaning and the quilting frame is looking at me with loathsome eyes and the SS3 BOM is feeling quite betrayed ... but there is angel food cake and strawberries for breakfast

*note to self - do not drink a pot of tea after 8pm and expect a good night's sleep ... caffeine or no