Baby's First Ball

I knit this up last night. It is from 'Knitting for Baby' by Melanie Falick and Kristin Nicholas. I used to make these for our boys when our youngest was a baby/toddler. I think I just recently threw out one I made that was squished beyond recognition. (I think I will be making more though; once they see a new one) :P This one is for my nephew, though. He is only a month old, but hey... better to get it done before he can play with it than when he is 'too old' to play with it... It is supposed to be knitted with wool and then felted. But I made it with RH acrylic WW. It turned out fine, I think. I wanted to make it in U of M colors, Maize and Blue. But I didn't have any navy blue. :( I want to make more of these. They're so much fun to make, and knit up so fast. I found a few free knitted ball patterns online: Small balls, Medium balls, Large balls, Swirl ball, 12-section yarnball, Wooly ball, Simple ball... all found at knitting pattern central.... Happy Knitting!

"Eye Dazzler Afghan"~ Finished!

It is done!! This is an afghan pattern I got in Annie's Scrap Crochet Club. (Which I am no longer subscribing to for a long time now...) I don't know *exactly* when I started this afghan. I was going through old blog posts trying to find it. Then; Ha!, I found this picture in photobucket, which was around the same time as this post. But I the first time I blogged about it was here. Sooo... I probably started this afghan in February of '06. Which makes it less than three years it took me to finish it. (Makes me feel a *little* bit better... for some reason I thought it was right after we had moved to Colorado...) Anyway... This afghan is HUGE!!! I couldn't even lift it up over my head. I asked my husband, 'Lift it up over your head so I can see how long it is' and he lifted it up over his head (he is six feet tall). I measured it and it is 86" long x 54" wide! I think this is the biggest afghan ever for me. (No wonder it took me so long to finish~ lol...) ;)

Heres' a picture of the diamond in the middle.

And the rest of the colors to the corner. Each corner is the same. I stayed up til about 11:30 last night to finish this. I was so close, I couldn't stop! ;-D Well that's one big HUGE project I can cross off my WIP list. Woo Hoo! My kids and my husband both said 'What are you going to work on now?' LOL!!! I said 'Oh I have a lot I can work on' My husband said '200 projects?' I said 'NO' '100?' 'no...' '20?' 'Maybe...' :P I think it's more like ten. I am getting a handle on it though. Yay me.

Slippers

I have had these done for a while. I just got around to taking a picture of them.... When I got my slipper swap package, I loved the slippers Miss Kitty had sent me. I found out that it was an online (free!) pattern, and I wanted to make some myself. I ended up making a bunch of different slippers to send to a family on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This is the last pair. I just have to sew on the buttons. :P They are called Desert Boots. (They're the ones on the left.) I think if I make some more, I would make a second buttonhole on the ankle band. Or maybe make it more towards the middle of the band. Anyway. I love my pair.
:-D I am working on my scrap granny ghan. It's almost done. It is huge! If only I could work on the baby one with more interest. It's about halfway done but I seem to have lost all motivation. Maybe if I had more colors to put in it. I can only put so many colors in each row, to 'go' with the colors in the previous row, etc, etc.... The closest Michaels is an hour away, now. :( The WalMart here doesn't have any baby yarn at all. We are going that way today; maybe I can talk my husband into taking me to Michaels. :-D

Peppermint Hot Pads... and Towels

I crocheted these today. I had a horrible day today. Nothing horrible *happened*. But, grrrr..... First, I woke up 45 minutes late. I was going to go clean the old house today (it's an hour drive just to get there, plus I was planning on being there a long time cleaning). Well, I decided, I will just be there late, I guess... FINALLY get the kids to get it together (one of the reasons my day was horrible, without going into detail...) Text my husband. He calls while I'm in the car, driving. I see the gas gauge is practically on E. UGH! How am I going to drive all the way there on less than a quarter tank of gas and NO money? Hubby says there's a little in there, get some gas..... Go to the gas station, get gas. Then head to the post office to get stamps so I can mail a couple letters. Get out of the car. Some guy comes over to me, talking loud for everyone in the parking lot to hear (people are staring), 'Your, uh.... right passenger....' (spit it out, already...) 'Tail light?' 'no...., ugh.... tire was shaking. You better get that taken care of right away, it's going to split and blow.... Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.... you can take it up to Big O Tires and they'll fix it for about ten bucks...' (Ugh... I just spent my last ten bucks on gas...) 'Thanks...' So, I go back home. Guess I'm not cleaning today... Check the clothes in the dryer. They're STILL not dry? It's been like two hours!! Turn the dryer back on and change the setting, maybe that's it... Check about an hour later... Nope. No heat, still feel cold and damp. UGH. What next? Well I decided I am not doing anything else. I have been wanting to make a peppermint hot pad forever. There USED to be some cute ones on crochet pattern central, but I am almost positive that they were on the aol homepage that has shut down permanently. (Gotta LOVE AOL!!!! NOT...) Anyway I didn't really go by a pattern, more like two different patterns and doing the two different colors kind of hoping it worked..... (I think I did do a spiral hat a long time ago, so I must have kind of known what I was doing. lol...) Anyway. I really am happy how they turned out! I saw some cute kitchen towels (or maybe hand towels? hmmm...) at Walgreens, they were 'peppermint'. I haven't gotten any yet, but they will go with the hotpads for gifts (and probably some type of peppermint candies, too... ) I am thinking about making some up to put on my etsy store, maybe; too. Gotta get some more dishcloth cotton first....

I wanted to show the towels I got to go with the snowman hotpad I made, too (above-- which I already posted about, but just for the sake of showing it with the towels... here it is again) :)

I got these at WalMart for $1 each. Then I saw the snowman 'candy containers' (I thought they were candle holders until I took the stickers off the bottom LOL) at Walgreens. So I got those. Well then later, I saw some real snowman candle holders there WITH a tea light candle in them- 2 for $1. Then, when I got to the checkout counter, they rang up for 31c each~ how cool is that?! Gotta love a good deal. :P Then later I went back to WalMart, and got two snowman potholders for $1 to go with the snowman towels. So that will make a nice gift. Or two... (I might make another snowman hotpad, split up the two snowman containers & towels.... Anyway. Well I hope you all are having a good day/week.

Another Package from Australia!

We just got another package from a kind soul on a yahoo group I am in. I don't know if she wants me to say her name on here or not. But she knows who she is. :-D I want to thank her again, she has really brightened our days just by thinking of us when our son broke his arm. She sent us an Australia calendar for 2009. I already hung it up for next year. :P Maybe the rest of 2008 will go by slower, now; eh? lol, probably not...

It has some touristy sites (I guess) on there. I feel like I almost got to visit Australia through the pictures. :)

She also sent four baseball caps for the boys (and my husband). This is only two of them (two were already taken :P). But the other two are a kangaroo and palm trees, too. Just different colors:

My husband said the hat on the left looks like it could be from a Las Vegas casino, there is a casino named Gold Coast (and there are palm trees all over Las Vegas, too). Funny though this is the original Gold Coast.... :-D

She also sent a gift for ME!! A beautiful opal and gold necklace. I just love it~ Thank you so much. I put it on right away. It looked much better next to my pink shirt I had on that day but here it is on a clean towel (I went outside to try and get better lighting.... not so great but...) I got an opal necklace from one of my Uncles one time, when he went to Australia years ago. It's on the right, minus the chain which I don't know what happened to. :( Now I have two genuine opal necklaces from Australia!! Thanks again, I just love it.

Here is our littlest munchkin (I don't think I can call him that anymore, he's so tall and skinny, now...) wearing one of the hats she sent. He didn't want me to take his picture so I had to try and sneak one in. I think he knew I was trying to take one, though. He wouldn't look up....

Then the very next day I got a box of goodies from my Mom. The kids (my husband and I, too) LOVE it when she sends us a box, because 99.9% of the time, it means CANDY!!! We buy candy, too. (But it doesn't last long....) But when Grandma sends candy, she sends CANDY! Lots of it... Well she also sent the boys a shirt each. Two big gummy snakes (yikes!), a Transformer toy, a Hot Wheels watch, stickers.... And she sent me a skirt I paid her for, and this beautiful necklace! I wasn't expecting this. When she came to visit us this past summer, she must have been trying to get ideas of things to buy; or else she just loves jewelry (she does), and wanted to buy a necklace for me? :P I had mentioned to my husband when one of the (one gajillion) jewelry commercials came on, 'If you ever want to buy me a necklace, I like THAT one....' Well my Mom bought me THAT one. It took me a second to put two and two together, but... :P I had called her on the phone and was thanking her and I said, 'I told Steve when one of the jewelry commercials came on, that if he ever wanted to buy me a necklace, I wanted one like this....' (Oooooh..... light went on...) 'Is that why you bought this for me?' She said she heard me say it when she was out visiting us (man I must say it a lot... :P) and that's why she bought it for me.

Here is another blurry, bad picture, but.... You get the idea. It isn't diamonds, of course. But I still love it.

I can't believe I got two necklaces in one week! I hardly ever buy jewelry for myself. I used to never wear it, I don't know why; but I didn't care to. But just the past couple years I have been wanting to be more 'girly' (ha ha), and looking and buying little things here and there; hoop earrings, necklaces, bracelets... A girl can never have enough jewelry, right? I love both of them, and thank you a million thanks.

I've Been Tagged

by Lucy. Wow I don't think I've ever been tagged before. Hope I do this right... :P

The rules are as follows:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know your entry is up.

Six random things about myself.... Hmmm... This might be harder than I think... (and possibly, quite boring...) 1. My husband and I have been married for sixteen years. 2. We have moved five times in the last three years; totalling 2179 miles all together 3. I like to bake 4. I was hit by a car when I was nine years old, and in a coma for thirteen days. 5. I come from a big family (so does my husband) 6. I love coffee

Well. it was random. That's for sure. :P Now for the hard part... tagging six people. I don't know if I even know six blogging people to tag!? Here goes: Mimi, Vik, Lisa, Lesa, LuAnne, and Jana. ??

Yo-yo Stuff....

What a lovely title.... Sorry for the lack of a better one. I have been looking for different ideas for things to do with yo-yos lately. I have been (slowly) making yo-yos to send to somene on CFAC to put into an afghan. I just like doing them. They are a quick, no brainer thing to crochet. Well I had recently seen a new pattern in an Annie's Attic catalog, called 'Yo-yo Baby Animals'. Or, 'Baby Yo-Yo Animals', rather. I thought it was cute, but didn't want to pay $7.95 plus shipping for something that I don't even know what I would use them for.... Well, that combined with our youngest son asking me to "crochet him a surprise", ended up in me trying to make one just from the picture. Well I got it out of my system, and hope to never make one again.

I just used pom-poms, googly eyes and felt for the face. I saw another cute piggy while googling 'crocheted yo-yos' online. Pretty cute. Almost the same as the one in the catalog. There is also a Yo-Yo Along Blog. (I got the link for the piggy from there, too). Mostly those are from fabric. Besides the crocheted pig already mentioned... I also found a miniature doll house afghan someone made out of yo-yos. I would go blind making that! :0 Well I might have found more but I got sick of looking by then. :P I still want to make a purse out of yo-yos, and have a few saved up for that too (in greens and browns). Someday...

Baby Granny Square Baby Afghan

Well this is my progress on this so far. Actually I'm further along now. :P Hopefully it will be done soon. I should be getting ready so we can do schoolwork now.... Being lazy... :P

Finished the Granny Star Afghan!!

I don't quite believe it myself. I guess before I had internet, I probably finished all my projects, too, eh? (Ahem....) This has to be THE fastest I have ever finished an afghan in my LIFE. It would have been done sooner, but I ran out of the blue, and then I ran out of white. Our youngest son wants this one. But I would like to make him one that 'matches' his room or at least his blanket. (Spiderman). I am sending this for the 2008 blanket drive for Pine Ridge. I have also been working on the baby granny square afghan. I just haven't taken a picture of it lately.

This is another thing I worked on while we didn't have internet. It's called 'Cat in the Window'. From the 'Mad About Scraps' book, from Annie's Attic. I didn't have any 1" plastic rings, though. I was going to look at WalMart the next time we went; but before I even went, I saw an idea in the 2009 Crochet-Pattern-A-Day Calender: Someone had made a tree garland out of the plastic rings from two liter pop bottles!! :0 Why didn't I think of that?! My husband is always buying pop for him and the kids (I rarely drink it), and so I dug the one out of the garbage that was just thrown away (it was right on the top, and I washed my hands after :P) and..... ta-da!!:

A ring to hang the potholder. That is just about the coolest way ever to recycle. (I washed the plastic ring, too, by the way...) ;) The only thing with this potholder is, it's made out of acrylic yarn. I was going to try and see if there is any similar colors in cotton. But.... since I had all these, I made one anyway...

Snowmen

Well after not having internet for two weeks, I got a lot of crocheting done. It's amazing how addicted I have become to the internet. (Kind of scary!) What did I do before we had a computer? Well I thought I would try to start catching up by posting all the snowmen related things I/we did... I joined the 'Snowtime Like the Present to Crochet CAL' at Crochetville, before we moved. One of the things I made was this snowman potholder (from 'The Ultimate Book of Potholders'). I had been wanting to make one of these for a while anyway. And it was super easy.

I did this snowman picture frame first, though. <-- (link) I posted it over at my crochet pattern blog, too. :P It worked up fast, and with hardly any yarn. Maybe before I had internet I came up with patterns on my own. Hmmm.... I can't remember. ;P

The kids and I made this snowman thing ? for arts & crafts. It is still not glued together. Maybe I'll make them glue it, and we'll send it to Grandma. She would LOVE it. (insert evil laughter here....) ;-P