I made an afghan

It's one of my rectangle granny squares. Gave it to a neighbor who's had a bad year.

Lost my blog counter

A month or two ago, the counter on my blog quit working...and now the place that I got the counter from is saying that my counter account is going to be deleted because it hasnt counted anything for thirty days. I'm guessing the code or something might no longer be compatible with my blog....or something. Oh well.

I got that counter in April of 2006, and there's been 143,456 total page views since then, and 107,535 total visits. Not bad for a little over six years of counting visits to my blog.

I know that there are still people visiting my blog. I still get the occasional comment, and I've had people email me directly too.

edit:
I went digging around on the settings of my blog, and found the activity counter stuff that only I can see. Surprised me to see that there were actually over 100 page views of my blog today. I didnt know about this particular setting (blogspot/blogger changed a few things a few months ago, and I havent looked at it much lately because I've been busy with my mom being sick and myself being sick)

At least I can tell that people still wander in to look at my blog occasionally.

Here's a shawl I finished recently

Back in February I discovered the tv show "Sherlock". It's a modern telling of Sherlock Holmes.(stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, and Martin Freeman as John Watson.) The creators of the show took Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and set the show in modern times. (think the first season was filmed in 2010) I fell in love with the show (and both of the main actors) within the 8 minutes of the first episode. A friend of mine had suggested the show, so I'd downloaded the first episode off of iTunes and after the first 15 minutes of the first show, I'd gone back and downloaded the other two.

In one scene in the first episode, Sherlock is sitting in the back of an ambulance with an orange blanket over his shoulders, and he asks (Detective) Inspector Lestrade why he's got this blanket... Lestrade tells him "It's a shock blanket Sherlock, it's for shock.". Sherlock tells him he's not in shock...and I think that's all I'll say about the scene because I dont want to ruin it for anyone who hasnt watched it yet.

I joined a group of crocheters and knitters that like the show and anything Sherlock related. Everyone was talking about crocheting or knitting "shock blankets". So I finally decided what to do with a crochet pattern I had floating around as just an idea in my head last fall and wasnt sure what I wanted to do with it or if it would work. I ended up making a "Shock Blanket Shawl". It's basically a very long, extremely wide scarf...or a very long, very narrow afghan.

The yarn I used is Hobby Lobby's "I Love This Yarn". I really like how this turned out, and the orange is actually kind of nice. It's becoming one of my favorite colors to crochet or knit with. (there may be a knitted scarf coming soon)

The pattern is fairly quick to do. I'd have been finished with it in just a few weeks if I hadnt had a bit of a vision problem earlier this spring that made me pretty much half blind. (better now) I had to put the shawl down for the better part of a month when it was a little more than half finished. Once I started it back up, I had the shawl finished within a week.

I'm kind of planning on posting the pattern once I write it up and hopefully have someone test it for me. I've already crocheted a scarf using the same stitch combination (scarf started out as a swatch and I decided to turn it into something useful)

Here's the rest of the pictures of the shawl.

Hope my blog transferred ok

Was having problems getting the blog transferred over. Hope it worked. Someone please comment if you can and tell me if it's ok?

possible technical difficulties ahead.

Just to warn people, my blog might be about to disappear. Having problems getting it transferred to a new system. If you want to save the two patterns I have posted on here, do it now.

Bathroom Remodels

Posting this for my aunt, she wants to see what we've done. I hope she likes the pictures.

I thought I had taken some still pictures of what my bathroom looked like before the remodel. If I did, I cant find them. The video is kind of shaky, and I went pretty quickly with it, but it gives you an idea of what I had before.

Here's the After pictures!

The glass in the shower door is called "glue chip". Looks nicer than some of the shower doors you can buy off the shelf at Lowes. It was supposed to be 1/4in glass, but they apparently couldnt find that glass in 1/4in. So the door ended up taking about 3 1/2 weeks to order, and they did it in 3/4in glass. (didnt charge us extra for the 3/4in glass, according to the installer)

The glue chip up close looks kind of like a car window that's gotten iced over by an ice storm. I really like the look of it. It's smooth on the inside of the door, so we had to buy squeegees to wipe the water off the door when we're done showering. Big reason we didnt go for clear glass.

The shower stool in the shower is made out of teak wood. (old sailing ships used to use teak. It's apparently a good wood to use around water) I decided I didnt want to use that shower stool because it wobbles on the sloped shower floor. So, I gave it to my mother to use in her bathroom as a seat to sit on when she's drying off from a shower, or trying to put her shoes on or something.

Her shower is a bit bigger than mine, so she could probably use it in there without the stool wobbling as much as it did in my shower. I think she likes it better as a place to sit when drying off tho. I did try it out in my shower a couple of times and just didnt like it.

Liked being able to sit down under the spray tho, so I might go out and buy a shower chair that has adjustable legs on it...might be able to fix those so it wouldnt wobble on the sloped floor.

The shower wand is left over from my old shower. It's still in good condition so I didnt change that. I am still waiting on a longer pipe for the shower wand to attach to. They lowered the floor, but not the shower pipe. The floor was lowered by several inches, and I'm only five foot four. So, it's kind of a stretch to reach it. When my mom was using my shower for a couple of weeks during the construction of her shower, she couldnt reach the wand. She broke her shoulder back in February, and while that's healed, she has a hard time raising her arm up like that, so I had to leave the shower head sitting on one of the grab bars I had put in the shower.

About the grab bars. Reason I had them put in, is because I sometimes have problems with vertigo. Kind of makes it hard to wash your hair and close your eyes and lean your head back to rinse shampoo out of your hair, when closing your eyes and leaning your head back will make you lose all sense of where you are and make you fall down. (that was a long sentence. I hope I got the commas in all the right places)

The grab bars were helpful for my mom when she was using my shower, and my dad really liked the idea of having them, so he asked for grab bars in their shower too. Think that was his only big request on his part. (They actually had grab bars in their old shower, but the guy who built their old shower was an effing idiot. He used the wrong kind of screws in their shower. When the contractor took their old shower apart, the screws on their grab bars were rusted thru and were not far from failing completely.)

I also had grab bars put on the wall outside of my shower. My shower has 2 horizontal bars and one vertical bar. (vertical is above the horizontal bar and is centered in the middle of the back wall of the shower). There's another vertical bar right outside of my shower and a horizontal one. The horizontal bar makes a great towel bar too.

The grab bars are pretty much the entire reason we did the shower remodels. My fiberglass shower insert didnt have studs behind it. (I have pictures to prove it) There's a local pharmacy that installs grab bars, and they said they have special things they use that's supposed to brace grab bars in fiberglass showers. I just didnt trust that they would hold. So my dad had me call a decorator that my aunt (not the same aunt I'm posting these pictures for) knows and she helped us pick out the tile and got us a really good contractor. (first remodel we've ever done where the contractor actually knew what he was doing, had the right skills to do what he was doing well, and didnt take a year plus infinity to do the work)

The decorator also helped us pick out new paint colors and new carpeting. My dog TinyMonsters (died in 2006) did a number (#1 and #2 specifically) on our old carpet, and after four years of no dog, our house looked like we still had a dog. (I'll do another post later to show off the new carpet if my aunt wants to see it too)

The shelves in the shower are made out of Corian. They're set into the tile. I like how they look. Got the extra shelf so that I'd have an extra storage spot for dry washcloths. The top one is high enough that I can keep the washcloths dry so I can dry my face off if I get soap in my eyes.

We also had the floor of my bathroom tiled with the same tile they used in my shower. It turned out really nice.

I also got a new toilet for my bathroom. Kind of wish I hadnt. The new one is more environmentally "friendly" and is seriously low flushing. We'll just say that it cant be all that "friendly" to the environment when you have to flush the damn thing 3 times just to get anything to go down. Plus, I'm not used to toilets that burp the water up and then suck it down. Toilets are supposed to swirl the water. I'm a big fan of the Coriolis effect. (now watch, I'll get comments from the greenies who will accuse me of destroying the planet with a swirling flush toilet)

I'll do another blog post tomorrow with pictures of my mom's bathroom, since she had more stuff done to hers.

Holy crap! I wrote a pattern!

Back in April I made my b-in-law some fingerless mitts because his hands were cold. I actually bothered to write down how I did it. I made him two pairs and did the second pair differently than the first pair. So, I'm posting how I did it.

I'm not the greatest pattern writer. I had to have help with the rectangle granny square to make it readable and understandable. So, if these patterns are a bit confusing, I'm sorry. I didnt ask anyone to help me with writing these out. I pretty much wrote them out as I was making them, and saved them in Word until I decided tonight to post this.

(this is the first pattern, wrote it out kind of basic)

Fingerless mitt

Chain 25

Hdc in each sts for 9 rows

Row 10: chain 2, hdc for 5 sts, ch 2, sk 2 sts, hdc in each sts to end of row

Rows 11 to 18, hdc in each sts till you have 18 rows

Fold lengthwise and sew or crochet up the side to finish off.

(this is the second version. Basically the same as the first one, except that I changed the chain-up part from a chain-2 to a chain-1.)

Fingerless Mitts
(Make two)

Foundation Row: Chain 25

Row 1: half double crochet in 2nd chain from hook, half double crochet in each st to end of row.

Row 2: Chain 1 loosely. (you don’t really need height on this one, and just doing a loose ch-1 gives you enough height, and you dont end up with that loopy look on the ends that a ch-2 gives you sometimes) Half double crochet in each st till end of row.

Work in pattern to Row 10.

Row 10: (thumbhole row) ch 1, hdc in next 5 sts, ch 2, skip next 2 sts, hdc in next st. Hdc in each st to end of row.

Rows 11 to 18: hdc in each sts to Row 18.

Fold lengthwise and sew or slip stitch up the side to make a tube.

(Optional) You can crochet around the edge of the openings to give it a more finished look. I did that for one pair of fingerless mitts I made for my brother-in-law. I didnt care for the edging on the ends of the mitts tho)

I took pictures, but then over the summer I was a bit sick, and now dont remember which of the mitt pictures I took was which. I used the same color yarn for both pairs, and I guess now it doesnt really matter which one was made first. At least you can get a basic idea of what they looked like when I was finished.

I watch too much HGTV

(wow...3 new posts from me in one night...)

Ok, I did a remodeling project in my bedroom last winter. (had a fancypants desk built custom for me) and then this summer, my parents and I decided we needed to remodel the bathrooms. (their bathroom really needed it. The guy who remodeled their bathroom in 2005 was a complete moron. Bathroom building is apparently a skill...at least according to Mike Holmes on "Holmes on Homes").

So, my bathroom was the first one to get re-done. No pictures yet, I'm waiting for the shower doors to arrive and for the shower head to get put back on, plus we have to repaint (the entire house) and re-carpet (the entire house). The house has needed some new paint and carpet for quite awhile. (my dog, TinyMonsters, has been dead since 2006 and it still looks like we have a live dog living here) Plus, after having my desk built in my bedroom, my bedroom still needs new paint, and my carpet was ripped up a bit by the desk installer. So, my room still needs to be finished too.

We cut out the cheesy fiberglass shower insert that the bathroom came with when it was built. ("we" meaning the contractor got out his sawz-all and surgically removed it in small pieces). I picked out some new tile, and some tile installers came and built a new shower floor (properly waterproofed!) and tiled the walls from floor to ceiling. Oh, and I got a new tile floor in the bathroom to match. About the only thing I didnt change in the bathroom is the sink and cabinet. (bye bye old toilet, getting a new one soon!)

I picked out my shower door today. (changed my mind on the doors my mom had picked out for us the other day. I found out how much mine was going to cost and had a serious attack of "whaaat? How much?!?". So, I went back to the glass store this afternoon and got one that was priced a little more realistically. My mom still gets her INSANELY PRICED shower door for their master bath, since I was able to pick out a nice door for half the price of the one mom had picked out for me, and my dad will stop crying uncontrollably about how much that door was going to cost. I swear, he looked so happy this morning when I told him I was going to cancel the freakishly expensive door and get a cheaper one.

It's amazing how guilty I felt over the cost of that door. My dad had told them go ahead and get it, and I just had this worrying guilt over how much it cost in the bottom of my stomach. I just couldnt do it. The contractor seemed a bit annoyed with me when I called him this morning to tell him I was changing it.

The doors that my mom had picked out for both bathrooms was 3/4 inch clear glass. (they had 1/4 inch glass for a little less, which was what we'd decided to put into my bathroom until I panicked about the price). When I got to the glass store, I picked out an opaque glass called "Glue Chip" (yeah, I dont know what that means either) that kind of reminds me either of ice crystals forming on a car windshield, or of fossils of leaves in rocks.

My mom will still get her clear glass shower doors, which I think is ok, since she's got the master bathroom and it would probably look really cool with clear glass doors...and I'll have glass doors that I wont have to squeegee after every shower to keep them clean.

I'll probably post a few pictures of the before and after pictures of my bathroom once I get the doors installed and the shower head put back up. I love the tile. I cant wait to wash my hair in the new shower. I hate my parents current shower. It was poorly made, and "probably" not properly waterproofed. (eeeeek!! I'm afraid to see what happens when they rip up the old tile in there) The walls are made of marlite (kind of a fake marble looking stuff) and when the contractor was looking at that shower, he reached up and wiggled the top of the marlite walls and freaked when the wall wiggled. The moron who installed those walls five years ago apparently didnt use any adhesive (and probably no Durock, concrete board) behind the marlite...we're pretty sure the only thing holding up the marlite is my mom's grab bars.

and since this is a crocheting blog, I'll mention that I havent gotten much done crochet or knit-wise this summer. I made a couple of shawls, and am mostly finished with a giant granny square afghan. I started another new shawl with some sparkly yarn the other day and that's half finished. Bought more of the sparkly yarn (Hobby Lobby's "I Love This Yarn" Royalty Blue with sparkle) and am considering an afghan with that.

Also got some "I Love This Cotton" from HL and crocheted and finished a pineapple doily with that earlier this summer. My aunt starched it for me and it actually looks pretty cool, even if it is made in crochet cotton and not crochet thread.

I discovered Knitpicks earlier this year. (well, I knew about them for a few years, but then I actually bought some stuff and fell in love with their needles). I started a practice sock from the toe up on 40in circs. I have a toe and part of a foot, but havent gotten much past that. I may have a sock in a few years. I bought so many knitting needles I needed storage for that, so I went to WalMart and bought myself a toolbox to keep them in. Then I kind of hurt my right hand and didnt do much in the way of crocheting or knitting over the past few months. Hand is getting better, so hopefully I'll be cranking out some stuff soon...probably not that sock, but maybe a few more crocheted shawls.