I used a "P" crochet hook, and crocheted the length of the scarf (end to end, instead of the side by side scarves I usually make) The stitch is just a basic single crochet. I figured that since chenille is kind of a furry yarn, that any fancy stitches I might have wanted to try would get "lost" in the furryness. It took me about an hour and two skeins of yarn (all I could afford...even at 40% off!) I think it turned out pretty nice.
I have a ton of scrap yarn left from the last few projects I've done...I think it's time to start another scrap afghan...I just need a really cool pattern
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Rectangular Granny Afghan
Special stitches: (corner shells are 3 dc, ch-1, 3 dc)
Hint: when fastening off leave a long tail to be worked in later so the stitches won’t come apart.
Round 1:
ch 48
Dc in 4th ch from hook and next 2 chs, ch1 *sk 1 ch, dc in next 3chs, ch 1* repeat from * to * across (9 more times) ending with 1 dc in last ch. fasten off leaving a long tail to weave in
Round 2:
Attach new yarn in last ch-1 sp before the last dc. Ch 3, 2 dc, ch-1 in same sp, 3 dc, ch-1, 3 dc, ch-1 inside dc loop, working on other side of starting ch (3 dc, ch-1 in each sp across) until ch 4 loop (3dc, ch-1, 4 times in loop), (3dc, ch-1 in each sp across) joining with sl st in first dc.
Round 3: Attach red in first ch-1 sp of row 2 (ch 3, 2 dc, ch-1, 3dc ch-1 in same sp for corner, 3 dc, ch-1 in next sp, (3 dc, ch-1, 3 dc, ch-1 in next sp for corner) 3 dc, ch-1 in each sp across joining in ch 3.
Round 4: continue in pattern until size desired.
For more than one row of same color after joining sl st to the first ch sp and work in pattern.
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So, I'm sitting there, crocheting my little fingers off...terribly sad about the terrorists attacks a few days before, when some guy comes into the store, starts to walk past the table I was at...then he walked back, stuffed two $100 bills into the jar in front of me and refused to take any ribbons for it. The song "What a Wonderful World" was playing right about then...I'd always loved that song before, but I guess seeing some guy just stop, pull out that money and stuff it into the jar made me feel good, and so now when "What a Wonderful World" plays, it just makes me feel better.
Too bad WalMart fired me about 2 weeks later. They panicked because people were not shopping for a couple of months after 9-11...so WM just started to thin their herds of blue vested cattle...guess they needed to do that so they could pay the people in the sweat shops their few pennies a day.
Hope I dont sound too bitter about having worked for WalMart...I still shop there, (they're squeezing out all the other stores in my area) I just wish that the WalMart that just landed in a cornfield near my house had a better craft department...it really sucks...that craft department is only a bit nicer than the one that the Kmart down the street from it used to have (Kmart got rid of their craft departments in the early 90's)
TinyMonsters (my dog) is feeling better now (hopefully!). We took him to his favorite vet, Dr. Ramm, and he got poked and prodded (Tiny just LOVES Dr. Ramm and will do whatever he wants him to do...things that I cant even get him to do).
It's seriously hilarious to watch a vet tech try to get a urine sample from a dog...at least Tiny's been trained to go on command...all I had to do was tell Tiny to "hurry up", and the vet tech had to scramble to hold a Tupperware container underneath the dog. Wish I'd had a camera.
I'm really impressed with Tiny's vet, which is why I'll drive 6 miles out of my way with a drooling, yapping 95 pound behemoth sitting in the seat behind me. I'll switch to a closer vet when I get a new dog...maybe...not. I'll just get a smaller dog next time. (something I can pick up when it doesnt want to do something)
Got no crocheting done this weekend. Went out with a friend last night in Lincoln...went to Mammoth Hall at UNL (big anthropological museum) and the planetarium. Watched a movie, and then stopped at the Flying J Truck Stop on the way home for french toast. Didnt find out till around midnight (at the truck stop) that my dad had been trying to reach me all night because my dog was ripping up carpet, eating the plant life in the front yard, and puking up said plant life all over the house. Tiny apparently was more than a little ticked off that his favorite human (that would be me) was not home to comfort him during his gastric distress he gets occasionally. Oh well...Dad never believes me when I tell him how crazy the dog gets when he becomes pre-bloat...now maybe he'll understand me the next time I make an executive decision to take Tiny to the Doggy ER ($250 just to walk in the door) to get Tiny checked out.
Most of the magazines are WorkBasket Magazines. Some of them go back to the 1950s. Some of the retro patterns are probably back in style now. There are also a few Crochet Fantasy magazines (earliest one is from 1984) and my aunt brought me over a few copies of Magic Crochet and Crochet World, along with a few WorkBaskets that she found around the house.
Some of the older magazines are starting to crumble, and a few of the magazines were obviously well used. (I recognized a few patterns as things that Grandma had made for me, my sister, and my cousins)
Since some of the magazines are crumbling into dust, I'm bypassing my usual reluctance to commit copyright violations, and I'm typing some of the patterns into Word and saving them to CD so that I'll have them if the magazines totally crumble. Most of them are printed on cheap acidic paper...it's pretty much a given that they'll disappear in a few years. I'm sure I'll pick one of them up someday, only to have them fall apart like 3,000 year old paper scrolls.
I'm going to buy plastic comic book bags and will be putting each magazine in a separate bag. It wont stop them from crumbling, but it might slow it down a bit.
Some of the patterns that I've already typed up, I've printed off (actually planning on using those patterns fairly soon) and I've put them into some binders. (finally, all those classes in Desktop Publishing are paying off) I've reformatted some things, like bolding some print, and using italics
In the Header and Footer spaces, I've put what magazines I've copied the pattern from...year, issue numbers...
I know it's technically a copyright violation by making copies, but they're only for my own use and I'm not posting them to the internet. I think Grandma would like it that I'm getting some use out of her patterns...it's great to have a nice big stash of patterns to drool over....errr...ummm...browse through.
The vet is giving the dog a few days and some various medicines to see if she might get better. Judging from what my aunt said tonight, I'm not sure this will have a happy ending.
This is really ticking me off, that my aunt's dog has to suffer because of the carelessness of a neighbor who cant keep their dog under control.
I'm not usually one who would want to hurt a dog, but I really do want to see the neighbor's dog put down if my aunt's dog has to be put to sleep.
As for my crocheting...I havent gotten much done this week, but I did start a new afghan...this one is being done in all white.
Went to the new WalMart SuperCenter that just opened up the street. Their craft department really really really sucks... Hardly any yarn, small amount of fabric. It just didnt impress me at all.
On a happier note, I got a new pattern book today... I've now got the instructions on how to crochet Care Bears... Hope I can figure this one out...I know a couple of little girls who seriously love Care Bears.
I'm still working on my patternless sock monkey doll... So far I've got two legs made...I need to find a decent picture of a real sock monkey so I can see what shape the body is supposed to have. At least the legs, arms and tail all have the same basic shape. I know my big problem will be making the mouth and the eyes. I've never been good at embroidery.
I wonder if Michaelangelo had the same problem when he was carving David or the Pieta?
I read somewhere once that Michaelangelo wasnt creating the statues, he claimed they were already there in the marble, and he was only releasing them.
I guess it's kind of the same thing when I crochet something...I already know what I want to make, I've got the yarn to make it, I just have to arrange the yarn in a way that it becomes whatever my brain is imagining.
so, anyways, my latest attempt at making an amigurumi is (hopefully) going to look something like a sock monkey (gosh, I really hope so!)
I've already got a leg crocheted (in Red Heart Super Saver Lt. Grey) I dont know if I have enough of the grey yarn to make the entire monkey in the same color, since I'm using up scrap yarn...so it could end up looking kind of strange... My big worry is making the face. I cant embroider, so he might end up a faceless, slightly colorful, strange looking sock monkey. Maybe I'll make him in a Halloween theme...then he can be a FrankenMonkey...
Watched Shepherd Smith talking to people coming out of the sludge...I'm wondering why someone didnt make up a sign or something, or at least taken a can of spray paint and painted arrows on the pavement to at least show people where to go, rather than let them sit on the waters edge on the interstate, wondering where the Hell their rescuers are.
This really scares me...if New Orleans, a city that's got to be used to at least occasionally having a hurricane pass by it, can be so overwhelmed and so completely unprepared for what has happened (I'm not passing blame) then what will happen if some disaster of biblical proportions happens somewhere else? (like where I live)
It shows me that we can never be prepared for something this horrible to happen.
Also saw on the news that people in muslim countries are gleefully dancing in the streets, happy as clams that Katrina did such damaged and killed a bunch of Americans. Hopefully these people will NEVER have any huge catastrophe happen where they'll need America's help.
It seems like the rest of the world hates America, but who do they run to when a tsunami slams into their shores, or when a 8.7 Richter scale earthquake knocks down their mud brick houses...or when a dictator invades their countries and decides to turn it into it's 19th Province. They ask America to pull their asses out the fire/water. And no matter what the political tensions might be, we gladly give them our money and our assistance and help them. We're one of the most powerful countries in the world...we're generous to a fault when people need our help, but when we need help, the silence is so deafening that you can hear the pin drop from 6,000 miles away.
As the day went on, and I watched more and more of Fox News, and heard that the water was rising in New Orleans, and that 55 people died in one county in Mississippi...I'm starting to believe that it's worse than bad.
I live in Nebraska, so I'm pretty removed from it all, but it's starting to slowly sink in...
I feel almost as bad as I did on September 11th when I woke up to find that the world had changed. At least this time it was a storm, an act of nature, and not 19 insane people willing to kill for their religion.
I just dont quite understand why the governments of the states that were hit by the hurricane didnt hire Greyhound buses before the storm hit to take anyone who wanted to leave, but couldnt afford it financially, out of the storm area.
and here are the yarn ends. There were 193 of them, and weaving them in was too much like handsewing which is why it took me longer to weave them in than it did to actually crochet the afghan.
Actually, I was sitting on the end seat, and decided to get up and go buy a pop...the step kind of juts out about 3 inches (or the seat is set 3 inches back from the front of the step). My left foot caught on the step, and I fell down on my left side, right smack onto my left hand. Didnt break anything (been there done that, this doesnt feel like anything broke) I felt my pinkie, ring, and middle fingers on my left hand bend back at the same time that my wrist bent back. These are apparently important fingers for me when crocheting. Hopefully it heals quick, at least I dont have any projects on a deadline right now tho.
Apparently they're a bit scared that they're going to get sued... Gosh, I wonder why that is? I thought they were fostering goodwill to the people of the world with all those free scans of other people's hard work. Surely a few hundred thousand dollars is a small price to pay for each instance of their "fostering goodwill".
I guess a few people there do understand that what they're doing is wrong, and they're now trying to cover their tracks so that the "copyright police" (aka Lawyers specializing in Intellectual Property Bearing Cease & Desist Orders) wont track back to them.
This is my Grandma O'Neil. She's the one responsible for my crochet and yarn addiction. She passed away May 22, 2004. I crocheted the giant rectangle granny that's on her lap.
My first rectangle granny square. Crocheted in Red Heart Jeweltones yarn. It's also the first afghan I ever sold. Wish I'd kept it...
This is me! In a poncho that I crocheted last winter. Wore that thing most of last winter, it's pretty warm. Of course, I wore a sweatshirt and two t-shirts underneath it...otherwise I'd have frozen.
I think my wireless internet connection problems may be fixed.. My dad and I went to Best Buy this morning and bought new cordless phones. Instead of getting the standard 2.4 megahertz phones, which can interfere with my wireless connection, which ironically is ALSO 2.4 megahertz. We got a set of 5.8 megahertz phones. Made by motorola. Cant use them yet. They have to charge for 16hrs, but I did disconnect the old phones and take their batteries out. I'm not getting as many dropouts as I was. Hope this works.
Hoping to finish a couple of projects tonight so that I get some pictures of them. One is a poncho that I'm making for my aunt Janice's sister...the other is an American flag afghan that I've been done with for about a month now, but I still have to weave in the endless tails that are in it. I was planning on putting crocheted stars onto it, but after weaving all those tails in, I just cant bring myself to do any sewing of star appliques. So this will probably be my 17th or 18th American flag afghan that I've made, and I've yet to put stars in any of them. I'm thinking of keeping this afghan for myself. I'll post pictures of my projects later.
My other crochet project that I'm just starting is a sweater vest. I made one earlier this spring that turned out ok, but I screwed up a little on the front. That earlier vest, and this new one, are just products of my imagination...I have no real pattern for them. What I've done, is take a store bought fabric vest and I've just tried to follow the shape of the vest with what I'm crocheting. Works pretty good with some other stuff I've done, and that first vest turned out almost ok.
here's a picture of that first vest.
