Christmas 2014 - All about the crochet

So I've been scrambling, and the weekend before Christmas I was all finished with Christmas presents.

For my mother-in-law, I crocheted a simple shell border around some high quality towels using Sarafina cotton (size 2) yarn.   To do this, I first sewed, with the same yarn and a sharp needle, a blanket stitch around 2 towels and 2 washcloths.  Then I crocheted a single crochet row, then 5-double crochet, skip 2, slip stitch, skip 2, 5-double crochet etc around making the shell row.  That's it.  Easy peasy, and well worth it, my mother-in-law loved it!  Perfect gift.

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For my grand-niece, well, I finished that blanket and pony!  Woohoo!  Her birthday is Dec 29th, and they are coming down for Christmas on Jan 1st, so what I'll do is wrap the blanket up as a birthday present, and the pony up as her Christmas present.

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I've already begun the new baby's blanket.  And, since I made Princess K a toy, I suppose I'll make Princess ? one too.  I'm about 6 rows past what is shown in this picture.

It's the weekend before Thanksgiving.   I have so much to be thankful for - my life, my health, my family, my daughter's life .. their dogs who helped keep me from falling back into depression with their adorable fluffy selves ...

And my Christmas tree is up.  Yep.  Micaela was so excited to get Christmas up she was literally bouncing.  She got as far as the mantel, and I had to do everything else.  It's been a few years since I decorated my own tree, the girls usually do it, but this year was all me. I'm a complete amateur, and my iphone pictures are as usual pretty horrible, but it's probably one of the prettiest trees I've ever done.  Got no money left though, lol.  Had to buy all new lights, and of course ribbon, and picks to stick in and help fill  up the tree, and a few other likely unnecessary items to make Christmas pretty.

I am a huge fan of Pentatonix, and they have some Christmas songs out that are just unbelievable.  You've probably seen them, they both rather went viral on the internet.  But here they are again.

Little Drummer Boy

 Mary Did You Know

Carol Of The Bells

Things forgotten

Today is Thursday, throw-back-thursday, and I've been sitting here thinking of the things that were totally blog-worthy that I never did blog about.

For instance, when I was making the 2 cakes for my church's homeschool graduation service in May, which included my youngest daughter, Micaela.  8 hours on my feet, then in the @#$%!#! trash they went, and off to Albertsons I went where I purchased ... for less than I had spent on the trashed cakes ... 3 lovely and delicious cakes that everyone just couldn't get enough of.  That was absolutely blog-worthy.  I may have come off a teensy bit pissed and whiny though, so maybe it's better that I didn't blog it.  Looking through my phone, I don't see that I took any pictures of my delicatessin disaster, either, which is probably also for the best.  I used to make wonderful cakes, even some very nice wedding cakes.

Which reminds me, my parents' 50th anniversary was back in March of this year.  I made those cakes, and they were amazing!  Tasted good, anyway.  And I did take pictures of that!

My niece, Jessica, got married several years back.  My mother was making her a quilt for her wedding.  Approximately 3 years later, and a whole lot of junk along the way, such as my dad's massive heart attack and susbequent 4-vessel bypass, my oldest daughter's (Dara) journey of pain and medical testing until she was diagnosed the week before her 19th birthday with severe fibromyalgia, then just a week later Mom having severe reactions with a routine gallbladder surgery leading the family to find out about the disease she had been diagnosed with 5 years before, 6 weeks later my 17 year-old daughter (Micaela) getting hit by an 18-wheeler and impossibly surviving ..... approximately 3 years after she got married Jessica's quilt was finished.  Or I should say, Mom was finished with her part.  Then I took it, and where Mom had done her hand-stitched applique around all 4 sides of the quilt, I did some top-stitch embroidery, outlining all that applique.  It was beautiful.  It was brutal.   The quilting had already been done, and the quilter had used some tight stitches of her own with some clear, plastic thread or something.  I don't know, Mom's the quilter in the family.  But when I got it, it was technically finished and ready to go.  It was rather difficult to pass the needle through,without poking it through the backside.  I bled.  I callused.  I cried.  And about 6 months later I finished.  And then I really cried (with thankfulness). 

My oldest daughter, Dara, has a lifelong friend who married young, has a little daughter, and they just bought their first house.  As soon as I saw on FaceBook that they were buying, I started crocheting her a lovely afghan throw.  Really it was just an excuse to try out Stylecraft DK, but it certainly turned out wonderful!  And really, aren't they all just excuses to play with yarn?  I actually haven't delivered it  yet, but this weekend I'll be getting a gift bag and some tissue paper and delivering it to her, I think it's time now.  They'll be moving in within the next couple of weeks I think.

In the quest to clean out some stash, I made myself an afghan throw.  I luuuurrrrrrve it!!!!!  This is me!  I should have made it twice as big as I did.  I still could I suppose, but now I'm on to other things.  Still, sometimes I'm a bit tempted to pick the dog hair out of it, wrap it up nice and tight, then go back to it and make it bigger later.  It would probably look better in here if it were actually cool outside, not Louisiana summertime.

Oh, I musn't forget my basket!  I love my basket!  I am using it to hold the yarn for my next big project, a cabled afghan for my nephew, who is getting married this September. and I have found an excuse to make more of these, and even bought more yarn to accomplish that .. a girl in our church is preggers and NEEDS a cute little crocheted basket to carry little things like burp cloths, baby powder, wipees, etc. in.  In fact, her mom and mother-in-law surely need a matching basket to keep at their homes for the same thing.  Anyway, here's the one I made myself, I haven't started the pink/gray/white ones yet.

And that's my "throw back Thursday".  Throwing up a bunch of stuff I could have blogged about before, but instead procrastinated and tried to put it all in one blog as though anyone will ever get to the bottom of this one.

If you actually reached the bottom of this post, you MUST post a comment and say HI.

Getting' crafty - The Letter "M"

So ... my daughter was in an awful accident right as her senior year should have started.  She lost her senior year.  As a homeschooler, I seriously was not worried about her not doing her schoolwork!  I just wanted her to concentrate on healing, and sitting up and using her right arm hurt too much at that time.  Well, now she's coming to the end of her senior year, thankful to Abeca Academy for working with us and getting her here!

So, as a homeschooler, how do you graduate?  When my first daughter graduated, there were 3 others in our church that were also homeschooled, and we had a wonderful celebration.  Decorations, cakes (I do the baking), the pastors officiated, pictures, it was just wonderful.  When Micaela would have graduated last year, she was the only one and we would have, what, gone to dinner?  Bleh.  Probably.   However, she lost that year, and this year our church has THREE homeschoolers, so once again we can hold a celebration down at the church, all official and stuff.  A real garaduation ceremony.  With no schools doing all the work.  That means us parents are doing everything.

Graduation pictures - check.
Announcements/invitations (Jason's job) - check
Digging through old photos with plenty of sniffling nostalgia and wishing-I-could-turn-back-time (me) - check

NOW TO THE CRAFT STUFF

Today I am taking a bunch of those photos to the printer/copier/scanner, and making simple black&white copies.  I'll be cutting those out and making a collage on a large paper mache' "M" which I ordered from Joann.com.   DISCLAIMER:  This was a Pinterest idea, and this is the blog I got these instructions from.  Not my idea.  But I am going to list here exactly what I did, any difficulties I ran into, etc.

The M.  It came to me as ugly brown paper mache'.  Must be painted!   I asked Mic if she wanted it "brown-based" or "grey-based" (because Mod Podge comes in a large variety of possibilities these days, including a browned antique-y color).  She chose grey. 

This M is 23.5 inches tall.  So far in this picture all I've done is paint it black using a sponge brush.  As you can see, I'm working on my dining room table (gasp, would that be yarn in the background?!), with a Dollar Store plastic table cloth thrown over it to keep it safe.Getting down in those corners is really tricky!  Next time, SPRAY PAINT!

Copying the pictures.   According to above-linked blog, just copy the pictures black-n-white onto plain copy paper.  This will glue down and collage up nicely.  So, taking a while to fix breakfast and make copies while the M thoroughly dries.

I had to lighten the intensity (they were way too dark) and even bring down the size.  With an M this large, I figured I'd be able to get tons of pics on it, but the reality is, not really.  I want her childhood on this M, and I now realize I'm going to have to just pick pictures again, not just copy everything I dumped in the folder.  Sigh, back to weeding out.

Okay, playing with scissors, lay out photos on the M until satisfied, then paint Modge Podge on the back of the picture and on the M, lay it all down, let it dry, come back later in the day with a good coat all over the M, front/back/sides.  Dare ANYONE to walk near it for the rest of the day until it is no longer tacky.

Here it is propped up against her bedroom wall where it will soon be properly hung. 

And here it was used at the homeschool graduation ceremony on her table.  My beautiful miracle.  My Mic.