Tunisian Throw delivered

So.  I delivered the Tunisian blanket to my brother-in-law tonight.  I started off by telling him that over the years he had brought a lot of hurt and pain to this family, and it was hard for me, the outsider to watch the pain in his mother, his brothers, his grandparents.  But that was the past, and just doesn't matter.  I asked his forgiveness for any and every time in the past I had offended him.  I told him about how this yarn, this blanket, was supposed to be for me and only me, learning a new technique I figured it would have flaws, but somehow when I put my hand in the box and touched the yarn for the first time I just felt "Chad", and from that moment I never had a doubt that this was for Chad and only Chad.

I told him that it was after that that Jason (my husband, the oldest of the brothers) told me that he, Chad, had been clean for more than a year.  That that was just HUGE, after all the years of struggling with addiction, he was clean?  And then shortly after that he had the incident where Jason called a friend to get him medical attention in jail (he got picked up again, but this time not for wrongdoing.  He was a passenger in a car that got pulled over, the cop ran him, and found he had unpaid fines and took him to jail for it), he was released and taken straight to the hospital, where they found his L4 through S1 spine is nearly completely compressed.  Chad has a nearly full left leg amputation so has been walking on prostheses for 30 years.

Anyway.  When I pulled the blanket out of the bag and handed it to him, you could just tell.  He knows this blanket was special.  I prayed over it and him for many hours while I was working on it.  I took it to my mother's prayer partners and had them anoint it and pray over it.  In the night time hours when he feels all alone, he has this to hold onto and KNOW that he is never alone, and never has been.  Someone is out there praying for him.  God is watching him and knows his struggles, his pains,

There are flaws in this afghan throw.  I definitely see them, and they make me cringe.  But when he sees them, he will be reminded that he is flawed, but in his darkest thoughts, in his sorrow for his past, in his worst flaws, God has been watching over him, waiting for him to stand and say "no", to look toward the Light, to reach for Him.  His flaws are part of him, and it's okay.

He is not alone.

These words resound in my head every single day.  You are not alone.  He is not alone.  She is not alone.  He watches over you, and in your darkest moments you are to be reminded .....

You are not alone.

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.

Sculpy hooks

I've been playing around with Sculpey to make a comfortable, no-more-cramps hook.  Previously my favorite has been The Crochet Dude's hooks, pretty comfortable to work with but the cushions tend to come loose.

So I decided to try Sculpey.  

The first hook: (D) Crochet Dude 

Second hook:  (h) Too thin.  My hand cramped up. 

Third hook:  (I) PERFECT: I crocheted for hours and hours and hours with this hook. Then my upper arm and shoulder got tired....

Fourth hook:  (G) Eh, too thick. I think I can still work with it though.

Woah.  Terrible picture!  Darn iPhone!  Or is  it just my lack of photographic talent.  

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.

Patchwork afghan

I've loved the look of patchwork afghans I've seen and pinned on Pinterest.  I have way too much yarn in my closet and plastic bins, and in the quest for getting my room clean again (won't Hubs be happy!), I'm using my yarn up.  Stash. Buster.

I pulled out some “earthtone” colors from my Vanna’s stash, using the following colors (5 rows):

• Chocolate brown
• Grey Heather
• Wheat
• Oatmeal
• Barley
• Dusty Rose
• Dusty Green
• Dusty Purple
• Dusty Blue
• Mustard
• Cranberry
• Honey
• Toffee

And the (6th row) /join/border was done in Espresso.

My living room, kitchen, and dining room are all one open room. The colors in this afghan pull all three rooms together, rugs in the living room, bricks of the fireplace, tile floor, dark brown leather furniture, curtain in the dining room, chandelier in the dining room, even the barley matches the granite counter tops of the kitchen and the grey heather matches the stainless steel appliances. My family is not necessarily impressed with what I do, except this simple afghan. This they love, and this I will keep for us.

Join: Top slip stitch. You can’t really see it well in the pictures because it’s so dark and I’m using an iphone camera, but IRL it adds a bit of a braid look to it. For some reason the joins ridged up a little bit. I don’t know why, I’ve used the same join before and it lay flat, but on this it does. If I were re-doing it, I’d do sc join (sc in stitch 1 of block 1, sc in stitch 1 of block 2, and so on), or something like that.

NOTE: I have 30 of these 7” squares. It took 2 full skeins of Espresso to stitch the 6th row for 28 squares, so I am in a 3rd skein to finish just the 6th row on the last 2 blocks.

BORDER: Border #46 from Edie Eckman’s Around the Corner Crochet Borders, using Beige and Espresso.

CONCLUSION: Now that it’s washed and dried and I’m using it … it’s not big enough. o_o Every square should have been 1-2 rows bigger, or I should have done about 56 squares instead of 30. Now that would have been a snuggler, and would have really cleaned out that stash bucket!