Daydreams

What do you daydream about?  I confess, I'm a daydreamer.

Since I had a mama/daughter date and spent time with Dara yesterday evening, I didn't take an afternoon or evening nap, so I slept during the night.  Got up around 4 a.m., came in here and sat on the couch and crocheted for about 4 hours.  Dead silence, dog curled up beside me, nothing but me, my crochet, and my thoughts.

And I dreamed about having my own fiber shop and all the activities I'd have going.

Of course, reality always rears its proverbial ugly head ... it's this town.  I'd probably be doing all the activities all by myself and *forget* making an actual living at it.  It's a good dream though, having a fiber shop, having classes, having meet-ups, stocking stuff the big-box stores have no clue about.  Knit, crochet, spin, weave.  Downtown near all the coffee shops and museums.  

Daydreams never last though.  Back to the real word and real job that is just nowhere near as fun as hooks and yarn.  Ah well, back to work.

The Tunisian Throw

Before I make any posts with pictures on my LionBrand Tunisian Throw, I need to tell this story:

Okay.  So Christmas 2013 I gave a completed Daisy swap blanket to a young lady in our church named Angel.  She's an overcomer with a really amazing story of addiction, prostitution, overcoming, and making it her life's ministry to help others in addiction problems.  We have a ministry in our church named Seven, confidential, but it's for people in addiction (I think it might actually be a social-work sanctioned something or other, most people in it do not attend our church from what I've seen), and those people plus family members (like my mother-in-law) can be involved.  Otherwise, stay away from those rooms on that night of the week, give them privacy.

So this past Christmas, Angel told me how much that afghan means to her.  Every time someone comes over, she tells them how it was made especially for her (and it was, I preferenced colors to match a picture of her new place, from Day 1 it was all about Angel), prayed over, and made in secret just for her.  I knew that when those dark nights come, as they will for anyone in recovery, she has something physical to hold onto, to remember She Is Not Alone.

Those words resounded inside my head over and over and over all through December.  Not Alone.  Then one day as I was praying I knew I needed to make more, and with Angel's help choose the recipient before I begin making the afghan, so I can pray over it, positivity, all that.  And then when that person's "dark moments" come along, they have something physical to hold onto and always know they are not alone.

I was thinking on this a couple Saturdays ago, then got in my car to drive out to my parents', and on Christian radio heard THREE songs in a row about not being alone, then a recorded call-in where the woman said, "Everyone has something they can do for someone else to let them know they're not alone."

Hello!  I really felt like God was asking me for my crochet!  On the one hand, that's really silly, so many people still sneer at "crochet", on the other hand, wow.  God wants my crochet!  Okay, God, you do realize it takes a lot of time .. yeah.  Nevermind.  Okay.  Sure, I really dont' mind to tell you the truth.  It's a wonderful feeling to have a real purpose in the thing that you love to do!

So I get this box in from Herrschners, I had ordered the caramel colored Deborah Norville Everyday Soft for my Tunisian throw.  The instant my hand touched that yarn, I felt the name CHAD.  I was like, But I don't even LIKE Chad.  Ugh!  

Chad is my husband's brother.  Addict,, thief, family-hurter.  So at Christmas he told Jason he's been clean for 14 months.  Awesome.  

Then ... well, can I believe him?  And I knew it didn't matter.  After 20+ years of me doing my best to avoid him at family functions, not saying more than "hi Chad", I knew God wants my crochet, and he wants this for Chad.

Fast forward.  I've already started it.  Tunisian is new for me, and I had gotten my first 6 blocks done, and decided that's all I'm going to do.  Six patterns, maybe 6 of each of them for a 36-block afghan.  Then my mother-in-law posts on Facebook a plea for prayer.  Don't think she's ever done that before, and I saw it at 11:00 pm when it was far too late to call.  I told my husband, he had no idea what was going on either.  So he called her first thing next morning.   

Chad got arrested again.  Not for wrongdoing this time, but for some unpaid fines.  He's still clean.  He sat in jail for nearly a week.  Then he called, crying, begging for someone to help him, he was in so much pain.  He had a cut on his thumb that had gotten infected and was very painful, and the pain in his lower back was just agony.  Chad has a high threshhold for pain, and he was crying.  So my husband immediately called a friend, asked for medical attention for his brother, and 5 minutes later Chad had been released and was being picked up.  My mother-in-law took him to the hospital for care.  When she took him back to his place, it was flooded. 

Chad was so dejected, it seems like  nothing is going right and nothing ever will.

And my husband tells me to hurry up on that afghan ... 

You know, sometimes God will let us hit the bottom so when we finally break, we know without a doubt that it is Him doing the fixing, the repairing, the helping.  And sometimes a person needs that something special to hold onto and know they aren't alone.  I suppose I'm the perfect one to play a part in that, if Chad realizes that I've been thinking about him and praying for him and having others pray over this handmade afghan, he will always have that proof that he is not alone.   

Even if you don't have some special hand-made, prayed-over object to hold in your hands, no matter how dark our world has become and is becoming, if you're reading this you have the Breath of God in you.  God breathed life into Adam, and we are the children of Adam.  God is always ready to answer, when you're ready to call.

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

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!