What a week

It's been a crazy week.  Sooo busy at work, and the kids are getting sick again.  Oh, joy.  So I don't know if we'll be attending the Christening we've RSVPd to this weekend, but I think they would appreciate us keeping the germs to ourselves.  So I'll just have to take the gift I had made over there another day when we're feeling better....or just have one of us go with one of the kids, if they are healthy enough, and the others stay home.

But I've joined the Moogly Blog 2015 CAL (crochet along) and I will be getting a new pattern every 2 weeks for 24 weeks, December is for seaming.  So this week was the Tamara's Kismet Square.  I've never done a Jacob's Ladder technique and I had a little snafu in the first round for the sideways ladder, I was 1 'rung' short on each side, so I had to just add in 2 extra DCs to each side as I went along the next row so it would come out proper.  It's not noticeable, I don't think.  But I really do love the effect.  I love how it's rungs...

Then they twist and loop through each other (this is a previous round pic but gives the effect)...

And then my finished product is this!!!

I absolutely love the colors.  Used what I had, 142.3 yards total, which is nice.  It love the braided effect it has.  It's so bright.  And up close it doesn't look like much because I've been working on it.  But it actually does resemble the pattern when I look at it in a picture like this!  Yay for me!  I'm always critical that I'm not doing good enough and it looks nothing like what was put out there by the designer.  But I think I did okay.  No, I did not block it.  I really don't plan on blocking.  I'm not a blocker, in general.  So I am thinking I'm just going to be seaming these squares together as they are at the end, because that's how I roll.  Not that I'm lazy, but I'm not going to kill the acrylic yarn.  It's going to get washed a bajillion times, cause I assume we're going to use it on the couch, which ends up always smelling like dog butt after a couple weeks.....so there's no point, in my mind.  It will be what it will be :)

Besides the heavy workload I have, I have the Slytherin Swaps that have started, and the sign-ups are trickling in.  So far we have 31 people participating.  So I will close those tomorrow night some time and I will then pair everyone up and give out their partner information and watch the chaos happy that ensues from the 'stalking' that people participate in to get an awesome box put together fort their spoilees.  This term's theme is Favorite TV show.  Who has only one?  Really not many people, but it's a generality, I think.  And it seems to be fun watching what people are answering thus far!  Yay for swap time!  Hopefully this time around I don't have any flakers o_O

Hope you are having a great week!

The New Year

I guess I never formally said Happy New Year!!!  So there it is!!

Since this is the craft year for me, I'm doing what I want.  It's not all just for me, but I'm not spending the whole year crafting for Christmas and others like I did.  I have several projects I'm doing that are slotted for other people. of course.  That's how I operate.  But I'm going to just do them as I want to and if I want to.  For instance, Noelle's daughters love these homemade hats that they got that match their coats.  Brianna got a new coat, it's mint colored.  So she wanted a hat to match.  So I whipped one up.  And she loves it.  The hats a tad big, but better bigger than smaller, if you want to put the positive spin on it.  And here it is!

I think it turned out really cute and it matches perfectly with her coat!  So glad she likes it.  Fantastic knit-worthy recipients are the absolute best!  They make your heart sing when someone loves what you make.  I hope she gets a lot of use out of this.

Charity Hats

So along with a friend at work, we made some preemie hats for Little Hats Big Hearts.  I ran out of red yarn, I was only able to make 7, but hey, it's better than none!  It was a free pattern for a 10 minute crochet preemie hat that I used.

The coloring on the 2nd photo didn't turn out so good, but they're the same red as the top picture.  I'm in the midst of my Detention Owl for my HP knit/crochet group on Rav., so I am working on Annie's Socks first.

I have a Toothless I started and stopped making for Jeff.  I have several plans of stuff in the works.  But I am going to make a cute hat for a 8 yo daughter of a co-worker, and it shouldn't take long at all.  Just need to get around 200 yards of mint colored yarn.  I have the accent colors already.  And then maybe I'll put forward the effort of making another ram.  I'm trying to not buy yarn this year, I'm trying to stash bust and have a very restricted budget.  The mint yarn is the only cost of the hat I'm making, just supplies, I wouldn't charge for time.  Maybe if I do the same for the ram?  I don't know yet.

I'm cleaning things out and organizing things, or trying, and trying to just let things flow.  That's my goal I've decided, of course to put forth the effort needed in life, but to also just let things flow.

Here's to hoping you have a good and productive and flowing week!