One on the needles

Going back to my knitting on this one, and touching back into my ripple love.

This is a knitted ripple using the pattern Easy Ripple Baby Blanket.

I am using some discontinued Encore Colorspun DK from my stash.  CO 142 stitches (34 stitch repeat + 6) using US 7 needles. Only 3 pattern lines, pretty mindless once I got past the fact that I couldn’t keep count of where I was based on where the cast-on tail was. What is really nice is this pattern is totally reversible.

~ Peace

Really done now

I finished tucking in the ends. Whew! That was a lot of work. I think it looks so much better with those nasty bits tamed, and the half-hexagon motifs there and all.

click to see full size

Here is a close-up of the half-hexagon motifs:

click to see full size

This child sized blanket is about 34 x 38 inches. It was made with some of the discontinued colors of cotton-ease. I used a bit of one skein of each of the colors: red, turquoise, navy, orange and yellow. I think I used about 3-4 skeins of white (can’t really remember). All of the colors where from my stash, but I ended up needing more white, so I picked up more white for another future project.

The right and left sides where the half-hexs are inserted kind of pooch out a bit, but I don’t think anyone but another crocheter would mind. I decided to go without borders too. Borders made it look odd.

I started on a knitted afghan using more stash yarn. I will post that once it looks like something other than a puny cast on and a few rows.

~ Peace

Just can’t wait

Can’t wait until I am entirely done with this project. Had to get it out into the blog and Ravelry world. Tonight I finished most of the work on my 1st child’s blanket for Project Little Lambs. Please be sure to visit and check out their brochure.

Anyway, here is what I have done so far:

Just tonight I finished doing the last rows on full hexagons, and started working on the half-hexagons. It took many attempts until I was happy with the half-hexagon. It isn’t perfect, but it will do and I think it will look better after I crochet on a border. I have to figure out what color(s) to use for that too. But basically, it is looking pretty good if I do say so myself. I hope to finish this one up some time tomorrow, and then I will post a better photo and some of the details - yarn amounts used and such.

I may do another hexagon blanket using some of the other discontinued cotton-ease colors: pink, lt blue, purple - perhaps white again, but maybe not as the main color. So more later…

Peace

About done

Last night I finished crocheting in the last circles into hexagons on my chakra circles into hexagons blanket. Here it is, from all sides:
(click on any image to see full size)

I will be working on a half hexagon motif for the 8 spaces (4 on top, and 4 on bottom) using just the beige, and I also need to weave in a bazillion ends too, but the major work is done! Earlier I had worked the dark blue and an alternating row of red and purple all around from that center hexagon. I decided it was way too wide so I tore those 2 rows out and started building it longer.

I know it is long and skinny because it needs to be. This is a blanket for use on my Reiki Healing clients as they are on the massage table. I hope it proves comfy.

If it turns out to be too narrow I can always build on each side as I have plenty of hexagons left. I will just stash them away for a bit and if I don’t use them on the sides, then I will making pillows and/or child sized blankets out of them.

Today I needed a break, so I headed off to the Needlework Unlimited sale. Bought a bunch of sportweight kid colored yarn for charity blankets, and 2 pairs of felted slippers that say, yarn queen and knitting queen on them. I already have a set that say yarn goddess.

~ Peace

Even more reasons to keep up my afghan craze

I went to the Minnesota Knitters Guild Yarnover event to knit and chat with my friend Kerry. The plan was we weren’t going to spend any money, just window shop, not spend any money, visit, get a little work done on my projects, not spend any money, kick back, and not spend any money.

Walked around and see what’s new at a lot of stores I don’t normally get to, and I picked up a brochure about an afghan drive through Cornerstone. The afghan drive is called Project Little Lambs. A great cause and a really good reason to just go all out crazy at making some small afghans/blankets just because I can. I hope to be able to donate at least 8 afghans by August 1, 2008. Maybe more because they only need to be 28 by 32 inches. Small and cute! If you are interested in helping, they have a brochure of details that you read or printout at Project Little Lambs.

All the Yarnover vendors had terrific stuff, kits and yarns and books so I had a lot of fun looking. I walked past the table for Candace Eisner Strick’s patterns and yarns several times. Then I went closer and started touching the project samples, squeezed the yarn (mistake!) and started to daydream about which colorway was the prettiest. That was hard, they are all very beautiful.

Bottom line is that I just couldn’t resist the small kits - I think Renee helped to nudge me off the cliff. So very beautifully colored, sinfully soft yarn, great patterns. You have to spend money to save money - right? No need to drive around and hope I could get what I wanted from one of the Minnesota yarn stores that carry the kits (stickwear.com is wholesale only) and the kit came in a bag (extra value) and I could buy patterns without the yarn and, and, and!

By purchasing the small kit, I was given the choice of patterns that could be made up with that amount of yarn. I chose the one on the left to go with my choice of colorway=rose garden.

After that purchase I thought I had better leave before I really let my pocketbook loose. Headed back home and crocheted on my chakra circles to hexagons afghan.

I am loving this afghan so much! The circles were fun to crochet, and making them into hexagons while connecting them is fun too. I think I may do another using my stash of cotton-ease for one or maybe even several of the donation afghans. I hope I can get started up on those by the weekend.

~ Peace

Christmas 2007 is finally over!

finished sewing my sister’s Christmas 2007 afghan last night. Here it is, just hanging out on one of my chairs.

I still need to de-hair, wash and dry the afghan before giving it to my sis.

I planned on sewing together RetinaBurn, but dang I just don’t feel like doing that. So today I will start crocheting together my circles into hexagons chakra blanket. I have my corrected plan here too.

See you later!

~ Peace

Circles into Hexagons and other things

I have crocheted all 210 3-color circles for my chakra blanket. Just tonight I finished the placement plan:

Now I have to crochet them all together. That means working the last 2 rows on all of them, taking them from circles to hexagons.

From this placement I am only using 163 of the circles, the rest I am going to make into pillows or some sort of wall hanging for the healing space.

So, what do you think?

I am impressed to say I even figured out a way to make the plan. All those 3 colored circles are stacked images. I couldn’t figure out how to do it in my graphics software (Paintshop Pro) but I managed it in Windows Publisher. Sometimes the tool for the job is the one that lets you do things in the rough way - quickish and non-arty but good enough.

Other things I have been up to are sewing together my sister’s afghan. I might have that done tomorrow evening. I am bringing it along for my project during my BeadLadies meeting.

After sewing up my sister’s afghan m y plan is to star sewing the RetinaBurn afghan. It will feel good to have both of these sewing stages of these projects done. I think I will be able to enjoy the crocheting process of the hexagon chakra blanket if I know some of my other projects aren’t haunting me.

But that doesn’t mean I feel so guilty that I am not going to be doing my computer games. Have you found Sheep’s Quest yet? It is a hoot. You help sheep to upgrade their farm by moving through maze-like formations - make arrows so that they will follow, pick up coins and keep them away from the predators (wolves, penguins, etc.) and normal sheep landscape items like land-mines, pits and such. I finished the game - purchased all the upgrades so now my sheep can watch giant outdoor screens, go to the arcade, and dance at the disco. That’s a normal sheep’s life, isn’t it?

p.s. I just spied a mistake involving 2 circles. Can you find it too?

Peace!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeels!

Wheels or yoyos, whatever they are called, they are fun to crochet. I took my work-basket full of wheels to my weekly BeadLadies.com meeting. By the end of the meeting the wheels had been dug through so they were somewhat mixed up.

Then the basket tipped over on the drive home. When I got home I decided to dump them out and start taking photos of my process of getting them back into order. It was kind of fun to really mess them up even more to see the way the colors looked. Although I am far from being done, I think the end result with all 3 rows of color will work out well.

This blanket won’t look as eye popping as my RetinaBurn. Good thing because it is meant to be a fibery healing tool.

Right now it is my bit of color therapy. There are a lot of changes in store for my life and having something calming and orderly helps me to relax and not get too hung up on perfection.

There is also the therapy of putting them back into some sort of order. Especially since getting them back to that planned order will help me to finish the 2nd row, and do the 3rd color row. Each stack is 5 wheels of the same 1st and 2nd rows = 30 rows per outer row color, right now I have 30×5=150. There will be a total of 210 wheels/yoyos that will be turned into 210 hexagons.

Just a few minutes later I ended up with this photo on the right.

Back in order and more easy to see that I still have both the dark blue (looking like black in the photo) and purple 2nd color rows to do before I can tackle the 3rd and final color row.

Here they are resting in my work-basket.

I will be finishing up the 2nd rows and maybe even moving ahead to the next row tonight! Whee!

It has been such a fun project so far. What are you all working on?

~ Peace

From Ripples to Squares to Hexagons

Still feeling the love for afghans/blankets. I finished all the 35 squares of my sisters Starry Night. So now I have both that afghan and the strips of Retina Burn to sew together. But I am just not in the mood for that kind of finishing work.

I have had it on my mind to do a hexagon afghan/blanket ever since I saw so many beautiful ones in the hexagon love group on Flickr and within the granny square’s group on Ravelry. I have had a big bag of Vanna’s Choice yarn in muted rainbow (chakra) colors waiting for the perfect afghan (blanket) pattern. Decided that doing it up in stripes ala ripple would be too - too - something or other. Hexagons out of a circle seems to fit seeing that I want them to represent chakras for my Reiki Healing area.

So I decided to just try my hand at doing up one from really eyeballing the many versions I have seen. I did a test using a bit of my stash of cotton-ease (discontinued colors).

I am really liking it! So much so that even though this is just a test, and my primary focus will be doing up the chakra (rainbow) colored one, I must Must MUST do one up using my cotton-ease stash too. For a gift or for another blanket for ME!

Here is the first hexagon done up using the Vanna’s Choice yarn:

My plan is to use 3 colors without any repeats, for example: red/orange/yellow, red/orange/green, etc. and then use the beige in all of the hexagons.

That means I will have 210 unique 3-color combinations! I am hoping that that the beige outers will help unify the afghan and keep it from looking too rainbow bright. I haven’t decided how to arrange them, so that means that I will have to hold off on doing the beige part until I am finished with all the 3-color circles because the outer bit is done joining them together. Cool!

Peace!

Moving along…

I decided to let the strips of RetinaBurn age for a bit before seaming. I have found the magazine article that details seaming in seed stitch - and it looks pretty doable but maybe I shouldn’t be so cocky about it, especially since Margaret, future foster parent, told me today that she and her husband will be finishing the paperwork to become foster parents.  I figure they will get a child very soon after the paperwork goes in. I guess I shouldn’t let the strips marinate for too long.

When I set RetinaBurn down I picked up Chaachi’s Christmas 2007 afghan up to get it moving along. After all, it is March! I should have completed it for her birthday on the 8th, but but but.

I decided to start doing the granny squares production style. That way I won’t have to be constantly looking over directions and re-remembering each row. Making mistakes and such.

Once I got all the centers done it was much easier to just crochet away and not have to count them so much. Just to be sure I had the right number and all. I am a bit crazed in that area - I probably don’t need to tell you that, it isn’t like it is some deep dark never shared secret, especially if you remember the post about the number of stitches in the Moderne Log Cabin that I did.

Here’s a photo of my progress after Monday evening:

See that last row? How perfect it looks, how nicely those stacks of ALL of the 32 (out of 35) medium blue rows are just sitting there, smiling smugly in their whateverness?

Tuesday night I was talking to Chaachi about how I was just going to continue to rip right along with doing basically one row a night of the 32 blocks (3 finished already) and have this beauty done in about a week — taking into account how life intrudes and all that and dang it if I didn’t discover that I had done 30 of those 32 wrong. Just that last “perfect” row mind you. Ah the irony. Life did intrude.

But I finished fixing those blocks on Tuesday night and tonight, Wednesday, I almost finished the row that I would have done last night. Chaachi’s Starry Night will still be done in about a week though. Take THAT whoever you are. You can’t be the knitting goddess because this isn’t knitting. I can hardly believe that crochet has a goddess associated with it - but perhaps a gnome or some fanciful sprite or such.  So I promise I won’t try so very hard to bring down your wrath.  Let’s be friends and get along, shall we?

Peace!