Around here we have...

...a yummy snuggly squishy wool blend working up on large needles.

I'm thinking it'll come out like this:

Except garter stitch.

...84 squares of my mom's kaleidoscope blanket! 

It's so pretty!  She has some really great color combinations in there.

I want to sneak it for myself!

...a natural/neutral themed blanket.

Mom and I are slowly but surely working through the acrylic stash.

The next one to conquer is cotton.  

I have so many little balls of Sugar 'n Creme and Peaches 'n Creme, I could start a store. 

Also this:

Pip has 8 extra legs!

Happy crafting x o

For the Love of Lucy

I've tried writing this post about ten times and have absolutely no idea how to start it, so I'll just dive right in.

My two current projects both come courtesy Lucy of Attic24.  The first is her Granny Stripe Blanket.  I'm using 12 colours of DK yarn given to me by my best friend Sarah*. (She brought my 20 balls all the way from England, somehow stuffed into her suitcase!  I'm excited to have it though; DK at my LYS's are all pastel baby colours.)  Here how it's coming along.

 

I'm choosing the colours randomly. Each 'round' is a total of 12 colours, and in each round they're chosen randomly thanks to the Random Number Generator. So I have a nice little oceany section in the middle.

Green, turquoise, blue, green ocean!

Lucy chained 240, but I did 300, so it's long. It's longer than I am tall, so I'd estimate 5 feet 5 inches!

iPhone for comparison.

It's going to be huge on my bed, and probably hit the floor, especially when I add the border, but it'll be great to wrap around myself fully when it starts to get chilly again. (Except it's been really chilly here lately, which is fine by me. I'd like to delay the Virginia humidity as long as possible.)

The next WIP is Lucy's Jolly Chunky Bag. It's a smaller version of a bag she made in the past. (And as it's coming along, we're almost finished, I'm glad we chose the smaller version.) We because my mom is doing one as well - it's her first crochet project! She doing it really well, especially since we're using an H-8 hook with bulky yarn.

Starting rounds!  Mine's on the left; mom's is on the right

Lucy was selling a set of the yarn she used (Stylecraft Special Chunky) but it was sold out, and I wanted to start immediately. Waiting for yarn is torture. So we went to our local Michael's, which didn't seem to have chunky! (*shakes fist*) But we stumbled upon some Loops & Threads, Michael's own brand yarn in chunky weight. It's really soft and nice to work with. Here's what we chose:

Loops & Threads Charisma in Yellow, Fuchsia, Think Pink, Electric Blue, Dark Blue, Taupe,  and True Red

We should have FO photos soon. The way they're crocheting up, they resemble baskets, but I'm sure once straps are added and it's smushed into a purse shape they'll be great!

Happy crafting!

*Check out Sarah's EssHaych and Eriko's Emporium (Blythes!) Etsy shops

**AVERT YOUR EYES, MOTHER!!!***

Four episodes of Bones and one skein of yarn later:

So, two balls of yarn and eight more episodes means I should hopefully have this done by Christmas. The only thing I'm worried about is my daddy's scarf. It's knitting, so it's taking me a whole lot longer. But all six seasons of Bones are on Netflix Instant, so I should get it done.

Evolution of a Hippo

Harriet the Hippo

by Rebecca Danger

WIP Wednesday

My Noro Striped Scarf, still going strong at 51 inches and I still have some to knit. This is going to be luscious when its finished.

15. The New Feature

This is the first part in a 16 set of posts of things I need to blog about. See more information here. 

Yes, these might be crazy out of order. But that's the fun, no? Anyway, we're starting off with a **new** feature! Yep, something else I'm supposed to do on specific days and not do it, yay! But this one, and all my others, I'm going to seriously try to do. So we'll see how that goes. The new feature is... drum roll... Work in Progress (WIP) Wednesday! I was reading other blogs, and one click led to another blog, and a woman had WIP Wednesdays, and I figured that's a fantastic idea, especially since I always have WIPs, and never have any FOs. Oops. I need to work on that. Today I have four to show you, and excuse the semi-lame picture quality. Though my iPhone takes awesome pictures, this is the best it can do in the low-light.

And did you know you can see what my WIPs are and their status regardless of WIP Wednesday? On the right hand sidebar, the first gadget entitled WIPs is linked directly from Ravelry. (Any knitter or crocheter needs to have an account with them.)  Just another fun way to keep track of things.

First we have a scarf. I know, a scarf right? I hate scarves. It seems like miles and miles of endless stitches and no progress. But this is Lion Brand's Wool Ease Thick and Quick on size 13s, so it's going by quickly. This is for John, another reason why it's not too bad. We saw one like this at Purl Soho, a moss/seed stitch scarf in charcoal grey, but it was from some chunky Cascade. He didn't want to buy the yarn then, but I remembered I had some T&Q in my stash. I bought another skein because he'll probably want a hat. I'm alternating two rows between each skein so the difference in dye lots isn't drastic. I'm doing moss stitch because garter stitch looks too rustic and homemade and stockinette stitch curls. This creates a nice pattern and is interesting enough that I don't want to chuck it across the room halfway through. 

Christmas project! I got the new issue of Crochet Today! and was flipping through, and there was a Christmas tree garland, and I knew I had to make it. I don't have any Christmas colored sock yarn, and knew I had red, green and white in my stash so I didn't go buy any, and whipped up some. They're a tad bigger, but that's ok. They're currently waiting for me to measure the mantle and see if 6 is ok or I need 9. Then they'll get their ends woven in and be finished and ready for December.

This WIP has been removed. As a gift for my mom, I'm not sure if she reads this blog or not, so I can't have it hanging out in public. See the Ziggity Zag via Ravelry, which she doesn't have an account with, for more details. Thanks.

And finally, this is a shark. Doesn't look like it now, but I promise it'll look like a shark. (Or at least a dead alligator.) This is Anna of Mochimochi Land's pattern for the baby gator, and remember how I said when it didn't have arms or legs it looked like a shark? I redid the pattern in plain stockinette with grey and red yarn, and will knit him up some fins so I have a little shark. Cute!

And so that commences the first edition of WIP Wednesday. Hopefully next Wednesday, the tree garland and shark will be finished, I'll have gained a lot on the two scarves, and I might even have some more projects to show, especially since I have a very bad case of startitis.