I Love Being Creative - Day 20

Recently I've been pretty crafty.  Beyond the crochet, I have been trying to tackle other creative things to enhance our living conditions.  I've made a number of wreaths for the door, in fact I have a new wreath for the summer laying dismantled on the office floor.  I really should get to that.  Making the big granny square blanket has me wanting to make more.  In fact, I bought two pillow inserts so I can make granny square pillows to go with the blanket.

We got pretty creative with Mother's Day gifts as well.  We bought some unfinished wooden frames and let Elliot finger paint them.  Both grandma's loved them!  We really need to do more stuff with Elliot since we've been told that he loves arts and crafts at school.

Now I've gotta get back to that huge ass blanket!

Progress

I've been spending lots of time during the evenings working on my stash blanket. I've figured out that I will need 96 rows to make the blanket as large as I want. Sadly, I may have 96 different types of yarn to use without having any repeats.

Now, a picture of progress...

Yarn Yarn Everywhere - Day 11

Sam and I have been discussing the fact that I need to crochet something for our home. I have always wanted to make a really big blanket for us. My plan was to crochet large squares, at least one a week and after a year or so, stitch them all together to make a really big blanket. Sam thought that I should make something that I would be able to add on to as needed over the years. So I decided to make a huge granny square blanket. I figured that I would add a row from every different kind of yarn that I had. Basically, it would be a scrap blanket. We would randomly choose the different yarns so that we couldn't create a pattern. It's been a really cool undertaking and it's turning out to be really pretty. It's just a bit daunting that I'll have to come up with 96 different yarns to create a blanket big enough for us both to cuddle under. However, I've been finding yarn in many different hiding places, so I'm thinking that reaching 96 won't be a problem. How crazy is it that I'll have 96 different yarns - not necessarily different colors, but 96 separate skeins of yarn.

Here's a picture of it so far...

I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK - Day 10

Okay, so it's a day late - sue me. I've mentioned before that when friends hear that you're crocheting again, the custom projects come rolling in. My friend Jenn who is a quilter (and is going to teach me to sew) has a really cool 17 year old kid. She showed him a picture of my boob hat and he asked her to ask me to make him a beard hat. Now, I had seen a couple of these on the Internet and they looked pretty awesome. What's a beard hat? Well, it's a knit or crochet beanie hat with a crochet beard attached to it. It's really genius - it keeps your face warm in a very stylish way. Most of the ones that I have seen online were on babies, which is just funny. So I set out to make a beard hat, without ever having made one before. I'm an expert when it comes to making hats so I knew that would be no problem, but I was clueless when it came to the beard part. I scoured the Internet for a pattern and was able to cut and paste a few to make the beard that suited me. For a first time effort it looks pretty cool, but I'm not a fan of how the mustache turned out. I'll have to work a bit more on that. Either way, it was hilarious looking and GM loved it - that's really all that mattered! Now to make one for my son....

I've Got my Eye on You - Day 9

When it rains, it pours. Now that I'm back into crocheting, I can't stop. Luckily my friends are giving me a ton of ideas and I have my confidence back to I'm ready to get really creative. After I made the boob hats, I started thinking of what other cool hats I could make. I thought about doing a hat with a big eye on it. My friend Shelly suggested creating a stuffed eyeball, with bloodshot on the sides. I thought it was a really cool idea and got to work. I started on my blue eye, but began making it much too big. I felt it was going to be too time consuming, so I set aside the huge eye and began work on a much smaller version. I looked up crocheted eyeballs on the Internet for inspiration but in the end decided to put my own twist on the eyeballs. Instead of bloodshot, my eye looks as if it was plucked from a large crocheted eye socket, complete with hanging optic nerve. This eye was a hit! Shelly took it with her to work and has gotten lots of comments from coworkers (most noting how gross it is!) With a little extra time, I finished the larger eyeball, also with optic nerve. I have the larger one to Sam to take to work, thinking that his coworkers would get a kick out of it (unfortunately few have even noticed it's existence). So far I've only done blue eyes - I need to try brown, green and hazel as well.

Enjoy!!

Hats Galore - Day 6

Now that I'm back into crocheting, well meaning friends make requests for me to make things. One of these days I'll actually make something for myself. One of these days...Anywho, one of Sam's friends found a picture of a boob hat on the Internet and posted on Facebook that he really wanted one. I decided to try my hand at making one for Sam (I'm not particularly fond of his friend and this was a good way to get his goat as it were) and it turned out cute. I got lazy halfway through and changed my stitch pattern, which made it look a bit strange, but cute none the less. After I finished Sam's hat, his friend just HAD to have one and even begged me to make one. I gave in and thus the "boob hat" was born.

Blanket of Love - Day 3

We found out we were having a baby boy on July 12, 2010. That afternoon, I came home from work and got together the yarn that I had picked out to crochet a blanket for my son. It was beautiful, shades of blues and grey for an accent. I started the blanket that afternoon. A few weeks later I put it down. I was too tired from working and being pregnant to do anything after work but sleep. So there it sat, the one thing I wanted to create for my own child, sitting in a bag next to the couch. It sat and sat and sat. Then one day, as I watched my 10 month old son sleep, it dawned on me that I still hadn't finished his blanket. Over the years I have crocheted a number of gifts for a number of people, but realized that I had nothing in my home that I had created. I felt that at least one of us deserved to have something hand made just for them. So I started crocheting again. I hadn't picked up a crochet needle in over a year. But like riding a bike, it felt natural again.My goal was to have it complete by his first birthday so that I could give it to him. I worked on it after Elliot went to bed, trying my best to make some progress. Unfortunately, I had decided early on to make a rather large blanket, a task I was ready to take on when I had months to complete it. At this point, I was just going to have to crochet like the wind to complete it in time!Well, days before his 1st birthday, I completed the blanket. Sadly, my kid's not really a blanket type of guy just yet. We did use it to wrap him up when he was feeling sick a couple of months ago. There was no better feeling than snuggling with my little guy, with him wrapped in something I made.Since the blanket, I have really jumped back into crocheting. Hopefully it will last this time and hopefully I will make something for me. Until then, at least my son has something that he can look back on that his mommy hand made!