Wordless Wednesday - A Mountain Walk, Summer 2013

Turtle Trot 2014

Well, I totally sucked at keeping up with Turtle Trot in 2013 - I wasn't even considering 2014 because I automatically thought 14 projects - but the Rules and Sign Up came out and it's only 10!  (Notice how I said 'only' there.  I'm pretty sure my needles came to life just to laugh at me!)

So anyway - I signed up.  Maybe it'll go better this year?

Here's what I'll be doing:

1. Princess Palace


2. Chang Wufei


3. Angel of Grace


4. Mary Wigham


5. A Whole Lotta Latte


6. Whatever my IHSW project ends up being :D (QS Lovers, unless the HAED BB SAL has something so awesome I can't resist joining)

7. A New Project (already planned. maybe started. i ain't saying)

8. A New Project (ditto the above)

9. I want to start Yarr


10. Snowing


Frederick the Literate isn't on the list, because after these afghans are done, I hope to spend the last few days in 2013 really buckling down and getting all his backstitching done!

Weekly Goals!

No Thrifty Thursday post, sorry! Holidays are toooooo busy!  And then I went to sleep very, very early!  They do say there's something in turkey that makes you sleepy, lol!

My goals last week:

1. Get the grey afghan as close to 25 repeats as I could - I worked on it a lot, but I don't think I made it that far.
2.Get another row of cream done on the ripple afghan - done and doneski!  Also, since I had some requests for where the pattern came from, here is what the book looks like - Afghan Romance by the Needlecraft Shop.  This is the cover, and sometimes you can find it on Amazon:



I found this one for sale on etsy, HERE.  I will give fair warning - the projects are gorgeous, but if you work from this book, you should be experienced at both crochet and pattern reading - not that the afghans are hard, but they are full, and I mean FULL, of errors.  So far, not the granny-ripple, but both the others I am working on were just flat-out wrong if you want your afghan to look like the pictures. Yet they are errors that you can easily correct if you know what you are doing.  Also, I thought the love story, which is supposed to be such a big thrill with this pattern book, was boring and overdone; but that's just my opinion!  Some may really like it, but it wasn't to my taste.  Also, that girl crochets so fast that I think she really just sneezes those afghans out.  In her sleep.  The story takes place over less than a year, and yet she makes dozens upon dozens of complicated afghans - ah, if only! If only!  Maybe that was the fiction? HAHAHA!

3. Get another pattern repeat done on the rainbow afghan - done!
4. Get another light red stripe done on the red afghan - done!
5. Start the kitten afghan - done!  Four rows of kittens so far!
6. Get the wallpaper done on Princess Palace - nope! I bombed again with this one!

I had no time this week to go and pick up camera batteries, and mine are d-e-a-d!  So I will post pics of my progress this week as I get each new goal done.  If I get the batteries, that is.

This weeks goals:

1. Just keep working on the grey afghan.  JUST KEEP GOING!
2. Get another row of cream done on the ripple afghan - that will make this one 3/5ths done, if I manage
3. FINISH the rainbow afghan.  It's already 2/3rds done.
4. More kittens - maybe 10 rows?
5. Get two more red stripes done.  Then I will have 5 of 11 done, whatever that fraction is :D
6. Work on Princess Palace if you get the chance.

Wordless Wednesday - Peaceful

Friday Goals!

Well, my goals for last week didn't go too badly:

1. Get the grey afghan to 20 repeats - I think I hit 18 or 19.  I didn't bother taking a pic.  It looks the same, just longer.

2. Get a stripe sequence done on the rainbow afghan - done!  Here's a pic:



3. Get two color repeats done on the ripple afghan - I didn't plan this one well.  The actual color repeats are huge!  So now my goal to get a cream-colored stripe done - there are five cream-colored stripes in the whole afghan.  Got the first one!  Here's a pic:



4. Get another light red stripe done on the red afghan - done!  Pic again:



5. Start the last afghan - nope.  Didn't do it.

6. Take a picture of the Sprite so I can post about it - Here ya go!  Severus Snape, made for me by Missy at the DorkStitch blog.  She sent me the rough draft so I wouldn't have to wait :D



7. Get the wallpaper done in the throne room on Princess Palace - nope.  A little progress, but not that far.  I ended up making a new Q-snap cover, though.  I'll post about that on Monday, hopefully with the wallpaper done!

8. Work on Nostlagy for IHSW - did that!  Pics are in a previous post.

So here is next week - by next Friday I want to:

1. Get as close to 25 repeats on the grey afghan as I can
2. Get another row of cream done on the ripple afghan
3. Get another pattern repeat done on the rainbow afghan
4. Get another light red stripe done on the red afghan
5. Start the kitten afghan
6. Get the wallpaper done on the Princess Palace

Onward I go!

Thrifty Thursday - Box Sale, part 2

This was the stuff I left in the car :D  The last bit I crammed in to my $10 box at the sale.  The sewing box doesn't quite clasp, but it's otherwise in good shape!  It had a few needle packs in the bottom and an old pattern that was falling apart.  The snowman is a music box and plays 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'. Both had $5 price tags on them.



About the hats, yesterday - most of them I made.  Some of them are Mum's work.  All of them will be going in my etsy shop to get a bit more Christmas money.  I've got 12 or 13 in so far.  Blogger is not letting me reply to comments, so I'll just say - Hey, Linda!  If you see one you really, really like, let me know :D

Wordless Wednesday - Hat Factory!

IHSW - November

It was IHSW!  But I didn't know it on Friday since there was no main blog post until really late - therefore, very little stitching.  But I had fun anyway!

Nostlagy - Before:



After:

Weekly Goals!

Christmas is getting closer, and I've no more time to fiddle and ignore my afghans, lol!
So every Friday, I'm going to try to set some goals and show my progress.

This week:

1. Get the grey afghan to at least 20 repeats
2. Get a stripe sequence done on the rainbow afghan - I finally got my yarn!
3. Get two color repeats done on the ripple afghan
4. Get another light red stripe done on the red afghan
5. Start the last afghan
6. Take a picture of the Sprite I stitched so I can post about it :D
7. Get the wallpaper done on the throne room in the Princess Palace

I thought IHSW would be this weekend, but there is nothing about it on the main blog - HERE if you're interested - so maybe it's next week?  If it is this week, I'll add in #8 as being 'Work on Nostlagy for IHSW'.

I sold some stuff in my Etsy store, and used the funds to pay off a HAED layaway - here's a little from that!

Glamour



and Girl on Floor

Thrifty Thursday - Box Sale!

There is a local church here that has yard sales to support their building program - they are currently building a youth center and soup kitchen that has the whole community excited, because part of rural living includes the fact that things like that?  The nearest youth center where kids can go to play basketball is over fifty miles away.  A soup kitchen? Even further.  So anyway, churches from other states send stuff here, and they sell it, and sometimes it's really awesome stuff!  At the end of the 'season', as in it is too cold for yard sales any more, there is a box sale.

Pay $1 for a little box, $5 for a medium box, or $10 for a kind-of large box, and then you can take home whatever you can fit in the box, as long as the lid closes.  Last year I bought one $5 box and regretted it - by the time I went back to get a $10 box, all the good stuff was grabbed.  So this year - Monday, to be exact! - I got a $10 box straight off.  Here is my loot!




A really gorgeous big basket, a smaller 'bread' basket, five skeins of white/metallic baby-sport yarn, two extremely heavy glass goblets, some little knick-knacks, a baggie full of old-fashioned metal shower curtain hooks, two brand-new boxes of Christmas cards, several baggies full of painted wooden beads, a very fancy game box for a game I don't know how to play, a brand-new set of measuring spoons, and a pack of paper dishes like you'd get at a fast food booth at a fair. Those I will be using this summer when Dad grills.  I also managed to stuff in an old-fashioned, padded sewing box and a snowman music box, but I left them in my car, apparently.  So there will be one picture for next week!

Thanks for the comments on the 'Red' post yesterday - the berries were easy pictures but it took me 13 shots before I could get the red afghan to look anything close to its real colors! My Mum had to hold it in the shadow of her house for me :D  Blogger isn't letting me respond to comments right now.  I hate it when it does that.

Here's a closer look at some of my treasures:



I would have taken a picture of the box, but they were running out so I put the stuff in my car and gave my empty box back!  Those penguins are a tiny wooden candlestick, and that weird dark glass thing is actually a medium green - maybe a vase?  I'm not sure, but it is pretty!

Wordless Wednesday - Red

First 'Thrifty Thursday'

I decided to combine actually going thrifting - at flea-markets, estate and yard sales, and thrift stores - with doing something thrifty, as in to save money, for these posts.

Recently, my neighbors' grandchildren came to stay with them for a while - they go through my backyard all the time, which I don't mind.  What I do mind is that several times I have caught them peering in my windows.  They are girls, and preteens, so I'm sure they're just curious, and I never see them at night - but still!

I decided that my blinds aren't going to cut it, so I needed curtains. I'm on a pretty strict budget, so a-thrifting I went!  We have a nice little community thrift shop about ten minutes down the road, so I went and asked for blue curtains - any kind.  I have two sets of two windows that are right beside each other, but the way my house is set up, they are in two different rooms.  You can't really see the other set of windows unless you are almost right beside the little archway, so they didn't have to match.  The lady that owns the store found me one set of blue with white flowers - they are kind of angled, so they don't fully cover the window, but they are better than nothing!  The other set was off-white, in a sort of solid net (that sounds so stupid!) with blue stripes.

They totally worked for me!  And I hung a treasure between them, that I found at a Goodwill a month or so ago!  It's dated 1976 and I love it!  Total for the curtains was $2 a set, and I got the picture for a dollar.



That left the kitchen window as the last one that had to have a curtain - my other windows had curtains, except the living room, and it's too high for them to see in.  Still looking for curtains, though.  Anyway, all she had left was one panel of a very long, very narrow, heavily lined blue curtain with a shiny floral pattern.  I said I could make it work, and she sold it to me for $1.  So I came home, measured it and the window, did some cutting, sewing, and ripped out the tall, folded casing at the top.  I couldn't quite get the creases out of the bottom of the left curtain, from the ripped out casing, but I can live with that!



Two short, lined curtains to keep the peepers out and the heat in!  Love it! Now I just need some fabric to make some curtain ties.

First Wordless Wednesday! - A Short Autumn Walk, With Company

Stuck! - and some Blog Ideas

I was enjoying the Rainbow Stripes afghan immensely! It goes really, really fast - one day of work and I got this far:



But - I went to find some green and I found light-green, dark-green, pale-green, spring-green, muted-green, any kind of green you want - except for a nice, basic, bright green.  So I am stuck until I can get to a store that sells yarn.  My Mum, funnily enough, has been past a Wal-Mart twice this week, and forgot to stop and get yarn for me twice.  Sheesh!  It's a long trip, so I can't justify going for only yarn.  As it stands, I'll have to wait for grocery day.

So since I couldn't work on that one, I started my Dad's afghan!  And here is how it looks - no matter how I set the camera, it burned the yarn out, flash or no flash.  I'll try to take a picture outside if the weather co-operates.  It's 'Cherry Red', a nice medium-dark color.  I do have bright red almost this shade for accent, but it's a few rows before I get to that.  My Dad is a big fan of red.



Here's a better picture of the texture on my Mum's afghan - each of those puff stitch crosses is one pattern repeat.  I'm currently working on the thirteenth repeat and when I get to fifteen, the afghan is halfway done. It's a darker grey than this picture, the flash burnt it a little, too.



And last but not least - my brother's afghan is this far, and those are the next two colors I'll be using.  Only one afghan left to start - but I'm focusing on my Mum's and my nephew's.  At least, I will be when I get some green!



Some blog ideas - I haven't been cross stitching much because I am focusing so much on these afghans.  That means a lot less posts, so I'm thinking about trying out some blog 'days' like Wordless Wednesday and Thrifty Thursday.  Might be fun!  Also, I'm going to set aside Fridays to cross-stitch, because my projects are screaming at me!  And so I'll be trying for at least a Stitching-Update Saturday :D

So tomorrow will be my first Wordless Wednesday post!  I'm hoping to maybe get some pretty leaves?