So, new years resolutions already a bust...

One of my resolutions has already been slashed.. nope, make that 2.. but it is for a good reason!

I have gotten so much business in my baby shower boutique with custom orders, I have not had the chance to post a blog update, or to knit/crochet any charity hats.

Remember this?

I am making 2 of these sets for boys this week, is that a good reason to have NOT kept my end of the blogger resolutions?

Guess I'll need to do a few extras this week... or maybe next week, because.... drum-roll...............................



I am moving!

Again...

This time it is for the better, though I had to find homes for my feline friends and one of my super fluffy adorable puppies..... but it is for the best, and when I move again to a larger house, I can get them back, a very good friend from high school is fostering them until hubby gets into National Guard, and/or gets hired soon by ANY Oregon police department.

As for the crafty side... I love being able to multi-task.

Tonight, our Criminal Justice Club hosted a "Cop Movie Night" where we watched The Expendables.

Not as bad as I expected, in fact, much better than I expected. But seeing as I had budgeted for that time to be spent making a hat to match a blanket I have already finished, I still chose to crochet through the movie... while watching it most of the time. It is rather difficult to rip out a project with boucle yarn in the dark and pick back up to finish it......

That is a rant for another time though. Here is what I got finished at the movie:

Okay, so the blanket I finished while waiting for a yarn store to open up so I could get some yarn for a charity hat drive they were hosting... do those hats count toward my charity work?

Now, these are Sensations Boucle, and don't really follow ANY sort of official pattern. The blanket is crocheted with a J hook, in a basic granny square, the tonal yarn self stripes, and the hat closest to the blanket is made the same way, it is a 3 round granny square, then I started doing the rounds without the increases at the corners. So rather than "3dbl, ch 1, 3 dbl in corner space", it is just a "3 dbl in corner space."

The second hat, which is still a work in progress, is just a plain circle, worked in dbl then once I got to 4 rounds, I stopped increasing. This is a basic bucket hat but because of the drape of the hat, it will form better to the baby head.

Tomorrow I am doing feather hair extensions at the local Indoor Market, and then the rest of the weekend and into the week I am packing for the big move. While we may need to commute 4 days a week, the money we are saving in rent and laundry will MORE than pay for cost of gas.

I am also working through my scraps to get a decent stock of baby goods to toss up on my Etsy.. I have neglected it so much... whoops.

Do you ever get so bogged down that you have to prioritize your obligations?

Finishes, and Baby Showers

I have an endless list of holiday knitting, but woke up this morning from a dream about knitting designs...

But that is for a later moment. For now, I need to update you on some finishes, some gifts I have been waiting to blog about until they were given, and some decent weather to photograph some of my finishes from last month.

So, here is all is!

We will start off with Fynn and his baby shower gifts. My friend Taylor is expecting her first child. She and her fiancee are a very non-orthodox couple. They requested that nothing be "typical baby". The nursery theme is pirates, and the baby shower was themed Jungle.

That got me thinking, every new parent I know has a blanket that they really like to put on their baby's crib or to wrap them up in when they are running about town with their little one. I wanted the blanket I made for them to be a representation of their personality as much as a gift for the baby.

Here you have it:

Yep, that is right, those are pirate skulls on a hand embroidered baby quilt...I wish I could have gotten better pics of that, but the pic I got of the skulls up close were a bit too blurry to save.

I also gave with this set, a handmade card (should have gotten pics of that too), as well as a granny square blanket crocheted out of Joann Sensations Rainbow Boucle in Blue (self striping) and a matching hat, as well as a couple of outfits, and I will be taking washcloths and burp cloths to her in the hospital when she has baby Fynn, I didn't finish making them before the shower.

Next, I have been trying to get some photos of some of the finishes I have done, the main one being the climbing shells scarf that I did over a month ago.

With school and the weather being so annoying, I couldn't get anything decent.

This was my first attempt:

Not so great, right?

How about this one?

I decided to try something, I decided to go into the bathroom, turned on the light, used the mirror to see my digital screen and used the auto setting on my camera... That way, your camera isnt fighting the light facing you, it is only using that light.

 Next thing I wanted to show... I have seen those adorable ear warmer headbands that have fun buttons or cute flowers offset to one side or the other, they wrap under your hair and cover your ears for those cold mornings, and frosty nights walking the dogs or heading to school.


Here is my rendition:  The Head-hugger!

Really simple garter stitch with big needles and super bulky yarn... I will post a recipe for this design in my next separate post...


You will also be able to find it on Ravlery. It is SUPER warm, and I got so many compliments today at school.

I am about half way through my diagonal garter baby blanket with eyelet border, but didn't get photos yet, and I think I might do another version of the Back-2-School with Flair scarf in Lion Brand Homespun, also, I may have found an adequate yarn replacement for the suggested, but discontinued Moda Dea Dream I used on the original for this pattern...