Yet another shrug

I'm pretty sure I mentioned that when Amber saw her sister's shrug she asked for one of her own. And of course hers had to be a lot different, she wanted a ruffly collar and sleeves on hers. Well I finally finished the darned thing and am glad to be done with it. She picked the color, the length of the collar, back and sleeves, and where to put the button. She apparantly likes it as she wore it to school this morning.
Forgive the lopsided pictures, it was 'O dark thirty' and I was leaning on the wall...LOL
Here's a close up of the stitch pattern. It really stands out with her orange shirt behind it!

Most loved/hated stitches

A few weeks ago on the CPlist at http://crochetpartners.org/ there was a discussion about what stitches everyone loved/hated the most. One of the most frequent to come up as most hated was the picot. At the time of this discussion (although I didn't partake) I whole heartedly agreed that the picot was a horrid little stitch. Of course at the time I'd only ever done it in thread.
Well folks, my opinion has since changed. Yesterday I started my very first MAM and the complete third round has a picot almost every stitch. NO, I didn't read through the pattern before I started (I rarely do). NO, I wasn't at all prepared for it and YES, I screwed up the first turn in the third round and didn't realize it until I was all the way at the other end of the strip. YES, I had a little frog party (can you say ripppit???)lol. BUT, and here's where my opinion changed...this time it's being done in ww YARN. Yes, that's yarn, NOT thread. With a decent sized H hook, not a tiny little size 10 steel hook. It's soo soo much easier in this medium and goes by so much quicker that I've discovered this bothersome little stitch isn't so bothersome at all....at least until the next time I encounter it in thread!!

Another shrug

Alicia asked me to make one for her. She wanted a purple one. So being the "wonderful" mother that I am I made her one. I'm not sure I like it, it seems a bit saggy in the back, but she likes it and isn't that all that matters?

So now that Alicia has one, of course Amber wants one too, but she wants a collar on hers ... "and oh mom, do you think you could put a button on the front too so I can close it? And can you make the back come down lower than Alicia's?" (Do you think this child knows what she wants?) Of course I'm making her one and of course I ran out of yarn before I could finish it. Now this is yarn that I've had in my stash for a couple of years so finding the same thing is pretty much impossible. I did find another skein today at A.C. Moore, so hopefully the difference won't be noticable.
On another note - I finished a project I was working on for my Halloween swap partner in one of my groups. A few minutes after I cut the yarn, I couldn't find the remainder of the skein....lo and behold, I have a yarn thief in my house and I caught him red handed!!! (or is that red-toed?)

Maybe we have another crocheter in the family?

They said they were going to fix it

What is it? It is that ugly thing over there --->>> that is messing up the right side of my blog. I emailed them about it 5 days ago and got a form letter reply Wednesday.
Dear MyBlogSite User,

Some of you may be experiencing issues with the header being right justified to the column as opposed to inserted in the actual header placement. We are aware of this error and sincerely apologize to any of our users that may be impacted by this occurrence. Our engineering team is working hard to correct this problem for you. Your blogs should return to normal by the end of the week. We will keep you updated on our progress. Again, sincere apologies for this disruption to your blogs.


Sincerely,
MyBlogSite Support Team

I mean, come on already. Just go in, fix the code and let me take it off my page again. How hard can it be?

Learning a new stitch

Ok, it's really not new, just a new way (to me) to do an old stitch. FPDC (that's front post double crochet for those of you who don't know crochet terms). I'm working on a project for a Halloween swap and it calls for FPDC and I really like it!! What a neat way to get more texture into a piece. Here's a pic of what it looks like. Sorry for the fuzziness but my camera just doesn't like to take up close photos very well.
It's kinda hard to see in all that orange, but you get the general idea.

On another note, JW if finally over his ear infection and the sniffles are gone! He's still teething and drooling a lot but as you can see from this pic, he's feeling much better!

He was hanging out with his dad watching football. Can you believe it? Only 16 months old and already will drop what he's doing if there's a game on the tv!

Today was a good day

to go shopping! I had the unexpected surprise of DH being off work today so I left JW with him and spent several hours in my favorite stores, ie: Hobby Lobby, A.C. Moore and BooksAMillion, all these with a side trip over to Tuesday Morning to check out their new yarns. Oh yeah, I stopped in Joann's too (it's right next to Tues. Mrng) but didn't see anything I just had to have there.
Look what I found at BooksAMillion!!

They had a great selection of crochet mags, but I had to limit myself to just two today. I hit up Tuesday Morning and discovered that not very many people here have discovered they have yarn. I got away with 4 skeins of Spiral (made in Italy) that was marked down from $8.99 to $2.99!
And of course, I had to make purchases at A.C. Moore and Hobby Lobby. A.C. Moore is having a sale on Peaches N Cream cotton for $0.94/skein so I came out with several and another 1lb bag of Homespun mill ends. Much to my surprise HL is STILL having their 1/2off sale on all crochet instruction books and hooks so I bought 3 more books, a couple hooks for my daughter, and a couple misc balls of thread that I needed to complete a project.
All in all, I spent about 3.5 hours out by myself. I think that's the longest I've been alone since before JW was born 16 months ago. I had a great time petting all the yummy yarns and leisurely looking thru all the books. I even met a couple other ladies who crochet and had fun comparing notes with them. I'm kicking myself now for not asking them about starting a local crochet group. :( Oh well, maybe another time.

Finished the shrug

Using this pattern from Diane Langan which can be found at her website here: http://www.dianelangan.com/crochetpatterns/shrugs.html .

It's the Ivory Slouchy Shrug pattern. I used some leftover Lion Brand Jiffy (about 2 1/4 skeins). It worked up fairly fast although I did have some problems at first so I emailed her and she answered fairly quickly and I was off and running.

Here's the pic of my finished product. I decided not to add the collar as I felt it would be too hot on my neck. Both of my daughters have asked me to make one for them and they like the collar, so the next ones will be done with it.
LOL, not a very good pic, the left arm looks funny but I think it's just because it's not hanging straight on the hangar. I was holding my son when I hung it and while I was taking the pic, made things a little difficult.
Anyway, you get the idea. I think it turned out ok, but I think when I make them for the girls I'll use a lighter weight yarn.
Tell me what you think.

Sleep Deprived

Funny thing, when we moved here we said we're not going to live in another apartment. We're going to get a house this time. We're tired of having neighbors that close.
I sure wish we had done that instead of moving into this condo. Our neighbor upstairs is getting ready to deploy so is cleaning out her condo. Last night at 12:15 it sounded like she was having a party up there (where are the kids?) so I decided to go up and politely ask her if she could turn her music down a little. I rang the doorbell and waited...and waited...and waited...and rang it again. I figured she couldn't hear it over her loud music and horrid singing so I decided to knock. So I knocked and waited....and knocked again and waited...and again...well, you get the idea. When pounding on her door didn't get a response I started back down the stairs and that's when she finally answered.
So I turn around (trying not to look as pissed as I was) and said "I don't know if you realize, but it's 12:30 at night and your music is kind of loud. Do you mind turning it down?" OMG, you'd have think I just told her she was the ugliest cow in the world and her kids were horrid little brats ... she completely flaked out on me. If you know me, you know I'm really not the type to stand around and take verbal abuse from someone, but you'd be proud of me. I just asked her again to keep it down and if she didn't, I wouldn't bother her again, but I'd be sure to have the police get involved. At that point, I turned away and went back in my own place, locked the door and had a seat.
I think I really pissed her off - although I'm not sure how asking someone to turn the music down would be such a problem. She had to be throwing furniture or boxes or hitting the floor with a sledgehammer. A couple of times I thought she was going to come through our ceiling. She managed to wake up all 3 of the kids and my husband. Oh, let me back up, yes I DID call the police about 5 minutes after coming back in since that's when she started her petty little noise fest up there. It's difficult to believe this woman is almost 40 with 4 kids (I'm still wondering where the kids were, but I haven't heard them in days, so maybe they're with a saner member of the family?)
Anyway, she either finally quieted down around 3 am or I was just so tired that I slept through the rest of her noise. I do know that 2 of MY kids have been up since about 3am because of her noise. I guess they'll sleep well tonight, won't they?

Yay! It's here!!

It finally arrived, and right after I was complaining about the delay!
The kids and I were getting ready to go to the library and Amber says "Mom, there's a package at the door" - to be perfectly honest, I just about bowled over all 3 of them to get to it and I think I actually growled at them..LOL! It's a good thing my kids have a good sense of humor.

Doesn't this all look so pretty? I can't wait to start using it, but I promised myself I was going to finish the shrug first. At the rate I'm going today, looks like I won't be playing in the new yarn till late tomorrow or Friday

Where is it?

Where is my order from Herrschners? I ordered it on Sept 2, it should be here by now. OMG I just can't STAND waiting any longer!!! It's driiving me crazy. I just tracked the order and the last entry was in Charlotte 2 days ago. I KNOW it only takes about 3 hours if you're driving slow to get here from Charlotte. Oh why do they make me wait so long?????
Look at this:
6
*CARON SAYELLE OFF-WHITE (013075-0319)
$
6
*BERNAT HANDICRAFTER CTN/5 PUMPKIN (016013-3132)
4
*BERNAT HANDICRAFTER CTN/5 WARM BROWN (016013-3130)
5
*BERNAT BERELLA "4" PL TAP GLD (711640-8887)

Wouldn't you be anxious to get it too? 21 skiens of yarn in such wonderful warm colors. Oh gosh I can't wait, I hope my mail person knocks on my door with it today. I'm so excited to get it that I'm almost bouncing off the walls. Poor kids can't figure out what's wrong with mom!! LOL!

She's a slow one

Moving at only 6mph, Ophelia is really taking her time. So far we're just on the outer edges and if she goes where the projections show, we won't get too much of her. It's a little windy here with sporadic bursts of rain, but so far it's relatively quiet and I like it that way!

This is kind of a smooshed up picture, but it gives a good idea of where we are (Fayetteville).
I thought this would be a good time to get some crocheting done, but with the kids home from school (one is grounded) it's not working out that way. Neither of them want to do chores so I have to go "crack the whip" bleh.

Ophelia

I've had three calls today stating that school will be closed tomorrow due to inclement weather. Seems we're battening down and getting ready for Ophelia, but looking at the projected path, we're just going to get the edges - if anything. http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm16/projectedpath_large.html
I keep telling my husband that I'd rather go thru another earthquake than a hurricane (I've been thru one, not the other). Earthquakes sneak up on you, shake you up, and are generally over fairly quickly. Watching hurricanes creep up on you is another thing entirely and not something I'm very comfortable with.
Oh well, we'll see what happens. The kids are just happy to get an extra day off and although dh's jump was cancelled, he still has to work :(
g'night

Ok, I think I got it now, but this one is just a test.
This is what that other entry was supposed to look like. This is JW and Alicia sitting on the sun ghan I'm making for my sis.

And this is the shrug sleeve and the frogged mess I was talking about.

On my hook

My hooks have been busy lately. Besides the skully I made for my husband (pics are at http://spaces.msn.com/members/jwamblicia/) I've also been working on a shrug on which I miscounted somewhere and had to frog it back to the 11th rnd :(
I'm also still working on the sun ghan that I thought would be perfect for my sister. As the rounds get bigger they take longer to finish and after a while I get dizzy with all the round and round! lolI hope she likes it, as you can see JW and Alicia sure do! I guess one way or another it's going to find a home..

New blog home

After all the downtime at MSN , I've decided to move my blog/space. I've tried several blog sites in the past few days and this one seems the easiest and has the extras that I like so I'm gonna rest here for a bit. If you're at all interested in my past posts you can find them at http://spaces.msn.com/members/jwamblicia/ . That is - if they're not down again and you can get in.