Busy Hands

I've had busy hands for the past few days. My friend said I should build up an inventory of ami to sell at our local Saturday markets so I've been working on that. So far, these are what I've come up with:

 I also finished the shrug I posted about before. I'll post a pic of it being modeled by the little girl I made it for when I give it to her since it doesn't look as good when it's not being worn.

I have a hard time listening when my hands are idle, so yesterday at church I started crocheting. I didn't decide what it was going to be until about the 10th round. I had seen some really cute pin cushions online which gave me the idea for what I came up with. I wish I could find the pattern again to give reference. Having said that, I did NOT follow a pattern but I DID get the idea from someone else and as soon as I find the page, I'll link to it. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

Toddler shrug

So my friend and I were having a conversation a few weeks ago about the difference between crochet and knitting. She's recently learned to knit but doesn't crochet and I have been crocheting for years, but couldn't knit to save my life.  Anyhow, she mentioned that she'd really like a shrug for her daughter but would like it crocheted because it seems easier to get a "lacy" look with crochet. I decided to take on the project. I haven't made a shrug in years. I looked around through all of my pattern books and tons of patterns online and just didn't find one I liked so I decided to try and design one myself.

This book has been invaluable in helping me figure out what I wanted to do. I really like the net stitch when I want to give something that light and lacy look, but since this was going to be for a toddler I wanted it to be just a bit more sturdy so on page 34 I found directions for the "Lily Net Stitch". The back panel turned out beautiful.

I'll also be adding some ribbed cuffs with a picot edge and I think once I get the arms sewn up I'll do a picot edge around the opening. Writing a pattern is a lot more work than I thought it would be. I have crossed out and frogged so many times I almost gave up on writing it. Once it's done I'll post it here and on Ravelry.com for people to test it for me.

Feeling a little froggy.

After seeing the octopus I had been making, a friend of mine asked if I could make him a frog. Although I vigorously waved my magic wand and said the magic words..nothing happened. So off I went in search of a good (free and easy) pattern!

The first one I found was Amigaerumi by Erika Hughes. Fast and fairly easy to make all the parts I was really liking this one until it came time for assembly. I usually avoid patterns that require sewing, but I really wanted to make this frog. Anyway, here's what I came up with.

Not too bad, but I'm not especially happy with how the arms turned out and I think adding pipe cleaners inside the legs would have been a good idea so they'd be more pose able.

The next one I tried was Frog in "Paris" which is a DROPS design. He's a cute little thing, but once again I had some trouble with placement when adding the limbs.

After trying both designs I kind of mixed them up a bit and tried a little harder in getting the placement right and came up with this little guy.

He's a little cockeyed and has the "gangsta lean" going on, but I'm pretty happy with him. My friend liked all three and decided to buy them all! Not bad for a few days worth of crocheting here and there!

Yarn Addictions

I don't understand how people who crochet and knit can limit the amount of yarn they have on hand. I try, I really do try really hard not to make extra yarn purchases. In light of that statement I have a confession to make. I'm a yarnoholic. <<-- is that even a word?

Last week a friend of mine asked if I'd make a shrug for her daughter. Seeing as how she's my friend and I love her daughter to bits I enthusiastically said yes. She said she'd like it to be in a shade of brown. I know I had recently purchased some beautiful chocolate colored yarn a couple months ago so decided to dig it out for this project. After going through the house and pulling out a tote and a few bags full of yarn, I didn't find the brown (I think it's hidden in my room somewhere.) but I did find all of this:

The way I had it all laid out I wasn't able to get it all in the picture. The box in the background has been in the closet for years and I found a bag of yarn in the bottom of it that was given to me by my ex-husband's late aunt which included the bag in the foreground which was full of plastic canvas and yarn specifically for that. The sad part is I didn't find the brown and this isn't all of the stash. There's another 20gal tote full of it out in the storage shed that I found the other day and I keep running across small bags of yarn here and there.

Balls

Ok, I think I've finally got the basic concept of crocheting balls down. Start with magic ring, increase a few rounds, sc a few rounds, and decrease the opposite of your increases. Easy peasy!

Now that I've figured this out I think I'll be making a bunch of hackey sacks for the group of kids in our local behavior treatment center. In the past 9 months of spending time there I've noticed a lot of the kids don't get regular visits from family if they get them at all. I usually have a small project there with me and they all get excited to see what I'm making. Today I had these two balls with me ( I whipped up the yellow one while sitting at the laudromat) and several got excited and asked if they were hackey sacks. They aren't, just stuffed with normal poly fill and the smaller one has a few bells in it. Anyway, it got me to thinking. At any given time there are 60 kids living in this building. I can whip these up pretty fast so I think I'll make a bunch and drop them off.

I also figure that just knowing the basic design for a sphere is a good jumping off point for learning to design my own amigurumi. We'll have to see what I can come up with.

Snuggly (Ugly) Bunny

I used the Snuggly Bunny pattern over at StormyzCrochet but mine just doesn't look like hers. I like how fast it worked up and thanks to tutorials over at PlanetJune's amigurumi help I think I did pretty a pretty good job attaching the pieces. The problem I had was with placement. I wish there had been more pics showing the placement of the different parts. As you can see, mine came out a bit crooked.

I'll chalk this one up as a learning experience and do some more reading of tutorials and practicing.

Octopi - who would've thought?

Last week I posted about the octopus I made for my daughter. She took it to school with her and her substitute teacher literally went bananas over it. Said she would pay me to make some for her. Pay me? For something I enjoy doing? Can you believe it has never crossed my mind to charge people for the things I make?

Anyway, it was a good idea, but I wasn't totally happy with the pattern. I tried another and ended up with this:

It's cute, but came out a lot smaller than I expected. The original pattern calls for two strands of yarn and a K hook. I used some leftover RedHeart and either a G or an H (can't remember now). I really liked how the legs worked up in this pattern moreso than in the other, but there was no direction on actually closing the bottom. So anyway, I took the two patterns and morphed them a bit to work together and came up with this cutey:

In the end though, I ended up not following any patterns precisely and ended up selling her this orange one and four others and no two of them were the same. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience and I've received lot's of positive feedback from people saying I should either open up my own Etsy shop or do the local Saturday markets. We'll see. I'm still learning the fine art of amigurumi and having fun with it.

Here's another one without the googly eyes. I don't care much for the eyes like this, but I really like where it's sitting!

Crochtopus anyone?

Allie has been asking me to make her a squid, but for lack of finding a pattern I'm going with this cute little octopus patter I found at http://www.favecrafts.com/Crochet-Amigurumi/Crochtopus/ct/1# . This is working up pretty fast. I started this afternoon sitting in the car while waiting for JohnWalter and have worked on it a round at a time in my few stops today.

Sometimes it's nice having a quick project like this while I'm stuck in traffic sitting at long red lights! lol. I got the last round done and started on a tentacle while doing just that...sitting at a red light. 

After several interruptions and having to hunt high and low for the backs to the eyes, the beast is finally done! I hope she likes it, I've already got 4 more people asking for one!

Finally

After a 5 year break I have finally unpacked my yarn stash and picked up my hooks again! It feels so good to be making things again and the pain that made me stop before (bilateral CPS) is almost non-existent now. I'm not doing big projects, but have completed plenty of small ones. Lots of hats

 , some scarves, my first amigurumi ,

my first couple of projects using tapestry crochet

 , and a new hook case among other things.

Where does the time go?

8 months has just flown by. So many things have happened that I've totally forgotten to come update.

The girls spent the summer with the grandparents, the neighbors from hell moved in next door, the baby was diagnosed with 'failure to thrive' and then rediagnosed as normal, just small. I got little to no crocheting done, but I did purge the downstairs of many many boxes of books and magazines and purged the kids' closets of clothes that don't fit anymore. Sheesh, there's really just been too much going on. Hopefully I'll get back to updating this on a regular basis again.

Clarity

Every once in a while in the midst of my hectic life there comes a moment of such clarity that it makes me pause. Today I had one of those moments. While I was holding the baby, and my son was sitting on the floor playing, and my 2 oldest were tearing up the kitchen in their quest to make breakfast it slapped me in the face how truly blessed I am. I have 4 beautiful, healthy, intelligent children. No...they don't always behave. No...they don't always clean up after themselves. Yes...they drive me absolutely bonkers. But all in all they are truly wonderful and in my day to day life with all the work and frustrations of trying to raise 4 kids on just one income, I tend to forget. Thank you God for blessing me so.

And as the oldest 2 start fighting and the youngest starts crying, the moment is gone as I hunt down the toddler to make sure he's not dumping shampoo or taking the ornaments off the Christmas tree...haha

Finished Sweater

I finished the sweater and cap! Can't believe I finished it this fast, but I actually got a couple of hours of almost uninterrupted crocheting in today! I haven't tried it on the baby yet as I didn't want to wake her, but when I do, I'll make sure to take a pic and post it for all to see how it ended up fitting.
Now I just need to find a good (read easy) pattern for booties that is similar or figure out how to make them myself.

Reunions

It's always fun having reunions with long lost siblings! The girls' oldest sister came for a visit this weekend and they had a great time with her. The last time they saw her was almost a year ago. She recently moved closer to us to go to college, so hopefully we'll get to see her more often.

Poor thing, I thought they were going to run her over when she got here. (We didn't tell them she was coming so it would be a surprise, kind of an early Christmas present!) I think they stayed up most of the night playing games and watching movies. Here they are hamming for the camera.

While she was here we braved the seasonal madness of the mall to get her a dress to wear to a semi-formal party. It was crazy there and I swear I'll never go back during a holiday season.

Making progress

I'm finally making progress on Allie's sweater and I think she'll actually be able to wear it for a month or so before she gets too big for it. I finished the first sleeve (finally) and got about halfway through the other before I had to stop and get the kids ready for bed tonite. Hopefully I'll get it finished tomorrow. Just need to finish the last 2 inches of the second sleeve, edge the body, and get some cute buttons for it. Of course there's still the little cap that goes with it, but I should be able to finish that in one or two evenings depending on how needy the little ones are.

Sweater in progress

I'm finally finding some time to crochet again. I'm attempting to make a sweater for the baby. I've never made a sweater before. The closest I've come to making wearables are scarves, hats, and ponchos. Nothing that difficult. This poor sweater on the other hand. I've frogged the sleeve several times because I keep forgetting to turn at the end of each row rather than working in the round. I'll post another pic when it's actually finished.

I also have a queen size afghan that I'm working on, but there are no photos of it yet.

Camera frenzy

All you parents and grandparents out there know how it is when you have a new baby in the house. The camera comes out and every little moment has to be captured! Seems like the first few months in a baby's life they get photographed more than the rest (at least in my house).

So anyway, my camera has been getting a pretty good workout but it's been difficult to get all 4 kids in one place while they're all awake and somewhat alert. A couple of days ago I finally managed to do just that and got the resulting pic.

Finished projects

I actually did some crocheting while I was pregnant. Not a lot, but a few items. Just thought I'd share them here.







This is a poncho I made for Amber after someone stole her other one.



This is Allie's very first baby blanket.








This is Amber's afghan done in the colors of her choice. There's a photo of Alicia's somewhere back in this blog. Now I just need to make one to fit JW's new bed.





This is a rug I whipped up right before Allie was born to put next to my bed. I hate getting up in the middle of the night and putting my bare feet on a cold floor so this was my solution. It looks better now that the ends have been woven in and it's been washed and blocked.

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted here. A lot has happened since my last post. We've moved back on post, the girls started the 5th grade, JW has grown like a weed, I've completed an afghan, another poncho for Amber, a couple baby blankets, and 3 weeks ago gave birth to a beautiful baby girl!!

Pineapple doily

Well I finally finished it (a couple of weeks ago!) This is the doily I did for my swap partner in Luxury. This is the first doily I've done with anything smaller than size 3 thread in over a year since the accident. I think it turned out quite nice.

I've got a baby blanket and an afghan on my hooks at the moment and just finished some squares for a 12" square exchange. Maybe now I'll find more time to post. We'll see.

Goodbye Sweet Gram

Bettie Doris (Currie) LeClere

Bettie Doris (Currie) LeClere, 86, died Monday, March 6, 2006 at Rosewood Court Adult Foster Care Home in Brookings of natural causes.

She was born April 29, 1919 to Joseph Alexander and Mary Ethel (Vincent) Currie in Eugene, Oregon.

Mrs. LeClere was raised and schooled in Eugene and Springfield where she spent most of her life working and raising her family.

She married Joe Prociw in Springfield in 1937 and they raised three children together. She later married Leonard LeClere about 1953 and they also raised three children together.

Mrs. LeClere was employed as a waitress at Seymour’s Restaurant in Eugene for a number of years before beginning at the University of Oregon. She retired from U of O in 1975 after being employed as the Housekeeper for the University President for about a decade.

After retirement she worked closely with the Springfield Police Department to develop a Neighborhood Watch Program. She attended a number of specialized classes and received various commendations from the police department for her involvement.

Mrs. LeClere was an accomplished seamstress and very good at needlework. She enjoyed crocheting, knitting, and cross-stitch and won first prize for her work at the Curry County Fair some years ago. She also liked hand-decorating ceramics and was very skilled at doing custom hand-drawn designs. She loved to read and was a fan of Louis L’Amour. She also enjoyed vegetable and flower gardening and specialized in growing irises.

She is survived by son, Larrie and wife Beverly Prociw of Roseburg; daughter Bettie Gaye Ridl of Anchorage, Alaska; daughter Donna and husband Jim Blunt of Brookings; daughter Cecelia and husband Layne Worlton, also of Brookings; son Dwayne LeClere of Kodiak, Alaska; and son Tim and wife Pamela LeClere of Winston, Oregon; fifteen grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren; and also twin brother Bert Currie of Anaconda, Montana.

She was preceded in death by her two older sisters and three older brothers, Wilma Roberts, Letta Bloom, and Arthur, Keith, and Ralph Currie.

Funeral services will be held at 1:00 pm on Saturday, March 11, 2006 at Redwood Memorial Chapel, Brookings. Private entombment will be held later at Springfield Memorial Gardens in Springfield, Oregon.