I have no idea where it comes from, but this is at least the third year it has been celebrated.

The Crochet Guild of America is doing a Crochet-along. Ravelry is having a party. Craftster is getting in on the fun, too! And you can follow the excitement on Twitter by searching for #natcromo.

As for me, I’m going to try and crochet even more than usual this month (though, I’m not sure how I’m going to do that yet…)

This morning on my commute to work I started making another Diet Coke Bottle Cozy, mostly just to see what the pattern would look like with striped yarn. I finished it at lunch, and here it is!

In other news, I finished the Ladybug blanket!

A close up of the face:

I ended up crocheting a separate black wedge and sewing it on for the face, as the colour changes on the big circle really weren’t working for me. Sewing the spots on was quite annoying as well… I’m going to have to find a better way to do that. Not that I plan on making this blanket again, but I’m sure this sort of technique will come up in something else.

So, back to NatCroMo: Learn to crochet! Crochet something new! Learn a new crochet technique! Crochet in public! Talk about crochet! Sing about crochet! But above all… CROCHET! ^_^

In the meantime, here is yesterday’s motif:

(That’s Beyond The Square motif #36)

And today’s:

(Also BTS, motif #40)

Of the two, I think I like the second one better. ^_^

More to come! (Possibly even from a different source!)

These blankets are going to charity:

(I should get a better picture of that purple one made at the show before I send it off…)

I’m going to make these three bigger and give them as Christmas gifts:

These are Christmas presents, and I’m keeping them as is:

And this one is MINE:

My current main project is a gift for someone who reads this blog, and I really don’t want to give the surprise away if I can help it, so pictures and updates will be made on Ravelry (where you need an account to see it). Don’t worry, once the Big Day has come and gone, I’ll post all of the gory details. ^_^

Now that BOB is over, I find myself with my own crafting time again, so I’m waffling around trying to decide what to do. I’ve joined a couple of swaps, I still need to make the June square in the CAL, and I’ve been itching to just make my way through my growing collection of motif books and make at least one of everything.

Of course, there’s still Christmas coming, and various birthdays left to think about. I’ve been hoping that Bernat Satin would go on sale for the last several months, but I haven’t seen it. If you do, could you please let me know? I’m planning on buying a LOT of it, not only because I’ll need it for some gifts, but also because it’s my go-to yarn for worsted weight acrylic and I’m starting to run low. It’s soft, works up well, and the colours are pretty nice.

Anticipated projects: at least one more Snowflake afghan, maybe the Hawaiian Flower afghan, more 3-way Tunisian, lots of hats and scarves, some geeky afghans, and of course, Dad’s Christmas present.

My work situation has changed and I suddenly find myself with a good chunk of crochet time. That time can only be spent working on a pattern I know really well, and that doesn’t have any tricky colour changes. The project I’ve been working on lately has recently become too large to do while I do my job, so I need a replacement project. For now, I’m prepping some scarves (doing the base chain and first row at home on several), and I’m thinking of doing some granny squares. Any thoughts on what else might work? Basically, anything I don’t have to look at too much, that can easily be done a couple of stitches at a time.

Finally, check out this Spiral Granny Square I made: click here.

I took about a dozen pictures of this and not a single one caught the beautiful colours of this blanket. I suppose you’re all just going to have to come visit me at the show (and then buy this).

This blanket is also an excellent example of how wonderful that “no turning chain dc” technique is. Here is a close-up of the edge:

Isn’t that amazing? If I look really, really closely, I still have a hard time telling which stitches are real double crochets, and which are the no-turning-chain stitches.

I’ve found it to make working in the round a bit easier, too. In the past, I had always had problems figuring out which chain in the beginning chain was the one I needed to make a join in. Using this no-turning-chain method, it’s pretty obvious where the join goes.

If you haven’t tried out this technique already, I urge you to do it. You won’t regret it!

I just realized the other day that I never posted pictures of the motifs I received from craftADDchick here on the blog. I’ve put them under the cut (Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t read any further on this post, please!)

Please forgive the pictures; I took these on my scribe at work in a different way than usual…

This last picture has three motifs for my Dad’s Christmas present:

The piano represents his tuning mine while I was growing up, the Starfleet badge is for his love of Star Trek, and the maple leaf is for his passion for all things “Made In Canada” (the irony here being that craftADDchick, who made these, lives in the States. We won’t tell Dad. ^_-)

I love these motifs and I hope we do another swap like this again soon! It was fun to participate in it, and I don’t have nearly enough motifs to make a blanket out of them yet. In the mean time, I’ve signed up for the third round of the Granny’s Daughters swap.

*passes out*

First, the 12″ squares CAL:

I still need to do a border around the edge. I stopped short of the 12″ to accommodate a solid dc border in the green I used for the flower. I’m sure I’ll get around to that sometime before the April square is revealed (note to self: start badgering craftADDchick soon)

The other monthly check-up is the charity crafting. I fell five points short of my goal for February, but with tonight’s effort I’ve caught up! I’m making March’s goal 20 points. We’ll see what happens.

Here is the Lollipop blanket:

Now with border!

You’re just going to have to imagine what the purple shell blanket looks like finished. The sun was long gone by the time I finished it and the indoor picture of it looks really really bad. Mom and Dad will be dropping by tomorrow and I’ll be sending them home with them. I’ll try to remember to take a picture before we say goodbye!

In other news, I have an update on the “make your own centre-pull ball” technique. Here is a picture of the ball from yesterday after making the border on Lollipop:

Not too shabby!

I’ve made a bunch of swirly hexagons up and, after consuming copious amounts of caffeine to counter the hypnotic effects, I posed them in a couple of ways for your consideration.

Which do you prefer?

Option 1 (aka Klingon Layout)

Option 2 (aka Opposite Layout)

Vote in the comments! Or via e-mail if you’d prefer: fantastic dot mio at gmail dot com

In the meantime, I’ve joined a swap on Craftster! Specifically, the Amazing Crochet Motif Swap. It’s being run by my favourite crochet pusher on Craftster, craftADDchick (some of you may remember her from the 12″ square crochet-a-long). It should be fun!

In completely unrelated news, I’ve bought a new book! You see, Charles wanted to get out of the house this weekend, and really wanted to get some new reading material so we headed off to Chapters at Runnymede. He took lots of pictures, and I bought a book:

I’ve barely had a chance to look at it, really. What post-it notes? Oh, and just ignore Charles if he suggests that I’ve been keeping the book next to the bed so that it’s handy just before I go to sleep. (My most creative time is between 11pm and 1am. It’s a curse.)

And he didn’t even buy anything. *sigh*

Anyhow, more pictures from my trip to Alberta under the cut!

Safety first:

Huge tracks of land next:

And finally, the stupid-face Michaels in hick-town Medicine Hat:

To be fair, I should post a picture of the Michaels in Toronto, oh wait!

Yeah, I’m not bitter at all…

First, the old:

“Toothpaste”

“Grape”

The new:

“Jellyfish“. I’m convinced that no lighting attempt will show off the truly jarring colours in this one. I recommend you take a trip out to Michaels and look for this yarn. Look for “Candy Stripes” in the Bernat Baby Co-ordinates area.

I’m making progress on the hex blanket:

And since I’ve got so many annoying craft pictures in this post, there’s only one from the Alberta trip:

It’s not really representative of the trip, but it makes me smile, for some reason.

What yellow and green striped blanket?

Here is the finished purple blanket:

Every crochet endeavor creates scraps, so the scrap baby blanket has begun, using the pattern from this crochet-a-long:

And finally, yesterday I was weak and bought more baby yarn. It was on sale, what can I say? The pattern is in this thread.

(pictures out in the sun that show the truly jarring pink/purple colouring of this blanket to come tomorrow… I hope!)

And that’s what I’ve been up to!

…

What green and yellow striped baby blanket?

More from the Alberta trip:

This was the view from our bedroom window:

This is the inside of the cow feeding thingy (it’s my professionalism that makes this all worth while) :

Finally, this picture marks the point in the trip when I started to notice a pattern in the stories:

An illustrative example, “So, I was driving this tractor when there was a big CRASH and then we spent two days hammering the grain bin back into shape.” (It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the bin in question is the second one from the right.)

I’m not sure what I think of this pattern. I had to fudge it in a few places, and I found a couple of spots unclear (those two problems may be related, come to think of it).

It’s pretty, though, and I think it will make a great addition to the blanket!