Posts Tagged ‘ladybug’

NatCroMo 2010

March 2nd, 2010 mio

Happy National Crochet Month!

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!
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In other news, I finished the Ladybug blanket!
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A close up of the face:
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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! ^_^

Posted in Afghans, Experimenting Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments »

And the lake is damp

February 2nd, 2010 mio

I know this won’t come as a surprise to everyone reading this blog, but Bell sucks. I’ve had the misfortune of being a telephone customer of theirs, as well as a customer of Bell Sympatico. For anyone who pays attention to this sort of thing, my opinion is: don’t use Bell unless under threat of death.

Why? In short:

- they have stolen money out of my bank account (by doing something they *specifically* claimed was impossible) then wouldn’t give it back until I involved my bank

- they’ve cut off my phone service for not paying *someone else’s* bill, and even after it was proven that was the case they still wouldn’t reconnect it, and still wouldn’t even after we proved that it was, in fact, their fault that it was possible at all

- they’ve sold me a service that didn’t exist (which lead to me having to pay the cable company an extra hookup charge since they had to come to my house twice)

- and most recently they failed to fix a connection problem. For two weeks. They claim to have made 6 appointments for techs to check out the problem, but we only saw 2. Each of those techs “fixed” the problem, only to have service go back down within 24 hours. (They also both complained bitterly about working for Bell!)

So, what’s a gal to do during this internet outage? (Did I mention that the internet wasn’t working at work either because of a computer virus? *yanks out hair*) Well, I certainly didn’t plan any part of my wedding! (Whose idea was it to keep our notes about it in a Google document? Oh wait, that was me…)

I crocheted, naturally! I also loom-knit.

You all remember Mom’s sorority’s charity thing with the kids hats and scarves right?

Check it!
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The plan is to fill a bin with these. The current count is 23 complete sets (I took this picture before finishing a few of them… all of those hats in front of the pile have matching scarves now, plus there is another set not pictured… and a blue hat I still need to make a matching scarf for…)

I also made quite a few dishcloths. And a crochet-on-the-double hat using Bernat Soft Boucle (that still needs sewing up), and blew through a few more balls of red on the Ladybug blanket. I’m woefully behind on motifs, but expect to see a rush of those soon, as I’m in another motif swap. ^_^

A possible conclusion from all of this might be that having no internet access can be really good for my crafting! Another conclusion might be that having no internet had the potential to drive me so crazy that I needed that many projects to distract myself with just to get through it…

*eye twitch*

Posted in charity, knitting loom Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments »

Counting on not counting

January 23rd, 2010 mio

My mom wants to give that Ladybug blanket as a gift in March, so I thought maybe I should finish making it, or something. So, I brought it with me to my last Crochet Guild meeting, figuring that I’d get a good chunk of it done.

Unfortunately, my original plan for making this circle pattern was to count to the number of rounds I’m on, 12 times, to make sure I get evenly spaced increases that aren’t all stacked on one another (and thereby making a dodecagon and not a circle). As it turns out, it’s difficult to count while chit-chatting. I ended up putting the blanket aside and working on other things (of *course* I brought other yarn. Whose blog do you think you’re reading here?).

Obviously this is the sort of project that needs attention: no chit-chatting, no subway, no work, no television. As it turns out, I don’t have enough time like that in my schedule between now and March. What to do?

Well, I came up with a solution, but only because of a totally unrelated conversation on Ravelry recently. We were talking about the chainless foundation, and whether or not it could be used in projects that don’t start with a plain, all-one-kind-of-stitch first row (turns out it can… more on that later). Anyhow, someone was having trouble seeing where to insert the hook to make the next stitch, and someone else suggested she put a stitch marker in the chain stitch so that she could find it more easily.

Huh.

You know, I *never* think of using stitch markers. I’ve ignored them in every pattern I’ve made that called for them, mostly because I haven’t needed them. I know what various stitches look like, I can see very clearly when they change into other stitches, and so often the stitch markers are there so that you don’t have to count three or four stitches every time. To me, it’s not worth the annoyance of using stitch markers, just to save a second or two.

But, because of that recent conversation, I did think of it this time. And look!

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That’s 12 evenly spaced scraps of yarn. I am now crocheting and watching TV with abandon!

(P.S. I’ll be teaching my Crochet Guild how to make Crochet-on-the-Double hats at the next meeting, on Feb. 20th. If you decide to come check it out, bring a 6mm, double-ended hook, and some worsted weight yarn in two colours with you. I recommend a ball of each colour you want in Bernat Satin, but use what you want. There will be some hooks at the meeting, available to buy, but I don’t know how many they’ll have.)

Posted in Afghans Tags: , , , , , No Comments »
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