Ran out of yarn!

Hello Friends,

I hope you had a great start to your week. My weekend of finishing WIPs was lovely, until I ran out of yarn for my granny stripe blanket. The blanket uses up quite a bit of yarn for each color switch. Each color includes 2 rows (down and back), so using scraps is not an option with this blanket. I went through as many rows with colors I had and then I had to stop because I did not want the color pattern to look like I ran out of some colors.

I did take some photos of the blanket so far..

I really like this blanket. I named it English Meadow when I began to make it because I choose the colors to go along with the Vera Bradley English Meadow pattern. Since it was before the pattern was released, my colors may be somewhat different shades but I still enjoy it.

Since I ran out of some blues and greens, I decided it would be alright if I worked on a new scarf that has been waiting for me to make for oh so long. My friend Sarah told me about the infinity scarf. A scarf that can be worn multiple ways, I think the idea was that it could be worn an infinite number of ways. The scarf needs to be long enough to wrap around your neck twice which makes it look like a cowl. So I bought some special yarn to give it a try (well special for me, I usually stick with Vanna's Choice and Vanna Baby which I love, but usually buy it on sale for $2 or $2.50). I used a 50% off coupon at A.C. Moore and bought Lion Brand Amazing yarn. The color I purchased was Arcadia. It was difficult to choose as the colors are hard to see in the skeins.

The yarn can be a little tricky because it is fuzzy. If you mess up and need to unravel some stitches, this yarn sometimes will not un-do.  I will post some more photos of this and the pattern soon. Here is a sneak peak photo of the scarf...

I am very happy with the way the scarf is turning out so far. I hope your day was great!
xoxo Susan

Hurrican Season Begins

Hello Friends,

I just finished another book a few minutes ago, and as I was thinking about what I should read next I remembered I need to update my blog. Before I let myself get swept away in another book, I need to complete a few more rows. This blanket is being made with Lion Brand Vanna's Choice and Vanna Baby yarn (the yellow is Ducky from Vanna Baby).

This blanket is as wide as the top of the queen sized bed. I was aiming for a width to be able to cover one person comfortably whether the person is laying on a bed or relaxing on a couch. Now I just need to keep increasing the length, which I am finding to be rather difficult in the hot weather. I get very warm as I work on this blanket. I try to position the blanket so if it not covering my body but the temperature is above 90 degrees, even inside in the air conditioning is warm when this is covering me. I may have to work on smaller sized projects during the summer.

June starts the official beginning of Hurricane Season here in Florida. We are in desparate need of rain and although we have had a few showers over the last week or two, the rainfall does not come close to the amount we need to get out of this drought. I am sure it will come soon enough.

A Little Piece of Florida
We planted two dwarf banana trees two months ago and one of our plants is growing much more than the other.

We really can't believe the difference in growth. As far as we can tell, they both get the same amount of sunlight. Well I better get hooking. I hope you are having some sunshine and warm weather where you are.
xoxo Susan

Granny Striping

Good Morning,

Time passes by too fast. I feel like each time I look at my calendar another month has passed. I am gearing up to travel on business to Seattle, Washington. I am very excited to visit Seattle as I have never been there before. One thing I am not looking forward to is the long plane ride across the entire country.

This weekend I spent most of my time getting things in order prior to leaving for my trip. I was able to work a little bit on my new cardigan and the English Meadow granny stripe from a couple months ago. The sweater is making slow progress. I am using an F size hook and the next portion requires are smaller hook, so I need to get to the store before I can go much further. Somewhere over time and moving to Florida, I lost some of my hook sets. I am not sure if I have used a hook smaller than F before.

It looks like the sun was a little too bright for the photos!

I am not sure what I will bring to work on while traveling. This blanket is too large to transport with me. I try not to bring any extra items with me during travel to alleviate any stress on my back during transport. I may have to bring some yarn to start some more granny circles...
Well, it is a beautiful day, the sun is shining and the temperature is not too hot. Hopefully I can sneak some time outside in between a busy day of work.
I hope your Monday is joyful!
xoxo Susan

A Thursday Crochet Lunch Group Finished Project - Jackie's Country Blue Granny Stripe

Hello Lovelies,

I was hoping to post this earlier today but the day just got away. You may remember me mentioning a Thursday Crochet Lunch Group, consisting of Carolynne, Jackie, and me (co-workers of mine). We planned to get together on Thursdays during the lunch hour and crochet and/or talk about crochet and our current projects. Well due to so much going on and bouts of sickness, we really only met one time. During our second week, Jackie was very sick, which was bad news, but the good news was after spending a day in bed in which she could barely move, the next day she was still sick but she was able to crochet the day away. AND she finished her first big project!!!!

Jackie is not a blogger (not yet anyways) so she said I could share her beautiful creation on here with you. I am calling this one Jackie's Country Blue Granny Stripe because the three blue colors were all variations of the Caron's Country Blue color (regular, dark, and light) - I know I am so creative :)

Jackie's Beautiful Blanket

This was her first granny stripe and she did a marvelous job

She used Caron Simply Soft Yarn, 100% Acrylic, purchased on sale for $1.99 (HUGE DEAL!) at A.C. Moore.  Her colors were: 1. Country Blue, 2. Dark Country Blue, 3. Light Country Blue, 4. Pistachio, and 5. Off White. I think they look divine together! The yarn really is "simply soft" I just wanted to spread it out on the floor and lay on it. Of course I didn't do this, but it was so soft it made me want to keep touching it. She used Lucy's pattern over at Attic 24 (link to pattern in on my Patterns Used page, scroll up, under the title "Florida Crochet Garden" next to "Home" tab).

I can't wait to see her next blanket. She is making another granny stripe because after seeing this one, you can imagine the requests from her friends to make more.

Well that's all for tonight. I must get back to the baby circle of friends blanket - this was my Thursday Lunch project, which hopefully will be ready to show final photos this weekend.

My mom's learning to crochet progress: I stopped by Ft. Myers Beach where my parents have been vacationing the last few days and my mom said she hasn't worked on her crochet, but she will get there. Her next door neighbor in Buffalo who taught me to crochet, Kathy, said she will work with her when she returns home. Kathy was a great teacher, so I know she will be in good hands and maybe she will be writing her own blog by the summer!
xoxo Susan

Granny Stripes and Chocolate

Good Morning,

I am finally feeling a little bit back on track with things since I have been able to catch up on some crocheting this weekend. I've been working on the Japanese flower cover/blanket this weekend and I also added a few rows to the granny stripe. The longer the granny stripe gets the more I like it. The granny stripe is nice and cozy underneath. Even with the spaces between the clusters, this will still be a super warm blanket.


Last week while my friend Colleen visited, we stopped by Norman Love's salon to get some yummy treats. This was actually my first time visiting Norman Love because J and I were slightly mis-directed last time we tried to find it. After visiting for the first time, I have a feeling I will be making many many visits there. I didn't tell Colleen the name of the "chocolate place" we were going to because I wasn't aware of Norman Love's popularity. She was very excited to stop by their store as it is the only storefront location and she is a pastry chef herself. Unfortunately Norman was not in the shop that day, so she wasn't able to meet him. Maybe next time.

Colleen outside of Norman Love's

My yummy treats

We enjoyed some scummy goodies. I got a brownie pop, turtle rounds (carmel, peanuts, and chocolate) and a milk chocolate bar. Colleen purchased some bon bons in a variety of flavors which I didn't get a photo of, but they were quite impressive. The mango one was divine!

Well I am off to go enjoy the gorgeous day outside. I hope you have some sunshine near you.
xoxo Susan

A Flowery Weekend

Hello Lovelies,
This morning I woke up early to get right down to come crochet business. The flower cover I started a few weeks ago with the beautiful Japanese crochet flowers posed some problems for me regarding color selection. After seeing many beautiful examples on the Flower Bed. I decided my next one is going to have 2 color flowers only, and since I am making all of the centers white, I guess the flowers could be considered one color.
So, I started working on my new Japanese flower cover this morning. I am very happy with the white centers and the same color for the entire petal.

Using less colors also means less ends to weave in, which if you are a regular reader you already know I dread weaving in the ends. I like to weave them in as I go so it looks cleaner when I examine my progress, but this slows down the making progress part a little bit. Weaving as you go does not take more time in the long run though.

I also need to work on the granny stripe blanket this weekend. I have been neglecting it over the last couple weeks. The temperature dropped a bit here so I have been able to use my ripple and granny garden blankets to keep my legs warm as I crochet, and I have been enjoying every minute of it.

I don't know if I will ever get enough of crocheting flowers. J works every Saturday, so in between getting research and teaching work done, I usually spend the morning hooking away. I am going to cook some corned beef and cabbage for dinner tonight in honor of St. Patrick's Day week coming up. We had some last Friday at the Irish Festival but I have been craving some more.
Happy Saturday
xoxo Susan

Vera Bradley English Meadow Summer 2011 inspiration!!

Gooood Morning,
I forgot to share with you that baby D arrived (my friend Gina's baby)! Her name is McKenna Jordyn. Gina (mom) and baby are both doing well. They will be coming home from the hospital tomorrow. Next week I will venture up to see them (and sneak in lots of photos of baby McKenna with crochet stuff).

Well today I am sharing my granny stripe inspiration with you. I am a big fan of Vera Bradley and I was able to get a sneak peak at the Summer 2011 patterns scheduled to hit stores in April. One of the patterns is called English Meadow. 

English Meadow Pattern

Pattern with Border

 

Inside of the bag pattern

My blanket does have some darker blues and greens in it. I think some of them look even darker than usually because they are next to some of the lighter hues. If I were to make another one, I think I would try to stick with all lighter colors, but I am pretty happy with the ones I have in there right now.

I really enjoy working on the granny stripe because each row doesn't take to long. I did not make it very wide, you can see the width of the blanket while laying on a queen size bed. I didn't make it for queen size bed, I just sort of made it wide enough to be able to cover one person nicely while cozy-ied up on a sofa. The ripple blanket takes much longer for each row because the rows are not straight across, they ripple up and down. The granny stripe is less counting and re-doing if you miscount and smooth sailing across each row.

I do have swatches of the other new Vera Bradley patterns for April 2011. If people want to see them I can show them - but I won't have a crochet project to match each one, haha. At least not yet...

Well I hope you have a fabulous day - we are halfway to the weekend!
XOXO Susan

Foggy Views and Granny Stripes

Good Morning Lovelies,

We have a foggy start to the day here, but it is bright so it looks like the sun will be out shortly. Yesterday I found painfully little marks on my left heel, which J thought were spider bites. I couldn't even run last night because it hurt too much to have my sneakers rub against the skin. When I went outside to check out the fog this morning, I noticed we have spider webs all over the place (they were not there yesterday). Spider webs across the screen of the lanai, around some plants, and on some trees. It looks like J is probably right about my little marks being spider bites. I am going to put him on spider patrol.



Foogy Morning



Usually I can see all the way down the street in the backyard

 

Can you see the spider web?

I have made a little progress on my granny stripe. Tomorrow I will show you my color inspiration for this one. I am using blues and some shades of green and a yellow here and there - an English Cottage/Meadow look. Those of you in England you will have to be the judge for me once the blanket is complete! For anyone who missed my first posting - I explained some subtle differences between my pattern (due to my errors of course) and Lucy's pattern for the granny stripe.

I still love touching this blanket. Even though the texture isn't as differentiated as other patterns, I still think the look and feel is great.
Well off to grade all day long with a little bit of getting our taxes done in between. I usually spend Mondays grading all day but yesterday I had some other projects to finish up so this week Tuesday will be my full day of grading.
XOXO Susan

Back at It

Hello Friends,
Yesterday I was feeling a bit under the weather so I did not share anything with you on my blog. I did start another WIP, I know I know, I already have several other works in progress but since I am new to crocheting regularly, I am so far behind! I love all of the things Lucy at Attic 24 and Alice at Crochet with Raymond have been making over the years that I feel compelled to "catch up". I am still working on my other projects for variation, but I just needed to try the granny stripe.

The granny stripe is still in the very beginning stages and I am using a certain color pattern as my inspiration but I am not going to reveal my color inspiration just yet...

I followed Lucy's pattern as best I could, except I forgot for the first row that her dc really meant sc in USA terms. SO my first row is a dc instead of single crochet. I really love making it, the rows go at a nice pace and it looks so nice, especially the texture it produces with each color having a row of front and back (you flip) which doesn't usually happen in a regular granny square. In addition to using a USA dc (instead of a UK dc which is sc in USA) my other adjustments were to put one chain in between each granny cluster for the second row only (first row of clusters, but second row of the blanket). Lucy's pattern says to make the length in multiples of three's so mine was a chain of 162. I was imagining a blanket to cover one person on a sofa or bed.
Welllll I hope you have a fabulous weekend and I just might post again tonight to make up for yesterday. We will see how much progress I make today. The weather is delightful as usual here so I may have to crochet outside.
XOXO Susan