A little something to hold you over...

Hello Loves,

I was really hoping to have my stained glass blanket complete, but you know how it goes. I am making good progress but it is not quite done yet. I do not want to spoil the ta-dah moment, I am not going to show you any more photos of it until it is done.

Luckily, I do have something to show you to "hold you over" while you wait. First, I made some homemade brownies. Making baked goods from scratch and not from a box mix has been one of my goals for this year. Brownies were one of the goodies on my list to make.

I used the recipe for Chewy Cocoa Brownies found on the Toll House Cocoa container and it turned out pretty good. It was very easy to make.

1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter

2 Tbsp water

2 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup Nestle Toll House Baking Cocoa

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup chopped nuts (optional, but I used them)

Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Grease 13 x 9 inch baking pan. Combine sugar, butter and water in large bowl. Stir in eggs and vanilla extract. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in medium bowl; Stir into sugar mixture. Stir in nuts. Spread into prepared baking pan. Bake for 18 to 25 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out slightly sticky. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Cut into bars. Makes 2 dozen brownies.

The brownies turned out very yummy. So yummy that J and I gobble them up in only two days.

Now a real crochet "hold over". I know I said I was not going to work on anything else until I finish the stained glass blanket, but....

I was looking through photos of crochet projects and saw some diagonal pieces. After reading through some different variations of the pattern, I decided to try it with my own version of the pattern. Sometimes patterns do not make sense to me or logically works differently in my head, so after a little bit of trial and error, I was able to get this going. I am thinking a blanket (smaller one).

I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I have a very busy work week ahead so I must be off to try and finish this stained glass blanket before the week begins.
xo Susan

Weekend Wonderfuls and Stained Glass Blanket

Hello Friends,

The weekend is finally here! I am very excited for some crochet time this weekend. My weeks go by much too quickly leaving my little time to crochet during the week. Luckily the stained glass blanket is a nice one to work on a little at a time. The little squares take about 5 minutes each to make, this includes weaving in the ends. So if I have a quick 15 minutes, I can make 3 squares.

Right now I am almost done with all of the squares for a 16 by 10 square blanket (160 total). As you can see, I started to connect the rows prior to completing all of the squares. I was not sure about the size, so I wanted to see how it looks assembled. My next posting should be of a completed stained glass blanket!!!

Well, I did have some time to stop at shop for some yarn this week. The funny thing about de-stashing, which if you remember, I started my stained glass blanket because I fell in love with the one Angie made and because I wanted to de-stash. Staying true to the rules of Feng Shui, when you make room for new yarn, you will fill up the space with..... NEW YARN!

I stopped by my local A.C. Moore store and found all of the Stitch Nation yarn on clearance for $3.00 each (regular $4.99 so approximately 40% off). At first I just bought six, three colors, two of each color. Then after bringing the yarn home and touching it and making a "swatch" of a new pattern I wanted to try, I had to go back for more.

So I went back, and bought more yarn. I purchased some of the Bamboo ewe, and some alpaca love. Please be warned though, if you have an A.C. Moore store near you, the yarn may not be on clearance (at least not yet). One of my co-workers went to a different location and found the yarn was not marked down at the other store. If the store near you does not have it marked down yet, it will probably be soon, so keep checking.

As you can see the bamboo ewe is 55% Viscose from Bamboo, 45% Wool

The alpaca love is 80% Wool and 20% Alpaca

So the bamboo ewe and alpaca love were both at A.C. Moore. You are probably thinking, wow that is a lot of yarn, enough to keep me busy for a while. But, I did not stop there. I had a coupon for Hobby Lobby and I remembered seeing a neat looking yarn there several months back. On my way home from work today I stopped by Hobby Lobby and found some of those neat yarns in the spring/summer colors were marked down too.  They are from the brand Yarn Bee and the Snowflake Wool. I really like the way the yarn reminds me of snowflakes. I am not sure what to make with these ones yet. I plan to go back and get some of the newer colors too (with a coupon of course). I am sort of a yarn frugal. I've slowly been spending a little more on yarn, but most of my projects I use Vanna's Choice by Lion Brand, and I wait for the yarn to be on sale for 2/$5 or $2 if I am very lucky. I really like the feel of it too.

Well, I have enough yarn to keep my very busy this weekend. Since I am now fully stocked up with yarn, I bet Vanna's Choice will go on sale for $2 this Sunday, just my luck, haha. I hope you have a yarn and hook filled weekend.
Have a fabulous Friday evening,
xoxo Susan

Stained Glass Blanket, Starting to Connect

Hello Friends,

Thank you for stopping by. First though, I need to thank Eileen over at Crochet Attic for the Blog Award. I am so grateful to be awarded something for my blog. I know I am supposed to say some things about myself and pass the award along. I am going to do this in my next post, so bare with me. Knowing people enjoy hearing and seeing what I am making is very nice. I have been blogging for almost 8 months and I am so glad to have met so many wonderful people both crocheters and non-crocheters from this experience. I learn so much about the every day lives and culture of people across the my own state, country, and worldwide. So thank you very much Eileen!

Since my last post, I've been slowly trying to connect my pieces of stained glass (not really stained glass, but you know what I mean!).  Since I am not sure how big I will make this blanket I am connecting some rows so I can gauge the size. Right now I am making rows of 16 squares.

I started to connect some of the squares, using Angie over at Le Monde Sucrette's zig zag connecting pattern. This began over the weekend and I did take a break to go to the beach with J. We visited Sanibel Island, FL for a lovely day at the beach.

The zig zags will look better once the opposite rows are connected. Right now in between each square there is a space because they are only connected on two sides rather than four.

Organizing the colors so two colors do not show up right next to each other is always tricky. You would think with such a variety of colors, this would be easy, but I am always amazed at how tricky this can be.

Driving home from work tonight the sun was setting with beautiful pink colors across the sky. I tried to capture this on camera but could not get a shot that looked like it did in person. You can see a little bit of the colors in the sky.

So far I have four rows connected. I spread these out on our living room coffee table on Sunday and they are still there. Luckily J has not even commented on them being in the way or asked when they will be connected and removed from the table. He is so wonderful!

One of my friends is expecting a baby in the beginning of November and decided not to find out the sex of the baby. So, I am not able to make a girl or boy blanket which makes me anxious. I decided I did not want to make a yellow one, or even green because if it is a girl I like to have everything look extra girly. So, I was thinking maybe, just maybe this might make a gender neutral baby blanket? What do you think?

Using all of these lovely colors has me already thinking about my next project. I do not want to get too far ahead of myself, I want to finish this project before starting another one. I hope your week is going well and you are able to sneak in some crochet time :)
Have a fabulous day,
xoxo Susan

Stained Glass Blanket Update

Hello Lovelies,

Welcome to my new followers, and welcome back to my not so new followers. Thank you all for stopping by to see what I am up to. Another busy week has passed and the wonderful weekend is here to enjoy. I was able to make some progress on my stained glass blanket but not as much as I wanted. This weekend I plan to finish all of the squares and start putting some lines together. I cannot wait to see how it looks put together.

Right now I am making 7 to 8 of each color. I am still not sure exactly how big the blanket will be. I know I want it to be at least 10 by 16 for a total of 160 squares. I may add some additional colors. I think there are two or three more colors I am not using that I could add from the Lion Brand Vanna's Choice and Vanna Baby that would go well with the blanket.

Here are all of my colors so far...

I am hoping my next posting will have some rows of squares connected!!! My weekend will hopefully be filled with reading and crocheting, I cannot think of anything that sounds better than that!
I hope you had a fabulous Friday and are ready for a relaxing weekend too.
xo Susan

Stained Glass Blanket

Good Morning Lovelies,

Yesterday the day started out bright and sunny and then some clouds came and lingered on with some rain for almost the whole day, and I enjoyed every single minute of it. I spend the day working on my little squares for my new blanket. I decided to call it this one Stained Glass. All of the different colors remind me of stained glass windows so there you have it.

You can see I am weaving in my ends as I go. I find this to be so much more enjoyable when I near the end and do not have that dreadful feeling of being almost done but still have to spend hours weaving the ends in.

A few colors are still missing. I may have to pop over to the craft store today and get a regular orange color and a regular purple, maybe a magenta as well. I am using Lion Brand Vanna's Choice and Vanna Baby, 100% acrylic, this is the yarn I use for most of my projects.

So for now I am working on stacking up the colors. I have not decided how big this will be yet. I do not want it to be too small that it will not get any use. My main goal was to use this as a way to de-stash but as I already said I need to go buy some colors I already ran out of! Angie's version for her daughter was 10 by 16 squares, I am thinking maybe 12 by 16 which is a total of 192 squares, or 13 by 16 for a total of 208 squares.

This is a holiday weekend here in the USA called Labor Day. Time has gone by so quickly I did not realize the holiday weekend was already here. The holiday weekend means no school Monday! I hope you are having a great weekend and a great holiday weekend for those of you in the USA.

Have a fabulous Sunday,
xoxo Susan

New Blanket WIP!

Hello Friends,

Did you see Angie's latest finished project? I LOVE the pattern for this blanket and luckily she shared her pattern with us here. As soon as I saw this finished blanket, I knew it had to be my next blanket. The colors look great and I love the technique Angie used to connect all of the squares. This is the perfect project for using up some of my yarn stash.

I am hoping to use all of the colors I have in my cabinet. I will show a photo of my cabinet later because the lighting was not good for a photo today. Since I had some pink yarn out, I started off with pink.

I started with some pink and added some blue and green so far. I will count to see how many different colors I have in my stash so I know an approximate number of each color I need to make.

Just 3 colors so far

Not the color pattern I will be using but you know how I like to lay stuff out!

I plan to use a lot of different colors and do not plan on having a specific color pattern in the blanket.

Before starting the blanket, I made a hexagon from Bunny Mummy's tutorial here. The pattern is a Coats and Clark pattern that Bunny Mummy adjusted and with their permission, made a tutorial for it. I love the colors she used in her blanket. I was trying out some autumn colors. I am still looking for the hexagon pattern I saw used in a scarf with autumn colors. Don't you hate it when you can't find something great you saw, even when you know you saved the link somewhere.

The colors in the photo do not look as nice as it does in person (my lighting was not great). I am not sure if this is the hexagon I will use for the fall colors scarf.
Hopefully I can crank out a lot of colorful rounded squares this weekend.
Have a fabulous Friday,
xoxo Susan

A Crochet Bouquet

Hello Lovelies,
How I have missed blogging. Reading your blogs and writing my own. Hopefully (keep your fingers crossed), I will have some time very soon to get on to my regular crochet happiness. The academic year has started off with a bang, and things may be starting to fall into place. Just when I think things are in balance, something happens to throw it off ... and majorly off. Lots of late nights and tired mornings, but life is good so I cannot complain. My new sewing machine arrived a few weeks ago and I still have not been able to try it. This weekend I hope to get it threaded and hem some pants.

We have had some cloudy days which makes it feel like autumn is coming. I enjoy the cloudy days here in Florida, I've been lighting my autumn scented candles and feel like I can see the leaves changing colors (except of course my trees are palm trees!).

Well, lets get on with what we really care about, CROCHET! My new book Crochet Bouquet arrived and I was able to make two of the flowers so far. I used a hook that was a tad bit too big, because the daffodil is quite large.

Of course I couldn't find my yarns in the orange shades to make a proper daffodil/narcissus flower. I like this book, but I also think I need to get 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet. I really want to make one of Alice's garden tea cozys over at Crochet with Raymond.

Prior to the school year beginning, I started to knit. I had to watch some videos to remember what to do. My mom taught my a very long time ago when I found her old knitting needles in my parent's basement. I never made anything but I used to be able to knit a few rows. I still need some more practice but hopefully by Christmas I will be able to make the "body" part of the tea cozy. Unfortunately, I have not been able to practice for many weeks now. Maybe this weekend will be perfect for some knitting practice.

I hope you are having a fabulous week! What are you working on?
xoxo Susan