Crochet Me Crazy

Well, we're home from the first leg of our trip to San Antonio. The kids swam at the hotel and we ate a couple of good meals. Crochetwise, I completed 3 more squares for the 63 Squares afghan. I'll post those pictures when we get home again. My husband just came to tell me to put it on record that this is the first day in history that he has unpacked his bags from a trip before I did! LOL! It's a joke because he sometimes leaves his bags for days or even weeks before he will unpack. I'm usually unpacking as soon as we get in the door....I'm getting slower and he's getting faster!

Tomorrow is our 10 year wedding anniversary! We're really not celebrating this weekend since we are headed on this trip this weekend. Hopefully, we'll get a babysitter and do something without the kids when we celebrate.

We have a lot planned from tomorrow morning (Tuesday) through next week so I might be kinda scarce. Hopefully though, I'll have time to work on some more projects since we'll be in the car a lot. Then I'll have lots of pictures of at least my squares and from our trip. I decided today I have to make myself finish up some little stuff because I've got too many things going right now. I keep going back to the 63 squares though.

Alison had some friends spend the night this weekend and they dressed in Alison's crochet tops so I took the opportunity to take some pictures. I hadn't posted a picture of this particular halter yet even though it is my favorite one so far. The pink and white one is the one that I thought was a flop (below), however, it fits her friend, Hannah, much better than it does Alison. I talked Alison into letting Hannah have it. I was able to convince her to let it go by promising to make her another one in those colors. And I said I was done with halters for awhile!! The little girl is Hannah's little sister. She is wearing one of Alison's shirts that had gotten too short for her so I added the crochet edging to the bottom to give it a little more length. I've done the same thing with blue jeans that were getting too short for her but otherwise fit.


4th of July Halter 

I don't know if you can see them in the picture but I added red beads to the bottom of this halter. The stitch I used for the bottom part of this halter is the same stitch that is used in the white "Lacy Shells and V's" hat and scarf I have a picture of earlier in my posts.


Alison and her friends, dressed in crochet! 


back view 

This is a rare event! I always at least get a little crocheting done before bed. Instead I went to bed with a head-ache because I had been reading way too much about CSS. What the heck is that??? I don't know...it stands for "Cascading Style Sheets" which is apparently the html format these blog templates are in. You see, I want to change my blog template to a 3 column format and to something a little more original that this pre-fab one that I got from Blogger. I'm not really sure how I'm going to do this because I know absolutely nothing
about HTML. Anyway, now it appears that some of my buttons are not showing up. I don't know why it does that. I'm going to have to see if I can fix it. Anyway, its kinda fun when you actually figure something out since I'm such a novice at all this stuff. You never know till you try!

A few pictures....


two head kerchiefs 

Another halter for Alison

back view of halter top 

varigated rose colored halter top 

This is made with some yarn I got free from someone on my freecycle list. (If you haven't checked out freecycle yet, you should check into it) I made this pattern up using a stitch I got from the 63 squares booklet. It's hard to tell much about it in this picture. Also, my daughter has her bathing suit on underneath it so that is where some of the other colors peaking out from under it are from. As you can see, I've been on a bit of a halter top whim! I have one more halter top that started it all a few months back that I need to post a picture of. Now I think I'm ready to move on from the halter thing. I think I am going to finish a kitchen set I started awhile back. I've only done the dish cloth so far.

Alison's Glasses Case 

Alison's Tooth Pillow 

Yellow Kerchief 

Alison asked me to make her a head scarf to go with a yellow outfit she has. Here's the finished product. These are super quick and easy to make.

Black & Tan Striped Poncho 

This was my first attempt at making a poncho. I made this pattern up as I went along.

Daisy Poncho 

I didn't follow a pattern for this poncho either. I just picked out a square pattern I liked and put them together to make this poncho.

Toy bag 

I made this little baggie for Michael. It's harder to come up with things to make for boys. He's keeping some money in it.

Alison's exam certificate 

I added some pictures from Alison's recital to our photo album. They are in a sub-album titled "Ballet" in Alison's main album. Her recital was great. The show itself was very impressive. The first half had the younger student dancers in it and then the 2nd half was only the professional dancers. Alison did great but I was dissapointed in the performance dance she was given because I don't think it showed enough of what they learned and accomplished this year, which was alot! Alison was very dissapointed this year because her granny was the only family member that came to the show this year. The tickets were $10 each and we couldn't afford to pay for everyone a ticket so it was kinda hard to invite many people to come. She was crying after the show....I felt really terrible for her. She's quite a little dancer though! Her teachers say she definately has a calling on her life through dance.
They have exams every year at this dance school. Each grade has a syllabus they follow. The director of the school is a co-writer of the syllabus. Her examiner, who is also a co-writer, flew from Australia to do their exams. Alison absolutely loved her examiner! She was a wonderfully sweet lady. She just had such a sweet spirit about her.

Halter Top 

Back view of halter top 

Bikini 

I haven't posted anything recently because I've been working on an couple of projects that are taking awhile....an afghan and a vest. I took a break from those to do a bikini and a halter top for my daughter. I was missing the feeling of accomplishment I get from finishing something so I needed to do some short term projects!
I didn't use a pattern for either of these. I just made them up as I went along. I think they turned out pretty good if I don't say so myself!

I am finally able to sit down at the computer after over a week. I am going to be posting lots of pictures in the photo album of our week. We have been on a week long spree of fun! Our spree started with camping at Rusk-Palestine State Park Memorial day weekend. We took a train ride on the Texas State Railroad. It's about a 3 hour round trip on a restored victorian steam engine from Rusk State Park to Palestine State Park. We got off at Palestine State Park and had a pic-nic. We had an hour and 1/2 there before we rode back. We all had a really good time and the kids especially loved it. We drove home from camping Monday night and got in late, of course, like we always do. Alison had her ballet demonstraion night on Tuesday night that we had to be back for. It's a big deal where all the grades demonstrate what they have learned for the year. We brought a boquet of flower and she was presented with her exam certificate. I'll be posting pictures of this event in the album as well. We left the same night after her performance to spend a night in Galveston. Jeff had some meeting there the next day so we decided to stay there and let the kids spend a little time at the beach. Our hotel was right on the Sea Wall but unfortunately it was where it was only rocks and not sandy beach. We didn't have the truck that day so the kids and I took about a 2 mile hike to the nearest McDonalds for lunch! We didn't realize it was going to be so far but there was no turning back once we started! We had a bad experience at the LaQuinta Inn and Suites on the Seawall in Galveston. We always stay in these just about everywhere we go. It is our normal practice to get a late checkout, which is usually at 1:00 because a lot of times the kids and I are there without a car until Jeff gets back. Every single hotel has always been very happy to store our bags for us and we hang out at the pool until he gets back. Well, the girl at the desk at this particular hotel really had an attitude problem. She didn't really want to help store our bags and then she had the nerve to tell us the kids couldn't get in the pool because we had already checked out! She even said we should've checked out at 11:00 because they don't do late check-outs. She was obviously uninformed because we have stayed at more LaQuinta than she has worked at. (They only do late check-outs for frequest stayers that are in the rewards program) Anyway, Jeff asked to talk to the manager but he was conveniently "out" and she didn't know when he would be back. In any case, we have an email and phone number. We ended up walking across the street to the beach and the kids played around on the rocks. Michael caught a dozen hermit crabs and they had fun letting the waves splash on them. When Jeff got back, we drove down to the sandy part of the beach and took a little time there to let the kids play before we left for the next part of our trip to San Antonio. We got into San Antonio late and went straight to bed. We had the truck that next day and I was planning on driving to Blanco to spend the day at the river but I decided to just hang out at the hotel. The kids swam all day long at the pool. We ate at our favorite restaurant, The Alamo Cafe, in San Antonio when Jeff got back home and then headed home. We would have stayed another night but we had to get back to Houston for the KSBJ Summerfest we had bought tickets for. We spent the next two days all day at the Summerfest. It was a huge deal at the H & H Ranch near Intercontinental Airport. There were all kinds of things to do including a lazy river and pool which was really nice because it was VERY hot! There were three different stages with Christian artists playing all day long both days. The highlight of the whole thing was seeing the NEWSBOYS play last night! We were right up front and they are so awesome! Anyway, I managed to keep from getting sunburned the whole week until yesterday. Now I am a lobster today. The spree is over now and my house looks like it could use a visit from Kim and Aggie! We've only been home long enough to rush around and throw things together as quick as we could. Now its time to straighten things up and mow the jungle.