Crochet Me Crazy

Saturday I took Alison to her last Saturday dance class for the year. Her ballet exam is next Saturday. This is a big deal and something they really prepare for. I took Alison and her friend from dance to McDonald's after class to eat, play and visit for about an hour after class before we drove home. The dance studio is a 45 minute drive from our house.

Alison had another friend, Hannah, over to our house on Saturday. The kids went into the woods behind our fence and found some blackberries growing. I told them if they could get 4 cups we could make a pie! They worked on finding enough berries to make a pie. By Sunday, they had enough berries so I helped Alison and a neighbor girl make the pie. We even made the crust from scratch -- LOL! I've gotten lazy and haven't made a crust from scratch in a few years but they had fun doing it. Our pie turned out great and I wish I would have taken a picture but I forgot...it's about gone now! LOL!

Then a BAD thing happened. We were working on trimming 4 HUGE Crepe Myrtle trees in our front yard. We had huge piles of branches and wood stacks piled up all over our front yard when Jeff says..."Man, I got myself good!" He was so calm, I almost didn't stop what I was doing. Well, he cut his hand with the pole chain saw on his knuckle! He really didn't want to go to the emergency room and thought about it for awhile before he made up his mind...took a shower, etc. Then we took of for the emergency room where they stitched it up. Thank goodness the emergency room was not busy so we were in and out in a little more than an hour or so. They gave Jeff a tetanus shot because he hasn't had one since he was about 12! Thank God, it wasn't serious. The saw is a very, very light pole chain saw or it could have been very bad. I tried to get as much of the tree mess cleaned up myself as I could last night when we got home because we were right in the middle of this project. I could only stack and move the branches he had gotten cut so far but there is still a HUGE pile of branches that need to be sawed into firewood out there. Hope the neighbors don't mind too much! He's going to need to heal a bit before he gets back out there again!

This is Jeff's last week at his job at GE as far as we know of at this point.

I tried it out last night and it works great! I knew I would be cutting A LOT of circles and since blue jean material is pretty thick, I chose this particular cutter. It said you could cut fabric, paper, thin leather, ultra suede and other materials and ses a standard 28mm rotary blade so even though it was a bit pricey compared to the other choices...I figured I'd go for it and possibly save myself some heart ache.

Quilter's Rule Circle Cutter


I have been saving old blue jeans for a long time with the intention of making this quilt out of old blue jeans and material from the kid's old shirts. Alison hates getting rid of her clothes that she out grows! "Oh...I don't want to get rid of that- I LOVED that shirt!" My daughter says everytime I try to clean out her closet! Okay...well, its too small for you, girl! So I decided to save some of it and make this out of old clothes and jeans...it will be a nice way to remember time periods by.

Here's the pattern I found online:

circle blue jeans quilt - denim quilt gallery - quilters recycle and use up old jeans

Jeff had to go to San Antonio for business so we decided to double up on the kids school work on Tuesday and went with him. We got in early Wednesday morning about 1:00 am to our hotel. We had a really nice room which was a suite...which we weren't expecting! We've stayed at that hotel many times and I didn't even KNOW they had rooms like that! LOL...lucky break for us, I guess! We ran into the big storm that went through Texas on our way into San Antonio...it was really, really bad...I wouldn't have been able to drive in it but Jeff was driving and we did okay. Luckily, it wasn't long but we were going about 5 mph on the freeway because you could not see really much at all. We woke up to a beautiful day though...we hung out at the hotel and Alison swam and we walked next door to a few stores. When Jeff got back from his meetings, we went to eat at our favorite restaurant "The Alamo Cafe" and then drove to my hometown, Blanco, Texas, to visit with a friend. We took a walk in the Blanco State Park and then drove back to San Antonio that night. Today, we got up and checked out of the hotel and then went to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens and then went to The Mirror Maze which is a litte attraction right across from The Alamo. Had fun and was nice to get away for a little while for some fun. Seems like a long time since we've done anything fun. I'm read to get our RV out of service and take a long over due camping trip! Here are a few pictures from our day today:







I have to practically twist Michael's arm to get him in pictures anymore...Alison wants her picture made with everything she sees! LOL

I didn't make any new squares on the trip..I just brought a baggie of squares I had already made and my Bone Colored Simply Soft yarn that I do the trim in. I just worked on adding the trim to the squares I brought. Haven't had time to take pictures of those yet....Going to head to bed now...ah, its late!

Got to get back to my sensible eating now too! Completely blew it on this trip but that's okay. I have lost 7 lbs so far and I feel so much better! :)

Here are two squares I made using free patterns I found on the web....my intention was to post the links for the patterns as I post my pictures online but I see now that of the two free patterns which I printed a long while back, only one of them is still available online, but you have to email the lady to ask for it now.

This first square I used a pattern called MaryEllen's Easy Daisy Granny Square. This is one of my favorite square patterns because it is so pretty but yet very, very simple to make....You can go to this web page where she states that you can email her to request the pattern....
MaryEllen's Home Page



This isn't a very good picture and because of the yarn I used, you can't really see the detail of the stitches. I used a pattern called Granny a la Harper for this square which was a free pattern online, however, now I see that the url is dead that I got this from.



The moral of the story? Print or save free patterns as a pdf document...if its something you really want to keep because there's no guarantee it will be there forever. I use CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Edit PDF easily;. to save patterns from web pages as documents on my computer. If you haven't discovered this yet, it saves you tons of time instead of having to copy/paste patterns into word like I used to do! :)

Oh, want to see how BIG our ducks have gotten??

Here are 3 squares I've got my tan border around....they look so much nicer when I get the tan trim on them, I think. I loved the look of my king size afghan for my bed so much...I'm looking forward to having a duplicate of it in my living room so I can see it more often! LOL

Well, here I go again with the squares again! If you've read my blog for long, you might remember my King Sized Afghan project I did. I have 3 large window like openings in the walls which go into the kid's school/craft/computer room. This happens to be my most cluttered room and its right in the middle of my house so I'm going to make panels that I will hang with tension rods to block the view of this room! I always wished their were walls there because it would make furniture arrangement easier too. I don't have to worry about the backs of ugly book cases facing into my living room! The finished project will be done exactly as i did my King Sized Afghan shown here: Picasa Web Albums - summerysmile - Completed Cro... - crochet 036.jpg
With different odd squares, obviously...but i will still use the same tan color as the trim. The square patterns I am using at the moment are from this book: Amazon.com: 101 Crochet Squares (1216): Books: Jean Leinhauser My copy of this book is so tattered and worn because I have used it so much!!

Okay, seemed to be fine today! Just in time for my mother in laws visit for a wedding shower. We were gone all day long today going to the shower which was a litte drive. I cheated and ate a piece of cake at the shower and it was so not worth it! Aah! I felt sleepy on the drive home ... amazing what a little sugar will do to you when you've gone almost 2 months without it! I did manage to get a T-shirt trimmed with fur for Alison though -- ha! ha! ... also found another project i never took a picture of while hanging up her clothes today. See, that's why I have to take and record pictures or I will forget what I have made! Well, its late so I'm going to bed. Just trying to be a better blogger!!!! I'm not so energetic to get the pictures posted tonight though ;)
Good night to all....

PS: It's COLD outside!!! What is going on with Spring this year???!!!???

Started feeling bad yesterday and by last night I was in full blown chills and fever. My sweet children took care of me last night and were piling blankets on me, keeping me warm while my husband snored away! LOL....I'm still feeling bad today...hoping this is going to pass quickly because i don't have time for this. My daughter is making some chicken soup right now.... such sweetness....

Love,
Lisa

Found this post in my drafts I had never posted....I'm done with this shirt now.

Want to buy a hand-made crochet gift? I don't sell my stuff yet but my friends do! Check out their stores and their reasonably priced items.

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This is what I am working on at the moment. I haven't decided if I'm going to keep going with the pattern and turn it into a t-shirt dress or just put the trim on t-shirt. Plan on adding some flowers and stuff. This is thread so it takes me longer with it. The idea was inspired from Maggie Weldon's T-shirt dress patterns here: Maggie's Crochet - Kits & Patterns - Baby and Dolls Gallery
i'm just making up my own using a stitch pattern from one of my books

My husband must have caughter "spring fever" because he's been busy working on all kinds of projects around here! Halleluah!! LOL...He finished the deck for our above ground pool that he started last year. (2nd picture) I think it looks great and he did a super job! We re-did our front flower bed...moving stuff around, etc. We still have to add the pine bark mulch but we got rained out on that plan yesterday. Today, my hubby is cleaning the RV. We found a reasonable place to store it so he's cleaning it up before we take it over there later today. 4th pictures is the duck pen hubby made under the deck! (More on the ducks to come...) I've been repotting plants like crazy. We live walking distance to Home Depot and my son keeps bringing me trays of plants and flowers they are throwing away in the dumpster!! LOL....Yes, I've trained him well! MOST of the plants in the picture below are from the Home Depot dumpster....I'm about to have to start passing stuff on to neighbors....! Now, the precious little guys you see below are our little ducks we just got. We get them every year...this tradition was started by accident several years back. I was raised with my back gate opening into the Blanco State Park. As a child, the ducks would either nest in our yard or we would get the babies and keep them in our yard until they were big enough to survive without the cats, snakes, etc getting them. Then, when they were big enough, we'd open the gate and let them out. While visiting a few years ago in my old stomping grounds, we found two babies running around without their mama. I knew they probably wouldn't make it so we took them home with us and when they were big enough...we went back and released them again. They are still there in the park today! We had so much fun with those ducks that we've been buying them every year since then and then we take them to Blanco State Park and release them when they are big enough. They grow very, very quickly so its usually only have them about 2 months at the most. I know my pictures are a little screwy but since I haven't been able to use Hello to post pictures anymore...i haven't figured it out how to get them where I want them yet...quite frankly, I haven't had time! I have been crocheting but only have this 1st picture at the moment of a top I made for Alison. I used double strands of crochet thread on that. The picture isn't a good one and she's wearing black underneath it so you can't tell much about it. I've made two of these tops for her....I'm working on another top for her at the moment made with kitchen cotton yarn. Almost done! Then, I've also got some thread trim going at the moment to sew on a T-shirt....Will post pictures when I can get her to pose for me! This is the busy time of year for Alison's dance because they are preparing for their ballet exams. We have extra classes on Saturdays. Once that is past us, they'll start getting ready for the big ballet performance at the end up the year...This year they are performing The Lion, The Witch an the Wardrobe. Alison will be in two scenes this year since she is taking modern in addition to Ballet this year. Well, that's about it for now...gotta go help my husband!