Crochet Me Crazy

The end of a great but tiring Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful time seeing my sister and her significant other. We ate, had a campfire and roasted marshmallows, played games, looked around the State Park, visited, and of course, we rode horses.

Tomorrow I'm looking for a Sunday full of rest! It was a very busy day for trail rides today. Every slot was booked. Been a while since we've had a day like today.

I hope everyone is having a fun & busy time cooking and cleaning and getting ready for family and friends!

I've been waiting on pins and needles hoping I have water before Thanksgiving! We've been without water for 4 days now. We think the leak has been found and today my water is on but I'm still not getting enough pressure to do much. The plan was to clean the house today but here I am at 4:41 and I've only managed to get some dusting and vacuming done. The bathroom is waiting for me. Tomorrow is my cooking day! Please, please....I need water! You just never know what's next....

So...what will I be thankful for on Thanksgiving? WATER!! .... no really, I am thankful for water, but I'm very thankful for my family, friends, good health and all the many blessings that God has given us. Truly, it's so much easier to be thankful for things once you've done without. We have less now than I think we've ever had at any point in our lives but I think I am more thankful and grateful for the things I have now than I ever have been. Thank you Lord for blessing our family in ways I can't explain.

I've made a huge amount of progess on my afghan since my last post...but no posts for a bit until we get past these next very busy few days ahead of us!

God Bless & Happy Thanksgiving!

Have finished making the Navy Wedges and joining them to the squares...Now Tonight I have been working on attaching all of those to the center star. This is proving to be something that takes a lot of concentration and I don't believe that the pattern is really correct here either. I am getting the general idea from the pattern and sorda "winging it". It's looking fine when I'm done so I'm happy with it. I don't even think I could explain this to anyone! I definately would not recommend this pattern to anyone who is not an experienced crocheter. If I had tried this a few years ago, I would have given up and thrown up my hands in frustration for sure!! I'm really having to concentrate as I join these and I got the three joined that you see here and had to take a break. 5 more to join! That boy better appreciate this afghan!!

On the other hand, I do love a challenge when it comes to crocheting and it's definately not a boring afghan to make.

Now, here a few animal pictures for you. Every morning and every evening, I feed these three guys grain in stalls. We have 31 horses here in total but these guys get special treatment because of their age/weight.

RED -- He's our "Kid" trail horse...old and reliable.

Macho, the mule -- He used to be good for kids on the trail but he's recently been retired. He is literally on his last leg...He's extremely old. I'm not even sure anyone knows just how old...well into his 30's for sure.

Snuffy -- extremely shy. He was bought from some people that used him for a pack mule but he's easy to ride. (I've even ridden Snuffy and I'm not much of a rider!)

All of the animals here are spoiled and sweet...even the goats! I feed these guys every morning as well. These are our "babies"...not really babies anymore but they were all bottle fed so they are extremely tame and loveable.


The white goat in this picture is a new addition. She craves attention and she's more likely to get it here. Her name is Sweet Pea and she's part Angora and part Spanish goat. She's so sweet and her fur looks like a poodle.


I swear it's hard for me to get my coffee drank in the morning because I have so many critter wanting attention. Some days I think we need a full time animal "petter" around here!

I just realized that Thanksgiving is next week!! Holy cow....It really is ridiculous how fast the weeks fly by! I have a lot to get done!! I am excited though because we haven't had a "real" Thanksgiving in three years! I'm excited because we are having guests and I am cooking the real deal like we used to do before we moved....Turkey, Dressing and all the yummy dips and special things everyone likes.

Alison went to dance tonight for the first time since her accident....she was just an observer and will be just observing this week. Her foot looks even better today but it is still a little bit swollen. I slathered it with Oregano oil tonight and called Jeff to have him pick up more Epsom salt on his way home. We HAVE to get her better for her show!!

Next...I just had to share these pictures of my beloved Gracie....It's a big joke around here about me and my deer. Everyone says they feel second rate. I *do* really, really love this deer.

Those look good...can I have one??

Yum....my favorite fruit snacks!


Yes, I LOVE my deer....we are very close.

I've made a lot of progress on my Blue Star Afghan since my last post! I'm so proud of this afghan! It's really not taking very long to make either....I'm feeling optimistic about finishing before Christmas!

I have come across and error in the corrections for this pattern though. When you are joining the Granny Square Blocks to the center star. I had 4 of them joined and was having lots of trouble until it finally "clicked" in my brain and I realized what was wrong. That was the hardest part to get through thus far.

Well, it's been a really busy weekend. We had rides all day on Saturday. Jeff did the rides because Alison is hurt and can't ride. She is doing a lot better though. She is still hobbling around but limping less. We will go to dance tomorrow...she may not dance but she's going to be watching and maybe she can at least mark some of her dances. I hope she's going to be able to dance.

We went to church this morning and then I took the kids into town. Morgan needed basketball shoes before tomorrow when he starts basketball. We did a little running around and now that's it. The weekend is over --

The weather has been warm and sunny and now the cold is coming in tonight....I hate it but everyone else loves it. Blah...

Have a good week ya'll!

This pattern is still scaring me...when I started making this second set of squares, I didn't completely understand what the pattern was telling me and a bit of panic set in momentarily. I looked at the chart and was able to get through it. It was basically just changing the colors on this set of squares. I zoomed throught that set of 4 squares for the Granny Square 2...

Remember, I'm trying to finish this afghan before CHRISTMAS!!

Another set of color changes and I finished up these 8 squares for the Granny Square 3... Go Lisa!


I am REALLY happy with my yarn color choices on this afghan. I love the brown and blue together in my varigated! It's actually perfect for a boy and I didn't even know I was making this for a boy when I bought this yarn months ago! Alison wants me to make her one of these in pinks...I told her I can't give her and answer about that until I get all the way through this one.

Alison is carefully walking on her ankle tonight! It's still swollen and bruised but it almost seems to look better with her limping around on it. I think it's helping to get circulation to it.

I think I might feel a little bit better today! I've still got the "crud" but I slept much better last night. I think I might be on the upside of this cold!

Ahh...I figured out how to get my paragraphs back into my posts since Blogger updated to the new format!! This was driving me crazy!

Poor Alison is going to go nuts being layed up for so long. Yesterday, she laid in the bed all day. A friend brought some crutches last night and she got outside for a litle bit. She wanted to go in the pasture with the horses but I told her NO! She hasn't gotten to see her horse since the fall. Yesterday, we kept the ankle on ice all day. It seems to look a little better today but she's still a long way from walking on it! I got her in an epsom salt bath this afternoon.

Yesterday, Jeff & Michael went and got a truck that Michael is test driving. He's probably going to buy it because the guy is going to let Michael make payments and he only wants $1000. It's an old Chevy truck but it has a newer engine in it and it seems to run good. Problem....it's a stick shift again! We can't seem to get away from the stick shifts! So Michael is practicing driving that around the ranch this week. I can drive a stick shift but I find this truck very difficult to drive. Michael seems to be able to make it go even better than I can. Sigh....I hate this.

Now, onto the Blue Star Afghan....

This afghan is from the book called Herrschners Blue Ribbon Afghans.

I have chosen to use "I Love This Yarn" brand yarn from Hobby Lobby with the following color combinations:

In place of what the pattern calls for "light blue" MC, I am using Dark Country Blue.

In place of what the pattern calls for "blue" A , I am using Stonewash.
In place of what the pattern calls for "navy" B, I am using Navy
In place of what the pattern calls for "cream" C, I am using Ivory.
In place of what the pattern calls for "blue & cream multicolored", I am using Blue Camo Stripe.

On the first part of the pattern called "Granny Block 1"....these are my first 8 squares. The pattern says to add edging to 4 of the blocks.



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What a day this has been! Alison was riding her horse bareback when her horse slipped and fell down. She fell on Alison's leg. We got her iced and elevated and she's been that way ever since. She was in a lot of pain and crying. She seems better now...I gave her some Ibuprophen. It's mainly her ankle....although her knee hurts too. Her ankle is swollen but she can move it so we're hoping it's just a bad sprain. More assessment tomorrow to see if we're going to take her in to the doctor.

But that's not ALL!! Morgan and Serenity and I are all coddling over Alison when my son calls me and tells me he has totalled his car! I had to go pick him up where he had walked for several miles to a cell phone signal. I pick him up and we start heading further out the extremely dark, curvy road when my "Check Engine" light comes on in my car! I say...No way, and we are not driving out to his car way out here with no cell service. I turned around and headed back to town. Thankfully, we made it home okay. I am just thanking God tonight that both of my kid's are okay and only have wounds that will heal with time. Michael hit a cliff when he had a run in with a deer. The road he was on is extremely narrow, curvy and quite dangerous actually. There was a cliff wall and no where for he or the deer to go. Michael said his air bag went off but he was able to get out of the car and cut his bumper off and push the car out of the road. He only has minor scrapes and burns.

I hate it when you wake up in the night and your nose is stopped up but running at the same time. I didn't sleep well and I even took Nyquil before bed. But we still got up this morning and went to Sunday School and Church even though we got home way after 11 pm last night. I took the kids to the corn maize last night. It was a lot of fun!

Alison and I spent the day in the town shopping. The usual grocery and WalMart trip but we went to Beall's, Cato and some other new store that just opened looking for Alison some church clothes. Now that we are going to church, she has somewhere to wear nicer clothes to. Anyway, the trip took longer than the norm. It was my night to cook for the kids so I came home and made a lasagne. We just got finished playing a game and Alison went over to Morgan's house. I'm settling down and just about to take a shower and then sit down and crochet for a bit. I started another afghan. I've decided the wedding ring afghan is going to be a Christmas present....now I have to get the Blue Star finished before Christmas for it to be a present to. I started it last night and so far so good! !

I found the corrections for the pattern online and printed them out. This is going to be a challenge to finish before Christmas!! Tomorrow, we already have 4 trail rides scheduled so tomorrow could end up being a fairly busy day...we'll see

Well, I've never claimed to be a photographer but here is my finished product! It turned out very pretty despite it all! The colors are great!