Crochet Me Crazy

I really should have posted more progress reports on my Blue Star Afghan as I progressed on this but I've been a bad, bad blogger. Now, I find myself FINISHED with my afghan!!

I will still have many ends to weave in. The yarn quantities were right on this afghan and I didn't have to buy extra yarn. I love this afghan....even though there were a lot of errors in the pattern and the corrections, if you are an experienced crocheter, you can get through it and it turns out lovely. I think I may actually make this again. Alison wants one in pinks. I told her I'd have to get through the whole afghan before I could make a decision about whether I would make this again. My gift recipient is very excited to get this afghan so that makes me feel good that all my hard work is appreciated. (It's hard to keep this type of gift as a surprise from someone who is at your house a lot)

We've been so busy. It's that time of year that we are going to a whole lot of ballet. Alison has prolonged classes every day from here until show date. She's been at a disadvantage because of her ankle injury but she IS dancing and she says she feels confident she can "pull it off". After the show, she will get a nice break from dance which should give her time to fully recover.

We pulled out all the Christmas decorations this week and have been "decking the house" I have a whole lot of Christmas decorations and it's always a challenge figuring out where to put all this stuff in our tiny houses we've been in. Alison always insists on getting it all out though. She loves Christmas and so do I!
Tonight, we finished by decorating the Christmas tree...


Heck, we even decked the deer out! She's wearing her reindeer antlers...

This weekend was very quiet around here. The riding season is over so there were no rides. Yesterday, I took Morgan and Alison to town. I had no particular reason to go but they wanted to go so I cheauffered them around. Morgan got a hair cut and tried to do some incognito Christmas shopping for Alison. We ended the day by going to the movie theater last night and saw Red Dawn. It's been a long time since I've gone to the movie theater. It was a good movie.

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'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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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

I've still been searching around online for yarn for the Blue Star Afghan. I've found it is very difficult to try to pick colors online. The very small pictures samples of the yarn colors make it very difficult to try to coordinate the 5 different colors I would need for my afghan. I was very delighted to find that the Red Heart site gives you the coordinating colors for their yarns! I think this is the blue multi-color I will use on my Blue Star Afghan. Blues Classic Yarn | Red Heart I will use white and I am considering the other 3 colors as the Skipper Blue, Pale Blue, and Blue Jewel or I may just order my varigated online and look for the coordinating colors in the store. I hope I'm not getting in over my head trying to make this afghan!

The owner's 4 day party is over. It's quiet here and everyone has gone home. Yesterday, Alison was hired to catch, groom and tack the horses for the owner's and their guests to go riding. They were all tired so she paid Alison to do it for them.

What a GORGEOUS day today was! It was so warm I had to change into shorts! It was Alison's best friends birthday so she came over and they went horseback riding. They also decided to go swimming!! Not that warm but you know how kids are...they can take it. Then, we decided to go the State Park for a pic-nic. Then we walked around a little bit...



It sure is nice there when it's not crowded with people. We came home in time to pick up Michael and take him to Wednesday night church. I drove on from there to take Phoebe home, then back to pick Michael back up.

I do have some crochet stuff to post...time just keeps getting away from me. I will FINALLY be posting pictures of my completed Prairie Star Afghan!

Today did NOT feel like Sunday. Jeff was off yesterday and worked today. I guess I will have to get used to it when Jeff starts getting different days of the week off that aren't necessarily the weekends.

Michael and I went to town for groceries today. Alison went over to her friend's house to bake some goodies. Her friend's mom's new coffee/gift shop is grand opening tomorrow so they were baking stuff for that.

I've been obsessing a bit over a new project. I can't remember if I mentioned this or not but I'm about to start on another afghan. I was first obsessing over which pattern. I have quite a few afghan patterns that I have always loved. I think I have it pretty much narrowed down to this one....

It's called Blue Star Afghan and it's from the book Herrschner's Blue Ribbon Afghans
This, like the Prairie Star, is one of those afghans that I have always loved and wanted to make someday. I always change the colors of things but I even love the colors on this. I won't be able to start this right away though because I have to locate the yarn first. I can't believe they don't give you specific yarn colors or brands on this! That is the part I'm having trouble with. I don't have a place to buy yarn close by and I just can't get a good enough look at the yarns to order online. I looked at Wal-Mart today but they didn't have a good enough selection. I've got to come up with the varigated color first and then match the rest of the solids with that. I have to get the colors right on a project this big. I am a little bit NERVOUS about starting this, however. I'm glad I did a little reading about it online first because I discovered that there are apparently a lot of ERRORS in this pattern and in this book in general. It's a little annoying to spend money on a published book and then find out it has so many errors. I did find a page of corrections online and apparently Herrschner's will send them to you if you request them. Even with the corrections, I had read on a crochet-along thread, that people still had problems with it. I'm just thankful I found this out BEFORE hand! I don't know how long it will be until I can get to a craft store to buy yarn so I'll have to find something else to keep busy with until then. One thing I plan on digging out is my Star Coverlet I abandoned working on in the RV for lack of space. I've asked Jeff to get it out of storage so I can sew that together.

Oh,