Crochet Me Crazy

Well, we had a pretty good weekend. Friday night I took Alison and Phoebe to go bowling with the homeschool group. Not many people showed up but they got in a couple hours of bowling and then we had dinner with another family from the group. I dropped Alison and Phoebe off at the church at about 9:30 where they were going to stay with Jeff for the high school football game after party that our church was hosting. Jeff was there as an adult supervisor. It was late night for them. I went grocery shopping and then went home.

Saturday, I worked on my sister's afghan.



I'm still busy at it today. I only have a handful of flowers left to crochet but the most time consuming part is sewing them on. I should be done in a day or two though! I'll post a picture of the whole afghan in all it's glory then.

Here is my latest hats....


My reindeer antler don't stand up though! I should have used a stiffer yarn. I'm going to have to see if I can get some kind of wire in there to make them stand up!

Last but not least....Alison asked her brother to go riding with her today. Here's my two awesome children that I love so much....

Well, I got started on the Rosettes for the afghan last night. I made about 5 of them but I kept thinking....I don't like these roses. They just aren't that pretty to me and they come out a little un-uniform so I decided to see if I can find a better pattern for a nicer looking flower. Here is the flower that the original pattern calls for...


It's just not that attractive, is it?

I've crocheted a lot of flowers so I know I can come up with something better. I've been playing around with different patterns and hook sizes today to see if I can find the right flower. The trick is to find a substitute pattern that doesn't use up more yarn that the original pattern so I am using the unraveled yarn from the original rose to test the new patterns. Here are a few of the options....



And after my experimentations, I think this is the one I'm going to go with...



What do you think?

You can see I only have 4 more pineapples to add to the border! There are a few more rounds for the edging after that and then I have flowers to crochet that will need to be sewed onto each pineapple. I didn't take the time to stretch out each Pineapple flat for the picture.



Here is a close up of the Pineapple border...It's a very beautiful afghan!



The pineapple border is very easy to do and the pattern works up well with no corrections that I have found. The pictures do not do the color justice! It looks pink in the picture but it is a grayish purple color. (Obviously, I have not started weaving in ends yet!)

I will bring a my hook and yarn with me tonight when I take Alison to youth and maybe have time to make a few flowers. It'll make a nice little take-along project.

Just sitting down after a long day. We had a fairly busy day doing rides today...not crazy but busy -- just busy enough -- 30 riders. We were starving afterwards so we went into town to eat dinner. We just got home.

I feel bad that Gracie is missing out on Spring with all the fresh, juicy leaves popping up everwhere so we pulled over on the side of the road on the way home
and got her a large tree branch of Spanish Oak! (It's actually a small tree) Jeff said..yeah, poor deer -- the other deer are roaming and scrounging around for food while Gracie has nice bowls of Corn (we call it her "candy") -- sweet feed, Alfalfa hay, grass hay, apples and carrots! Yeah, but her crazy owner also brings her small trees to munch on! She's enjoying it...



My beautiful girl...




I took a picture of the progress on my afghan...pictures just don't do it justice though. See how different the color looks depending on whether I have the flash on the camera on or not.

Picture with the flash shows a more accurate view of the color of the yarn...


Picture without the flash shows the actual stitches better...



Looky lumpy because of the picture being taken on the un-made bed! (Oh, and the blue yarn is just my stitch markers!)

Okay---- I've finally got it figured out and now I'm cooking! I had to just clear my brain. It's a cable stitch and you are having to crochet into the 2nd row below your working row so it is difficult to find your stitches. I decided to start completely over and use pieces of yarn to mark my chain stitches that I need to find a couple of rows up. This will ensure that I am definately getting it in the right place....well, that WORKED! Now, it's working out just fine and it's straight like it's supposed to be. Last night I finished up my second ball of yarn on the project. It's looking nice now.



Okay, I'm really trying to hold it together here waiting to move and hear back from the company about Jeff's possible job. I'm getting frustrated because every day Alison keeps having to do horse rides and she is very overwhelmed and it is interfering with her getting her school work done. I told them that she couldn't do rides every day because she has to have 5 hours a day between ballet and her other activities to do school. They still are giving her rides. When they told us we had 12 rides coming yesterday, I almost came unglued. I need for Alison to be able to have time to do her school work during the day and at this rate, she is not going to accomplish what I had for her this year. I went over and told Mrs. Grain that I am not going to let Alison do rides this summer because she's going to have to continue her school work through the summer to finish. She wants her to work part time or half days or a few days a week at least. Letting go of Alison seems to be hard to do!