Crochet Me Crazy

We've been helping the owner's out here get ready for their big party. Yesterday I washed out the stalls and blew off and washed off the barn porch. I don't know who's birthday party this is but they are really going all out. There will be people here from Saturday through Wednesday. Today they moved the chuck wagon from the 1800's that has been restored out in front of the barn. We went down there to help them set it up. Michael knew how to tie the kind of knots they needed. One night they are having a chuck wagon dinner.

We had a BIG day scheduled for trail rides at the stables tomorrow. Maybe over 40 riders but it rained last night and there is a large percentage for heavy thunderstorms tonight and a 50% chance of rain tomorrow. We are going to have to make a judgement call on whether it will be safe to ride tomorrow with all the mud but it's really not looking too good. It's really bad timing for the rain which may cause us to have to turn away that badly needed business. Jeff switched his off work day from Sunday to tomorrow so he could go do the rides for them. The good news is that this is his last week of only 1 day a week off! Next week, he'll have Sunday & Monday off and then it's the work 6 days / off 2 day schedule! Yay!

I've been trying to find some type of joining method for my yo-yos. Everything I see is Join as You Go where you join on the last round...my yo-yos are already finished. I tried some braid joining methods but the videos were confusing and it ended up warping the shape of my yo-yo. Also, I don't know that I want all that extra yarn in between my yo-yos. I like the simplicity of just the yo-yos joined together so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I better stop making so many yo-yos because if I have to sew these together I'm not going to like that.

Today I tidied up my yarn bag that I had been using the yarn from to make yo-yos with by winding it into tighter balls with my yarn winder. The bag was overflowing and I was able to condense it quite a big by rewinding a lot of the loose balls into tighter, smaller balls. I love my yarn winder.

Well, I hope everyone has a great weekend! Looks like it's going to be a messy one for us but thank God for the rain!

I'm still making yo-yos I think mainly because I haven't had time to sit down and figure out another project to start on and I need something to keep my hands busy when I sit! (Possibly my son got his inability to sit and do nothing from ME?? :) I can waste many idle hours on the computer though! Anyway, I was looking through some yo-you quilt books to give me some ideas. I found THIS on the back cover of a quilt book:

Of course, who knows if I would ever finish this! It would take forever! I could make it sort of a life-time scrap project and maybe I would be done with it by the time I DIE and hopefully my kids wouldn't donate it to Salvation Army! LOL!

I do LOVE the yo-yo's though!


It would be impossible for an afghan of any kind made out them to be ugly! I am partial to the scrap look in crochet!

Quiet day around here today. I tried to clean up around the house today. I was thinking...what has happened to me? I used to be a neat freak and now I am able to leave messes around for days! It's impossible to keep dirt off the floors. I could vacume & sweep 20 times a day and still have it. I guess that's the price you pay when you don't live around cement streets and grass yards.

Later on in the afternoon Alison and I went for her to spend time with Princess.

We stayed up there for a long time. We came home, ran in the house and changed clothes and went to church. Jeff worked really late tonight again.

It was Alison's morning to feed the horses but Alison was sick this morning so I got up and did it myself. I started to get Michael to do it but I figured I needed to try to do it myself. I used to do it when we first moved out here but I've got intimidated when they moved the 3 extra horses from next door. I don't really like dealing with many horses...I'm more of a one horse at a time person! I was a little sneakier about it to avoid dealing with some of the pushier horses. I put out a flake of hay by the barn at our house to distract the greedy ones. Then, I was able to get each horse in its stall one by one. I don't like putting grain in the baby Andrew's stall when he's in there because he's got no manners. I did it though. I let out the horses and scooped the stalls today myself too. That's Michael's job but sometimes it's just easier to do stuff yourself. Alison was feeling better today but she still felt kinda weak. I made her take it easy today but then by the afternoon she was wanting to go to dance. She didn't want me to make her have to miss YOUTH tonight!

I also gave Michael a badly needed hair cut today. Even he finally admitted he needed a hair cut! I find it difficult to cut his fine, blonde hair but since he generally wears a hat all the time, I figured I could get it done if he could just be patient enough to sit there. In the end, it looked really good...maybe one of the best jobs I've ever done on his hair!

Michael helped Mr. Grain do a bunch of stuff today. They filled feeders and unloaded a bunch of hay. Yesterday, he helped Mrs. Grain do some stuff up at the cabin. They are doing a bunch of work and cleaning up around here from some big shindig they are having out here this weekend. Apparently, they are going to have people staying in all available housing.

Well, I played around with making some crochet yo-yo's.



I saw this Crocheting in Georgia: Miss Golie's Bedspreads. You should go take a look at this bedspread! It's amazing and completely handmade!
It inspired me that you could make a crochet version of this. I did a sample of two different versions to see which one I liked better.
This one looks better but it uses more yarn.



There is a free tutorial for this online here: Yo-Yo Puff

I actually prefer making this one but it's not quite as pretty.



However, on the 2nd round, you need to replace the CH2 with a CH3 so you don't get that goofy indention on your yo-yo. I'm sure you can see it in the picture. It's pretty noticeable to me. I got the pattern for this yo-yo from the book
25 Throws, Wraps, and Blankets to Crochet by Melody Griffiths



Anyway, I ended up making 4 yo-yos today but I'm not sure about this project because I don't know how I would join them. I guess you could just plain old sew them together but that would be no fun at all. I'll do a little searching to see if there's something on the web about how to join them.