Crochet Me Crazy

We have another hard freeze tonight but its supposed to warm up to the 60's tomorrow -- Yay! All that cold and we didn't even get any snow! Seeing snow is such a rarity for us that maybe it would have made the misery worth it a little bit!

Alison wanted to go see Princess today but we didn't get to. She called and they weren't home so we didn't get to go.

Alison went to a "lock-in" game night at the church tonight. It was until 1 am but we are picking her up at midnight. Michael didn't get to go because he is grounded.

Tomorrow we may be taking a drive to Kerrville with Jeff. He has a job putting some cabinets in for someone and he needs to go there to pick them up.

I finished another motif on my afghan. Well, I started this out planning on it being a very long term project just working with scraps as I went along but I've found myself mainly working on it and neglecting my other projects I have going. I just love the way it looks when I finish one. Plus, its super easy project to take along with me to wait for Alison at dance, etc....I don't have to take much yarn and I have the diamond pattern memorized.



One looks slightly bigger than the other in the picture, but that is just the angle that I'm holding the camera.

This RV park is actually full of "snowbirds" staying here for the winter. They think I'm funny when I practically sit on top of the camp fire on "cold" nights. -- LOL...

Well, now our pipes are frozen even though I had the water trickling. Apparently, it wasn't enough to stop the freezing. I have them on full blast now and nothing is coming out. So no heat and no water right now. Well, I have the space heaters but I'm thinking the temperature must be dropping because it was staying fairly warm in here and now it seems like its getting colder. I am on the look-out for the elusive snow flurries. Am I going to have to get out there with the blow dryer? This is all new to me...we've never been in the RV when it was this cold before.

Okay, I was sewing together one of my stars because I couldn't wait to see how its going to look. I think I'm really going to love this afghan...it's so..."quilty"!

Well, another good thing about the cold weather is it gives me an excuse to stay warm under my blanket and crochet all day! I am about to get my butt in gear and get the kids started on a new book study today though. We are using Progeny Press Guide to literature and reading "Where the Red Fern Grows" ... one of my favorite books I read when I was young.

Okay, enough already...this is a bit ridiculous. Honestly, I can't remember dealing with weather THIS cold for THIS long. Sure, it gets cold sometimes but to get cold like this and hold for this long? Below freezing for days in a row??? Below freezing is not uncommon over the night.Well, maybe its been this way before and I didn't realize because I was inside my warm house...?? I don't know. We have to keep the water running or it will freeze up in a matter of minutes. Yesterday, someone forgot and turned the water off and then hose froze up and started filling up our tank. Jeff had to go outside with the blow dryer and unfreeze it. We had to go to the grocery store yesterday and Jeff was so paranoid about leaving the water running. If it froze up our drainage lines even if the water was running then we might come home to a flooded camper. We ended up unhooking the hoses and letting it run on the ground and left the hot water on a trickle.

Everytime someone opens the door and goes outside, its like every bit of warm air we've managed to get in the RV goes right out the door. Then, we have to spend time getting it back warm inside. RV's are not very well insulated. I keep having to clean literally inches of water in my window wells from condensation. Weird things are happening...my husband is wearing a beanie when he goes outside. I've never seen him wear one of those since we've been married. He was actually thankful when I pulled the camoflauge one I had crocheted earlier out for him. They say it might snow tonight...not sure I believe it. We'll see....my kids would be happy. They've seen snow flurries before but they've never seen snow on the ground that sticks. Some good things have come out of the cold. Alison always wants us to buy popsicles at the store but we are never able to because they will melt before we get home. Yesterday, we bought some since we knew they wouldn't melt. Matter of fact, we left them outside all night. I just got finished putting them in the freezer this morning. Yup, they were still frozen out there. I realize other places are having much worse weather than we are here but that's why I live in southern Texas!

Uh oh...as I'm typing, Michael just announced that we are out of propane. He is cooking something on stove and it just ran out. The bad news is that Jeff isn't here and I don't know how to change the propane tanks out. That means no heat. UGH....I might be spending the rest of the day under my electric blanket.

Even though we had our faucets dripping last night, the hoses outside had frozen so the water wasn't draining in the sink. We had to keep putting hot water through to try to keep it unfrozen. We brought out drinking water cooler in so we would have water to drink today. It kept freezing last night. It's kinda big and between that and the space heaters, it's pretty cramped in here. The power has been going on and off intermittedly. At least its only been going off for 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

I've started two different scrap yarn crochet projects. I started this star afghan quilt thinking it would be a good use of scraps. I have a lot more of the diamonds crocheted but I just laid these out quickly to give an idea of what it will be like. I tried to find a picture of this pattern online somewhere to show it to you. It is such a beautiful afghan when it is finished and really resembles a quilt. I can't find a picture of it anywhere though. It's a pretty old pattern that I have had in my "to do" stack for quite awhile. It has several names in different publications. It is called a "Star Coverlet" in the pattern I am using but I have seen it published under the names "Six Pointed Star Afghan" and "Six Pointed Star Quilt"



However, I'm finding that some of my scraps are too small to complete a diamond with so I started a rectangle granny square afghan for my even smaller yarn scraps.



(Sorry, the pictures aren't very good...I was trying to keep warm in my bed while the electricity was off while I was doing this)

I will just crochet my little scraps onto this as I go along. I can't bear to throw the yarn away and they were quite frankly driving me nuts because I didn't have anywhere to put them here in the RV.

Here's a little something I crocheted this week. I just saw the pattern and thought it looked interesting and fun. I'm packing it away for now but I figure it can be used to set something like a plant or something on. It could be a place mat but I'm not into place mats so I won't be using it for that. The pattern is a little bit lopsided. If you'd like to try this pattern, hop on over to Hooks, Yarns, Crafts & Gardening Blog: Ripples & Shells Pattern



Okay, now can we have our normal Texas weather back?

The sun is shining and it's beautiful UNTIL you go outside!! It's soooo cold and sooo windy today. I woke up this morning regretting that I didn't take my shower last night while it was still warm. When we went to bed, we were all hot and opened our windows to let the cool evening air in. I heard the cold front blow in and felt it in the middle of the night and it woke me up to close the window. We;re having a hard time not having everything outside blow away. Sorry, Princess...we're definately not coming to see your today!! It's way to cold for me...I can't take it. I'm staying inside today unless absolutely necessary. The kids are crazy....Alison caught 4 decent sized fish yesterday when she went fishing so she did her school assignments for today last night because she wanted to go fishing again today. She came home with a big stringer of fish just now!

That girl has some stamina to be able to stand out there all this time as cold as it is. It's supposed to get down to 17 degrees tonight! That's way to cold for us Texans!