Just got back from Michael's yarn "event"

I went to the yarn "event" that Michael's Crafts had. It wasnt too bad. Sat and watched the fastest knitter contest...they had two adult women, and one little boy (the boy was probably only 7yrs old) One of the women won...the little boy came in second. He looked disappointed that they didnt have any second place prizes.

I signed up for the fastest crochet contest. They gave us Caron Simply Soft (I think) and said we could use our own hooks (thank goodness! they were going to make me use a Boye hook! ewww!) So I whipped out my trusty Susan Bates "J" hook. They had us chain 20 and then we sat and did single crochet for 10 minutes. There was only three of us. My hands shook for the first couple of minutes because I dont react well to being in front of a bunch of people, but that went away after a few minutes. I came in second. About 5 stitches behind one of the other girls. I had almost exactly 16 rows. I was one stitch short of exactly 16 rows...the girl next to me had 14 rows, and the girl who won was only 5 stitches ahead of me.

I probably could have contested the results, because I looked at the swatch that the girl who won did, hers was full of skipped stitches and split stitches, and it was curling in on itself and getting narrower (apparently she forgot to chain 1 at the end of each row) I decided not to complain, because the prize was a skein of some fuzzy mohair yarn and a scarf pattern. So I just decided that it was fun to do, and I came in second which is still pretty good. It still would have been cool to be the fastest, but it's not like I was competing against Lisa Gentry (the fastest crocheter in the world according to Guinness) or Lily Chin (who *thinks* she's the fastest...she never actually came close, but the CGOA still claims she's the fastest) The girl who won the contest looked pretty thrilled to have won, and I saw her in the back later going thru the yarn bins trying to find a few more skeins that were the same dye lot as the skein she won. Didnt look like she was able to find any.

I think I had more fun watching the 7yr old boy trying his hardest to be the fastest knitter... I felt bad that he didnt win

After the crochet contest was over, I went back to the yarn department and picked out a nice pattern book and used the 40% off coupon I got out of todays newspaper to buy it. ($1.93 for a pattern book! yay!)

I'm always happy to add to my pattern stash, and I really like it when I dont need to pay full price for the pattern. The book I got had 3 patterns for Pineapple baby afghans. I'd been looking at getting it for awhile. Later this week I'll probably head over to Hobby Lobby to get some Red Heart yarn (it's on sale!)

More projects done

I just finished another one of those pineapple shawls...It's done in Red Heart SS Heather Gray... I need to take a picture of it in good lighting tho...

I'm going to attempt another of the pineapple shawls...with a much smaller hook. My aunt Jan's 2yr old granddaughter Emma wants a shawl, and has seen the one that I gave to Jan for her birthday/christmas, so I've got to figure out what hook size will give me a shawl that a 2yr old can wear without tripping over it. Since the shawl pattern was orignally a doily pattern, I dont think it will be too hard to find a hook size that will work. I gave Emma a hat that I made from Dot Matthew's Bow's & Arrows hat pattern, and she wears it every time she comes over to her Mem's (Jan's) house.

I like making hats from Dot's patterns...I'm just not a hat wearer...my dad will wear them, but all the hats I've made so far are too "girly" for him. :)

Purple poncho

Here's a poncho I made in September 2005, but just this week finally sat down and wove in all the yarn ends. It's nothing spectacular...it's done all in half double crochet.

Granny Square pattern, with pictures (scene one, take two)

Edit #2 (late November 2006): I've noticed on several forums that a lot of people are using my rectangle granny square pattern. Seen the comment that people are worried about the long sides of the afghan narrowing while the corners on the short ends stick out. This is perfectly normal. Once your afghan starts getting bigger the weight of the afghan will make things even out. You dont need to do anything special to fix it.

EDIT: November 2006 -- I've found several of my pictures in other sites on the internet...I dont mind people giving out the LINK to my blog, but I do mind people lifting my pictures and claiming that the items in the pictures were personally made by them. (I think at least one picture was being hotlinked from my photobucket account. bad bad ju ju!)

I'll be gradually putting copyright info on my pictures, altho, it's probably a little late now...

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Here's hoping the power doesnt go all wonky on me again (and it could...there's a heck of a wind storm going on outside)

I had posted the pattern for the Giant Rectangle granny square pattern a few months back, but never got the pictures posted. So I'm reposting the pattern now, and I'll post the pictures below it in sequential order so that the visual crocheters can see how I start the afghan.

*+*+*+*+*

This is a crochet pattern that was taught to me by my late grandmother. I never had a written out copy of the pattern since I had it memorized. To the best of my knowledge, it's something she came up with on her own, and since the words in the pattern are mine, this pattern is copyrighted to me. Please do not sell the pattern. Some pattern designers dont want you to sell any item you might have made with their patterns. I'm not one of those... If you think you can get some money for a finished afghan you might make with this pattern, go right ahead, who am I to stop you...just dont sell my pattern to anyone.

Thanks to the people who helped me write it out and tested it for clarity for me.

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Rectangular Granny Afghan

Special stitches: (corner shells are 3 dc, ch-1, 3 dc)

Hint: when fastening off leave a long tail to be worked in later so the stitches won’t come apart.

Round 1:
ch 48

Dc in 4th ch from hook and next 2 chs, ch1 *sk 1 ch, dc in next 3chs, ch 1* repeat from * to * across (9 more times) ending with 1 dc in last ch. fasten off leaving a long tail to weave in


Round 2:
Attach new yarn in last ch-1 sp before the last dc. Ch 3, 2 dc, ch-1 in same sp, 3 dc, ch-1, 3 dc, ch-1 inside dc loop, working on other side of starting ch (3 dc, ch-1 in each sp across) until ch 4 loop (3dc, ch-1, 4 times in loop), (3dc, ch-1 in each sp across) joining with sl st in first dc.

Round 3: Attach yarn in first ch-1 sp of row 2 (ch 3, 2 dc, ch-1, 3dc ch-1 in same sp for corner, 3 dc, ch-1 in next sp, (3 dc, ch-1, 3 dc, ch-1 in next sp for corner) 3 dc, ch-1 in each sp across joining in ch 3.

Round 4: continue in pattern until size desired.

For more than one row of same color after joining sl st to the first ch sp and work in pattern.


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And now...the pictures :)

This is what it looks like once you complete the starting chain, and the First Round

And once you've attached the yarn for Round 2 (I like to crochet over the loose tails at the start of the afghan, helps me later when I go back to weave the tails in once I'm done)

This is how the increases should look

Join with a slip stitch (if not changing the yarn color, you can sl st in the next dc, and sl st in the ch 1 sp and then chain 3 and dc twice in the ch 1 space, ch 1, dc 3 times in the same space)

(note: I changed colors so you can see how each stitch looks from one round to the next)

And this is how it should look once you're finished with the Third Round. Once you get to this point, you should be able to follow the established pattern until the afghan is the size you want it to be.

You can pretty much make this afghan as big as you want. I've made crib sized afghans, queen sized afghans, and even a table doily with this pattern. I've always found it to be one of the easiest patterns for me to do, and one of the fastest.

Edit: January 2010

posting a picture or two of completed rectangle afghans.

In the picture with the Christmas themed afghan, there's a purple, white and black rectangle afghan folded on the back of the chair too..

The gray and red afghan at the top was one that I made for a cousin's kid, the patriotic one was one that I also made for a cousin's kid...probably the sibling of the first one, the one with the variegated red, white and blue is one that I made for a friend of mine. It was a scrap + a variegated color in between each color change, the Christmas one was for my grandmother...the purple, black and white one in that same picture was one I made for my aunt Mary, and the last afghan was probably one of my first scrap afghans. I made that one for my uncle Frank, who kept it in the sleeper cab of his 18 wheeler when he was out driving.

ARGH!!! Stupid power company!!

A few minutes ago, I was sitting here, happily updating my blog. I was just about to publish the pictures to my Giant Granny Square afghan pattern so that the people who are visual crocheters would have a better idea of how to do it from looking at the pictures...

Well...Guess what? Just as I was moving the mouse cursor to click on the "Publish Blog" button and the #%^&ing power went out!

ARGH!!!

It took me almost an hour to get everything looking good, and to upload all the pictures and such, and now I just have the makings of a really horrible migraine creeping up on me.

*cry* *whimper*

So...I guess it's going to have to wait till later...and I'll do it from my laptop so that if the power blips out on me again I wont lose everything to a power company induced reboot.

*grumble*

Pays to complain Part II

My mom's relatives always sends us a nice box of grapefruits and oranges for Christmas (thanks Sid!) and this year, we got something interesting and actually kind of funny in our box of tasty fruit.

My dad was getting my mom a grapefruit from the box the other day, and he discovered a perfectly peeled (and slightly moldy) orange...wrapped up in the green tissue paper they pack the fruit in. It looked like it had been peeled by a machine it was so perfect. I thought it was kind of funny, but still thought that the company might want to know. So I emailed the fruit company and asked if they were supposed to pre-peel the oranges, or was this an "escapee" from someone's lunch.

I got a prompt reply that, no, they dont pre-peel the oranges. They thanked me for my sense of humor and for informing them of the "abnormality", and now we're getting another shipment of tasty grapefruits and oranges. (Yum!) I love oranges, so I'm pretty thrilled that they've got such great customer service...my mom was excited...she gets to have Florida grapefruits for breakfast for just a little while longer.