Runaway October

Okay, so after a 7 month hia­tus, I am back. If you ever want to get com­ments on your blog, just stop blog­ging for a really long time. I hope to be back blog­ging reg­u­larly now. I over­hauled the whole blog, got rid of unnec­es­sary “fea­tures” and setup a new gallery tool. Be sure to check out the pic­tures, by click­ing on the links either above or to the right. I update with pic­tures of the boys reg­u­larly.

New Year by *Sally M*

On another note, 2009 has come to a close. It was a year of ups and downs for us, like I’m sure it was for most other fam­i­lies. We were taken to court by one of my day­care clients, and nice guys always fin­ish last. My hus­band bought me a won­der­ful new home! He also plowed through mas­sive lay­offs at his work and even ended up with a pro­mo­tion. We were sur­prised with an unex­pected preg­nancy and sub­se­quent mis­car­riage. We made new friends, lost fam­ily mem­bers, and all in all I think we weath­ered the storm nicely. We can only hope 2010 is as good… Well, maybe with a lit­tle less of the downs, of course.

As is typ­i­cal for me, I hope that I can use my blog to stick to my New Years res­o­lu­tions, which are pretty typ­i­cal for me, just look at the one’s from years past. But this time I have a whole house to dec­o­rate and make homey. On a bud­get. I also con­vinced Matt to buy this lit­tle pretty for my Christ­mas present…in pink of course.

Cav­allini 2010 Daily Planner

My hope is that I’ll have plenty of space to sched­ule things ahead of time, so that I don’t end up scram­bling the day before a birth­day or 4 weeks before Christ­mas again. My plan is to make Christ­mas presents through­out the year, and maybe setup a cou­ple craft­ing get-togethers. So if any of you are inter­ested in meet­ing to have some good food, a few drinks and make batches of Christ­mas presents with friends, let me know.

I have lots of new recipes to try, crafts to make, sewing to do and I hope to do a bit of can­ning. And by a bit, I mean I think I’ve been bit­ten by a can­ning bug. I found a new source for cheap, fresh pro­duce and home­made jam and jel­lies has never sounded bet­ter. I still need to set up and dec­o­rate my “craft room”. I’m kinda ignor­ing the fact that half of it is sup­posed to be for Matt’s com­puter stuff. We debate over the name of it con­stantly. Matt orig­i­nally named it the S.O.R. — Server Oper­a­tions Room. I’ve decided it’s the Sewing Machine Oper­a­tions Room — S.M.O.R. That’s a  much nicer name, don’t you think?

So those are a few of the things I’ll be work­ing on this year. Wont you join me?

And remem­ber, a blog­ger lives for com­ments. Please don’t be shy. If you drop by, lemme know you were here! To do so, just click on the link below that says “Leave a comment/# of com­ments” and type in what­ever your heart desires.

Thanks for read­ing!

So, is a crochet-a-long really a crochet-a-long (CAL) if no one else is cro­chet­ing with you?

When I saw news of the Lion Brand CAL pop up in the blog-o-sphere I knew I wanted to par­tic­i­pate, espe­cially since most “A-Longs” are for knit­ters. The pat­tern selected was for a sam­pler afghan, which is cool because it might have kept my atten­tion. Of course I don’t have much of a yarn stash so I had to wait to get yarn until the spouse was in an agree­able mood. I decided on using a Bernat Berella “4” in a nice heathered gray. Typ­i­cally I steer very clear of acrylic yarns, but it was on clear­ance. By the time I had every­thing together I real­ized that I was already weeks behind on the CAL. 

The orig­i­nal pat­tern turned out to be 10 blocks each of three dif­fer­ent pat­terns. Meh. I decided to ven­ture on my own, so I picked up Basic Cro­chet Stitches — 250 Stitches to Cro­chet by Erica Knight.

The book is well writ­ten and dis­played. It gives a brief intro­duc­tion to sev­eral basic stitches and how to read cro­chet­ing dia­grams. It doesn’t cover every stitch used in the book, so I have had to go look­ing for some of the more obscure ones. But so far so good. As I near the end of a cur­rent square, I become anx­ious to start and learn a new one. With 30+ squares in this afghan it’s essen­tial that I keep interested.

This color is more true to the actual color.

I def­i­nitely want to get my hands on more of the Har­mony Guides, such as The Har­mony Guides: Edg­ings and Fin­ish­ing Stitches: 250 to Cro­chet,

and The Har­mony Guides: 101 Stitches to Crochet.

They even have some inter­est­ing look­ing knit­ting books — The Har­mony Guides: Cable & Aran Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit. I do love a nice cable.

I fig­ure that if it comes out nicely I can give it away as a Christ­mas present, and if it doesn’t… well, the boys wont mind a few wonky squares as long as it’s warm and snuggly.

Oh! And what post is com­plete with­out pic­tures of my helper?

Thanks for read­ing.

What projects are you cur­rently work­ing on?