Where did the weekend go? Saturday I was up and dressed but didn’t do a lot. I crocheted. I’m working on a kitchen set for someone. Friday night I worked on dishcloths – lots of them. Saturday I worked on pot holders. Sunday I worked on a lot of different things.
It seems like my weekend flew by but I didn’t get a lot of stuff done. Sunday I helped Vicki in the kitchen with baking, prepping for the week and a few other things.
We’re having a rummage sale next month. I’ve been working on crochet items to sell during the rummage sale. I’ve got a few dish cloths and I had some terry cloth. Sunday I worked on cutting it up and prepping it so I could crochet around the material.
Once I’m done with the kitchen set I’m working on, I’ll work on the dish towels and hand towels. I think I might have some fleece in the craft room which isn’t claimed. If I do and I have time, I’d like to make up those so I could try selling them as well.
My goal for the rummage sale – make enough to get our dishwasher installed. We’re going to go look at the dishwasher this next weekend – during all the sales. The hope is we will have a built in dishwasher by the end of June or mid July.
From there, we will tackle other issues in the house. In the meanwhile, I’m crocheting a lot and hoping the items will sell.
Last weekend when I was down by Vicki, I worked on crocheting things for her. She has these pieces but I thought I’d show some of the pics I took of them. She got a couple of dish towels. One is pink, peach, yellow, and white. The other is green, purple and white. I love this pattern and it makes up in about an hour. She wants a million more of these. I told her I doubted I could make that many.
One of the stores we went to we picked up buttons as I wasn’t going to haul my little drawers of buttons down to add them to the towels. The yellow one popped better than the others on the pink/peach one. The purple stood out best on the other. I think they turned out nicely.
I had some bamboo thread in a lovely blue / turquoise color. We bought a new book and there was a lovely pattern in there. It was a trim book and I have enjoyed all the patterns I have done so far from it. We saw an ad for the book in a magazine and the shawl they showed was beautiful but of course the pattern wasn’t in the magazine so we had to go buy the book.
Vicki wanted some trivets. The blue/tan one is the pattern she had me make while I was down there. It was a complicated and annoying pattern. I told her if she wanted more of that specific pattern she was out of luck. However, if she was willing to let me make my own pattern, I would be willing to make her more. She was and I did which is the purple, blue, yellow and green picture. I’ve got the pattern for sale on my web site. I think it turned out nicely. I want to play with different designs on the part that stands up. Once I was back, a friend of mine said she was looking for light weight scarves for spring. I had one of these done and the second I made up for her quickly.
The pink one is a long chain of ribbon which is textured. She tried it as a scarf in a variety of styles and then tried it as a belt. I think it will be versatile for her.
This weekend I’ve managed to get a lot of my book work done at my computer in my office. I paid for the time at the desk yesterday with being in pain last night. I updated a website for a friend this morning and did more book work today. My legs don’t hurt as much today so perhaps I won’t have as hard of a time tonight.
It feels good to get a lot of things off my to do list. I feel like I was productive and accomplished things I needed to. I feel like I’ve finally caught up. It is a weight off my mind and now I can work on other things – like Virginia’s afghan.
This is of course the variation on what I did over the summer. I didn’t even wait for the actual spring break to start. Friday the week before I left work at 10:30 and headed for home. Alex met me at my house and I finished getting packed. He loaded the van. We hit the road about noon I think.
Our drive down was long. With Alex driving, we went through Chicago – downtown Chicago. I don’t like to go that way but as passenger I don’t get to pick. Alex thought it would be shorter and mileage wise it was. Time wise it ended up taking us like seven hours to get there.
Vicki fed us on arrival and Alex unloaded the car. Everyone has made fun of my craft bag that I took but I did get to a good bit of my crocheting.
I’ve been playing with lace patterns. I’m not big on working with thread so I’ve been using different threads to make lace projects. One of them was a lace purple sparkle scarf which I gave to Vicki on Friday:
Friday and Saturday I worked on scarves. Here are a couple of pictures of the different ones I made:
Vicki and I went to JoAnn Fabrics on Saturday and got some great deals. They had yarn on sale and I tried out two new ones that I discovered I loved – Red Heart Shimmer which is a smaller yarn and soft. It is easy to work with and sparkly which is always fun. The other yarn was Deborah Norville Serenity Chunky – crayon box. It is a heavy yarn and the colors were stunning – bright and fun.
Now in case you haven’t heard this before when I get new yarn I want to dive in and start creating with that new yarn. I had new yarn from the shopping trip and I had new yarn that Vicki had sent to me (but wouldn’t let me touch – it was TORTURE!). Friday and Saturday I worked on ruffle scarves. These are quick and easy projects. Of the haul of yarn, Vicki picked out the ones she wanted so I just sat and worked on scarves.
I could not resist the new yarn I’d purchased and started with the Crayon Box to make a hat, scarf and wristers. The array of colors were just stunning and both Vicki and I loved how these turned out.
After the crayon box yarn, I picked up the shimmer yarn. Oh that turned out BEAUTIFULLY! Vicki’s favorite stitch is the crocodile stitch and I had that book with me so I handed it to Vicki and told her to pick out a hat pattern. The crocodile stitch is a yarn eater and she picked two patterns. I ended up making her one of the hats in the book. I also made a scarf and added the flower from the hat pattern to the scarf. I also made her wristers using crocodile stitches and the stitch from the scarf.
I’ve also been putting off making slippers for her. I’ve had the pattern for months but the yarn she wanted me to use was thicker and heavier than the pattern called for so I had to make adjustments. I stayed up until three in the morning one night and finished her slippers.
In addition to all of Vicki’s stuff, I worked on kitchen sets for two of my nieces. Dish towels, dish clothes, sponges, and pot holders for both sets.
When I left Vicki’s, my craft bag was significantly lighter – mostly because Vicki kept a lot of the items I made. This last Friday on the drive home I worked on mesh bags and make up pads for myself. I got those done on the drive. Saturday Ken and I helped a friend move. I drove and he packed the van. While sitting in the van, I worked on potholders. I got four of them done yesterday and today.
I also worked on Vicki’s afghan. It is octagonal and takes a long time to do one row. However, I did work on it and got several rows completed.
Today I worked on a solution for Vicki. She has to put Tiger Balm on her back. Unfortunately she can’t really reach where the lotion has to go. In order to reach it she is using her back scratcher. However, she is concerned about the balm having an affect on the wood. So I crocheted her a cover for it so she can put the balm on the crochet cotton to go over the top of it. I’ll be mailing it to her this week.
In total, I’ve made the following:
17 scarves 4 dish towels 8 pot holders (4 of which were actually for me) 5 sponges 2 hats 2 pair of wristers 2 dish cloths 1 pair of slippers 2 mesh bags 10 make up pads and a strange cover for a back scratcher
In addition to the crocheting, I made homemade pizza and meatballs for Vicki as well as putting tiger balm on her shoulder daily and cooking the meals with Alex. It was a GREAT week, very relaxing and productive.
