Latest Projects

Once again I've been terrible at keeping up to date on my blog. I keep saying I want to be more diligent at this, but then forget about it. Probably stems from the fact I'm really not much of a daily journal keeper, even as a kid. So many things I wanted to write about since my last posting here, but I didn't think of coming here to write. Thankfully I am not like that with my actual crocheting... I've done a lot of work since I last posted.

A wonderful site called The Crochet Crowd has been keeping my interest for a while now. The guys that run it are amazing with their beautiful crochet work, and they have such a great sense of humour. They have a lot of great videos for their tutorials and events they attend.

Anyhoo... since January these boys have been running some very interesting CAL challenges. They post a free pattern for everyone to follow and give a month to finish that item and send in the photo of the finished work. The winner is not chosen by popular votes, which I'm rather glad for as far too many folks manage to find a ton of people to come vote for them even if their work isn't that great. To be honest I really didn't see any ugly work being done for these challenges, though there were some really outstanding ones... I'd hate to see someone who worked so hard on something that gorgeous not win simply because they had less friends to help vote.

The way the winner is chosen for these challenges is via a random number generator. This was felt to be fairer than public voting as it simply picks someone at random. I still feel that the site owners should've gone through and picked the really amazing works and chose from those they thought was the best. Ah well, at least this was still somewhat more fair way to choose.

Out of the few challenges I actually managed to finish on time, unfortunately I didn't win any of them. I still enjoyed making the items though and they were items I can use around the house. I missed a couple simply because I'm really not that speedy with my crocheting and the work was a larger project. Two afghans I missed mainly because I opted for a size that would fit my bed (which is Queen size) instead of going for the smaller versions.

The projects I did enter were a Spring Fling Pillow, an Ocean Waves afghan, and a Circular Motifs Wrap. The only reason I managed to get the afghan one done was due to knowing ahead of time which pattern was being used and I was able to start it before the official date. This was allowed so it wasn't cheating. Though to be honest I only just finished it... literally an hour before the official closing time (whew). Here's some shots of my entries:

Spring Fling Pillow: this was a very quick crochet, even for me. Some people did multiple entries, but I opted just for the one. This is now sitting on my sofa and the cats love cuddling next to it when I'm not LOL!

Ocean Waves Afghan: because I'd finished the above pillow in such a short time and the pattern for the next contest was up (this Ocean Waves one), I began this a bit earlier than the official start date. I wasn't the only one and the boys from the Crochet Crowd were quite okay with this. It's no longer draped on my sofa but is now getting used for my bed now that the cooler autumn weather is drawing nearer.

Circular Motifs Wrap: This was originally intended to be a wrap or shawl, but it came out looking more like a table runner... so this is what I'm using it for (though not on the table in the photo LOL).

I'm currently working on the latest contest... the Juicy Fruits Afghan... though the deadline has already passed. I had three months to make this latest one, but I still wasn't able to get any more than halfway through it. I again chose to do a Queen size so it would fit my own bed. When that is done I'll show it off here on my blog.

Holy buckets, it's been a loooooong time since I last posted. A lot of things happened since then and much of it is even good :) Let's see if I can sum it up in brief.

August and most of September was too hot to do anything but crash in front of the A, so that was pretty much uneventful.

Halloween was rather fun... we even had a good number of kids come to the door. My next door neighbour decorated... Theo LOVES decorating for the holidays... he has such fun doing it every year and it's pretty much contagious. Eventually our entire end of the co-op was all covered in spooks and cobwebs. My son and his friends got all dressed up and went candy hunting (my son is the one far right holding the pretty nurse LOL)!

December 1st my son left for BC to go visit his sister for the Christmas holidays. Sadly this meant I was alone for the holidays... or so I thought! My ex came down to stay for a week and we actually had a decent Christmas. We decided to have a ham instead of the usual turkey, though I did have one sitting in my freezer. As his gift for me he bought a ton of groceries... which was much appreciated! As well, Theo from next door got into his outdoor decorating again and even decorated my balcony (as well as a couple of others) with garland and a huge wreath! It looked awesome!

I also received an interesting stocking for Christmas from my swap partner on Ravelry. She really stalked me well as everything was something I loved! There were bags of potato chips, Bits & Bites snacks, jerkied meat (it was bison... it was actually rather tasty), and yoghurt coated raisins. I also got a packet of official NASA space food... ice cream! Not only that I received some lovely soft cotton yarn (in a nice shade of emerald green), kitchen notions, more crochet notions, and best of all 3 amazing official NASA mission patches! My stocking was just as cool! My partner hand made this lovely thing with fabric which had wee Tardis's all over it... I loved it!! I was gobsmacked at how well she'd discovered all my likes! Not very many people do and I loved everything she sent!

Another awesome thing I was sent was a lovely handmade shoulder wrap/lapghan collectively made by various people from the Ravelry site. They all made various knitted/crocheted squares and someone attached them all together & mailed it to me in time for Christmas! It was lovely (though I did have to run it through a gentle cycle on my washer due to a cigarette smell). I currently have that on my bed and use it when I get cold sitting at the TV.

New Years was a hoot! I was invited to the New Year bash my neighbours on both sides were collectively hosting. We all started out at the unit to the left of mine (where Jeff & Linda live) and had a blast drinking various alcohols (I loved the peach schnapps mixed with OJ), dancing, and singing (mostly off key LOL) to the songs playing over the radio. There was even some finger foods to nibble on. I brought over 2 small trays of my homemade rum balls, which were a hit. Around 11pm we all trucked over over to Theo & Tammy's place (which is to the right of my unit) for more food, drinks, silly singing & dancing. We were all by this time quite tipsy and yelled (rather loudly... thankfully the neighbours on either side of us were all attending the party LOL) the last 15 seconds of the countdown, then laughed & cheered at the start of the "new" year. This called for another round of drinks (even though by this time I was only drinking water) and hugs all around!

We've had a lot of snow dumped on us this past month, although we did have one freakish day where it was 14 above zero. Sadly the very next day it was back down to nearly 35 below and has been petty much that temperature since. Oh, I did take out my ham bones from the freezer 3 days ago (I saved the leftovers from Christmas) and popped them into a pot for soup. Came out pretty well, and quite yummy, even if the peas didn't quite rend down as they should. Because my fridge had a few other pots in it with other leftovers I had to resort to storing my soup out on the freezing cold balcony. It worked, and the lid is tight that the squirrels can't get into it.

Well, so much for my brief description of the past few months LOL! I'll leave off here.