One more thing...

I am loving all the inspiring baby items people are posting on our "baby love" link party!

Addiction

I am learning just how addictive Pinterest is and I am hooked!  I sit down to see what has found it's way from and to me and hours later I am still marveling at the crochet talent out there.  It all started when Cynthia and I were wondering if anybody ever looked at this blog (or rather retired TwoLuLa with the broken friends gadget) and she noticed that googling us, a photo of my crayon blanket had been "pinned" on Pinterest.  What?  What is this Pinterest? Where did that photo go?  Then Cynthia said she became a member on Pinterest and I was more intrigued.  So last week, I logged into Pinterest. Now I find that people around the globe are following me.  How awesome is that?  Now if they would visit TwoLuLa2.blogspot.com I think Cynthia and I would be on cloud nine.

Peace,
Carol

PS.  Cynthia, on your last post about unfinished projects, I did not mean to make you feel bad and for that I am sorry (unless it urges you to finish Daniel's blanket).  I know how easy it is to drop something and start something new then forget about the dropped something.  I have an afghan for myself half finished in my basement and more that I have long since forgotten about.  The one thing I adore about you is your excitement to try new crochet projects.  As long as something gets finished along the way - and you have done this in with a tea cosy, mug cosy, wool-eater table topper, several baby blankets, and more - so forgive my careless comment that made you feel bad.  Just enjoy the power of the hook and create.  After all, this is why we started this blog - to encourage our creativity!

Will I Ever Finish it? Friday

Will I Ever Finish it? Friday

Carol made a comment to me the other day about not finishing my crochet  projects.  Could this be true? Well, there's the blanket I have been making for Daniel, striped and colorful with an assortment of different stitches, the ziggy pillow I am making for Olivia's dorm room, a tea cup cosy I am making just for fun which still needs its ends sewn it, squares for a charity blanket at church which need to be sewn together and edged, and….

Hmmm, maybe she has a point.  So I decided to start a Will I Ever Finish It? Friday post. Maybe having to dig these unfinished projects up, visit with them for a while as I photograph them and write about them, will get me moving on actually finishing them!

Am I alone in this?  Please tell me about your unfinished work so I can feel I bit encouraged and better.


Here's my first Will I Ever Finish it? Friday post:

Carol came over for a visit the other day.  As seems to be an emerging pattern, our time to sit, visit, drink tea, talk over life  and be creative was cut short. This time a massive traffic jam caused by an accident (very sadly fatal for the truck driver involved) delayed Carol in her trip to my house.  Then I needed to make an emergency art supplies delivery to my daughter at college, and another trip to pick my son up from cross country practice.  But we did manage to squeeze in a very quick cup of tea and a lovely lunch with dear friend Liz and her daughter Anna.

During our short visit we talked about possible baby gifts we could make for some soon-to-be-here babies.  We ventured down into my basement and I  pulled out two baby blankets I have never finished.  One is a pieced log cabin quilt (I'll post a photo of it later).  All the blocks have been made, more or less, but it needs to be assembled, a border added and quilted.  Enough time to finish it before the first baby arrives?  Not sure, not sure.

This is the second blanket:

I started it quite some time ago.  Quite, quite some time ago.  It is from a pattern in an old Leisure Arts leaflet, "Make One For Baby".  I loved the colors and the texture!  Wonderful!

It uses a combination of half double crochet, long double crochet and front post stitches.

 So why, with so much love going on for this blanket, did I stop working on it?  Well, as the blanket grew, row by row, the entire thing started to go askew.  It was very quickly losing its rectangular shape.   If I laid it out on the table with the bottom and one side lined up with the table edges, the opposite side was going off at an unpleasant angle!  My photos don't show this, but thats the beauty of cropping.

I remember, at the time, asking Carol, my crochet expert, to help me figure out what was happening.  She was baffled.  We asked Carol's crochet expert, her mom Muriel, and even Muriel was at a loss to figure out what I was doing wrong.

So, with much frustration and discouragement, the unfinished blanket was assigned to a basket somewhere down in the basement. And there it has lived for the last few years.

Carol and I studied it anew this week.  I had hoped that with a few more years of crochet experience we would have diagnosed its ailment.  No such luck.

So the question now is, do I pick it up again, finish it and hope that the powers of blocking will make it at least presentable?  I assume the baby will not have a ruler handy to assess the squareness of my blanket.

Or do I rip, rip, rip and start it again in hopes of a different result?

Or, as Carol suggested, do I take what I have and make it into something else, like a pillow?

Either way, on this Friday, I have to ask, Will I Ever Finish It?

 While you're here please visit out Baby Love Link Party and add a link to a baby item you have finished or are working on.

Happy Creating!
Cynthia

Baby Love Link Party

Carol and I seem to be surrounded by a bit of a baby boom! To date, Carol and I each have two gifts to make for soon-to-be-here babies.  Carol also is going to make a gift for a sweet 3 month old girl.   She  just completed an adorable crocheted sweater for a one-year old boy  (and I hope she took lots of photos to share with us!).

So, as we are awash in baby love, we thought it would be fun to invite all of you to share the baby gifts you have made, or are in the process of making.   We invite you to add your work to the collection, share your creativity with all of us and get inspired yourself by visiting other contributor's posts!

Basket Weave Baby Blankets

     I have been  thinking about possible gifts  I can crochet  for two soon-to-be-here babies.  This has caused me to try and remember what baby items I have already made and gifted.  The very first blanket I ever crocheted (and finished) was a pink, blue and white zig-zag baby blanket.  I remember I bought it as a kit and  diligently followed the instructions.  What a feeling of accomplishment when I finished!  Sadly, it being before the time of digital cameras, I don't think I ever took a photo of it. I can't even remember who I gave it to.  Oh well!  I hope it was used well and often!

Before my first child was born I started knitting a very basic baby sweater for her. I completed the front and probably about 3 rows of the back.  No sleeves. Three children later and it still sits unfinished in one of my yarn boxes.  Perhaps one day, far, far away, I will get it finished for a future grandchild.  Or maybe I should use it as a dishrag now!

When I was pregnant with my last child, my son, I decided that I wanted to crochet his Baptismal gown.  I found a pattern for a beautiful gown, bought the white cotton thread (yes, thread) and began.  The pattern started with the edging around the bottom of the skirt and worked its way up from there. Well, need I say that his gown never got any farther than that edging? What was I thinking to take on such a monumental project while pregnant with two little ones already at home? Something else for the grandchildren?

I actually did complete, and photograph, these two baby blankets.  Both are done in a basket weave pattern which I love.

I am feeling like I want to crochet another baby blanket, in a different pattern, and with a much brighter color scheme.  Time to do some thinking and get inspired.

Can you help get my creative juices going?  Carol and I have started our first link party  and its all about Baby projects.  It's called Baby Love Link Party.   We invite you to add your work to the collection, share your creativity with all of us and get inspired yourself by visiting other contributor's posts!  Please help us spread the invitation by grabbing the Baby Love button in the sidebar and adding it to your post!

Happy creating!

Peace,

Cynthia

Pillow Talk

I

Two weeks ago I started making a pillow for my daughter's dorm room. I chose the colors based upon the colors in the quilt we had already bought for her.





I was intrigued by the stitch pattern of this blanket  bought at the flea market a couple of months back (click here to see more photos of it).  I have seen blankets with this pattern before but couldn't find instructions in any of my books, and was being a bit dense as to figuring it out myself.  Luckily Carol found the stitch pattern in one of her crochet magazines.






The flea market blanket works two (or four) rows in the same color and then changes.  My pillow top is a bit different in that it changes color each row.  Its interesting to see the difference this makes in the overall look.


The pillow top is worked in diagonal rows, starting at one corner and increasing each row until the centerline is reached.  Then each row is decreased until the opposite corner is reached.

I began work on the pillow while on a car trip with the family. I gave my daughter, in the backseat, all 5 skeins of colors.  She randomly (or not, as was her choice) threw me a color when it was time for the next row.  Once all five colors were used I threw them all back to her and we started again.  She decided to make the pillow top symmetric about the center diagonal.

Here is the top, minus another round of black order.  I still have to sew in all the loose ends (my very least favorite thing to do, and hence always left to the very last).

Olivia likes how it turned out. Though, I have to confess, I am not exactly head-over-heeels in love with it.  I'm not sure why, maybe its just a bit too busy or random for my eye. Sometimes I look at it and love it.  Sometimes not.

So...I decided to make another pillow top with the same colors. This time I wanted larger bands of color. I decided to use a wavy pattern.

To add some texture, I worked the right side in the back loop only and the wrong side in the front loop only.

I still need to add a border, and of course, sew in the loose ends!

 I've decided to attach the pillow tops together to make a reversible pillow.  Olivia can decide which side to show depending on how she's feeling.   I'll show you the final pillow as soon as it is done.

Peace,

Cynthia

Busy, busy, busy

Have you been busy?  I know I have.  Summer seemed to race by (when it wasn't roasting me).  Mine was busy for many reasons, but my favorite reason was to finish crochet projects.  Remember that blanket I photographed last March?  The one I was making for Joanie?  Well after a few false starts and pattern adjustments, this is the blanket:

Joanie's blanket

rounds and rounds of double crochet

It took me forever to do this blanket!  I am not completely happy with the finished project because I noticed a mistake made too early to change it.  I am hoping it will please my eleven-year-old niece anyway. 

Then I began my next project which went faster.  Much much faster.  I completed this in two weeks!!  I promised a blanket to Cynthia's daughter Olivia for her high school graduation and wanted it done before she moved on campus.  Well, I was a week late, but she is now the owner of the "crayon blanket".  What color blanket do you give an artist?  Olivia had four colors that she recommended and I found those, but for some reason, it just needed more color.  So I explored my "stash" (aka, my personal store) and added more colors.

Here it is:

I played with stitches so that each color change was a stitch change too.  It is not ROYGBIV (for all the artists out there), but it is a variation of each color without being in rainbow order.  

 

 

Waldo got into the middle of things while I was photographing the blanket. (I did wash it before delivering it.)

Olivia, I really hope you like it!  Have a wonderful college experience!  Become that fine tuned artist you hope to become.  You are so very talented already it should be a piece of cake, right?











My next projects will be a plethora of baby things.  I know two women having babies this winter and one that had hers over the summer.  And a one year old that I want to make something special to wear.  I am planning to make two blankets for 6 month old and 4 year old boys.  I am also involved in sewing handbags and other things getting ready for some fall craft shows (and hoping for a little cash to fee my yarn habit :o)  And then there are all those squares we are still sewing together for our church's stitches group to donate.

Peace to you all!