my favorite kind of Winter day

I know this has nothing to do with yarn...
I love frost. I love how it feathers out and spreads.

my kitchen windows make the most beautiful designs when they frost over, but I haven't had frosty kitchen windows for a while.

this morning we had fog. Fog in the Winter makes the most beautiful landscape in the world, but you have to catch it in that 'zone'. one more degree of warmth and it's gone.


this is almost chunky frost this morning. I'm surprised it's still here, but we still have some pretty heavy cloud cover so that's protecting these delicate little structures.

awesome

on a more yarny note, the ugly afghan is coming along well.

the husband thinks I should leave it 7.5 ft wide and keep on until the length is just as long if not longer than 7.5 ft.
we'll see. I may just run out of steam -- and left over yarn -- before then

it is my time ... to stash bust

there is some unwritten cosmic law that says if you or someone you are related to knows how to crochet, you must have an ugly zig zag afghan.

I am in dire need of a good old stash bust. I have so much yarn here that it is just taking over everything. it doesn't really work for any projects I have in the works and not for anything that I am planning. my next big planned project is the White Tree of Gondor blanket I will be making my daughter for Christmas. but I need very specific colors for that, not to mention very LARGE quantities. so I need to make room.

therefore it is my time to bust a stash. and what better than the ugliest of all ugly zig zag afghans.

don't get me wrong... I like zig zag afghans, but because I only have the bohemian collection of colors right now, ugliness is what is going to happen - not really even whimsical bohemian...

so I've started. it is currently 7.5 ft wide ~ or long, depending on how many rows I feel like putting on it.

pot holders I have made

In my desperation to have a decent potholder I just whipped up a few last week. they really don't have to be a trick.

so even though these aren't the most gorgeous potholders, (although I do like the brown with purples and green...) they are super bulky and are very good at protecting my hands.




they are very simple to make too.
simple-ish pattern... once you have the basic idea down, then you can improvise the pattern just fine.

Notes: at the end of each dc increase row you may end up with one less stitch than you think you should be at. to explain... the chain 3 is going to be counted as a dc. it will also be counted as your last stitch and not the first. so when you have an increase row of 2dc, dc, 2dc - you will end with a dc. the next row would go 2dc, dc in 2, 2dc, dc in 2 until the end when you will 2dc, dc in one, join.
just count your stitches. to be sure...
you can do this one color or as many as you want.

( I apologize for any errors there may be in this free pattern.... but it is more to give you an idea. I hope that this will be helpful for you)
pattern is not an exact replication of the holders shown... but it will make a nice, useful holder.

row 1: magic circle, chain 3, dc 11, join with slip stitch
row 2: chain 3, 2 dc in each stitch so you have 24 stitches, join
row 3: sc in each stitch, join
row 4: chain 3, *2 dc in next, dc in the next* , repeat from * *until until you reach the end and have 36 stitches join
row 5: sc in each, join
row 6: chain 3,*2 dc in next, dc in the next two stitches*, repeat * *until you reach end and have 48 stitches, join
row 7: sc in each color, join
row 8: chain 3, 2 dc, dc in the next three, repeat to the end and have 50 stitches, join
row 9: sc in each, join
row 10: chain 3, *2 dc, dc in next 4*, repeat * * 62 stitches
row 11: sc in each, join
row 12: chain 3, *2 dc, dc in next 5* repeat * * until you have 74

make two.

weave in your ends and hold your two halves back to back.
join yarn and here is where you can have more or less fun....
you can shell stitch them together, or just slip stitch them together. for these I single crocheted them together.
hook through stitches on both holder halves at the same time and sc (or slip stitch or what ever) all the way to the end.

I put a loop on these. before you join at the end, chain 8 and slip stitch in the next stitch. in the loop you just made, crochet 16 single crochet in that loop space. slip stitch in space and finish off.
weave in ends and you are done :)

today's project?

Pot holders

that's right. no matter how many I have they all seem to disappear the moment I need one. So I will be making sure that I have more than I need in the hopes that I will someday have one on hand at all cooking times.

:)

one I will be making today -along with others- is a pattern I obtained a couple of years ago from Maggie's Crochet

I am also reverse engineering a pot holder I got from my grandma, for some reason her's is nice and protective whilst my copy is a steam vent cover....
I need to figure out the kink in my copy

so I've managed another pattern

and a couple more necklaces from the same design. I sold my flower necklace last week and I really did like it a lot but I hadn't gotten around to writing it all down... I thought that I'd better had, before I forgot how I made it in the first place. and without the original in my possession any longer I felt it would be very challenging to recall just exactly how it was done. so I sat down and wrote it out, taking photographs of the steps to make the initial flower.





so that's done and more necklaces for sale in the shop. it's been a busy week.

now I will be finishing up a pair of my family famous "ugly slippers" for the second daughter
perhaps I'll write up a tutorial for those and list them as a free pattern... they really aren't worth selling as they really aren't pretty ~ thus the name

Thank you so much Carissa Knits

if you know how to knit or even Tunisian crochet and are a geek, you totally have to check out this woman's blog if for no other reason than to get your hands on this chart.

Carissa Knits has an R2D2 hat (follow link) that you will squeak and squeal with delight over, I know I did and then promptly bought yarn and got to work

I can't knit anything more than a square or rectangle shape. that's the extent of my knit ability. my sister can knit like nobody's business but I have not received that gift from the crafting gods. I did, however figure out a few Tunisian crochet stitches and techniques which allow me to fake you out! unless you knit or crochet yourself... then it's totally obvious that I did not knit this pattern I crocheted it.