New Group

I really dove in to the crafting waters. I just created a Yahoo group called Crafty Divas Swaps and welcome any one that likes to swap crochet, quilting, or embroidery. It will also have a square or block of the month. Check it out.

So it begins.

I am not the best at keeping up a blog. However, circumstances in life change, sometimes unexpectedly. I used to have some pretty interesting blog sites working, but when I went to work full time outside the home, they fell by the wayside. Today I went to try and revive them, but cannot get signed on to either of them. SO...I start anew. Kind of like my life now.

April will see me spending some much needed time cleaning house, that has been neglected due to work and illness. Also getting back into my crafts. Until fall, I will be focusing on cleaning and crocheting. Then, in the fall I will be taking over a room that will be vacated, son is going off to college. Cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to setting this room up for all my crafts. It will be nice to get my sewing machines out and set up once again so I can again enjoy my quilting. In the mean time, as I said I will be working on crochet as it is a bit more portable and not so much noise.

When I went to work, I soon realized I would not have time to work on projects as I had before. Then, I got a little consumed (okay down right obsessed) with scrapbooking, buying all manner of supplies and equipment before realizing that it was a hobby that took up even more work space than quilting. Everything was put away. Then I became a little preoccupied (okay, down right obsessed again) with Facebook and farm games and the zoo. Now, I am ready to move on from that and have dived back in to my hobbies. Starting with crochet that is. Problem is, I gifted away all my yarns and fabrics so am having to start over with building a stash. I did keep a fair amount of fabric to play with, and recently found a few skeins of yarn to start playing with as well. I just bought some baby yarn to make a couple of gifts and am sure I still have some yellow that was gifted to me that I can dust off the hooks and make in to some items for charity. My family thinks I need to sell some things to make a little pocket money, so an online shop may be in the works in the months to come. However, I have enough PIGS (projects in grocery sacks) stashed around this house to last me years.

One week of work, spring break trip (which will be a rough one) and then I can settle in to being a frugal homemaker that once a gain plans out menus, cooks mostly from scratch, cuts every corner I can find, actually doing laundry and cleaning, and doing my crafts. I will now be able to spend time with my mom now that she has moved here to be closer, join back in to bible study and quilt group at the church, keep closer eye on teenage daughter, and of course keep up the rounds through the doctors until they figure out all my ills. That is what prompted the change in the first place, medical problems that has caused me to use up all my allowed time off for the year. We have a family reunion coming up in June, a new grandson expected to arrive in August and I am not missing any of it.

Long story short, I have started a new blog to share my life a little bit. That being said, here is what is going on at the moment.

I started this 8 point baby blanket in pink.

I am not sure I like how it is turning out for a couple of reasons.

One, the pale pink in the variegated rings tends to look as though it clashes. To me it looks dirty. However, it is the color for the next round so I am going to go ahead and finish a few more rounds to see how this is going to actually look.

The pattern can be found online at http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977275501 if you want to see the original version which is quite lovely.

The other problem is that even though the pattern called for G hook and knowing that I crochet very tight I went to a J hook, my work is still small. This is the half way point of an afghan that when completed is 36 1/2 inches. I figure that at this point it should be about 18 inches, I am only at 13 inches. I hate to go up any larger on the hook size as I have a hard time working with the really large hooks for some reason. Oh well, we will see how it turns out. One thing about this particularly design, I can just keep adding rounds until I get it as large as I want. Providing I am intelligent enough to follow the increases and decreases.

Another project I need to finish up is an afghan I started two years ago. I believe it is called Apache Tears or Navajo Tears, maybe someone can tell me for sure. The pattern was taught to me by my hubby's grandmother years ago in an attempt to teach me to crochet looser and straighter. Not sure how that worked out.

At the time, my grandson was in to John Deere for some reason so I used those colors. In fact I have a fleece panel with John Deere on it that never got made in to a quilt and now rest at the top of my junk closet. Granny would crochet this pattern using white or cream colored yarn then would embroidery little flowers in the center of the diamonds. This is as far as I have gotten with it and have been tempted mightily to turn the afghan in to a scarf. My grandson is no longer favoring John Deere, his colors would not be burnt orange and white for University of Texas.

Guess my first fabric purchase for a Christmas gift will be to find some UT fabric to make a quilt for his new UT bedroom.

I think that is enough rambling for today. I need to go fix some lunch, start some laundry, then more play time on the computer and Ravelry. I met up with the nicest group of ladies yesterday that I happened across on the website. It is always so nice to meet people that share a common interest. I am normally a little uneasy at such meetings and a bit shy with new people but they made me feel so welcome and by the time I left I felt like I belonged. I am looking forward to more meet ups with the group in the future.