Thursday, April 30, 2015

April Smalls SAL 2015

Whew!! That was a long blogging break!! After the first few busy weeks of April, and knowing there was even busier weeks to come (homeschool convention and dd's formal!!), I knew something had to give, and it ended up being blogging time:) That is okay though since I was still able to squeeze in some stitching/yarn time and now that things have settled down some I am back here and can show some things off!!

First things first... The Smalls Sal is hosted by Heather at Stitching Lotus. You can join in anytime with a finished 'small' project on the last Wednesday of the month.
 
In March I participated in Tree Bird Blog Hop hosted by Madam Samm of Sew We Quilt (Stitch). I stitched the bird on the right of the hand towel below. This month for the Smalls Sal I finished up the hand towel by stitching the bird to the left. I love how this turned out and I think my mother-in-law is going to love it!!  
For May I hope to work on an exchange block for a stitching group I am in. I need to find what I am going to stitch for it first!! :)

Monday, April 13, 2015

Turtle Trot- April 2015

The Turtle Trot Sal is hosted by Claudette at BAP Attack!!

A little late this month as we had a wild and crazy weekend and Friday just passed me by in a blur!! Actually, it wasn't all that wild and crazy:) It was dd's birthday weekend so we brought home a couple extra girls on Friday night after our 4-H meeting (I was cleaning all day Friday!!), and had a 'sleep' over. Then I took the girls into the 'city' to go ice skating for a while on Saturday. One of the girls went home and the other stayed with us, so we went out to dinner and then went to Youth group that night. On Sunday, we went back to the 'city' after church to have a birthday party with the grandparents/family. Dd even got to swim at my parent's house for a while with the younger cousins. Then we did a little grocery shopping and made it back home to make dinner and try to get some rest:) So a fun but busy weekend.

I didn't get much of any kind of stitching or fun yarn projects done this weekend, but I have been working on all my fun handiwork otherwise, so I have quite a bit to show off for this month!!

First off, I have a FINISH!!

This is Summer Pincushion by Black Bird Designs. I changed the colors to CC's Cocoa Bean and ???. I'm still trying to figure out what blue this was. I used up all but a couple inches of both threads, so it was super close to running out, but then I threw away the thread tags, so I will update this once I remember!! :)

Then I make a bit of progress on Sarah Tobias also from Black Bird Designs. Here is where I started from...
 And where I am now...
 Pictured above is also my progress on Spring Snapperland from Bent Creek and below is where I started from...
All-in-all, a good amount of progress on some of my oldest WIPs this month!! I'm pretty excited to get more of these all finished up:) 

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Samples of knitting

For those of you who are experience knitters doing sample swatches of work before you start a project may not be new to you. However this is the first time I've done swatches and I ended up doing 3!! I am working on some lace curtains for my kitchen window. I explained the situation with the window in THIS post.

Even though I know lace with the holes and looseness won't show a pattern quite as much as a tighter weave, I did want the pattern to show through in my work. Plus since we are using this curtain to attain some privacy I wanted it to be a bit tighter. I am using #3 crochet thread instead of the #10 that the PATTERN calls for and for my swatches I used #3, #5 and #6 knitting needles. The pattern calls for #6. This is what I ended up with...
 The top (#6 needles) looks decent in this pic, but in real life looks pretty sloppy and a bit too open for the privacy we are wanting. The middle (#5 needles) looks pretty good, but I think the #3 needles did a better job of showing off the pattern. Still I was going to use the #5 since I figured the small one would take forever to knit up. Then I asked my hubby and he liked the smaller one, so that's what I'm going to do on this.
And a pic of the bit I had done. Yes, I 'had' done. This is not a complicated pattern, but it does take a lot of paying attention and by the 6th row I had an extra stitch on my needles and I just could not find where the mistake was. It had to have been on the 4th row and it had to have been an extra yarn over, but I just couldn't find it. So I pulled it all off and from here on out I will have to be extra careful!! :) I am just about back to where I was in this photo now and everything looks good this time. :)

Monday, April 6, 2015

A Happy Easter Finish!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend (for those who celebrate, of course). We had a lovely morning with my parents and brother's family. Dd is the oldest of 3 grandchildren on my parent's side and she loves playing with her 2 cousins. We had a big breakfast that my dad is famous for (in our family anyway) and then the kids opened their Easter baskets. Yes, even my 15 year old gets an Easter basket at Mamaw and Papa's house. We didn't have a lot of time left as we needed to be at my in-laws shortly after noon, but the kids wanted to color eggs, decorate and eat cookies and go swimming too. So dd decorated 2 eggs, 2 cookies and swam for about 40 min!! Got a lot done in a short amount of time:)   BTW, no, it is not warm enough here to go swimming, and yes it is an outdoor pool. It was in the 60's, windy and only partly sunny, but my parents had warmed the pool up to around 90 degrees, so it was more like bath water. ;0)

Then it was off to my in-laws. Dd is the youngest of 3 grandchildren on that side. She loved it when the cousins were younger, but now they are all grown up and the rest of the family are all middle aged and older, so even though she loves her grandparents and seeing everyone else as well, it's not quite as fun for her over there. We did the big Easter dinner and sat around and talked a lot. Dd brought some of her art things and made an Easter card for her Grandma and Grandpa. Oh, and it was Grandma's birthday, so I had made her a lemon cake...
 It turned out very yummy:)

And while I was chatting away I got a bit more done on Madam Cottontail, though I didn't get it finished up until later last night. Here she is all stitched up...
Madam Cottontail is a chart from With thy Needle and Thread. I stitched her on 36ct Pearled Barley. I love how she turned out and this makes me want to go out and do some gardening!!

Yesterday was a lot of fun, but it was a long day. Dd and I left at 8:30 in the morning and didn't get home until 7:00. Then everyone was hungry again!! Thankfully hubby and dd settled for grilled cheese sandwiches so it was quick and easy. :)

Today is back to our regular schedule. We've made it through one April weekend, only 3 more busy ones to go. Next weekend is dd's BIRTHDAY weekend. Bringing home a couple extra teenage girls after our 4-H meeting on Friday night and then taking them into town to go ice skating on Saturday. Dd has youth group on Saturday night which one of the extra teen girls will just stay with us for the day and will be picked up at youth group. Sunday will be church and then a birthday party with the family. Lots of birthday fun going to be had:) But first I need to get the house cleaned up!! :)

Saturday, April 4, 2015

April Yota Update

YOTA is hosted by Pull The Other Thread blog.

Last month around this time I was feeling a bit under the weather so I didn't post a YOTA update, but I have one for you today!!

The last time I updated my YOTA project it looked like this...

 
This is Birds of a Feather Mystery Sampler by With thy Needle and Thread.

 
And here I am now. I wanted to get that silly 2nd bird done, but she conspired with a frog and had to have her head chopped off due to a mistake!! :) Only 5 more leaves on that tree left to do as well. So I'm hoping that by next month everything on this tree will be done and I will move on to some easy stitching and maybe get the alphabet done that is above and beside the tree. I'm super excited to see this project moving along!!
 
Now I'm off to make a birthday cake for my mother in law. Yep, her birthday is on Easter this year. When she asked what I wanted to bring for Easter I said that I would bring her a Lemon Birthday Cake (that is her fav) and a broccoli bake dish (not her fav). :O)

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

April's New Projects!!!

It's a new month, so it's time for new projects!! Here is what I plan to work on..

Stitching...
This is Handprint on My Heart from Heartstring Samplery and is the first project in this year's Prim Stitcher's Society club. I love this chart, but will have to wait a week or so to start it as I want to order another skein of the Cherry Cobbler thread. The chart calls for stitching this 1 over 2 and I don't like how that looks, so I will wait so I can stitch it 2 over 2.

Knitting and Crocheting...
I am going to do a couple things with both knitting and crochet that I've never done before. I love a challenge and learning new things:) First I'm going to knit some lace curtains. Our shower is in what we call our back room. It was an addition at some point to the house. It basically is our laundry room, but since it was added onto the back of the house, our kitchen window (above the sink) looks back into it. Right to where we take a shower. It wasn't such an issue when dd was smaller and couldn't see over the sink, but now she is taller than me, so I think it's past time to put up a small curtain in that window. I've never knitted lace and I've never knitted or crocheted with crochet thread. You can sort of see the pattern in the picture and that it is pretty see-through. The pattern calls for #10 crochet thread on size 6 needles and I'm going to use #3 crochet thread on either size 3 or size 5 needles and see if I can't make it a bit less lacy. I'm working on swatches right now to see which size needles I will use.

The crochet is new too. I saw a crochet bag that I really liked on Pinterest. I found the pattern and it is crochet with jute twine. Well, I have some twine, though I really don't know if it's jute or not, and I played around with it, but I didn't like how it was turning out. So I tried playing with the pattern using nylon string #18 and I really liked how it looked. This will make for a nice pool bag as well since it won't hurt the nylon to get wet. The handles of this project is the only part that I'm a little worried about being difficult, but I'll get to that when I do:)

Sewing...
This isn't a new project, but I really want to finish my Gail Pan bag that I started months and months ago. I can't wait to be able to use this bag, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to finish up the sewing!! SEW.. this one is going on my goals list for the month as well!!

Now to get busy getting some of these projects started!!!