Christmas

Well, Anna, Christmas is upon us in every hemisphere. And I'm going to Bali. The thought of bringing my yarn with me did briefly cross my mind, I'm not gonna lie. But who wants a sandy, sweaty scarf or blanket?

I did rip out all of the blanket I started and I'm starting over, trying to control the tenseness (or whatever it's called - I'm having one of those forgetting English vocab moments) of the string as I go. I'm gonna see if tightening my hold on the larger yarns and relaxing it a little bit for the smaller weighted yarns helps. We'll see. My first big experiment!

I gave my helper a scarf I crocheted a couple months ago. It was the first real thing I made (besides a hot pad when I was like 8). She loved it and listed off all the places she's going to wear it to this holiday season. : )

So anyways, my fingers won't be crafting up anything for the next couple weeks. Hopefully you're getting to spend time with lots of family and to be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen where you belong (wink) so you won't miss me too much. And I'll be busy reading books on the beach, so I'll also try to not miss you and our little blog too much.

See you next year!!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

(Another fun language fact: Selamat = Happy/Merry. Tahun = Year. Baru = New. Selamat Tahun Baru = Happy New Year. But.... Tuhan = Lord. The first New Year I was here for, I kept wishing people "selamat Tuhan baru!" Happy new Lord? All I can say is it's a good thing I'm cute...)

OWLS!

I have two American friends here who are kind of obsessed with decorating for Christmas, crafting things, and owls. So I ended up over at their house basically all day yesterday making owl ornaments for their sad little version of an Indonesian Christmas tree, which is actually a potted plant from their back yard. But if you are at all into owls, these are fun and supercute to make. The pattern is on my Pinterest under the board “sudahlah”.

I did end up putting eyes on the one on the left. It was 11 o’clock at night at that time, and I thought I didn’t feel like it, so I just stuck some pushpins in. But then I realized that it looked like stoner owl, so I gave it some black beady eyes too, after the picture. The blue one is positively my favoritest of all!

PS - As a random sidenote, the Indonesian word for owl is "burung hantu" - ghost bird. Fitting, no?

So Far

Anna. Nanna. Banana-wana-fo-fanna. Help me. My blanket currently looks like this:

I got it to where I really like all the colors, and that left edge looks impressive for a first try if I do say so myself – BUT WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE RIGHT SIDE?!? My blanket is a TRAPEZOID! After the first 3 rows, it starts pulling in. But only on that one side? I don’t understand it.

Is it because of the different weights?? I’m afraid that if I just keep going, it’ll be like 6 inches wide by the time I finish. But I don’t know how to back up and correct it. It’s not like I’m missing stitches anywhere or putting less in each row. Is there a magic secret that can help me?? Teach me, oh guru.  The life of my first blanket hangs in the balance…

Budding Crochet-er

Someone else in my house loves yarn too....

It's a Blanket!

So it's finally getting thick enough for people to realize I'm not making a scarf... And I'm taking the thicker green yarn you sent and unraveling it into two strands, each approximately the weight of the other yarns that I'm using. We'll see how that goes. It's taking awhile, but this blanket needs some green! Pictures soon!

I Hate the Phrase "Crafty"

...to me it conjures up ideas of older women who are grasping for something to fill their time up with and come up with cutesy things to clutter their (and other's) homes with. I prefer to be considered creative and inspired! I love the process of planning, gathering and making an object that has use, value and is attractive. Nothing makes me happier than making something for $10 that would cost someone $50 or more to purchase in a store. If I can give more because I put the time in myself, why wouldn't I?

All that to say - I love it when I can have what I want/need for little or nothing.

I have a lot of baby 'stuff' that was more than generously given to me when Molly was born. Mostly new, some handed down, but all wonderful things. I seriously need very little for this next baby girl. With all this stuff, I couldn't justify buying the little playmat I spotted at target and LOVED:

Now, there is just no way I can justify dropping $40 on something I already have, much less ask for it. I have plenty of fabric, so I decided to recover our playmat that has seen quite a bit of use as a hand-me-down and as Molly's favorite hang out before she learned to crawl.

I have not quilted or recovered anything before, and this became the perfect learning project. Not something done well enough that I'd be willing to give as a gift or sell, but I am pleased as punch how it turned out! So cute, and the photos of Laura playing on it will be so much cuter.

I love that these scraps were all from fabrics I had used to make gifts for friends who were having babies. The teal blue and hot pink squares were from a project for Chelsea Meeuwsen (forever known as "FLOYD" in my head) - a nursing cover and burp cloths. I love that it'll make me think of her when I use it!  (Plus, scraps + hand-me-down + time = new playmat, is the perfect equation!)

Molly was certainly cute, but the black, white and red circus motif left much to be desired.

Thoughts?

So the green was like uber thick and looked weird to me (so much for nicely textured) and I ripped it out, which ended up turning into “I started over”. I like the feel of it better this time without the bulky green in there. So this time around, it looks more or less like this:

There’s three different weights there, but they’re not so drastically different that they don’t line up and lay nicely. The only problem I’m running into is my color choice. How do you feel about this combo?

It’s that blasted light blue. I love it. But after putting in a whole row and then stepping back and looking at it, I feel like it clashes with the golden yellow and maybe I should just stick with the dark blue for now?

Any thoughts? Opinions? I’m all ears. And here’s one more for posterity -

That face is for you, Anna.

First Project

 

ANNA! This is my first project. It’s dang easy and I already know all the stitches…

The only problem is that the yarn you sent me is basically in groups of two – two of each type/brand/size. I am loving the variety, and I’m using portions of all of them in this blanket, so we’ll see how it looks in the end with different sizes of yarn. So far it’s not bad. The only difference from the picture above is that it doesn’t lay quite as smoothly as that one appears to.

It actually looks way cooler than this picture would make it seem. I was worried that it was starting to look like an old lady afghan after the first three colors. Then the blue (which I adore!) and the yellow (which I am really into these days) really kicked it into the 21st century.

That green looks a lot better than this picture shows. I just used my point and shoot which was compensating for the brightness of the white by making everything look darker than it actually is.

I realized just two days ago that I actually brought yarn needles back from America with me, thinking that I might use them someday. I’m leaving the ends loose for now though, because if this thing turns into a disaster, I want to be able to pull it apart fairly easily and reuse the colors.

It’s about two inches wider than my twin mattress. I didn’t want to make it super wide, because I’d rather have it be long. It could lay across a bed then when it’s finished or after I’m married and hopefully upgrade to a bigger-than-twin-size mattress, it can be a throw or something.

So what do you think? With different sizes of yarn, is it gonna end up being a disaster in the end? Or will it all come together?

Dedication

Anna. This is for you. Let's pretend we're old ladies making things together and laughing and talking. Right now, all I have is Season 4 of Gilmore Girls to keep me company while I crochet...