Crocheting

About 9 years ago I tried to make dishcloths like my Aunt Neenee did when I was young. She would sit and make one in just a few hours.  She spent many afternoons doing these, pot holders, and the deco hanging towels with the crocheted top. My grandmother gave me a set of instructions she had found and showed me how to start. She was visiting us to see her newly born Great-Grand-Daughter so crafts were quickly set aside for more important things.
 I made one chain stitch and the directions just confounded me and I could not figure them out.  I was the craftiest person I knew at the time and my grandmother lives about 2-3 hours away.  When we finally managed to get together I had set the project away and completely forgotten about it.  I am about to the end of my Aunt's supply so I asked my ILCS group (extremely talented and crafty people) if they knew of any way to learn visually.  I am not normally a patron of YouTube so it never crossed my mind to look there.  Thank goodness ILCS members had numerous suggestions to look for. 

I found several videos that helped and I got about half way done. Not perfect by any means but I am proud of myself.  Besides, it's a dishcloth, all not perfect ones will just get used in my own sink. ;)

I put this away so I could work on my HAED.  It is quickly becoming therapy for me.  I try to stitch at least  50 stitches each night.  With both girls being big snuggle buddies and hubby being his normal demanding little boy in a man suit, I do not always meet my goal.

If I don't set a goal, It won't get done.  I'm posting pics of my HAED progress under Dizzy Heights on the HAED SAL Blog in the tab above.  Feel free to have a look at all the progress of the other contributors to the blog.  There are some really amazing pieces there to see.

Don't forget to vote for your next freebie top right of page!  Poll closes at the end of March.

In Stitches ;)

Hi all!  I finished my bookmark for the ILCS bookmark exchange.  I sent that off Yesterday with tea bags.  I hope she likes it!  I'd post a pic but I can't until Shaunterria sees it.

When that was done I started my HAED SAL.  Now that is a major project.  It took me a bit to get started.  You can read all about it under the Dizzy Heights section in the HAED SAL link in the tabs above.  I think I have around 300 stitches done so far.  Seems a lot right?  NOT!  lol  There are 625 stitches per every square inch.  The whole piece is 16x 11 1/8.  112,400 stitches.  That's why there are many people out there that say HAEDs can take a year to finish.  I figure I can get mine done in about 6 months, hopefully less.

Mom asked for a bit of help with making some things for a local non profit society she is involved in.  This will consist of making small beaded items and some stitched items (ornaments, bookmarks and other daily use items).  They have a pool for birthdays so she'll need small handmade birthday gifts for each member that has a Birthday at the monthly meeting.  She gets a list so some months have a ton and some have 1 or 2.  I'll be making a few of these when the HAED starts to make my eyes cross.

I've never really told you all of my UFO.

The part finished is the part right by the horse's butt Left side middle of the chart.  This is a running joke with my eldest daughter that started before the baby came along.  It has now caught on with Lily.
 
While driving down the road I always call out when I see horses.  Kayla is normal little girl horse crazy.  One time I saw only the butt of the horse sticking out of a dark barn so I called out "horse butt" to her.  Of course this resulted in a fit of giggles.  It is now a contest to find the horses' butts only.

I'll end this post in hopes you leave with a smile thinking of the little girls in their car seats giggling over the sight of a horses behind.  Have a wonderful day!

Almost SAL

I received my fabric in the mail Thursday and I printed out my chart.  I have all 85 DMC threads and one Krenik fine braid,  Lugana 25 count antique white (so soft).   

Now if only I could start.  Hubby decided I needed to do a bunch of running around paying taxes for all our properties at the different county courthouses.  I may have to do more running next week if they won't let me pay the township ones at the county courthouses too. 

Why must men wait until the last minute for nearly everything? I could have all this done by now and not had to waste a full tank of gas to do it by planning my errands around his stops. GRRRR 

I think tonight he's making his own dinner and the girls and I will just be "starving" while we're out and about and have to stop to eat. ;)

Thank you for reading my rant.

Lily-Bean is Officially 3

Well I'm beat.  We just settled down after having about 40 friends and family members over to celebrate 3 years of having my youngest. She was born in February but with the weather around here we tend to push the party later so it's less winter and more spring.
 She got 4 packages of Legos!  She loves Legos.  They are supposed to be for older kids but she will sit there and fit the pieces in to fill one of the green boards completely.  Takes about an hour or so and she will sit there the entire time and work on it.  She also got a bunch of clothes (now I don't have to go clothes shopping) and several other girly type toys.  She got this really neat bell carousel. Similar to this one.^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
She hasn't left it alone yet.

In addition to Legos, her other favorite thing is playing on the computer.  pbskids,org and nickjr.com have a ton of games.  Bean spends hours playing the learning games on those sites.  

STITCHES----Yea right.  I did a few stitches yesterday for the bookmark exchange.  I dug through mom's giant bag O' floss to find a few colors for said bookmark.

I am now going to dig through the giant bag O' floss for colors for my HAED chart.  If I don't find a way to sneak some money in there to replace permanently borrowed threads, I'll have to find some other way to repay her.  Have a wonderful evening!