Finally Back to Crafting :)

FINALLY. Ugh. It's been way too long since I did anything creative. I'm making up for it in full speed now.

Last night I got started on crocheting the blue and brown blanket for the new baby. (Just in time too. Did you notice the ticker on the sidebar? We're down to 99 days and counting!)

Anyway, I had this pattern in mind and searched for it forever before finding it online. I know I have it in a pattern book, but I haven't unpacked those from when we moved in 2007, and I wasn't sure which box they were in. I've been meaning to go through all the boxes and record what is in everything so I can find it, but it hasn't happened yet. It's discouraging to try to find a place for everything when there just isn't room for everything to have a place. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having the big house get here so we can actually unpack everything for good. (By the way, I talked to our mover on the phone Monday and he said he was going to try to be on the road by Thursday... as in tomorrow. We'll see...) Anyway, I finally found the pattern here.

I haven't crocheted anything for a long time (other than the pink afghan I started which is just double crochet stitches. I wasn't sure I'd be able to figure out the pattern. But it turns out that this one is super easy, and it works up pretty fast. I got this far just last evening, within a couple hours, which also included time to figure out the pattern. I was a little rusty. I think it's going to be a really pretty blanket :) Now I'm feeling like I ought to go back and do something a little more interesting with the pink one. But, one crochet project at a time. Now sewing projects, that's another matter. You're going to see a bunch of those started in the next few days. I got some new fabric in the mail yesterday, and more coming soon. I'll show you those later.

Monday night I sat down to try to figure out what to do with my challenge fabric for the contest at our quilt shop. We only get one fat quarter of the challenge fabric to work with, and that in itself is a challenge, regardless of the fabric. I wanted to make a baby sundress with this summery fabric, but clearly a fat quarter is not enough to make much of a dress with. So, I figured that I could add other fabric to it and extend it a bit.

So I did a little figuring... okay, a LOT of figuring, followed by a lot of second-guessing and re-figuring, and then finally bit the bullet and cut everything into strips. All these colored strips in the picture above are from one single piece of fabric. I only had 1/2 yard of this, so that added to the challenge of figuring out how to get all my pieces cut out and still have enough fabric for everything.

When I got it all cut, I laid it out together ... and hated it. I'm hoping it will be cuter with a little bit of gathering between the strips, but either way, it is what it is, and I'm not spending another penny on this project. I'm hoping to get this sewn together sometime this week. We'll see. As usual the schedule is full, and I'm a little bit obsessed with the blue and brown blanket right now. Not to mention, I really need to work on our taxes sometime soon :(

Remember the other day when I said I was a fabric miser? I wasn't kidding. This is literally all I have left in scraps after cutting everything out for the dress. I don't even have an extra scrap of the challenge fabric. Yeah! I call this success :)

I had to squeeze in a few pictures of the 2 year old, who was as photogenic as always yesterday. Whenever we read a book, he will climb into my lap, lay back, and immediately fold his hands behind his head like this. He lays in bed like that too. It's too cute!

He's also a little obsessed with hats... can you tell? Sometimes the horse even gets to wear one.

He loves his brother's ski helmet. It didn't take him long to take off the goggles, though.