Blogging From Work Today

Shhhhh, don't tell anyone!

I just wanted to post a quick note to let you all know that the Penny-A-Day challenge has started!  I created a Google+ community, and I think we're up to 9 challenge members.  If you're interested in joining us, you can go here to check it out.  It's a public group, so any stitchers are welcome to join.

Just as a reminder, for this challenge you are doing one mini per day.  Personally, I'm crocheting a Sea Penny per day.  You could also knit one row of a scarf.  I'm encouraging people to choose an inspiration (I'm using daily weather conditions) to help keep you on track and make for a beautiful whatever-it-ends-up-being!

And to use Google+, all you need is a Google account.  Let me know if you have trouble finding the group, or if you need help setting yourself up on Google+!

I Told You It Would Be Celtic!

It's less of a sampler, I think.  Although it does feature several different kinds of stitches, it's really an embellished Irish blessing.  And here it is in .jpg - I think you can right-click and "save as":

I've left it at symbols so you can choose your own colors.  But if you want to use the colors in my original design, here's a little help - (I can't figure out how to show the symbols with the color numbers):

Blue (upper left corner) - 820
Green (lower left corner) - 701
Red (upper right corner) - 321
Gold (lower right corner) - 167

Hopefully that will help you match up the symbols to the colors I used.  Or you can choose your own!

Edited!  I figured out how to turn it into a pdf AND share it here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Click here to access the pdf file, which includes a real symbol and color key!

Specialty stitches - in the center, the red is a Smyrna Cross (large X with a + over it) and the green is a Double Leviathan (you could also do a large eyelet here).  The blue is Crow's Foot - Montenegrin would be pretty as well.  And the long stitches cover 5 threads.  You should note that the points where the red and green run together is 4 long stitches!  (I'm working my way into Bargello.)  The blue border is blackwork.

Grid is 100x160 - actual design area is 92x154.  If you stitch this, I'd love to see your finished piece.  I hope I'll have time to stitch it myself soon!

Enjoy!

My Week In Stitches and Merry Christmas!

I'm enjoying my first paid holiday in over 10 years, and I have to say "enjoy" is exactly the right word!  The girls turned on Christmas music this morning while my mom made cinnamon rolls for tomorrow morning, and now they're rolling out and cutting sugar cookies.  They're old enough to do this basically unsupervised - they just call me when they're ready to have the cookies transferred to the baking sheet, since they can't seem to do that without mis-shaping a rocking horse or Christmas tree.

As far as projects, I'm happy to say that as of about 2:30 this afternoon the aprons are done!  I was getting really nervous about finishing them. I'd planned to work on them during the days when the girls were at school.  Then I got a job.  Fortunately, they spent most of the afternoon out of the house with their father yesterday, so I was able to sew without being asked, "Mama what are you doing with the sewing machine?"

Here are the finish pictures:

This one is mine.  Made mostly according to the instructions found here, with 4 ruffles.  I modified the instructions slightly - instead of making an actual waistband piece, I made the back piece longer and folded it over.

Katie's - she loves ladybugs.  And this pink has ladybugs with lime-green heads, lol.

And Hallie's.  Since she's 10 now I wanted a fabric that looked a little more grown up.  I love this light-blue-bubbly thing.  As I said before, mixing prints like this was a huge stretch for me.  And I couldn't make myself mix too much the girls' aprons each use 2 fabrics with a total of 3 ruffles.  I did have to figure out the proportions of the adult apron to size this down to elementary school age.  I think I'll do a separate post about my modifications - my brain is too tired to do math right now, and I still have to finish knitting a legwarmer!

I hope you all have a blessed and happy Christmas!

Working Is HARD :)

But I love my job!  I work with some really great people who are helpful and friendly, and it's such a wonderful atmosphere!  Now if they would just pay me to sit, talk and stitch all day, it would be perfect! LOL

I'm having to readjust to working life, which means I've basically been a zombie when I get home, and it's hard for me to make myself pick up any kind of fiber.  I have some yarn in my purse so I can knit Hallie's legwarmers during my lunch break, but that isn't working out so well.  I'm having trouble casting them on with the aluminum dpns, and my small wooden circular needles are too long to use.  I'm going to force myself to work on them tonight, so that I can have some progress toward Christmas presents!

So no stitchy updates for this week!  I hope to have something for next week - the office closes early on Friday, so I'll have some daylight left when I get home!

My Week In Stitches, and 2013 Is Already Looking Like A Great Year

I'm so excited, I have to get the awesome news out of the way.  I've been an at-home mom the entire time I've been writing this blog.  I've worked from home in different capacities, but I've been here in my house behind my computer, stitching and writing whenever the mood strikes me.  Since my life turned sideways 3 months ago, I've been looking for a full-time job (this is a total necessity) and I've been really discouraged by the process.  I was submitting resumes, but not getting any calls for interviews.  Last Tuesday I got my first interview request - and this morning they called back to say I got the job, and they want me to start tomorrow!  I was hopeful that they would hire me, but I didn't think it would happen so quickly!  I had to go into hurry-up mode on the aprons because I won't have school days to finish them in secrecy anymore!  And do you know how hard it is to make yourself iron and pin hems when all you want to do is talk to your bff about life possibilities and independence?  So excited for what this year will bring!

Okay, on to the WIP updates.  I finished Katie's legwarmers, but didn't take a picture.  I discovered that I don't have enough of the same color to make Hallie's, so she's picked a different color.

Fairy Sisters - I filled in some of the blank space at the edge of the moon, and I'll likely be able to finish the rest of that color in the evenings this week.

Aprons - I got all the pieces cut on Wednesday, then I had an interview on Thursday, then I spent Friday hemming the pieces for one apron.  This afternoon I got almost all the rest of the hems ironed and pinned.  The next step will be gathering stitches and attaching.  You can see I decided to put the blue flowers with the ladybugs, and the pink flowers with the bubbles.  There will be 2 ruffles in the bubbles with the pink flowers in between, the opposite of the ladybug one.  And the floral in the back will be the back piece and the ties.

Wordless Weekend - She's 10 Now

(and after much parental wrestling wearing the sweater and beret lovingly handmade for her by her mother - parenthetical statements don't count as words, right?)

This Looks Like The Start Of A Sampler

And apparently it has an Irish theme. I don't know, I was just grabbing colored pencils. It's been so long since I designed anything, and I really have no idea when (if) I'll stitch it...

A Challenge for 2013 - a Penny-A-Day

I found this tutorial for Sea Pennies on Pinterest (a while ago, actually - I pinned it originally because of the colors).  The link will take you to the tutorial on Julia Crossland's website (which is wonderful, btw).

I don't know if you've seen these row-a-day scarves people knit based on the color of the sky each day?  I saw something about it (on Pinterest, of course) and I thought it was a cool idea.  But there were 2 problems I had with this idea - first, I hate carrying threads/yarn (and there's a good chance with this project that the color I need would be at the opposite end of the row); and second there are a whole lot of possibilities for sky colors, and that's a lot of yarn to buy and keep with the project.  I was sad, I really wanted to do something like this.  And the grays/blues/whites of the sky color knitting project are so beautiful - it's like a chronicle of your year.

But I was thinking - what if I combine these 2 projects? *cue lightbulb ding-sound*  I could do a sea penny each day.  And I could simplify the color scheme by just doing the weather for each day - sunny, cloudy/rainy, snowy, etc.  Not as many colors to worry about!  But they would still be gorgeous together!

So my challenge for 2013 will be to crochet (and attach after the first day) a penny each day, using yellows, grays and white.  The possibilities for this are pretty cool - it could be calendar shaped, for a chronological record of the weather.  Or it could be more free-form (this is what I'm thinking about - we get a LOT of sunny days in the summer here in Idaho, so there would be huge sections of yellow if I stay linear).  Maybe a spiral, maybe more triangular like Julia shows....

So does anyone want to join me?  Let me know here if you are interested - this is not an official sign up, I'll do another post when I see what kind of interest there is.  Let me know if you're interested in doing the penny idea, or if you would do the "a-day" challenge but with a different medium or format (a granny square or the sky scarf maybe?), or even a different inspiration - I thought about doing something with the shirt color I wore each day.  Okay, that should get your brains turning.  Yay!  I'm excited for 2013 now!

My Week In Stitches - a Finish!

*twirling, spinning happy dance*

I finished Hallie's sweater - before her birthday.  Ecstatic really does not describe how I feel.  I sure hope it fits her, lol.

This was made using the instructions for the Custom Fit Raglan.  Yarn is Caron Simply Soft, in Pagoda (the jade color) and White - I used the white striping to ensure I'd have enough of the jade for the entire sweater.  It was very close - I was nervous enough to go out last week and pick up another skein, which I ended up not needing at all.  Of course.  This is the color Hallie fell in love with when she was going through my yarn looking for a color for her friend's legwarmers.  This mama pays attention to things like that.  So, 2 skeins of jade and some of white.  The neck is unfinished because when I tried adding ribbing it got very small all of a sudden.  As it is right now, the neck will almost go over my head, so hers should fit through it just fine.  In the future I will modify the instructions using some of the v-neck technique to create a larger drop in the front.

So because I had a brand-new shiny skein of the Pagoda and so much White left over, I decided to make her a bonus piece - a beret I found on Ravelry.  See how cute it is?  It's crochet - I was hoping to work in a new stitch on the band instead of the seed stitch, but I couldn't figure out how to make it small enough to stay on her head and still do the specialty stitch (which you'll just have to wait until National Crochet Month to see).  The instructions were written for an adult head, and she's turning ten, so I did have to do some resizing.  I started by using smaller hooks than called for, then on the first round of the band I did sc-ch1-sk1-sc-sk1-sc (the instructions call for skipping every other stitch of the previous round and leaving a ch1 space, I decreased by removing every other ch1, if that makes sense).  I'll keep working on this idea because I think the band of a beret would be the perfect place to show off this stitch, and I'm determined to have projects to show the new crochet stitches for 2013.

And here they are together as an ensemble.  She's going to look so cute.  I hope she lets me get a picture of her wearing them, she's kind of weird about that right now.  Because she's almost ten.

The only other bit of work I accomplished this week was I-cord for the legwarmers.  I didn't even pull out Fairy Sisters, because I was really needing to get this sweater done.  I was going to start aprons today, but the almost-10-year-old is home sick, so it's back to my "decoy" project - since both girls requested legwarmers and even chose the colors, this is what I work on in front of them.  But with 3 weeks left until Christmas I'm starting to feel the pressure to get these done, too.

Wordless Weekend - Well, Not Really Wordless