I’ve been busy crocheting blankets! I’ve made three blankets since the 5th of March! The first one is featured in my last posting.
I made a pastel green basket-weave blanket with light blue shell stitch border lovey-sized blanket for the boy:
It was a total pain in the ass. Firstly, the yarn is very fine and the hook I used was pretty small compared to hook I used to make the first blanket. I developed several new blisters. It also required counting. Erg. I unraveled the first 6 rows at least 5 times before I found a good groove. When I completed the body of the blanket, I tried several different stitches for borders and unraveled each of them (about 4 times) after deciding I hated them all. I finally got ahold of my friend who inspired me to take up crocheting in the first place and she suggested the shell stitch. Of course, I loved it (she’s so farkin’ brilliant!!!) and did one row on either side of the blanket.
I finished Buddha’s blanket on April 8 and the same evening, started a blanket for my niece’s first birthday. I knew it would be late, but I had no idea how quickly I could work under pressure! I finished the entire blanket in 3 days and finished it *on* her birthday. I’m really very proud of it. With aforementioned friend’s help reading the pattern for the border, I whipped it right out. The colors don’t appear nearly as beautiful in the pictures as they do in person. It’s Neopolitan: brown, pink and off-white. The body is double crocheted, the border is mostly single-crocheted all the way around (man, that was hard!) and there is a fat braid that goes through the top and bottom. Best of all, there is a seat belt hole, which I thought would be really hard, but friend talked me through that one and it turned out to be pretty damn easy!
Here is the finished blanket!
Karma holding it to show size:
Other stuff and updates:
Buddha is finally over his sore ankle. He’s also back to full-on appetite. He’s a really fun baby most days, but everyday around 6pm-ish, he gets really cranky for about 30 minutes. Sometimes it abates, but sometimes it lasts for the rest of the evening.
Joy had Spring Break last week. She thinks that she should do something special every day when on breaks from school. I don’t usually mind, but when there is an evening when someone can’t come over and no one’s invited her over, she complains incessantly of boredom. As one might imagine, I hate that. She spent a few nights at Oma’s, a night at her friend L’s house, a night at A’s and each of them both spent a night here. We went to the park on a few pretty days, too. Unfortunately, the temps have dropped again. She and I spent about two hours cleaning and rearranging her room on Thursday. We got rid of two-thirds of her clothes, too. Wouldn’t you know it that it’s already a huge mess again?!
On Friday, I picked T up from Oma’s. Oma’s pretty pissed at me over it, but I fail to understand why. She tells T the entire time that “it’s really not that much work,” but if that were the case, then why is she so upset with me for getting her a couple of days early? I’ve done the work - it’s fuckin’ hard as hell. I know mom: she wants to justify to herself paying T in peanuts while working her ass off. Whatever. She’ll get over it eventually. I love my mom, but sometimes she is just way over the top.
Anyway, T is happy to be back, as are we. She’s a huge help around here with chores and the kids. And she likes the fact that she can go online pretty much as she pleases for a couple of hours per day. She’s about halfway through her book now, too.
The glasses are still weird. I forget to put them on sometimes. I do not like wearing them while I eat. I’ve been getting headaches, too. I think it might be from taking them off and putting them on a lot. The baby likes swatting them off of my face, which annoys the snot out of me. It’s just going to take some adjusting. But at least I look a little more like myself with them on and curly hair!
