Good day

Had a busy time the last 2 weeks, but loads done!  Let's start with progress on the Spectrum blanket that Katlyn has decided she would like instead of the color bar blanket I started for her.  She still wants the color bar one, but it's going to be too big for a car blanket, so she has laid claim on my lovely stripes!  I love that this blanket is so easy to just go back and forth and the change in colors is fun.  I am very pleased with it.  

a bit of progress

I decided that I needed to get Groot finished up and potted so I sat down on a lovely sunny Saturday and knocked him out.  Added a bit more detail and got him potted up! 

finishing details

He turned out so darn cute!  Had to drag him around the house to get a good shot of his happy face. 

and he is done!

I was on pinterest and ran across this little potted four leaf clover and thought I would make it for Katlyn.  She had just commented how she really liked St. Patrick's Day and this was a cute little project that really took no time at all to complete.

part one

How cute is this face!

part two

Stuffing and sewing 

part three

And here he is all done up and hanging around on the mantle.

lucky clover

So I finished Groot, made the lucky clover and made a few more shamrocks and turned them into a garland to decorate the mantle.  I had a very productive Saturday.

Spring mantle

Katlyn ended up with 3 days off in a row so we decided to go up North for the weekend, well of course I need to gather yarn for the trip.  Really not that hard, I was just going to take the Spectrum blanket, since all 6 skeins fit in my favorite yarn bag nicely.  The problem I ran into was that I ran out of the turquoise yarn!  What the heck??? I bought what the pattern called for and used the called for hook size.  I don't crochet loosely so not sure what was going on.  I pulled out my ruler and checked gauge (something I never do!) Turns out my gauge was bigger then the pattern said it should be, but the problem with that is if I had in fact been at the proper gauge, the blanket would be a tight, stiff mess!  So not sure who tests these patterns but this is definitely off.  

Now this has thrown a hitch in my plans to take this blanket along.  It's Wednesday night at this time, we are leaving Thursday right after work and Joann's didn't have the Mint Blue last time I tried to buy this yarn, ugh.  I don't want to waste time driving all the way up there when I have to do laundry and pack and they might not have it!  Damn.  I'll just pack another bag to take, but wait....we drive right by Joann's on the way out of town, so I'll take this blanket and another just in case they don't have the yarn I need, whew!  

further along

This is the blanket I started when I ran out of yarn for the other.  3 strands together and a beast hook to handle it!  This is for my newest Grandchild. Gender neutral at this point.  Won't know the sex until late April.

new baby blanket

So off on the road trip with a quick stop at Joann's for my yarn emergency and (they had the yarn)  I get settled in the passenger seat while Katlyn drives us in her new car and this is what I encounter!  Flippin' yarn vomit, like seriously aggravating.  

yarn vomit

Since we were in town on a Friday while most everyone worked and Brooke had school we just kind of wandered about Windsor during the day.  Went to the book store, had some lunch and just enjoyed the lovely weather that Northern California has!

at the book store

Made much progress on the blanket while driving and took it outdoors for  photos.  Got the third color going.

it's growing!

We were busy bees the entire weekend, I swear we were in and out of cars constantly!  I love hanging out with my boys though. 

my sweet boy Steven

We went to dinner a lot

dinner

This spare blanket that I brought just happened to be in the car and I worked on it every time we drove somewhere, it grew quite a bit!

in the car

We went to San Francisco on Saturday and walked around pier 39 and had lunch and drove up and down crazy hills with a million other people!  I took loads of pictures with my camera while walking around and the weather was beautiful.  They have musical stairs on the pier that Katlyn and Brooke enjoyed.

making music

We took a lot of pictures including selfies.

girls and selfies

Snoopy outside a restaurant in Windsor.

girls and Snoopy

We did a bit of shopping after breakfast and acted silly.  Had a good time and man I love the weather up there!

Grandma's crazy

Home repair is something I do because it's just me and Katlyn so unless one of my boys is down visiting (Christopher) I do what needs to be done myself.  Katlyn's bathroom door knob has been sticking, where she couldn't get out kind of sticking.  So after her friend got stuck in the bathroom at 11:30 pm on Monday night and Katlyn had to wake me up to help I figured it was time to fix it.  Well I did a temporary fix by changing her knob out with mine for now.  I will get new knobs over the weekend for both bathrooms.  So after many pictures and texts with Christopher trying to figure out HOW to remove the stupid knob in the first place...seriously, I can replace the front door and the bedroom ones with no problems but I could not figure out the bathroom one!  Finally I got it off, it had been painted around and the paint decided it didn't want to let go!  A hammer and a couple of screwdrivers convinced it otherwise and I only got a little bloody...oh the joys of owning my own home!

I'm handy

Christopher was entertained with my antics, so 1 bloody finger, 1 smashed thumb and 1 jammed cuticle later the knob is in place and works!  I am hoping that the new ones will cause me less damage and pain! 

ok, maybe not so much!

And that's my story so far this month.  I have added another color on the Spectrum blanket, but will all the door knob repairs last night I forgot to take pictures of it, so that will be later.  We shall see how productive I can be this weekend!

Listening to:  Wicked Garden by Stone Temple Pilots

marching on....see what I did there :)

And again, I've managed to let February slip on by with only 1 post.  Que sera sera, I would say I'd do better, but alas I know that will probably not be the case.

So on with the show, in this case pictures.

The pink & black blanket which I worked pretty near nonstop lately and thankfully had a 3 day weekend in which to finish it up!

A close up

I never did get a good finished photo of the entire thing, it measured 34 x 34 (it did make it to square status!) and I got it quickly wrapped a shipped off after getting the bow done and attached.  My friends loved it and sent me pictures of their baby girl snuggled in it.

Done and ready for shipping

I have taken to a new idea for use of scraps, I saw it somewhere...probably pinterest, that someone had a ball of mismatched yarns all tied together and actually I think it's Red Heart Boutique that does the same kind of thing, only the yarns in Boutique are the same colors and there are only 6 different yarns throughout a skein.  Anyway...I have started my own ball of random fun.  It's not very big yet as you can see, but I'm hoping it will grow as I finish up projects and have small bits of leftover yarn.  

My new little ball

Being as it's March, that means Shamrocks come out to play and since I made hearts for February, I figure Shamrocks should be hanging about the house in March.  Here they are in a bowl waiting to be strung up.

A bowl of Shamrocks for March

Now onto my crazy dog lady mode.  It's been chilly, not unfortunately cold enough in my opinion, but chilly enough in the evenings that the dogs like to snuggle with blankets.  I felt that they needed cowls to keep them toasty (Katlyn of course decided I was insane)  

Kid

I don't know if they keep them any warmer, but they sure look cute!

Max

I ordered some Simply Soft yarn from Joann.com because I saw this lovely striped blanket that was on a wrapper of the pink yarn I was using, but every time I went into the store to get the necessary yarns, they were always out of at least 1 of the colors and I knew if I didn't get them all at once I would never get them.  So with a really good coupon that made up for the stupid shipping costs, I was able to order the 6 colors I needed and even got a giant yarn of gray for a gender neutral baby blanket for my new grandchild that is coming along in the Fall.   Yay another one is coming!  Not going to know the gender until late April though, so I am going do cute gender neutral ones.  I am hoping for a boy though, then I'll have 1 of each!

A box of goodies

Katlyn and I went to Disneyland last week and she decided she needed to have a Mickey hair clip to wear.  I wasn't driving, so I grabbed black yarn along with my new stripe blanket yarn for the drive down.  Fairly straight forward, 3 circles sewn together and ta-da...Mickey!  

looks like a mouse

Next I started the striped blanket, of course nothing is ever easy and my center pull skein vomited out a mess for me to contend with before starting!

yarn vomit

Disneyland was great of course and the weather was actually cool enough for long sleeved shirts. The sun was shining and we had so much fun just wandering around.  

on the tram

Katlyn brought her cow...random indeed.  Someone gave him to her at work last week and she has kept him in her car.  She decided that he was going to come along to Disneyland with us and be in all pictures.  I took a lot of pictures and nearly all contained a cow bombing.

Happy the cow photobombing

Ok I found the name of the pattern for the stripe blanket, it's called the Spectrum Afghan found here 

It's a colorful rainbow and very easy to do and being Simply Soft, it's very soft!

easy peasy

Katlyn asked me to make her a blanket for her to keep in her car.  She likes lots of color but no holes.  I found a granny pattern that was basically solid, she ok'ed it and we just needed to get colors picked.  she remembered she want a blanket that looked like the off air television screen...you know the one with all the stripes and colors.  Well she saw it in a book I've had for years, Debbie Stoller's The Happy Hooker.  The pattern is called the Color-Bar Blanket of course though it's done in granny squares.  I did up 2 squares in the solid pattern and then while working on my stripe blanket on the drive to Disneyland, I thought of doing solid panels just doing half double crochet all the way, to measure the same as 12 squares.  Oh goodness...no millions of ends to weave and no putting 4 1/2 squares together!  I'm a genius, ok maybe not, but I sure as heck made the blanket easier then it was going to be!  So the first panel is done now in green and the second is underway in a royal blue.  I am trying to get at least 1 row done on my Spectrum blanket in the evenings so I can see a tiny bit of progress on it but Katlyn doesn't get upset because I'm not working on her blanket :)

blanket panel

So that about covers all of the latest news I have.  Not too much but still getting things done, which is great considering how much I read daily...I'm up to 40 books read since the beginning of year. Whoop, whoop.

Listening to: The Pretender by The Foo Fighters