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