Year of Projects Round-Up (2018-2019)

It's time for another Year of Projects round-up!   It is so satisfying to look back over a year of making and take stock of the variety of handcrafts I have seen to completion.

I discovered the pleasure of crocheting doilies and mandalas:

And while working with thread, I discovered some bookmark patterns that are quick and satisfying: 

Speaking of quick and satisfying, who doesn't love the quick gratification of small projects?

Looking back over the last 12 months, I'm reminded that this YOP year is when I learned to knit hats:

And continued to crochet some favorite hat patterns, too:

I also continued knitting and crocheting scarves.  BTW, the scarves below and the hats above were mostly made for gifts and charity.  I thought I'd mention that just in case anyone wonders if I wear all these.  😉

 

On a non-yarny note, I finished my first embroidered pillowcases with a crocheted edging.  Now, these are for me!

And finally...  a yearly look at projects made would not be complete without a round up of all the blankets crocheted.

There were baby blankets:

Some larger blankets:

And two special-to-me Spicier Life Blankets that represent many hours each of crocheting and sewing in ends.  

Oh, the ENDS!

And that, dear reader, is the end 

of this past Year of Projects!  

Thank you for coming along with me 

on this look back over the last twelve months.  

It's all squares this week...

June has been a slow yarn month for me and I don't know that this coming week will be much different.  

It's been a good month - doing good things (for myself and others).  Some new things have presented themselves.   Some things I've written about, some I've not.  While I know part of the reason I've lagged in interest in working with yarn is due to busyness, I also know I've lost some steam for some reason.   But then I've also been reading more and that kind of interferes with holding a hook and yarn.  😉  Hopefully this lag I'm in will change, or I'll figure it out and recalibrate.  At the moment, I'm feeling a bit rudderless.  It's weird.

All that said, though, earlier this week I managed to get all those crazy ends woven in on my BAMCAL square.  It's not going to require a hard blocking, so softly steaming this Flying Colors square is going to suffice for now (maybe forever):

Not my favorite square (because of my color choices and placements),

 but it will make a decent contribution to a larger blanket someday.

~~~~~

Even though I haven't crocheted much this month, my knitting needles have continually had a dishcloth on them.  While it seems pretty uninspiring to report, over the course of the last three weeks I turned this (and some other odds and ends):

Into this:

~~~~~

Now, if you're like me, when making dishcloths, you end up with lots of little odds and ends of cotton yarn left over.  Sometimes those odds and ends are too small to do much with, but I got to looking at some bags of these leftover bits of cotton yarn and I wondered how it would work to splice some of the yarns together into "magic balls" and make more cloths from them.

Playing it safe, I pulled together two different, but coordinating variegated yarns and did a braided join. 

Here's a picture that shows what that braided join looks like:

Basically, you take two ends of two different yarns, loop them around each other, split each into two sections (doesn't matter how many plies are in a section).  Then braid each side (the three sections of the braid will be the two split sections from one strand of yarn, and one whole strand of yarn).   Do this braiding on both sides of where you looped the yarns together and then wind it into one ball.  Then just keep adding different yarns and colors to a ball until it's the size you want.  Those stringy ends can get snipped off once you've knit or crocheted your item together (I made a little knot of those stringy ends before snipping, but I doubt it's necessary).  

If you want the braided section to more completely blend in, do this braiding at a section in each yarn where the color is as similar as possible.

Anyway...  I knitted up my magic ball and this is what I got:

Kind of cool, I think.  Definitely fun to watch it grow as I knit.  It would probably be even more fun if I combined more disparate colors into one "magic ball".   😀

Oh my goodness...  after posting I decided to look to see how others might do a braided join.  I found this video!  I like her method even better than what I came up with.  

While some may think the braiding isn't worth the effort, to me it was a small thing I could do while my mind was on something else, or my ears were tuned into something completely unrelated to what I was doing with my hands.  And when the item is finished there are no ends to weave in!  Magic!  😃

I'm starting to pull together other scraps of yarn to do this with (and regretting all that I've thrown away over the years).  I suspect variegated or a combination of solids and variegated will work the best with this.  I look forward to finding out.  

And that, dear reader, is all I've got!

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  47.06/100 skeins!

Taking stock...

This third Sunday of June, I'm taking stock of some projects I'd like to finish - or at least make more headway on before beginning a new YOP year on July 1st.

There is truly no reason at all that I cannot finish this Fairly Isleish Sweater:

 Seriously, girl!  Just apply yourself to finishing this already!

And maybe even this Blue Tit Cushion:

And this Flying Colors square I made (and almost finished) yesterday - its sole purpose being to distract me from the projects I ought to finish:

I'm on the last round.

So close, and yet...  soooo far!  😧

That's all I've got!   

Another post that almost wasn't...

The title of this post is starting to make a regular appearance.  Not sure what that means, but somehow I always seem to muster the motivation to make another post!  A post that almost wasn't.

It was a week that started off not so good.  But fortunately improved...

On Monday I found I had done something to my back (though I don't know what) and by evening all I could manage to do was sit with a heating pad, knit some simple dishcloths or watch Netflix.  I can't do both at the same time anymore, unfortunately.

BTW, I recommend the Ken Burns documentary on The Mayo Clinic,  the movie called The Sapphires...  and something else I can't remember the title of, but it was a documentary about Industrial Musicals.  Hilarious!  And very interesting - to me, anyway.

By Tuesday morning my back was no better and I had to cancel my ESL session.  By Tuesday afternoon I was starting to improve (meaning I could move without yelping), and was bored out of my skull so I finally got out my crochet hook and cotton yarn and started making a Market Bag:

Wednesday I was actually feeling okay enough to meet a friend for a walk.  Walking was probably  good for my back because it was all uphill from there.

Thursday I did grocery shopping.  Whee!

Friday was interesting.  A young friend (actually a daughter of long-time friends) had a booth at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival near my home.  I offered to come over for a while to give her a break.  She welcomed the offer and it was fun seeing her adorable crocheted cacti.  I didn't think to take my camera with me, but here is her Etsy shop:  Handmade By A Friend.   Seriously, though...  I wish I'd had a camera.  She is so clever in her presentation of these fun items and, while most are smaller than they may look in the pictures, they look better in person.  Each one unique.  And she had some terrific containers for the cacti she showed in her both.

I spent some time wandering through the vendor hall, and my first time through I bought a little rug-hooking kit.  Little is the operative word.  This little kit is supposed to make a finished project the size of a postcard.  I'm wishing I hadn't bought that, in all honesty, but it looked so fun at the time.  Ugh.  Why is it so easy to impulse buy things  like that?

And the second time through I bought some yarn:

I like the color, and I imagine it will make something pretty and soft one of these days, but it was an impulse buy, too.  Kind of wishing now I hadn't bought it either, but at least it was on sale.  On clearance, in fact.  I wonder why???

Anyway... impulse buys aside, the Fiber Festival was a pleasant way to spend a few hours.  While it seemed improved in some ways from when I attended a couple of years ago,  I do wish there were more vendors. 

Saturday I worked with Ruth (companion care).  And shortly before lunch the power went out.  I heard a loud boom and then we were sitting in the dark.  The power was on at my house, so we got in the car and drove there for lunch and an activity I had planned for us to do together.  Later in the day I ran the sound board for Sunday's worship team's practice.  All in all, another pleasant day.  And my back was still more improved.

And then there was today.  A rainy day, but a lovely day in many respects.  Church was very good, the music was great😉, the sermon was convicting, and then we enjoyed lunch out with friends where we shared good food and laughter. 

And that was my week.  Three more YOP weeks left this year!   Check out what other YOPers are up to by visiting our group on Ravelry.

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  44.06/100 skeins!

A finish. And some frustrations...

I've got a finish!   I drug my heels a ridiculously long time on this small Bertie Blanket, but I'm happy to say it's done and I'm sure I'll make more (I already have colors picked out for another one).   

I intended to make a more interesting border, but with the variegated yarn nothing I tried looked quite right, so it got a simple single crochet border.  And I decided that's good enough.  

~~~~~

Now.  As you look at the next picture - of my partridge in a pear tree cross stitch - you may ask yourself "why does this look different than it did before?"   

It's a sad and too-long-to-tell-here story, but it involved not being one bit happy with the back-stitched feather detail and the only way to redo it was to rip out all the main color on the wings.  At which point I decided to try another color, which I like just fine, but now I'm afraid to try any more back-stitching on it.  On paper, in the small picture the feather detail looks okay.  In real life it really doesn't.  And without any feather detail, the points and curves in the red sections don't make much sense.   

So I'm not sure what to do with this.  Does it look okay to just leave it like it is?  I've considered lightly drawing some shading on the thread, but I could seriously mess that up and then I'm right back to my only option being to rip it out again.  And I just can't imagine doing that again.  

I'm okay with the thing as a whole, but the wings have me flummoxed and discouraged.   I've put it aside to think about before stitching it into a small pillow, or just tossing it in the circular file and calling it a "learning experience".   

Ideas are welcome.

~~~~~

You'd think that would be enough disappointment, wouldn't you?  Well, after putting my partridge aside, I  decided to get out the Evenweave fabric I bought recently at Jo-Ann Fabrics and start another project.  But after I stitched half a small project I realized that the weave of the fabric is not even.  Unfortunately, it took some stitching before I could see the distortion.  Ugh.  I'd show a picture, but I ripped it out before that occurred to me.   An online search netted me some reviews that told me I'm not the only one who's had this experience with this no-company-name-on-the-label product sold at Jo-Ann's.  Be forewarned.  Don't buy it!

I'm returning two unopened packages this week, but this was a disappointment.   Between my partridge's wings and the Evenweave that isn't even,  I lost my steam to do any other cross stitching the rest of the week.    

~~~~~

All that aside, though, it was a busy and interesting week - most of which I can't really write about here.  But a fun part of last week was visiting with my husband's Uncle Art and his wife, Beth, who traveled east from California for various family events.  It was a sweet time spent with them on Thursday evening.

Also this past week, I donated a couple of kitchen-sized garbage bags full of yarn to a fund-raiser rummage sale, but don't go patting me on the back.  Midweek I bought more yarn when an online retailer was offering free shipping and they had in stock some yarn in a color I've been trying to get ahold of.  I don't feel badly at all about that purchase, but as soon as it arrives and I log it into my Ravelry inventory, my stash-busting numbers (recorded below) are going to take a serious reversal.  

So, while at the end of June it will probably only appear that I'm inching toward my goal, today I take pleasure in seeing a number that makes it look like I've made some significant progress toward reducing my stash by 100 (or more) skeins of yarn this year.  

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  58.04/100 skeins!

One last thing.  Last week I forgot to mention any dishcloths knitted up during May.  Probably because I didn't do much.  I made a whopping three cloths:  

Small things...

This week I've been working on several projects, but everything is still in WIP status.

The thing that got the most attention is still my cross stitch.  The partridge is basically done, though some back-stitching is needed to define the wings a bit. I just need to decide on or buy the right color floss for that.  I also need to not forget to give that bird an eye!

~~~~~

Besides time spent on cross stitch, I also worked on some small crochet projects (that were Crochet-A-Longs in Our Happy CAL Place).

First, were a couple of bookmarks crocheted with thread:

These take me back - to the 1970's to be precise.  

Gotta love granny stitches and fringe.  Though I felt compelled to braid my fringe...

Because I was feeling all retro, I tried use colors that reflected the 1970's (and that I had in my stash).  I love these and think they would look fun made in more modern colors, too.  I'm sure I'll be making more before I've gotten these out of my system.  They'd make great little gifts to have on hand to maybe tuck inside a card  - or a book, of course.  But these two are for me.  😊

~~~~~

Mid-week I realized I was going to need to host a CAL on OHCP, so I picked a quick-ish project that I've been wanting to try.  Scalloped Edge Hanger Covers:

Now, I'm not one who previously thought I'd crochet hanger covers, but ever since I saw these on Ravelry, I've been curious about them.   Who doesn't have at least a few garments that are prone to slipping off the hanger?  I thought I'd find out if this is a way to resolve that issue.

I'm happy to say, Yes!  These crocheted hanger covers are a total success.  The cuteness factor of the scallops is honestly what convinced me to give these a try, even though the scallops add not one bit of purpose to the non-slip factor.  

To be completely honest, the whole thing is a bit fiddly to make, but I think I'll make at least a few more.  If you're at all interested, I seriously recommend watching this video (of Mikey from Crochet Crowd) to walk you through it. It explains how to start the crocheting - something I was struggling with before watching the video.

I'll go ahead and explain that in following the video, one will end up with a piece of yarn across the front of the hanger - like this: 

 At first that was off-putting to me, but then it occurred to me (or maybe Mikey mentioned?) that that piece of yarn is a great place to  thread a ribbon:

So that's what I did, and then tied it into a bow.  While I'd use a bit thinner ribbon if I had it handy, I have to say I think my wide brown ribbon is kind of cute on my new pink hanger in the first hanger picture above.  😉

~~~~~

I also did some crocheting on my Bertie Baby Blanket, and I'm sooo close to being finished.   I'll hold off with a picture because until I add the border, there's really nothing different about it (from the first picture I showed weeks ago) except that it's larger.  Hopefully, next week I'll be able to check that off my WIP list.

~~~~~

And finally, I am going to join the chorus of voices that are amazed that another YOP year is nearly over.  While some YOPers begin their YOP year in January, July 1st is the traditional start date of each new YOP year.   I mention this in case anyone reading has been considering joining the fun.  July 1st is a great time to jump in.  All that is needed is a blog, a free Ravelry membership, and the desire to join the Year Of Projects group and share progress on projects throughout the year.   Check us out here!

Starting things...

Recently I seem to be about starting things.  

Hopefully, soon, I'll be about finishing them. 😉

Shortly after posting last week's YOP post I started on this Blue Tit Cushion:

See the legs and the tip of its tail?  This is a fun project and I hope it doesn't take me long to finish it, but honestly...  I've gotten seriously distracted with cross stitch this week.  Last week Jo-Ann Fabrics had a coupon for 40% off everything that was full price and I just couldn't let it go to waste.  So I made a list of several cross stitch projects I'd like to make, surveyed my collection of floss and fabric that was already in my possession, and made a list for some cross stitch supplies to purchase.

I came home with some Aida and Evenweave cloth in natural colors (I only had white and cream in my stash), and some beautiful floss colors.  Finally having everything I needed, on Thursday I got started on this Partridge in a Pear Tree design:

I like the original design (in the little oval picture frame), but see what looks like gray in the wings in the original design?  What appears to be gray in the original is actually two shades of blue - lighter shades than what is used on the head and underbelly.  I liked the gray.  And I didn't want my partridge to have country-blue wings.  So I'm substituting a couple of colors I had in my stash, and so far I think it's working.   I'm committed at this point, so I'm pretty determined to like it.  Hopefully I'll finish it soon.

~~~~~

And finally... feeling a little regretful that I hadn't even picked up my crochet hook since last weekend, I quickly made a little Sun's Out Coaster:

I've been keeping a crocheted coaster on the computer desk, so this will be a fun one to switch to once it heats up.  Wait a minute...  that would be now!   This is the third day in a row it's been in the 80's here.  And it's humid.  Hopefully, we'll get rain today as the weather pattern pushes through and there'll be some cooler air behind that.  I am not ready for 80 degrees in mid-May.  Come Memorial Day we can expect that kind of heat, but I want me some breezy crisp mornings for another week at least!

To see what other YOPers are up to, 

visit our group on Ravelry.

My first pillowcases are finished!

After pulling out my floss and various unfinished projects last week I set my mind to finishing up the pillowcases that I had started...I don't even remember when.  Well over a year ago, I'm sure.  

It's a similar pattern to something I remember embroidering when I was young and once I got back to them I enjoyed the nostalgia factor as I worked on them.  I'm so happy with how they turned out.

These pillowcases had a serged edge and attaching a crocheted border to them is done differently from how one would attach a crocheted border to say, a deeply hemmed pillowcase.  I referred to this example to get me started, but then created my own lacey crocheted edging.  I've written down the pattern for the border and have shared it below. 

I found it helpful to have a mark at each spot where I needed to punch through the fabric with a crochet hook to make the single crochet base.  I found this Dritz Marking Pen at Walmart and it worked great:

You can barely see the small dots I made on the fabric, but I think the picture shows what I did with the marker.  And the disappearing ink truly does disappear within about 24 hours.  

Let me say, even though my little marks were uneven in relationship to the edge of the pillowcase, they still were very helpful in my keeping some consistency in where I made these stitches.  That said, I'm not sure how important true consistency is when doing this foundation row.   It's just not the part that anyone is likely to focus on once there is a pretty border to look at.

So here's the pattern I created: 

Simple Crochet Pillowcase Border

The following stitches were used:

chain (ch) 
slip stitch (sl st) 
single crochet (sc) 
double crochet (dc) 
picot (sc, chain 3, sc into the front/bottom of original sc, sc)

Rnd 1: Using a 1.0 mm (or smaller) steel hook (to punch through the fabric), crochet sc’s all around the edge of a pillowcase that has been serged or rolled and hemmed. Join first sc with a sl st.

At this point I changed to a size 1.5 mm hook (because it’s easier to crochet size 10 thread with).

Rnd 2: Ch 3, dc into same first stitch (this creates a “v” shape); skip next 2 stitches; *dc, ch-1, dc in next stitch, skip next 2 stitches*; repeat * to * around and join to top of beginning ch-3 with sl st. If fudging is required, so be it. It will not show.

Rnd 3: Sl st to first ch-1 space. Ch 1, *picot into ch space; 5 dc’s in next ch-1 space*. Repeat * to * around. Join to first sc with sl st. Again, if fudging is required it won’t show once the pillowcase is finished, and definitely won't be obvious once it is laundered.

~~~~

Some things I feel are worth noting:   

My pillowcase was a blend of polyester and cotton.  So I did not expect it to shrink much at all when laundering it.  The thread I used to crochet the edging was 100% cotton.  I did expect it to shrink somewhat.  

As I crocheted the edging, it produced a little bit of flare.  One way to minimize that was to skip three (instead of 2) stitches occasionally in Rnd 2.  But mostly I decided to not worry about it and trust that the process of machine washing and drying would shrink the cotton thread a bit and the flare would reduce.  And it did.  Perfectly, I thought.  

So my thoughts about this (if using 100% cotton thread and a synthetic/cotton blend pillowcase):  a fair amount of flare is acceptable, but if it gets too ruffly, adjustments should be made while crocheting to tone it down a bit (unless you like a ruffly edge, of course).  It's all subjective, but I hope mentioning this helps someone else not to worry about it much if they give this crocheted edging a try and they see it start to flare out.  

If you work with acrylic yarn or a 100% cotton pillowcase you'll have different issues of shrinkage.  Just be aware of what you're working with it and accommodate it.  

Please let me know if the pattern written above doesn't make sense anywhere.  I think this may be the first time I've tried to write a pattern down.

And that's all there is to it.  The first round of sc's (punching the hook through the fabric) was the hardest part - and I'll make no bones about it, it was tedious.  But after that round it was kind of fun.

And I just love how it turned out!

To see what other YOPers are up to 

visit our group on Ravelry

And finally...

I hope all who celebrated had a 

Happy Mother's Day!