Crackpot Quilters’ Blog

by Nancy

I decided the other day that I want to make some crochet snowflakes to hang up in my classroom.  Since I’m going to be hanging them up, I need to stiffen them.  A little internet research revealed that there are quite a few methods for stiffening crochet.  I decided to go with the equal parts craft glue and water solution.  Here are my first two snowflakes (though the first is more of a star), blocked and drying on a foam tile.  The free pattern for the snowflake on the right can be found here.

by Nancy

On the crackpotty crochet front, my current project is these crochet mandalas:

They’re from a pattern by Lucy of Attic 24, one of my favorite crochet blogs. She warns that mandala making can be addictive, and she’s right!  I had a great time making the first purple one, just picking the colors as I went along.  Then, I made the middle one by reversing locations of the purple and yellow.  I liked the purple one best, so I made another in that color pattern.  My plan is to hang them somewhere in my classroom at school.

by Nancy

Here is my finished Crackpotty Project!  I am so pleased with it.  It’s a weekly meal and activities organizer.  There are little clothes pins on the sides for each day’s dinner and activities.  I made two little pockets out of cardstock to hold the extra meal and activities cards.  I’m very happy with how it turned out.  Now I just need to clean and organize the kitchen this week so that it looks as good as the organizer!

by Nancy

School’s out!  My plans for the summer include running, sewing, and (I’ve warned my family about this one) cleaning and organizing my house.  Next week I’ll be tackling the kitchen.  To that end, I started a crackpotty project today.  It involved some very enjoyable time spent at Hobby Lobby obtaining supplies: scrapbooking paper, cardstock, paint, stickers, and a picture frame.  The plan is to make a menu planning and activity organizing board inspired by something  I saw on Pinterest.  So far painting the mini clothes pins has been fun!  More updates as I make progress.

by Nancy

As some of you may know, March 14 (3-14) is Pi Day. We were on spring break that day, so when we returned to school on March 18, we held a belated Pi Day celebration in my Challenge Math group. Among the activities were writing about pi, making pi bracelets,

making circular pi collages,

and doing math problems involving pi. The kids had a great time, and because of special schedules and shortened classes due to state-wide reading testing, we ended up having almost an entire pi week. Lots of fun!

by Nancy

How did I not notice before now??? That’s what I keep asking myself. I was getting ready for the next-to-last step on my Granny Square Crochet Vest when I noticed this enormous problem:

The front pieces, one of which you see above on the left, are not the same height as the back piece, seen on the right. This is very, very bad. And somehow I managed not to notice until now. I looked back at the instructions and determined that yes, indeed, I had followed them and they are wrong. They instruct you to make the front pieces 6 squares tall and the back piece 8 squares tall, and that is exactly what I did. Not only that, but I was very disciplined about weaving in my ends as I went, so it’s even harder to disconnect the back squares from each other. Sigh. This is kind of how my week has been in a nutshell.

So, while watching gymnastics on TV this afternoon, I took the first steps in the undoing process for the back. I don’t think it will be finished any time soon. At least the front two pieces match each other…

by Nancy

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m not entirely satisfied with the start of my Granny Stripes blanket.  So, I started looking around for some other possibilities.  First, I tried this Ripple Pattern:

Very nice!  Next, I tried Granny Stripes:

Also very nice!

I really liked the combination of granny squares and ripples in the Granny Stripes blanket, and about this time I found this on Pinterest (which, by the way, can be highly addictive):

I absolutely love this!!! Aren’t the colors amazing? I tried finding the source but couldn’t come up with anything. So, I used it for inspiration and came up with this:

This just might be what I’m looking for…

by Nancy

Hmmm. That’s what I’m thinking at the moment. About a month ago I started crocheting this blanket:

I really like the colors I’m using:

I like the granny squares and the ripples

But I’m not sure I like the alternating between the granny squares and the ripples. I think I might like a blanket that is all ripples in the center with granny squares on both ends. But, that leads me to the other thing I don’t like:

The asymmetry. If you look closely at the second picture in my post, you’ll notice that the granny square rows have a half granny square at one end or the other in order for the ripples to line up correctly. I don’t really like this. The asymmetry just bothers me. And I don’t see a good way to do a ripple blanket with a row of granny squares on each end without the half granny squares. So, the question is what to do now. I don’t think I like what I’ve got so far well enough to do it for a whole blanket. But I don’t think I’m ready to give up on it completely, either. So, I think I’ll be browsing Ravelry and other sources of crochet patterns to see if I can find anything similar which I like better. Sigh.