by Nancy
Here are my crochet squares for April. This is the 12″ square, called Lace Petals Square by Chris Simon.
I didn’t do the 6″ square that was chosen for April for the Crochet-Along. It looked kind of complicated and confusing, so instead, I did Centered Square by Jan Eaton from 200 Crochet Blocks. And, I crocheted them together, using the slip stitch together in the outside loops only method, described here, which I like a lot!
by Nancy
We had nice, dry weather on Saturday, so I was able to get the last plants in my garden. And here it is! It’s a 4′ by 4′ square, planted in the method described in Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. It’s a really good method for me because the soil in our yard in lousy, and I like having just a small area to plant. Today for lunch I ate a salad of spinach and lettuce harvested from the garden – delicious! In addition to spinach and two varieties of lettuce, I planted green onions, basil, several kinds of tomatoes, bell peppers, and broccoli.
by Nancy
Sorry that the second picture is somewhat blurry, and that it’s already May and I’m just now getting around to posting this, but here are my March Crochet-Along blocks. Except that I’ve decided to narrow my colors for the project down to just purple, yellow, and white, so I may re-do the yellow-pink-yellow small squares and make them purple-yellow-purple in contrast to the other yellow-purple-yellow small squares. Aah, the creative process…
(by Ann)
Ta daaaah!
The Mystery Quilt that was begun in December, 2007 was hung in the Cute Little House on March 28, 2011. A certain e-mailing spouse sent this photo and a couple of others to several hundred of his closest e-mail buddies but apparently not to all the crackpots, so here it is. Now all I have to do is decide what colors to paint the walls.
(by Cathy)
Well, the domain registrar switch seems to have gone off without a hitch, so I think we can safely continue using the blog.
I had one free hour yesterday, and another one today, so I used them to finally put the finishing touches on this project:
The photography is terrible because I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the glare from the windows, but the vibrancy of the batik print still comes through. It’s machine quilted with black thread on the top and variegated thread on the bottom, as you can see in this photo:
I still need to put a label on it and figure out how to hang it. I kind of want to do both in as minimal a way as possible, so as not to interfere with the quilting design on the back. Since it’s pretty small, I’m wondering about three small loops to hold the hanging rod, rather than a full sleeve. And I’m thinking about a very narrow strip of a label, perhaps inserted between two lines of stitching. Any other suggestions for unobtrusive label and/or hanging?
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be transferring this domain, and the other domains that I own or manage, from GoDaddy.com to a different registrar in the next few days. There’s a thing having to do with DNS propagation that has to happen in this process, so the blog may disappear for a day or so and then reappear.
Fear not! It should reappear just fine eventually. I’m not changing hosts, just registrars. I’ve been really uncomfortable with GoDaddy for a long time, but transferring domain registration is a real pain in the neck, so I’ve just held my nose and stuck with it, but they finally went over the line recently and I’m moving to a different company. Wish me luck!
by Nancy
About a month ago I was getting bored with our plain blue and maroon placemats. Christmas was past but it was too early for flower placemats, so I decided to make some kite placemats for windy March days. The kite is a paper piecing pattern from the 2010 Project Linus quilt. Some of you may recognize the kite fabrics from James’ quilt. I am pleased to say that no fabric was purchased for the making of these placemats. 🙂
Remember the Midwestern Blizzard of February 1 and 2, 2011? What would you have done in that blizzard?
What would you have done if you opened your front door on February 2 to find this?
Or if you pushed the snow off your back steps and looked across your courtyard toward your garage and found this?
Or if you trudged around the block and into your garage and opened the door to look across your courtyard from the other direction and you saw this?
If there were snowdrifts taller than you, what would you do? If you were She Who Shall Not Be Named, you’d get your snow shovel and twenty (20) minutes later you’d see this:
And this:
Her name must be Superwoman!
And if you were the mother of Superwoman, what would you do? You’d print the photos on fabric and make them into a wall hanging for Superwoman’s birthday present.
Happy Birthday, Superwoman!
by Nancy
Here are my afghan squares for February:
They were fun to do, and I did some stitches for the first time: picots and popcorns. I really like how the smaller 6″ squares turned out. Now I’m working on my March squares – I’ll post them soon…
by Nancy
I’m very happy to report that I have finally found a way I like to connect the squares in my crochet scarf! For those who are interested, I am single crocheting the squares together, working in the back loop only of one square and the top loop only of the other square. This will be the back of the scarf. I’m using navy yarn to connect the squares. You can see how it looks in this picture:
The front of the scarf looks more plain, which is what I wanted to achieve. Here is a close-up of that:
Now that I finally like my joining method, it’s going pretty quickly and is not as monotonous as I feared it might be. Yay! I currently have 16 rows done. The pattern calls for 20 rows, but I may do a few extras so the scarf is a little longer.
