Monday Morning

Goodmorning,
 I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mine was very relaxing. I spent the four days off puttering around the house, organizing the basement, cooking and working on Christmas presents. Boring to some but, my favorite way to spend a weekend.
 I made a few things this weekend. I am making blankets for all four of the babies in my nursery, this is the second one I have finished.

I am also making gifts for the girls that help me in my room. This scarf is a fun project and took about an hour to make. The hook is huge, P 15, and the yarn is Super Bulky, a 6.

The hat is 8 hdc in a sliding ring and then increase until you get it big enough. Then work several rows with out increases. I will write a tutorial for it and the flower. I will also write a tutorial for the blanket. I did the center differently than any patterns I could find. I don't like the foundation chain to show through, like it does on most Granny rectangles. The solution was simple but, still took me a little while to figure out.
 Back to work today. I am ready, we are now officially in Christmas season, I am at least. Lol. I love this time of the year so much. I already decorated my house, I will post photos. My camera is charging and it is still dark anyway. Four short weeks until Christmas week. I love it. I still have a lot of things to finish making but, I love that too.
 I will talk to everyone later. Hope you have a great day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello,
 I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday. I am very thankful this year. The last week has had a lot of things happening in our family. My husband and my sister in law both totaled their cars, on the same night. Both are ok. My father in law stopped breathing and his heart stopped. The first responders brought him back, thank God. He went on a ventilator and was in ICU for a couple of days. He is still in the hospital. He seems to be doing better. We picked up our new car yesterday and we both love it, I am thankful that we had full coverage when we didn't legally need it. I am thankful for our health and happiness. I am thankful for my job. I love the little babies I work with and I love my co-workers. Everyone there has been so supportive of me and my family through all the crazy things we have gone through in the last few months. So, yes, I am very thankful this year.
 Today Autumn and I will clean the house top to bottom and then decorate for Christmas. We started to do that when she was two. My husband always works on Thanksgiving, that way he doesn't have to work on Christmas. We had our Thanksgiving meal last night and today will be all about baking and decorating. I love this little tradition that Autumn and I have.
 I have stopped working on my Granny Love blanket until I am finished with all of my Christmas makes. I am very close to done with it. Just some joining of a few more squares and a border to decide on. I enjoy working on it though and put it on hold so that I wouldn't feel rushed. I had wanted to finish it by Halloween, when it wasn't quite done I put it away. I can't wait to show it to everyone. We have a week off at Christmas and I plan on finishing it then.
 Here are some of the Christmas presents I have made so far...

This was made using up some Stylecraft Lucy Pack that I had leftover from my Granny Ripple that I finished last spring. This is for one of my babies in the nursery where I work.
 This is a hat for one of my co-workers...

I hope she likes it. I made up the pattern and I think I will make another hat and write up a tutorial for it. It was easy and took about an hour and a half to make.
  This is a pattern that I saw a few days ago on Ravelry and decided we should make in our CAL/KAL group, Everything Zen. I am going to make a few of these, one for me and a couple more for gifts. It took an hour while I was having my coffee this morning.

I have three more baby blankets that are almost finished for the three other babies in my care and I have three full sized blankets that are still being worked on. I had a number of other things that I am working on too. I am enjoying all the Christmas gift making. I love to make things for people, I love to give gifts and crochet is great. For a relatively small amount of money I can give lots of gifts. I hope everyone has a special day and I will talk to everyone soon. :)

What's Been Happening Around Here

Hello,
 I have not posted since November 1. I think that may be the longest break I have taken. The month started with internet trouble. I couldn't get on the web and when I did it was so slow. It took over an hour to do my last post and it was very short. We have gotten that all sorted out. Then it was my husband's birthday and then a few days later it was my Autumn's 7th birthday. I was brave (stupid) and let her have a slumber party. It started out with 6 little girls. The two oldest went home to sleep in their own beds. I don't blame them, the rest of them didn't sleep much. We had fun though. I took the girls to the Children's Museum and then out to pizza. A wonderful girl from work came with us to help. Thank goodness for Jordan. When we came home we had cake and ice cream. I made a polka dot cake that I saw on Pinterest. It was so neat.

How cool is that? Autumn fell asleep on the couch after all the birthday celebrations, but her friends were still awake at 2:35 in the morning. I had to keep going in and telling them to go to sleep. To top it off they all woke up at 5:30 in the morning. Crazy kids. I made them breakfast and put a movie on until their parents came to collect them. I would bet that they all fell asleep by mid-afternoon. I don't regret having the party, but there won't be another slumber party for many years. Lol.
 Last week I was getting all the things that I have made ready to take photos and post. I made a really neat bag with my group on Ravelry, Everything Zen.

I made the whole thing from scraps, which makes me very happy. I love our CAL group and am very thankful to Karisma for starting it.
 I have also made a hat and finished a baby blanket since the last time I posted. I need to have someone model the hat. The pictures I took of myself just look bizarre. Like an alien with big eyes and a mushroom head. I have said it before, I have no luck at self photos. I finished the baby blanket last night and it is too dark to take a picture right now. I will get some today. I made it as a gift for one of my babies in the nursery and I used all scraps for it too. I had little odds and ends left of my Stylecraft stash, and used most of them up. My most rewarding projects to make are the ones that I use up leftover yarn for.
 I had been planning to write a post on Tuesday and catch up then two things happened. I caught the worst cold and came home and fell asleep on the couch after work. I got up and went to bed. My husband came home a few hours later and woke me up to tell me he had been in a car accident. He hit a huge buck on the Interstate. It totaled our car. The thing is, we live in the country. We are always so careful out here. Especially now during rutting season. The accident happened down in the city though. He is ok. I don't know how he didn't get hurt. The car is a complete loss. When I called the insurance company the next morning, they had already had 4 people call in with deer hits. I called at 8:02. They open at 8. Two of the girls I work with have also hit deer in the last week. It is always bad in the fall. You have to be careful, but I have never heard of so many deer hits in one season. We had to wait two days to get a rental car, they were all booked due to the number of accidents. Before we knew the car was totaled, I called all the autobody places in the area to see when we could get our car in if it could be fixed. The waiting list at all of them was until at least 26 November.

As you can see, we have been car shopping. Just to top it all off, the day after the accident, my sister in law called me to tell me she had totaled her car the night before on her way home from work. The same time that her brother was hitting the deer, she was running in to a cow. Not a good day for the Griffith siblings or the crazy animals that are running around charging cars. Everyone is ok, except the animals. Next week is Thanksgiving and this year I am more than thankful that my family is ok. That is what has been happening around here lately. I hope everyone else is having a less eventful November. I will post again tomorrow with pictures of the projects I have finished. Talk to everyone soon.

November

Yikes! It is November already. I will start working on my crazy long list of Christmas presents today. September and October went by so quickly, I couldn't keep up. I finished up the month by making another Patchwork Puppy for one of Autumn's friends. She turns 7 today and for months has been asking me to make her one like Autumn's. I used the same pattern from Crochet World magazine, but I used DK yarn instead of worsted. I used different colors too. Here it is.

It is smaller than the one I made in March, but I think I like it better.

 Last night was Halloween and Autumn went as a witch. We had a lot of fun walking around the neighborhood trick or treating. I have to say, the days of yucky, cheap candy are over. She got a huge bag of mostly chocolate. Works for me. :)

I was gong to put another photo up with her wearing the cape I crocheted for her, but it has taken over an hour to get this much of the post done. Something going on with the internet here. They told us the servers are affected by the storm on the east coast. I don't know, all I know is that I have been here for an hour trying to get this published. I couldn't even log on yesterday. I will write another post as soon as we have better service. Talk to everyone soon. Happy November.

P.S. I can't get any links on here right now either. I can't even link back to my own older posts. I will blog again when the issue clears up. Talk to everyone soon. :)

A Cowl, An Owl And A Teddy Bear

Hello,
 I hope everyone is having a good week. I have still been going kind of slow, not much running around,  and certainly no housework. He he. I am feeling a lot better though and I went back to work on Monday. I have made a few more things to show you. I finished this Bellflower Infinity Scarf that I was working on for a CAL with the group Everything Zen on Ravelry. We make all kinds of different things in that group. It is lots of fun and we have really nice people in our group. Come join us if you like. You don't have to participate in all of the CAL/KALs that we do and if you want to make something you are invited to start your own CAL/KAL. Here is the cowl.

It is for me, but she is my model.
  Autumn has had to take a backpack to school since she started kindergarten last year. We have been walking to work since April and the backpack has been bothering her. She has broken her collarbone twice and the backpack strap hurts on the side where it was broken. One day I let her carry one of my bags and she carried it like a messenger bag. She loved it and it didn't hurt her shoulder. She wanted me to make her an owl bag. She said it had to be really big. So I made her this.

The wings are also pockets. She loves it and used it yesterday.
 Today is the birthday of one of the babies in the nursery I work in. She is also the daughter of my friend, Heather. The same lady who came to help me when I hurt myself last week, she is also my boss. I love her baby. She is a funny little thing. I made her a little teddy bear to carry around and play with. I used scrap yarn and worked it up while watching a documentary last night.

Looks like I need to put a nose on it. Ha ha. Somehow I forgot that until I saw the photo. I have time before work. So, that is what I have been up to this week. I will talk to everyone soon. I still have more to show you. :)

P.S. The bear is no longer noseless.

Autumn's New Sweater

Hello,
 How is everyone doing this week? I have had the last two days off from work. Not because I wanted to, I slipped on some wet leaves on Wednesday and landed on my artificial knee. I am am going to be ok, but it was pretty scary. I dropped my phone when it happened and I couldn't get up. I tried to call my friend, who was driving away from my house, and my phone wouldn't work. Autumn helped me get inside to the computer chair. It has wheels. I got online and emailed a few people, my phone was dead and I had to get ahold of my husband. Then I got on Facebook and tagged a couple of people and asked for help. My boss, Heather, was here within minutes to help me. Whew, I was so terrified that I had broken a part of my new knee. Will came racing home and long story short, I am ok, just really sore. The upside, I have had lots of time for my hobbies. I finished Autumn's hoodie. She picked out the yarn. I wasn't sure how the yarn would look and then we had to wait almost two weeks to get one more skein to finish it. The pattern called for 1,000 yards, I used more than 1,300 yards and I checked the gauge. That kind of stuff drives me nuts. I don't live close to the yarn shop and I had even bought an extra skein just in case, but it still wasn't enough. It was worth the wait though. She wore it to school today.

 I am so proud of my little girl. She was with me when I got hurt and she was such a great little helper. She was scared but she did everything I asked her to do. We don't have a landline, I don't think very many people in the US do anymore. She was ready to go start knocking on the neighbor's doors to find me some help. Facebook is attached to email and most people have smart phones. My boss heard her phone ping and checked and saw that I had posted that I needed help and she came right over. Several people saw my post and were ready to come over. Made me feel a lot better. I am so clumsy. Made me feel like an idiot to fall like that. I really want to thank my friend, Heather Wyjack and her husband Tom, for coming right over. I admit, I was a complete emotional mess when they got here. So that is my post for the day. I had planned a different post, I need to talk about some awards that some friendly bloggers have given me. I will do that tomorrow. I also have a couple of projects that are just about done. I will talk to everyone soon. :)

Tuesday's Tallies - Granny Love Update

Hello,
 Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I am loving this fall more than most. We have our new house that I love living in. The place we were in before was always temporary, even though we lived there for two years. We have our privacy, we have nice neighbors, my daughter has two little friends that live next door. This is a good fall season for our little family.
 I have been working on my Granny Love blanket. I have around 60 more squares to go and then I am done. Whew! I have changed it considerably since the last time I posted about it. I will show the changes pretty soon. I don't want to show the whole blanket until it is done. I am close. Here are the squares I finished this week.

There are about 100 sitting here. Doesn't look like it when they are all piled up. Like I said, I made a major change to this blanket and I can't wait to show it. Pretty soon. This project is part of the One-A-Day group on Ravelry and Gingerbreadgirl hosts a link party every Tuesday. Go check out everyone's neat work. There are some really beautiful projects on the go. I will talk to everyone tomorrow. I have more things to blog about. :)