It's Lily!

We had our 8th Anniversary guild meeting yesterday, and we celebrated it with a workshop by Lily Chin!  She has a new book out, Crochet Tips and Tricks, and it's well worth adding to your collection!!  There are tricks to getting rid of those nasty "holes" at the ends when doing the taller stitches, how to get any swatch to "soften up", how to not worry if you have enough chains by not doing them at the start, to never sewing buttons on again!  And lots more in between. 

She has a knitting version out with the same type of tricks, too.

I had taken this class from her at the Chain Link conference in Manchester, New Hampshire last summer, and had an absolute blast.  She's a great teacher, and knows how to make the class a lot of fun.  I had as much fun in class yesterday!

Lily even signed in my book that I was a sweetie.  Shhhhh! don't tell anyone, it'll ruin my reputation!!!!  ;D

Have a nice day.  :)

I thought I was Making A Dent.....

.....but found out I didn't!!!  I had been going thru the stash cabinet lately using up yarn left and right to make things for my guild's charity drives and upcoming sales event next month.  And, WOW!, I was actually seeing some bare spots becoming visible on the shelving!  Hurray! 

But then......My hours for work recently changed, and I now have a couple hours each day of "alone" time.  I thought I would use one day wisely (HA!) and clean out my corner in the living room from all my clutter.  You know, yarns, patterns, hooks, etc.  After all "non-essentially needed NOW" items were removed and taken up to the stash cabinet, all my empty spots have disappeared!  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised as it took me three bags to cart it all upstairs!  At least my corner now has room to get cluttered up again. ;D

I bought Mary Beth Temple's new book, Hooked for Life, Adventures of a Crochet Zealot. in Rhinebeck last weekend, and found out I seem to have the same problem she does with the yarn:  lots and lots of "leftovers" that don't amount to much at all, but can't bear to throw them away!  I started laughing about that when I was loading the big bags of stuff to go up as I had two of the 2 1/2 gallon sized baggies stuffed to capacity with mini-balls.  That doesn't even count the ones that were already up  there hiding in their corners of the cabinet! (And those two baggies were being stuffed into big totes filled with other yarns for their trip up the stairs)

Guess that means I foresee some granny squares coming up soon!  (sigh)  I think I'll have to look around for some really pretty "other" squares.  :D

Have a nice day! :)

First Commissioned Hat Sale!

Ok, now I've some pictures of the hat and scarf set I made from my Reversible Strands for Men (and Women, too!) pattern.  I should amend that to say hat pattern, since I just made up the scarf to go with the hat..... There is a problem with the pictures, though.  The picture makes them look like black and a reddish whatever color.  I tried with the flash on and with it off.  Neither seemed to really make much difference color-wise. Nothing could be further from the truth!  They're really black and "Magenta"!  Guess that's where the red comes from, eh?  ;D  Tell me what you think the color looks like!

I'm having some troubles with the pics again.  Eeesh!  I load some up and the bottom half is almost like a colorized negative!  Someone a lot smarter than I with electronics might know the reasons why.........but it's sure not me!

So.... this picture is not as "red" as the others I tried to load up, but it's still not very Magenta-ish.  I used Vanna's Choice for this project because the magenta is the color that was specified to go with black, and this was the closest I could find.  Most of the yarns I looked at were more fall-toned. 

So this second picture is closer to the "true" color, but I found out that you really don't want to be taking pictures on a moving train if you're trying to add to your portfolio!  lol  It's a tad blurry.  Ah well, ran out of time and it needed to be done. 

But no matter, the lady who bought this set is really happy with it, and I don't think she really cares how well my pictures do or don't turn out!  lol

Guess now I'll need to write up the matching scarf pattern to go with the hat!

Have a nice day!  :D

Updates

Well so far I've added some pictures to the My Designs section of the Photo Gallery.  I'm sure you've seen most of those, but............now they're in "easy reach".  lol

Here's one of the pictures I tried loading on an earlier post.  This time it worked!  Don't ask me why!!!! This scarf was inspired by Lisa Naskrent's Stonehenge hat pattern.  I made the hat and decided to make a scarf to go along with it for a combination of 60 Scarves in 60 Days Challenge, and for the Salvation Army drive my guild is doing.

It's Rhinebeck weekend!  Whoot, whoot!  I'll be going up on Sunday with some friends and hope to meet up with some others there.  I have to remember to get Jalapeno Sunrise ready to meet it's yarn makers too!  The Dye Dreams ladies will be in building 26  selling their great yarns.  I'm excited about them seeing the jacket.  I had originally bought only enough yarn to make a small shruggie.  But it grew.  And grew.  It didn't want to stay that size.  It turned into a jacket, and I needed yarn HELP.  Mona and Stephanie were great.  They were able to find me the extra skeins I needed in the same dye lots both times I had to go back saying "I need more!"

I've also got my first commissioned hat and scarf set, using my Reversible Strands for Men hat pattern.  Guess now I'll have to write up the pattern I made for the scarf to go along with it!  lol  I'll get some pics posted when the set is completed.

I did not meet my goal of turning in a total of 14 hat and scarf sets when I went to my guild meeting last Sunday.  Sigh.  I had already turned in 4 sets, and I added only 3 more last weekend.  I did have two more sets with me, but I didn't get them finished in time.  They needed odds and ends done to them like ENDS weaved in, etc.  But I did finish a complete baby layette set for the Crochet Sale on Nov. 19 at Danbury Hospital while I was there.  It turned out really cute with a blanket done in a double-sided pattern Margaret Hubert showed us at a workshop and will her new book, Complete Photo Guide to Crochet, coming out soon.

SO.....if I plan on getting anything else done today, guess I'd better get cracking!  Have a good day! :D

How Did October Get Here Soooo Fast?!

 (edited to get the pictures added...finally!)

 Here it is, the first of October already!  Who said the planet could start spinning so much faster than usual so these days fly by so quickly!!!  Eeek!

My scarf count so far for the 60 Scarves in 60 Days challengeis up to a total of 9.  I turned in four of them at last month's guild meeting, and I hope to have 5 more to add the five still here. That would give me a total of 14. My fingers are crossed.  And my wrists are starting to hurt.  I really do not like using my "everyday" set of larger sized hooks since they're plastic, and seem to have a problem sliding thru the yarn easily!  But since I get most of my yarning done away from home, I really don't want to take my fancies with me for fear of breaking or losing them.  Can't replace my Graydogs anymore!  Boohoo! 

The purple scarf is Dee Stanziano's Tumbling Clusters Autumn Scarf pattern.  Veerrryy nice!!!!  :D

 And now that October is here, that means it's time to gear up for RHINEBECK!!!  It runs from October 17th & 18th; Saturday 9AM-6PM, Sunday 10AM-5PM.  I have to take my Jalapeno Sunrise jacket with me too, because DyeDreamswill be up there vending and really want to see it up close and personal!  And I hoping to pick up some more of their YUMMY 50/50 merino wool/tencel yarn.  Well worth it!  Crochet stitches show up beautifully with this yarn, it's soft and easy to work with, and it gets even softer after a washing!  That was the one thing that really surprised me about this yarn.

Have a good night.  :)