July's CGOA Conference

I'm so excited!! It's almost time to go to "summer camp" for a week!  The class list for this year's CGOA Conference came out a couple of days ago for preview.  And I did, I did!!!  I have my schedule all picked out!  Do you?!  ;-D

My "roomie" and I decided we were going to see if we could get into our hotel room a day earlier than we had reserved for, and so far, it's a go!  So instead of leaving at 5am and hurrying to get there in time for Professional Day, we'll be having a nice, sedate road trip.  (Hey Roomie, you ARE aware we're taking turns driving, aren't you?  You won't be the only one to be stitching on the way up!  or back!  lol)

Two members of my crochet guild chapter will be teaching at the conference this year!  Congratulations to Dee Stanziano and Margaret Hubert !  Dee will be teaching some basic crochet classes, how to crochet backwards, how to "Crochet Your Knits", and how to do finger crochet.  Margaret will be teaching classes on free-form, embellishments, meshing, and "Beyond Scarves".  I hope you ladies will be able find time for a class or two!!  And are able to stay up for the dinner and fashion shows!!!  :D 

As for my sock from my Sunday Lesson, yes, Priscilla, I am ready for my first heel!!  But I didn't get as far as I wanted to today on my second sock, so I'll be playing catch-up tomorrow.  But by the time we have our next chapter meeting, both will be ready for heels!  Hey, don't blame me if you're a good teacher!  ;-D

Have a good night.  :)

Sock Sunday

Well, I did it.  I learned how to use double point needles this past Sunday!  LOL  I had invited 3 of the women from my crochet group over the house to have a knitting lesson.  Priscilla was the brave one to do the teaching!!!  :-)  The other two ladies and I just nodded and said uh-huh in strategic spots.  Not really!  Priscilla did an excellent job showing us newbies what we needed to do to learn how to start a sock with the closed toe method.  You really need 3 pair of hands to get started!  We had a good time laughing and muttering until we all finally got a few rows away from the beginning.  I was the dumb one.  I decided to use some sock yarn I found in my stash.  The rest were using w/w yarn.  I think that was the wisest choice to start learning this with!!!!

We had a good time laughing, chatting and joking with Hubby when he came to take a look at our progress.  "What is it?" says he,  "Can't you tell?  It's a sock!", says we.  (we weren't very far at all at this point!  lol)  We also ate a lot of fresh fruit and veggies, along with chips, dip and salsa in between rows.  Yum, yum.  I had to start my sock over again.  I had a hole.  I frogged back to the hole.  I fixed the hole.  I re-worked what I frogged.  Only to find out I had somehow or another gotten the needles backwards from where they should have been.  We started with 12 stitches on each needle, and needed to increase to a total of 20 stitches on each needle before starting to work even.  By the time everyone was ready to go home, I was back to 18/needle.  Everyone else was done with their increases.  After they left, I was talking to my mom, Hubby and Missyboo, and again, I had to start over.  This time I wasn't paying attention to my increase rows.  I went 6 rows with no increase at all!!  Arrgh!  Crochet is sooooo much easier to do!  (think it has anything to do with experience????) I don't think it was going to fit over the toes very well that way!  lol

But I took it to work with me today.  Priscilla, I'm ready for my heel now!!!!  At least on one sock!  Maybe I'll get the second one up to the same point before we do the heel lesson.  Or....maybe not!

Have a good night.  :)

Busy, busy weeks!

I will be sooo happy when April gets here!  Then I will be officially done with being Cookie Mom for Missyboo's Brownie Troop!  I will be picking up over 1000 boxes of cookies, then dividing them up to each individual girl!  Good thing we had put an addition on the house!  lol

Besides doing the cookie thing, I've made up 10 more chemo hats for my crochet club and a couple of preemie blankets.  Now I need to get the matching booties and hats done for the blankets! 

One of the groups I belong to on Ravelry had a thread going about how most people that don't crochet seem to think it's still stuck in the 70's.  So I made a 70's throwback beanie hat as a joke for a "daughter's revenge" for the goofy granny vests I had to wear back then.  I just posted it the other day and it's already been favorited!  Boy was I surprised that someone actually liked it, and so fast, too!  I'll have to see if I can get the pic posted here.  Every time I look at it I start laughing and saying EEEWWWW! to myself.  And I made it!  LOL

      I also found out this week that I received the "Set My Picot Free" award from the Crochet Liberation Front this past week for one of the sweaters I had posted some pictures of.  I was so surprised about that!!!!  That was soo cool!!!!!  To have one of mine singled out from all the fantastic projects available to look and see, and drool over, and to oohh and aaahh.                        

I also just finished up a cape for Missyboo to wear around the house when she gets chilly instead of dragging her blanket all around.  She gets tired of me telling her to put on a sweater if she's cold.  So far it seems to be working pretty well for her today!  She's wearing it right now over sleeveless nightie.  I guess she's ready for bed shortly!  lol

It also got me to thinking that with just a bit of tweaking, it could possibly be a child/adult size kind of thing all in one garment.  Hmmm....gonna have to play around with that a bit!  I've already been informed tho that I need to get my own yarn for that, because she's not giving the cape back now!

I'm looking forward to this Sunday, too.  Three of the ladies from my crochet club are coming over to my house for an informal knitting lesson.  I had inherited a few sets of double pointed needles and regular straight pointy sticks.  I can use the sticks, but have no clue how to use the dp's.  My aunt had shown me years ago, but that got lost in the Swiss cheese memory holes in my head.  Should be a fun time.  I think we're going to be doing a sock pattern.  I actually found some sock yarn in my stash, so that would be a good thing ~ make room for a fresh supply!  :D

Well, let me play around to see if I can get the pics loaded here, then it's time to fix up supper for the two of us.  Missyboo and I went to Wendy's last night for supper while Hubby was working.  So we surprised him with a chili.  It smelled so gooood in the car that I think I'm going to be making some this weekend!

Have a good night.  :)

Learning New Stitches

It was my Sunday go to meeting for crocheting yesterday.  I had a lot of fun this time! I have fun each time I go, but this time just felt happier for some reason.  We had three new people sign up to be members, and one was a crochet author.  She had autographed one of her books for a "name in the hat" raffle, and my name was picked as the lucky winner!  Yay! But wait a minute, I never win those things!  So I asked Grace if she was sure it was me just because I never do win, and she was pretty sure it was me.  Then come to find out, one of our newest members was named Nancy too!  It was hers..... not mine......(sigh)  Oh, well, there's always next time!

Come to find out, the other Nancy works for Penza (not sure if I heard the name correctly) Yarns, and she's ready for all of us to invade her store for a yarn hop!  Oh, yea!  Phyllis, the author, lives near me, and when I was first accepted for Associated Professional with CGOA, I had sent her an email introducing myself as a neighbor.  Now I finally got to meet her!  What a nice surprise that turned out to be!  The third new member, Pat, is into felting big time, which was perfect timing for me as I was putting the finishing touches on a handbag made from unspun roving from dudley spinners.  It's the first time working from roving for me, and I was curious as to whether it would felt faster or take longer than spun wool to felt up.  Especially since I was doing the felting by hand.  (sometimes frontend loaders don't work so well!  lol)  So I got pick up some good info from Pat before I started the felting.  It was very enjoyable for me to meet all three ladies yesterday.

Then there's my buddy, Dee, sitting directly across from me two tables away.  We had a bit of fun tossing small projects at each other for the purpose of oohing and aaahhing.  Then she came all the way over to try teaching me to do the Irish Clones Knot stitch.  Anyone else who was interested crowded around also with hook and yarn.  We had a good time "helicoptering" our hooks back and forth as many times as we wanted before trying to pull the yarn over thru all the loops we had created.  It made for quite a bit of laughter as we watched each other's loops fall off the hook, then for a bit of cheering as we all, one by one, got the hang of it.  We moved from the Clones Knot onto the infamous BULLION stitch.  I think with a bit more practice I might actually get a decent looking stitch from that now!  Dee showed us a trick for holding the BOTTOM of all the loops with a bit of downward pressure to create a space for the hook to freely pull thru all of them in one easy pass.  At least in theory, it's supposed to work that way!!!

Then we all found out that Dee and Margaret are both going to be teaching some classes at the CGOA conference in July!  Way to go, Ladies!!!!  I just wish they would come out with the class schedule already!!!  I don't want to wait for another four weeks to find out which classes I want to take. ;-{  Greedy me wants to see NOW!!!  (big sigh, ok, I'll wait)

Have a good night.  :)

PS: the bag is felted, and drying on the counter now.  It turned out pretty decent for being the second time I ever felted!  I'll get some pics posted soon.

I Was So Embarrassed!

Well, I really stuck my foot, er, fingers, in it this time.  I was looking thru my new Crochet! magazine, and recognized one of the names on a pattern.  I had "talked" to her a few times on CGOA Professional Members at Yahoo Groups, and thought I would send her a "Congratulations on being published" note.  So I did.  Do I need to tell you I named the wrong pattern in my note to her?!  She was soooo kind and sweet and nice about it, too, when she wrote back!  I was even more embarrassed when I realized that I had typed the words from a conversation my hubby and I were having about another pattern in the mag instead of what pertained to the lady I was writing to.  Felt like I was back in high school learning to take dictation again.  Found out I can't always walk and chew gum at the same time!  (disheartened sigh) LOL

Anyway, she and I have been having some wonderful email conversations the last few days, and she has now become a new member on Ravelry!  Congrats, again!!!  You are sooo going to love/hate that site!  (VBG)  When I say hate, I only mean that you will be amazed at how much time has slipped by un-noticed before you realize it's been awhile since you got up to take a break from the screen.  (it was dark when I started, it's now breaking daylight.  oh no!)  But it will be worth it, what with the feast your eyes will be taking in at all the different projects, and types of projects!, people have posted on the site.

On a different note -  Dee, Jr., I'm sending you my condolences on your Patriots losing in the Super Bowl.  I feel your pain!  The snowball deal still stands tho!  Next year it will be your Pats and my Packers at the big game.

Have a good night.  :)