Another Crochet Prayer Shawl

This is the same pattern as the prayer shawl I made for myself, but the yarn and colors are different.  This one is for Nana, I took the pictures early the morning I mailed it to her and had intended to have Otter model it but she wasn't feeling good that morning so I just took a few pictures of it "as is."

It's very soft yarn, Otter picked out the color and type of yarn.  The brand is I Love This Yarn and it is a color combination of sage green and cream.

(Blogger is acting up tonight, so the pictures are not necessarily where I want them!)

This is a closer shot of the rows.

It's the same combination of double stitch, chain 2, double stitch.

I'm very happy with the way it turned out.  This is an incredibly easy pattern and goes fast.

Crocheted Throw Pillows

These are a recent project of mine. The camo one is the one Bill requested, it matches the camo quilt he made. It's a granny square, the pillow form was white so I sewed a cover out of green fabric and put it on the pillow before attaching the crochet sides. It's the same on both sides.

Side A

Side B.

All pillows are in the same place in each picture, Side A is one side and Side B is the other side. The only one that is the same on both sides is the camo pillow. The others are all two-sided and are all single stitch. The pillow above the camo one is Otter's, the two colors match her comforter bedspread pretty closely. The rest are just colors I liked that I thought might look good on the patchwork quilt Bill made for me.

Crochet Granny Square Afghan Blanket (EDITED)

On my main blog, I mentioned a crochet project I've been working on. This is it.

Sweetie's birthday is towards the end of this month. Otter picked out the colors and the yarn, I did the actual work and Bill's contribution was to tell me when he thought it was big enough. Well, we had to let him have some input! :)

It's a shape known as a Granny Square. It's more of an afghan or blanket, which is what it was intended to be, because of the size. This is a close up. (EDIT: I just noticed that the afghan wasn't squared when I took the pictures. It looks a little wonky, both on the sides and on the close up. Pilot error, it's actually a square but I didn't get it straightened out when I was taking the picture so it looks a little odd and so does the center, but they are not like that in "real life." Part of the reason (a big part, actually) for the pictures not being the best was that I was trying to take the picture BEFORE the beagle could get inside the house. Because any blanket on the floor is fair game for her to park her furry behind on, and I didn't want to give Sweetie a dog-haired blanket!)

Two rows each of pink and white, alternating.

I did remember to take a picture, which I have been forgetting to do lately. But I forgot to measure it!

I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. Triple stitch is one of my favorite stitches and Granny Squares are enjoyable to make. And blankets are really good to work on when the weather is cool, because they cover you as they get bigger.

(We gave it to Sweetie today, otherwise I wouldn't be posting the pictures yet.)

Crocheted Prayer Shawl (EDITED) (Twice)

This has already been on the main blog, but this is the reason I started thinking that we needed a blog just for crafts. So, I'm posting it on here.

It's not strictly a prayer shawl, the original pattern called it a wrap but I have also seen this pattern in a book of prayer shawl patterns. I do use it at church, but it's a multi-use shawl.

It's folded up here. It's almost a mile of yarn, I measured. I used two different colors, both are by Lion Brand which is one of my favorite yarn brands. This is chunky weight yarn.

Chunky weight is a larger yarn than most. It's easy to work with and I'm pleased with the way it turned out. This particular yarn is probably acrylic, I don't remember beyond the fact that it is not wool.

You can see how wide it is in this picture. I'm pretty tall, each color is two rows and there are 15 sets of each so it's 30 rows wide.

I made it a little longer than the original pattern, because I wanted it long enough to at least reach my legs. I get very cold in church and this shawl is very warm. EDIT: I'm glad I made it so long, because Otter has taken to borrowing quite a bit of it to cover her arms and legs in church - it does get cold in there and she seems very glad when I take it! And she says that it is very warm.

The original pattern called for it to be made in two pieces, left half & right half. But they were to be joined in a way that the join would be invisible and the rows would match. So I just made it the size I wanted in one piece. With some shawls, they look better if they are divided in the middle but that is mostly determined by the shape. This one is essentially a long rectangle, as opposed to the triangular shape of most shawls. If I wanted to have the row colors alternate on each half, I could make it in two pieces but I wasn't impressed with the way that would work. At least not with this yarn and these colors.

It was an easy project and one I really enjoyed. It's a combination of three different stitches and it went pretty fast.

(Second edit:  This was donated to Goodwill after a while.  It was just too big.  Next time, I'm not letting Billyboy decide the size!).

Otter's Recent Sewing Project

Otter learned to sew in school this year. She made several of these pouches as gifts for her friends. They turned out really well. She appliqued the decorations, each one was personalized for the girl it went to. One girl loves penguins, so hers had penguins, etc. They were really cute and very detailed. Unfortunately, Otter forgot to take pictures. She gets that from me, I guess!

Anyway, she made me one for my birthday last year. It's holding some of my many crochet hooks. I have a lot of crochet hooks!

Ignore the phone cord visible in the picture.

There is a hook in this picture for size comparison.

She was going to applique the decorations on mine, but I found these adorable felt Christmas ornaments in the clearance bin at WalMart and just thought that they were so cute. So Otter used them instead of making each individual flower. They don't really look like Christmas ornaments to me, but that's their intended purpose.

The pouches zip closed, she learned how to put in zippers - which is something I've never been able to do.

She was very sneaky about it. I knew about it in advance, I picked out the fabric for it. But she didn't tell me when she was going to make it. One day, I noticed that my picnic basket full of yarn had been moved but I thought that Bill had moved it out of his way. I should have figured it out, because Otter kept talking to me about yarn & suggesting I get some out of the basket. Which was kind of odd, but I didn't catch on. A day or so later, I got into my picnic basket and there it was! She's sneaky, but it was a fun surprise.

Bill's Woodwork

Bill is pretty handy, although we get nervous when he's around power tools. For a good reason!

Anyway, these are a couple of examples of things he's made.

This is not the best picture, the camera was going out when I took this and this was the best one I could get. The shelf is the object of the picture, not my Fenton pieces. Bill has a bunch of scrap wood, various sizes & shapes. He made me a shelf that is hanging over the stove, and he made this one for me last year for the Fenton. It's actually a sort of sage green color.

Bill collects shot glasses. He's not a big drinker, but he likes shot glasses. We refer to his collection as the Useless Collection. He is always in need of display places for the glasses, so he used some more of that scrap wood and came up with this. It's hanging over the window in the office, so you can ignore the green curtains underneath the shelf! He's got many, many more shot glasses with no place to put them so he's considering making a shelf that goes all the way around the office, or possibly on two of the walls. It might be like this shelf, or it might be totally different.

Bill creates the pattern for the shape, style & size and then he gets to put his Engineering skills to use. He's been building a frame for the pachinko machines, when it's at a further stage I'll take pictures.

And hopefully, he won't have any injuries. :)

Bill Sews!

All three of us sew to an extent, Bill had made kites and a few things like that and then a couple of years ago he decided he wanted to make a quilt. We had several large trash bags full of military surplus camo uniforms and we sold several on eBay as well as donated quite a bit of them to Goodwill, etc. But there were still a lot left over and he decided to use them as quilt fabric. That was just the start. Here are a few of the quilts he's made.

This one was made for Bill's step-mom, who we refer to on the blogs as Sweetie, for Christmas a couple of years ago. It's a little larger than a lap quilt. I'm not sure exactly what stage this picture was taken at, but I think it was completed here.

Here's a close-up, which includes a picture of the backing.

This is the one he made for me, it's big enough for our king-sized bed and we use it in the spring & summer. I just put it back on the bed a couple of weeks back. It's very warm, but Bill made another quilt (the first one with the camo fabric) and he wants equal time for it so it is our fall/winter bedding. This one was made with some of the fabric left from the two lap quits, some fabric that I had in my scrap bag including the left over fabric from the kitchen curtains I made and also quite a bit of it came from shirts we bought at an auction. We sold a lot of the shirts, kept some to wear, donated a bunch and then turned several into quilt scraps. Creative recycling at it's best!

This is my quilt, on our bed. The bed is king-sized, as I mentioned before, but it's a sleigh bed style and is very big. The quilt fits just perfectly on it.

This is the other lap quilt he made, this one is for his Mom (referred to as Nana on the blogs). This was her Christmas present the same year as Sweetie's, and it was almost impossible for me to keep the secret of what Bill was working on for his two moms that year! He started them several weeks in advance so I had to be quiet for a long time.



This is the backing and a close-up of Nana's lap quit.

This is the first one he made. It's not really a standard size, it's actually bigger than our bed (a lot bigger). It's a heavier weight fabric than it looks, and it is extremely warm. Which is why it's the fall & winter quilt! He got the pieces sewn together to a point, then he realized he needed a backing fabric so he went to our favorite fabric store. And he made a few older ladies day, because they got to "take him under their wing" and help him find fabric! The backing is a green leafy pattern and is very pretty.

If she didn't have on socks, you wouldn't be able to see Otter in this picture! She's holding a sign that says "I'm invisible" in front of her face. She's wearing her own camo clothing, she has a pair of camo pants that she wears pretty often and one of the shirts that were in the surplus that the quilt is made from.