Grr..Argh....

Sigh, so this is why I make blankets in general, and why I generally choose patterns made up of one size of square. I suck at gauge.

I finished my circles blanket, but I ran short on yarn. I had enough to make all of the squares, but I did not have enough of the grey left over to to join the squares or do the blanket's border as the pattern calls for. I ended up joining the squares with the white, which does give a kind of nice little contrast where it shows through on the front. I thought I had enough of the blue left to do the border row in that, but I didn't have quite enough so I ended up with no border.

All in all, it's one of my sloppier blankets, truth be told, but it will make a good little lap blanket for around the house.

I may give this pattern a go again in the future, but I will definitely make sure I have more yarn on hand! As far as the other blanket I was thinking of using this pattern for, I think I may go with my trusty Triangles pattern.

I do love the Vanna White yarn though! That was very much fun to work with and I will definitely use it again for future projects.

And now for my next trick, I will move on to simultaneously making two scarves--one for me and one for Mr. Picasso Pants--inspired by the Tom Baker Doctor Who scarf.

Well, I am off. Have an excellent weekend!

**UPDATE**

Okay, ten minutes after I initially put this post up, I was looking for yarn for my next project and what do I find but a full grey and full blue skein still in my drawer of the yarn for this blanket. Good gravy. So, I went ahead and gave it a border, because it totally needed it. So here's the finished finished project:


There, that's much better. I toyed with the idea of actually taking it all apart and putting it back together with the grey instead of the white, but I honestly was just ready to put this one to bed.

I do feel a little bit better about it now though.

Also, I forgot to put this up in the earlier post. I don't know if you remember that I made a mini-version of my Lakeshore Throw for my friend's chinchilla or not, but I thought you guys might get a kick out of this photo she took of Bullet checking out his present:


Hee hee.

Okay, TTFN y'all!

C

Round and round she goes...

Howdy! I hope everyone had a good week. Crochet-wise, mine was pretty darn good. We won't talk about how it was work-wise though.

Anyhoo, I have started my Circles to Squares Afghan project and am very pleased with how it's turning out so far. I've completed round one (16 teeny squares) and round two (5 medium squares) so far.



Round three (3 mondo squares) will commence this evening. I definitely should get all of the squares done this week and hopefully assembly finished by the weekend. All in all, this seems to be a pretty quick working blanket which is nice.

I did have to use a smaller hook size than what's called for in the pattern. In order to keep to gauge, I've dropped down to a size H hook. Wow, I feel so grown up, sticking to gauge. I guess that is both the downside and upside to ordering your yarn online, huh?

I am also starting to get excited about my Doctor Who inspired scarf (and the miniature version I will be making for Mr. Picasso Pants). I say "inspired" because a) I will be crocheting and not knitting it, and b) I am going to use my scrap yarn rather than buying the specific colors used in the original scarf. After doing my yarn inventory and seeing all of the different colors I have, I am looking forward to getting started on this project.

The only other thing I've got to share at the moment is that I got a new crochet book this week. 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws, and Afghans: Crochet Squares to Mix and Match by Jan Eaton. I am super excited to play with the patterns in here. This is the kind thing that makes me do my happy dance. My sister has been telling me about this book for a while and mentioned a bit back that it was on sale at Interweave's hurt book sale, but by the time I got to the site it was sold out. I thought I'd check for it on Amazon though, and since they had it for a decent price I ended up going ahead and ordering it. Good stuff.
So there's your weekly installment of Crocheting with Cori. I hope you all have a wonderful week. May you each find your own cause of your personal happy dance!

Laters,
C

Trifecta...

I have a few items this week. Let's see, first things first.

I finished my texture blanket!

I am so happy with how this came out! I am completely in love with this pattern. It's not too difficult, it works up pretty quickly, and it looks seriously cool when finished. I am very glad I ended up going with the fleck yarn rather than just a solid color. The flecks add to the overall coolness of the blanket, in my opinion.

Here's a closer shot, and you can see the border a little better too.

Now I just need to coordinate efforts with my friend to get this to her parents. I think this may be one of the blankets I am most proud of to date. Hopefully its owners will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

I finished up with the blanket on Thursday, and so Friday night I decided to get started on my inventory while I watched all of my fun sci-fi shows. It turns out I had both more and less than I thought. When I told this to my husband he said I broke the space-time continuum.

I guess what I mean though is that I do have a fairly decent amount of leftover yarn from my various projects, but now that I've got it all organized and such, it seems so much more manageable.

Here's a shot of all of the yarn I've got:

I started out by sorting it all out by type and then how much I had of each type.

These are all of the full skeins I have leftover worsted weight from various projects:

And here are all of the partial skeins of worsted weight I have:

And then here are all of my "special" yarns:

I had a picture of my sport weight yarns, but I managed to not save it to my computer, apparently, so you'll just have to infer the existence of those from the first picture. I got myself two three drawer organizer containers (on sale at Wal-Mart, yay) and the wide one is completely full of yarn. There's a drawer for the partial worsted skeins, a drawer for the full skeins, and one for my current project. Then one drawer in the narrow container is for my specialty yarns and the other two are for patterns, hooks, and notions.

Let me tell you, organizing my hooks (I also went ahead and got a case for those) was an experience. I have four size G hooks. No clue why, I just do. I have a set of these clear brittle plastic hooks that I bought because they look really cool (and they weren't too expensive), but they really aren't very user-friendly. So I think I am going to start replacing those with new hooks in the sizes I don't already have hooks in, and then also work on filling in the gaps in hook sizes I have. I do seem to have a pretty good array of the normal sizes for what I do though, so that's nice.

I got everything written down as I organized it, so my next step is to put it all in a spreadsheet (yes, I am one of those people who uses Excel for everything, I love Excel) and then be good about keeping it updated and I should be golden as far as crochet project organization.

And that's how I spent my Friday night. Sci-Fi and yarn inventory. I. Am. A. Nerd. Hee hee.

Not included in my inventory yet (since it's part of an active project) is the yarn for my new project that came last week. I'm using Lion Brand's Vanna's Choice yarn to make this blanket. I'll be getting that project underway today. This yarn is really soft, so I am excited to see how it is to work with.

Here's a shot of that yarn so you can get an idea of the colors:

And that's all I've got.

Have a great week guys.

Peace out,
C

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

Let's see, I've got a few things to report this week.

I'm making excellent progress on the current blanket. I've got five out of the six rows completed. I plan to get half of the last row done tonight and then finish up the border by Thursday or Friday. No new photos of that since it's more of the same. I am really pleased with how this blanket is turning out. Hopefully K's parents will be as pleased. I will definitely be using this pattern again.

I've got my next project already all lined up. I stumbled across it on the Lion Brand Yarn site. It's the Circle to Squares Afghan. I am really excited about this. It looks like a fun and easy pattern. I'm even going to try out Vanna White's yarn. I totally missed that she was a fellow crocheter, but that's kind of cool. This is a big step for me--trying a new yarn and all. Should be fun. I'm going to use different colors than those shown in the pattern, of course. I can't ever work a pattern exactly how it's laid out in the instructions for some reason. Must be that rebellious streak. I'm going to make it in blue, white, and silver grey. These are my high school colors--since my 1o year reunion is this fall, I thought that would help me get jazzed up a bit more.

This blanket is also a practice run, because I think I want to use this pattern for the friend's blanket I've been commissioned to make.

Before I start that blanket, however, I need to go through all of my existing yarn to organize and take inventory. Basically I have my patterns and hooks and some yarn hanging out in a popcorn tin and the rest of my yarn is hanging out in a giant bag in my closet. This is really not the most efficient storage/access method.

So that's where I stand at present. It's nice to have some projects lined up.

I hope all is well with everyone. Enjoy your week!

C