Feeling the Christmas crunch!

Well I think I have hit a new record... I am currently working on four projects at once!  One is my son's Yankee's blanket, two is a slouchy hat and fingerless gloves for my daughter, three is a cowl for my sister, and four is a slouchy hat for my daughter to give to a friend for Christmas.  And is was five until tonight when I finished a cowl for our church ladies Christmas party. I'll post pics of it later!  All while suffering from some sort of lung infection! 

The craziest part is since so many are gifts for my loved ones I have to juggle when to work on them!!  I can't work on the Yankee's blanket while my son is around, can't do my daughter's hat and gloves while she's around, and can't do my sister's cowl while she's over!!  My daughters hat has been driving me nuts!!!  I have ripped it out so many times I have lost count!  It just is such a bulky yarn that it's hard to turn it into a good looking slouchy hat.  Oh well tomorrow is a new day and a new pattern to try lol!

Here are a few pictures of some recent projects I have completed that I thought I would share!  Makes me forget the work load I have to do when I look at all I have done :)


My first purse project!!  I love it! Found it on Ravelry under Nordstrom Hobo bag!  Got inspiration for the color scheme from a Coach purse I saw.

I lined it and everything woohoo!!

Some baby hats I made to for my cousins new baby and her big sis!  I have a couple more of these to make after Christmas for a few more cousins!

Knitted hat and scarf I made for my son's best friend in his favorite Boise State colors!  It's a Christmas present, I hope he likes them!  Again another project after Christmas, to try and make this hat using circular knitting needles so I don't have a seam up the back.  I hate sewing!

And one of the hardest things I have made, actually it wasn't difficult but more time consuming!  It was for a friend's baby shower.  I thought it was going to be a lot smaller than it actually turned out to be but it was so cute finished!  When it was over I thought "I never want to see that lamb again" but of course when it was pulled out of the bag I got lots of ooooohhhh can you make one of those for me?  And what do I say.... yes of course!  So I'm sure there will be more lamb pics to come ;)

Taven's NY Yankees blanket in progress and how I started it

So here is a picture of my son's Christmas present as it's coming along!   I'm using a P hook and Loops and Thread charisma yarn in charcoal and dk blue.

It took me forever to try and figure out how I wanted to make it.  Originally I thought I would try and do a tunisisan/afghan stitch on it but in my learning that stitch I discovered that this stitch creates a front and back and to acheive the size I wanted I would have to make smaller sections and sew them together.

Sewing is NOT something I enjoy!  Even though I have sown quite a bit of things including clothes I find it frustrating and try to avoid it at all cost lol!  And along that same line the Tunisian often requires a backing sown on, again yuck, to hide the yarn stretching across.  So I set out trying to come up with my own pattern. 

In my researching Tunisian crochet I found that you could crochet using a graph.  Hummm never thought about that!!  I found a graph online of the NY which was exactly what I wanted and finding it done saved a lot of time!!  I found it here http://www.docstoc.com/docs/96193211/NY-Yankees-logo-chart-knit-crochet-pattern

Here's a picture of my graph as I was using it. To keep my place I highlight it as I complete each row!

Then I looked up some more how to crochet with a graph videos and found some great ones but this one from groundhogpeggy on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59pMWiwzkpQ  was sooooo helpful!!!  This is link is part one but it will take you to the main how to on part 2. 

After watching her and seeing her interlocking stitches and how she eliminated a front and back I was on my way!!!  I knew doing her method would create a much too big blanket with my graph.  Also I didn't want to carry my yarn up thru the stitches, my yarn was pricey and I didn't want to waste it!  I decided on a half double crochet (hdc) as my stitch and that each box would represent four hdc (two on the first row and two on the second) instead of groundhogpeggy's six. I stayed with her method of working the rows but like I said I only did two hdc one way and two hdc the other way. 

I also just "drop" my yarn and pick up the new one when changing colors.  This way I don't waste any!  I just leave it hanging attached and start with the new color.  This is similar to some of the videos of Tunisian I saw where they make smaller spools of color.  But I just made sure I bought enough of each color to leave as one ball and not make any small spools.  It does make it interesting at times, trying to keep them from tangling but I found that if I line them up nice like in the picture and put them in order after turning each row they don't get tangled at all.

So that's what it looks like so far!!!  Hopefully this isn't too confusing ;(   Maybe next time I'll try and write out a pattern for it!

****Update i attempted to write out the pattern!!!  You can find it under "Yankees Blanket Instructions"

Ok blog world...here we go!!

Sorry this is my first blog posting and hopefully I won't be completely boring!  I really only started this blog as a way to keep track of my yarn projects, being able to share them with friends and family, and add notes to projects I've done.  I'm not sure I've ever done a project without modifying the pattern, most of the time significantly!  So having a place to go back to and see what I did to some of these makes it a whole lot easier than trying to read my chicken scratch!  That is if I even remebered to write anything down in the first place!

Currently I'm working on gifts for Christmas.  Really I have too many to do in the next 24 days that I don't need to be on here starting a blog but isn't that always the way?  I've already completed a number of projects people have asked me to make for their loved ones for Christmas so now I'm concentrating on mine.

 My son who is 10 is a die hard Yankees fan.  Last year I made a very easy V-stitch afghan out of Lion Brand Homespun that everyone has fallen in love with, including my son.  He's asked for one with Yankee colors for Christmas.  Well as usual I get an idea of what I want it to look like in my head and then begin the search online for how to do it! I wanted it to be different than the normal v-stitch.  I wanted it to have the NY Yankee logo on it.  I originally looked at attempting a Tunisian stitch for it but with the size of the blanket it would have to be done in sections and I didn't want that so I looked at other things like how to  crochet with a graph.  I found a NY graph that I can use but I wasn't happy with the "how to's" I found online.  So I came up with my own pattern!  This is a first for me and I'm really pleased with how it's going!  I'll post progress pics soon since I know I haven't been good at keeping notes of how I'm doing it!  And again that is my purpose for creating a blog in the first place! 

Here's a pic of the original V-stitch blanket.  The pattern can be found at LionBrand.com