SUSIE’s STUFF CROCHET AND MORE

GTA Christmas Donations November 2011

2011-11-16T18:01:00.001-06:00

I don’t crochet as fast as many people, especially with the carpal tunnel and a pinched ulna nerve, but I do what I can as I truly enjoy making items for the babies.

Here are the little Christmas hats I made. I tried something different for the pompoms on top. I am TERRIBLE at making yarn pompoms. So......remember when I was making Peyton’s Elmo hat? I had a light bulb moment when I was making the eyes and nose for it. I decided to use the pattern from those to make stuffed pompoms for the baby hats! For me, making them that way took a lot less time and I wasted a whole lot less yarn. When ever I try to make them where you wrap yarn around cardboard and trim it up.....I kept trimming and trimming and never was satisfied. By the time I would get them done, they were pretty stinking puny. So, I tried the stuffed eyeballs route this time and I think they turned out pretty good. At least I am satisfied with how they look.

Here’s my first little blanket. I got this really pretty yarn at Goodwill! The red and green are made by Caron and they are called Victorian Christmas Gold. I suppose the gold is because of the metallic thread in it. The green is called balsam. Not sure about the red because it didn’t have a label. I’m not sure if they make either one of these anymore.

My picture didn’t turn out very good, but this diaper shirt is made from the green that I used on the blanket above.

This blanket is just a rectangular granny square.

This is just half red and half white. I made the border using a strand of each color. Just pretty basic but kinda cute.

My cat picture this time for this post is Rocky again. He just seems to like getting his picture taken more so than Baby. He was sprawled out on the love seat, getting his afternoon nap in. He was out, big time. He didn’t even flinch when the flash went off.

Sure looking pretty chunky in this picture. I obviously don’t feed him, ha ha.

That’s it for this time. Take care all.

Halloween

2011-11-06T02:43:00.000-06:00

Just a quick post about Halloween (I know, it was almost a week ago). Story of my life, a day late and a dollar short :)

Here's a picture of Peyton wearing her Elmo hat I made her while going trick or treating. For just turning two, she got the trick or treating thing down pretty good. She figured out real fast that you say "trick or treat" when someone answered the door, and "thank you" after she got her candy.
Her mom and dad, and Grandpa and I took her out in our neighborhood, and of course Grandma puffed up like the proud grandma I am every time someone oohed and awed about how cute she looked.
I see now that I should have done the face a bit different on the hat. If I ever make another one, I will move all of the face pieces farther down on the hat, and put the eyes closer together. It didn't turn out bad though for the first time ever making something like this and winging it on the face.
Just had to share the picture of the little sweetheart.

Peyton’s Second Birthday

2011-10-29T19:44:00.001-05:00

Now that the birthday party is over I can post pictures!

Peyton is very into Elmo right now, so for her second birthday I crocheted her an Elmo doll. I got the pattern here at The Craft Frog: Elmo Pattern . I changed the mouth just a bit from her pattern but otherwise did everything else the same. This picture is of him outside and the second one is in the house which is actually more the color he is.

Then, using the eyes and nose from the same pattern, I made an ear flap Elmo hat for her and a matching scarf.

The rest of the pictures are from her birthday party today.

A good friend of the family works as a pastry chef and cake decorator. She made this awesome Elmo cake for Peyton. Great job Lacey!

Checking out her cake.

Getting ready to blow out the candles.

Blowing out the candles.

See my cake? :)

The cake pops aren’t bad either!

Don’t know where they got it, but they even had an Elmo piñata.

Peyton had fun smacking Elmo.

She was even laughing at him after smacking him :)

He was made pretty tough and it finally took some of the adults to pull him apart before the kids could gather up the candy.

Here are pictures of her opening up the box with Elmo and her hat.

I took some other pics at the party too, but these are the ones that are important to me.

GTA Donations September 2011

2011-09-27T15:45:00.001-05:00

Here are the items I sent to God’s Tiny Angels this month.

This is what I call my “fan” quilt. This was originally one of my UFO’s. I started out a long time ago making long strips of the pieces you see around the edges, with the intentions of making a queen sized quilt. Yup, that never happened.

I ended up salvaging that work by cutting the long strip down into smaller strips so I could use it for edging around the center “fan” piece.

Here is a close up of the fan piece in the center. By the time I salvaged my UFO, I ended up with a pretty little preemie size quilt.

The colors on this preemie quilt didn’t photograph well, but it’s actually more of a light lavender, darker lavender, and purple little flowers with white squares for fillers.

My third blanket is a crocheted rectangular granny square. I would say it’s probably big enough for a smaller newborn.

Just a cute little dress with a ruffled bottom and a matching hat.

A little diaper shirt made from multi colored brighter pastel yarn.

A newborn sweater and hat made from lavender “I Love This Yarn”.

I had just enough of the lavender yarn to make a newborn hat. One of our hospitals was asking for purple hats for the babies to wear for awareness of shaken baby syndrome.

During one of my frequent jaunts to Goodwill, I found this pretty little magenta colored hoodie in a size 0-3 months. Doesn’t look like it was ever worn. Really hard to get a good picture of it.

Another crocheted newborn sweater made of multi colored yarn in purples, blues and greens.

This newborn sweater has a cute bottom ruffle and ties instead of buttoning. I’m pretty sure it was made out of Red Heart Super saver yarn because it seems to be heavier and a bit scratchy. Not sure I would use this yarn again.

I didn’t have enough of the darker pink for all of this newborn sweater so I finished up by making the sleeves a lighter pink.

Last but not least are 3 little burial outfits for the littlest of our angels. The need is great for these outfits unfortunately. I am not very fast at crocheting blankets so I usually just make the dresses and hats or bonnets with the hope that the parents can find a nice blanket to go with them.

I’m sorry I didn’t post what yarn I used on most of these items. There are a number of reasons for that. Usually by the time I make my blog post for my donations, I frequently forget which yarn I used. Also, I buy a lot of my yarn from Goodwill or some of the local thrift stores, and some of them don’t have a label on them, so I have NO idea what brand, etc. it is. Same thing with yarn I buy at yard sales or have given to me. Can’t be choosey when it’s free or cheap you know :)

That’s it for this time. I keep plugging along, as long as the carpal tunnel doesn’t flare up :)

Our Tailless Squirrel and Other Stuff

2011-09-20T22:34:00.001-05:00

This is our little tailless squirrel that lives in our neighborhood. I’ve seen him around for at least the last couple of years, maybe longer but didn’t realize it. I don’t know if he lost his tail in some kind of accident or if he was born that way.

He is eating under the bird feeder here.

He seems to have adapted really well for not having a tail.

He bellies right up to eat bird feed or cracked corn I put out for the squirrels. He holds his own against all the other squirrels and gets his fair share.

This is a better picture showing his no tail physic.

Here he is having lunch with one of his tailed buddies.

His buddy heading up the maple tree after lunch, probably for a nap :)

Our resident chipmunk, or ground squirrel, as some people call them. He likes to hang out in the flower beds and under our back door stoop. I know for sure that he has been around here for at least 3-4 years.

Last but not least is our indoor resident male cat Rocky, guarding my sewing machine for me while he naps. He will sleep ANYWHERE, and in any position.

That’s it for tonight, hope you enjoyed my “critters” post.

Fabric Score!

2011-07-03T06:17:00.002-05:00

Ladies, if you sew, you MUST go check out your local Wal-Mart and see if they are having the same great clearance deal that I got in on at ours.
My stepson and his girlfriend were shopping at Wal-Mart last night and called to tell me that they were having a major clearance on fabrics back in the craft department. Our Wall-Mart no longer has a fabric department :( but they do carry the prepack precuts of fabric.
Well, when I found out they had a BUNCH of the fabrics packs marked down to 2/3 off, I actually made a midnight run to the store :)
Hubby said he would go with me since it was pretty late. That was good cause when we checked out he just smiled and handed me the credit card. Such a good man. He never complains when I buy goodies to make things for the needy babies. I am very lucky that way.
So here we go. This is what I bought.

I got ALL OF THIS for $50.57.
And SAVED $103.63 off the original prices.
What a haul and a deal! At least I thought so, lol.

Now for the close ups.

You never have enough fat quarters, right gals? So I picked up a few of the basic colors for......are you ready?...... 30 cents each!

I’m a sucker for bright colors so I got some hot pinks for a little girls quilt or two. The 2 yard cuts were $1.90 each.

I don’t think you ever have enough purples either so picked up a few of those too. The 1 yard cuts were $1.40 each. The one with the 2 different fabrics in it was $2.70.

These cute prints were $1.90 each.
The first is Winnie The Pooh, the next is fire trucks, then you have teddy bears, and last is zoo animals. Each one is 2 yards.

Now these really caught my eye. They are blanket kits and include a cute front panel that’s 36x44 with material for backing to match. And they were only $2.20 per kit!! How could any sewing person pass those up??

I picked up a couple of slightly patterned white for backings or whatever (you never have enough white). The bundles of 7 co coordinating fat quarters were only $2.70 each. Gosh, in some places you can’t get ONE fat quarter for that!

Look at this cute little rag doll kit I got for $2.00. Me thinks this might make a nice Christmas present for the granddaughter. At least that’s the plan.

Last but not least are these 2 patterns I got. The bonnet will be nice to have to make for some of the burial sets I make. And the dress and hat is just plain cute, and pretty simple to make after looking the pattern over.

So there’s my haul. I just had to share and tell you, go check out Wally World! Now I just have to find the time to make all this stuff!
Once again, Blogger is doing goofy stuff with spacing when you publish a post so if it looks wanky, it's not me!

Birds and Blooms

2011-06-29T12:36:00.002-05:00

I love this time of year with all the pretty flowers and the songs of the birds.

There have been a pair of finches hanging around the yard just singing away every morning.
This is a close up I was able to get of one of them in the maple tree in the front yard. Some of these pictures of the finches were taken through the front screen door so they may be a bit blurry and I apologize for that. I was afraid if I opened the door to take their picture they would fly away.

Just a few more pics of them :) Yesterday I had one in the front yard and one in the back yard singing to each other, so I suspect I have a male and female pair hanging around. I bet they have a nest around here somewhere but haven’t been able to locate it. Their song is so very pretty, it’s a joy just to listen to them. It amazes me how such a little bird can sing such a LOUD song.

The hostas in the front flower bed are starting to bloom. They never fail every year, I don’t think anything kills them.

The dahlias are doing well too.

My balloon flowers are open too. Obviously I need to get on the ball and deadhead my flowers :)
That’s it for now, thanks for stopping by!

Sure wish Blogger would stop messing up the spacing on stuff. If there's a big gap between pictures or text, it's Blogger, not me!

Quilt Frame Deal

2011-06-19T02:10:00.000-05:00

Look what I got Saturday!!

A friend of my ex sister in law was selling her wooden quilt frame for only $25.00!! When I saw the picture of it on her Facebook page my first thought was “oooooh, I NEED that, lol.
Well of course I needed it. And when she told me she only wanted $25.00 for it, I needed it even more!
Needless to say, we made arrangements for me to get it on Saturday, so I grabbed my daughter and we went with the truck to pick it up. When we got there I found out it was made by the Grace Company, who makes awesome quilting frames. It’s a little bit older model, but I sure don’t care about that! I have wanted one of these forever but could never afford to fit one in my budget.
I asked her why she was selling it and she said she has a quilt “bed” that she uses on her sewing machine now and hadn’t used this for 3 or 4 years. Umm, ok. And she just wanted to get it out of the house cause it’s taking up room.
Works for me! Discovered that it folds up almost flat and is 48 inches wide. Doesn’t weigh all that much either, maybe 20 pounds.
I’m so excited, now I just have to get in gear and use it. (and figure out HOW to use it, since I’ve never used one). Went to the Grace website and found instructions, so I don’t think I’m going to have too hard of a time figuring it out.
Did I say I’m excited, lol??

Fourth Of July Quilts

2011-06-17T05:58:00.001-05:00

Our group God’s Tiny Angels has been working on trying to get enough blankets for all the preemies in 3 NICU’s that we supply. So I dug through my stash and was able to come up with enough material to make 4 of them at least.

The 2 patchwork ones are “cheater” material so all I had to do with those was back them and bind them, one with muslin and one with navy material. The other two are squares in the center, then I put muslin strips around those and added other scrap strips around until I had a big enough quilt.

Nothing fancy but they still take a bit of time to put together and quilt them. Does anyone else dislike doing the binding as much as I do? I always seem to have a bit of trouble getting my corners all nice and neat. They turn out looking ok, just not quite up to the standard I would like.

Just glad I was able to come up with enough material for four of them, every single quilt helps! And that is what matters the most.

Bird Feeder Critters

2011-06-14T06:34:00.002-05:00

The birds have been coming around to the bird feeder but we have had other visitors too.

This little black squirrel thought he was going to get a free meal, but my feeder has a spring mechanism that tosses a squirrel off when he gets on it. Guess that ticked him off because he decided he would go and see what he could find in the grass by the maple tree instead.



    This baby bunny was making himself a feast under the feeder, cleaning up what the birds dropped. Isn’t he cute??!!

    Here’s a close up of him under the feeder.

I have picked two nice pickings of strawberries so far from the strawberry bed. They are SO much tastier than what you buy in the store.
That’s it for today! Thanks for stopping by.

Darn blogger is sure messing up how I place my pictures so sorry for the big gap in between, it's not me!!

Quilting With The Cats

2011-06-08T05:08:00.001-05:00

Haven’t been crocheting much lately since the carpal tunnel decided to kick in. So to give my hands a rest, I’ve been in quilting mode.

Our group, God's Tiny Angels , is in dire need of preemie blankets and quilts for the Fourth of July. We have 3 NICU’s that we provide for that like to dress up the babies on the fourth. Right now, we only have 76 members in our group, and we need 120 blankets or quilts to wrap up the babies. So, every single blanket or quilt we can crank out will be a big help. If the desire hits you, we can use your help! Preemie blankets need to be at least 20 inches by 20 inches, and we need to have them mailed to our group leader by June 19th. I know that’s only 10 days, but even one quilt or blanket will help so much!

If you are interested in helping, email me at (mamasu55 at gmail dot com) and I can give you all of the particulars.

So, I dug through my stash and am frantically working on Fourth of July quilts. I have 2 done so far, with at least 2 more, maybe 3 ready to get quilted.

I usually set my sewing machine up on the kitchen table so I have room to spread out. Of course, you see who has to try to supervise, good old Rocky, the nosiest cat there is! I just had to take this picture. Just as I was walking back into the kitchen, there he was, peeking out at me through the opening in my sewing machine :)

When he’s not busy supervising my sewing, he enjoys hanging upside down to watch tv.

Now Baby could care less if I’m sewing. She would rather roll around on the floor playing with an old drawstring from a pair of sweatpants. Doesn’t take much to amuse her!

That didn’t get to last very long though. Rocky just can’t stand it when Baby is having fun all by herself so he has to go pester her and get involved. That usually ticks Baby off and she is all done playing then. That’s when it’s time for her to go sulk because Rocky just couldn’t leave her alone.

Such are the joys of life with the furbabies.

Fabric Shopping

2011-05-27T05:19:00.002-05:00

Have you been fabric shopping lately?
I had not been fabric shopping in quite some time. My stash is pretty big and Most of the time when I am quilting I just go through my stash and use what I have on hand.
I was cruising through some of the fabric shops ads online and saw that Hancock Fabrics was having some pretty good sales, plus I had some Mother’s Day gift money burning a hole in my pocket. And JoAnn’s Fabrics was having a sale on quilt batting.
Boy, was I ever in for a rude awakening. Prices are ASTRONOMICAL!!
It’s probably been a year since I did any serious fabric shopping but come on!
As many of you know, I make baby items for a charity I belong to called God's Tiny Angels. Usually I crochet sweaters, hats, booties, blankets, etc. I decided recently I wanted to work on some quilts for preemies and newborns.
What my actual goal was going to be was to make some Christmas quilts for the babies. After wading through my stash I realized I didn’t have much of anything “Christmasy”. So my main intent was to go see what I could find at the shops for Christmas fabric.
It must be a bit early for Christmas fabric in the shops. The picking were somewhat slim, to say the least. But the work part of it was that what I did find, I’d almost have to pawn one of my kids in order to afford to buy the stuff!
What I did find was $9.99 A YARD! Is that crazy or what??? Ten bucks a yard for cotton and cotton blend fabric??? Almost makes one consider raising their own sheep, geez. Needless to say, I did not buy any Christmas fabric :(
So, it’s not looking too good for Christmas quilts this year. But I am in a quilting mood, so I did get some good deals on other fabrics.
After cruising all the isles at Hancock’s I ended up zooming in on the clearance tables they had set up with fabrics from $1 to $5 a yard. It was pretty obvious why some of the stuff was on clearance, can you say U.....G....L...Y? Wow.

I did find this cute fabric for Christmas on the clearance table. Won’t this be nice for a little girl?? I got what was left on the bolt, a little over a yard and a half at $2.00 a yard. Not bad considering it’s fleece.

Then I found this cute 100% cotton print marked down to $3 a yard from $6.99. There was a little over 4 1/2 yards left on the bolt so I bought it all, lol.

Then I just bought an assortment of cotton fabrics to fatten up my stash. They were all $2.00 a yard marked down from $2.99 to $6.99 a yard. I only bought a yard of each of these since most of my quilts are just patchwork squares and I will mix and match them with stuff I already had.

Of course I picked up a couple of packages of quilt batting. I went to JoAnn’s for these because they had them at 40% off. $5.39 each sure beats $8.99 each.
I really like this quilt batting. It’s a cotton batting that is denser but not as thick so it runs through the sewing machine much easier. And because it is denser it is warmer plus it washes up really nice.
Hancock’s had their quilt binding 40% off too so I picked up a few of those. Usually I just make my binding from fabric, but since it was on sale, I thought a few to have on hand might be nice. Coat’s and Clark thread was on sale at Hancock’s too so of course some of that made it’s way into my cart, lol. It amazes me how expensive thread has gotten to be too.
It sure didn’t take all that long to rack up a nice tidy little sum for 2 smaller bags of stuff. After this shopping expedition, I have made up my mind that I’m going to be taking a much closer look at the linens at our local Goodwill stores. The one in my neighborhood tends to get much nicer items in, often new and never used or seldom used. Many times I can get a queen sized sheet for $3.38. Kinda hard to pass that up after seeing what fabric is going for in the stores now.
So I think today might just have to include a little foray to Goodwill to see what I can discover.

Oh yeah, look who thought he had to hold down the ironing board for me while working on my latest quilt!

Monday Morning Ramblings and Mother’s Day

2011-05-09T09:54:00.001-05:00

Well, it’s a dreary cloudy day here this morning. Looks like we are going to get some rain, maybe a thunderstorm. That’s ok though, we need the rain. Windy too.

How was your Mother’s Day?

Mine was pretty nice. My daughter and son in law invited us over for a cookout. It was a beautiful sunny day with the temps in the high 70’s so we couldn’t have asked for better weather.

I got this nice bird feeder from my daughter and son in law. I really like that it has a hopper that slides up and down to hopefully fling the squirrels off. We have more than our share of them. I enjoy the squirrels too, but they can go eat their own food that gets put out for them :)

After we left my daughter’s home, we went to my son and daughter in laws house.

I got this pretty pot of impatiens from my grand daughter Peyton. She’s 18 months now and had to carry them out to give them to grandma.

When I got home, I put them in this cute little tricycle plant holder that my step daughter gave me a few years ago for Mother’s day. Just seemed like the perfect spot for them.

Got phone calls from my stepson and stepdaughter so I heard from or saw all four kids. That was pretty nice.

A couple of years ago I got two pretty lilac bushes from my son and daughter for Mother’s day. Last year I only had one bloom on them. This year I have a whopping three blooms :) It’s only the second year for them, so I can’t complain. They are just starting to open up nicely. With the cloudy day today it was hard to get a good picture of the real color of them. They are actually a deeper purple on the inside fringed with a lighter purple on each blossom.

While I had the camera out, I thought I’d wander around to the back yard and see how some of the other plants were doing. The grape vines are starting to leaf out.

Looks like the strawberries are starting to blossom too. This is the third season for our strawberry bed and it looks like we might have a good crop this year.

And of course Baby had to poke her nose in the window to look out to see what Mom was doing outside :)

Hope you all had a nice Mother’s day and got to enjoy some time with your family. I know I had a nice day.

GTA Donations April 2011

2011-04-17T17:01:00.001-05:00

Did you see my previous post of Peyton’s cupcake hat? Well, the pink in this sweater and hat set is what was left over from that. I knew there wasn’t enough of it to make the whole set so I did the rest of it in Pound of Love White yarn. I like the way it turned out. Should make a nice little set for Easter.

Remember awhile back I got a really good buy of a box of yarn at my local Goodwill? This is made from yarn from that box. It is Jamie sparkle yarn and it was pretty fine yarn so I used 2 strands, one of white and one of light pink. I like the way it turned out. This was the first time I’d made one of these cocoons but they seem to be pretty popular with some of the moms nowadays so I thought I’d give one a try. Kind of hard to see the sparkly in my picture but it’s there!

Last summer I think it was, I started posting about a bright stripes baby blanket I was working on. It kind of got set aside as a UFO for awhile but I finally picked it back up and finished it. All of the brights are mostly Red Heart Super Saver yarn. I knew I didn’t have enough of any one of the colors to make something so using them up in this blanket turned out nice so they didn’t go to waste. Sure helped use up some of my scrap stash.

These two sweaters and hat are made from one skein of yarn. It’s another of my good buys from Goodwill. I remember I only paid 88 cents for the skein but can’t remember exactly what the yarn was. I THINK it was a sport weight yarn, I do remember it was Bernat and the color was called something like buttercup. It’s very soft and should be nice against a baby’s skin.

This rectangle blanket was fun to make. I’m not big on making blankets, I just don’t have the patience so I don’t make too many of them but this one wasn’t bad.

Last summer when our God’s Tiny Angels group was having our sweater drive, our group leader put everyone’s names in a hat that contributed sweaters for a chance to win a prize and by golly I won! Was ever excited! I won 10 skeins of Red Heart Super Saver yarn and this blanket is made from some of that yarn. Haven’t figured out what else I’m going to make out of my winnings yet but you can bet it will probably something for the babies.

For this little blanket I did the middle in double crochet then I did rounds of granny square or shell stitches, just to be different :)

Some of the hospitals like the little diaper shirts so I made two of them with Pink Pound of Love and edged them in white.

A little burial set but fortunately I had enough yarn to make a blanket to go with all of it. Again, very simple but made of soft Pound of Love again. I’ve included a close up of just the gown and hat.

I had a partial skein of the green I Love This Yarn left over from another project so I made the bodice out of it and finished the rest of it off with white Pound of Love.

That’s it for this time. Wish it was more but the old carpal tunnel and pinched ulnar nerve sometimes limits my crocheting so I just keep on doing what I can, knowing every little bit helps.

Family Wedding And Pics Of Peyton

2011-03-28T23:41:00.001-05:00

My daughter in law’s sister Erin renewed her vows with her husband Mitch on Saturday. They got married last June in a civil ceremony, kinda quick, he’s in the Army and they couldn’t live together on the base without them being married.

So, on Saturday they returned home from Fort Riley so they could renew their vows and have a nice reception. Lots of people came.

Little Miss Peyton, my grand daughter, was the flower girl. How cute is that??

Here she is with her daddy and the ringer bearer.

The little stinker is on the go ALL…THE….TIME!!

She never slowed down once all night. She just walked all over and ran most of us adults ragged, lol. Gosh, to just have a tenth of her energy :)

Of course, Grandpa had to feed her some wedding cake! She has a hollow leg.

Then she had fun with Grandpa throwing her up and down and catching her.

This is towards the end of the night when she was finally getting pretty tired and kind of grumpy. She still wasn’t done walking around though and was a bit unhappy with Grandma holding her.

All in all, a very nice time.

Start On Painting Living Room

2011-03-27T17:43:00.001-05:00

On my last post I blogged about the great deal I got on Valspar paint at Lowe’s. Well, I got started on painting the living room, bit by bit, at my own slow pace, lol.

This is how the half wall between the living room and kitchen looked before I started painting.

Here is how it looks after painting. Rocky seems to enjoy it :)

I think it looks better. It warms it up and brightens it up in here.

Weekend Finds And Deals

2011-03-20T23:05:00.001-05:00

I did my usual weekend running around with my daughter yesterday and found some sweet sewing patterns at Goodwill.

This is a very vintage (1981 copyright) pattern that I got for whole 88 cents. It’s a size 2, which is a bit big right now for Peyton, since she is wearing 18 month sizes right now, and she is pretty petite, but by the time I get something made, it should fit. I’m thinking the sleeveless one would make some really cute sundresses. I’ve got all kinds of cute little prints materials that would work just fine. Then I was thinking the sleeveless one would be cool as a jumper if you made it in something like a corduroy material. I’m not big on sleeves, only because I usually have the dickens of a time putting them in. Oh, and the other great thing about this pattern, it’s never been cut! So, I thought maybe I could make templates of the pattern on freezer paper to use instead of cutting up the original. You figure, it’s 31 years old and it might be kind of fragile, wouldn’t want to ruin it and not be able to use it!

This is the other pattern I got ( for 88 cents). It’s sizes 3 through 6x so I have lots of time to make something from this one, lol. The package says there’s one piece of the pattern missing. I haven’t gone through it yet to see which piece it is, but I should be able to make something in here. The copyright on this one is 1990.

Isn’t this cute? I found it at Goodwill too! It doesn’t look like it’s ever been worn. It’s a size 24 months, so still a bit big, but she’s growing fast, so eventually…..

Then we went to Lowe’s. Daughter was looking for a dishwasher, I was going to buy paint. Awhile back Valspar paints had a deal on the internet where you could order a sample jar of their paint FREE if you were one of the first 1,000 to sign up daily for something like a week. You also got a coupon for $5 off the purchase of a gallon of their Signature paint. I’m a night owl so I had no problem getting in and being able to sign up on time every day. I have multiple email addys so I signed up three times and got 3 samples! AND when I opened the boxes, one of them had two of the $5 coupons stuck together, so I got FOUR coupons! Woohoo! They are good until May 31st, so there was no rush to use them. I was waiting for our local Lowe’s to have a sale on their Valspar paint. Well, instead of a sale, they had a mail in rebate for $5 off each gallon. So, after I send in my rebates, and using my coupons, I actually ended up getting $10 off each gallon! I bought 3 gallons so I can paint the living room and the long hallway going to the bedrooms. Now granted, their paint is NOT cheap ($31.99 each for the satin finish, plus tax for a total of $33.88 each). But let me tell you, I’ve used cheap paint and I’ve used Valspar, and the Valspar is worth EVERY PENNY of the extra cost. It has the primer in it, so when you paint, it covers AWESOME in just one coat and goes on really smooth. And no, no one is reimbursing me for my gushing testimonial, I’m just that impressed with it. So doing the math, using my coupons and rebates, I got the paint for just under $24 a gallon. The gold patch on the top of the picture is the color I got. Actual color is a bit “warmer” than the picture looks. Just so tired of bland eggshell walls, and wanted a bit of color, but nothing super drastic that would put the hubby into a tailspin, lol.

Got my haircut this weekend too in amongst all the running. It’s back up to chin length, much easier to take care of.

Sad But Necessary Donations

2011-03-11T10:07:00.000-06:00

God’s Tiny Angels received a request from one of our hospitals for burial or “angel” gowns for 1-3 pound babies.

Unfortunately there is a need for burial sets for babies who got their wings too soon. Sometimes I find it hard to make these, but then I think of the comfort that my small effort gives to a family who is going through one of the toughest times in their lives, and it makes it easier to create something nice for their baby during such a difficult time.

This set is fairly simple, but I made it with pink and white Pound of Love so it would be soft and trimmed it with just a few pink buttons. Simple but nice.

My second burial set. Again, made of Pound of Love yarn which I love for the softness of it. Again, very simple but nice and comforting. The pearl and lace decorations I added came from some trim I harvested from an old dress and were just too pretty to throw away. I knew someday I’d find a good use for them. They just seemed like the perfect addition to make this set special.

This set is made from a soft pink baby yarn. There wasn’t a label on it so not sure what brand, etc. the yarn is. I’m sure it came in a box of my yarn finds at Goodwill.

I added some white daisies with pink centers that matched the yarn hoping it would make it not quite so plain.

I made this little set from white Pound of Love. I’m thinking this set could be used for a girl or a boy, as they do use gowns for the boys too. I added a small bit of trim with white and green gimp to fancy it up.

My final set for now is made from some vintage Lion brand Jamie baby yarn. It’s variegated with pastel shades of blue, pink, green and yellow. It also has a slim thread of shimmery yarn in it. Because of the multi colors and the shimmer, I didn’t add any embellishments because I thought it might make it look too “busy”.

Some people find it hard to make these sets because of the circumstances for the need for them but I don’t really mind making them. They work up pretty fast, even for a slower crocheter like me. I don’t usually make a matching blanket for the sets, simply because they just take me too long to get a blanket done. I feel I can help more families this way and you can usually find a pretty blanket to buy to go with the set. The last thing these families need is to worry about trying to find clothing that is small enough for their angel and I can only hope my little gowns and hats will bring some comfort to them in such a difficult time in their lives.

Crocheted Baby Wrap Dress

2011-02-28T01:38:00.001-06:00

As many of you know, I belong to a group called God’s Tiny Angels and we make clothing, blankets, etc for needy babies. One of the ladies in our group, Louisa, posted a pattern that she created to our group for this wrap dress.

It looked like a pretty easy pattern so I thought I would give it a try. It worked up really fast and was very easy to make.

I think our group leader Danette is going to post it to the pattern page for God’s Tiny Angels. When I find out if it is there or not, I will post a link.

Peyton’s Cupcake Hat

2011-02-18T22:40:00.001-06:00

Peyton’s mom asked me if I could crochet a cupcake hat for her.

So I did a search on the internet and found more than one pattern. Each one had something that I just didn’t quite like about it so I used them for my “guides” and came up with my own version. Mom said it needed to have ear flaps and ties because Peyton would just pull it off otherwise.

My pictures aren’t as good as I’d like them to be but you get the idea :)

Peyton is about 16 months old now and her head measured about 19 inches around. I made it a bit big so hopefully it will fit her for awhile.

I used a size G crochet hook. Her coat is pink and brown so I used those colors. The pink is Bernat Satin 3.5 oz worsted weight acrylic yarn and I used about half of the skein. The color is called Flamingo. It’s a bit lighter than my picture shows.

The brown chocolate cupcake part, the earflaps and ties are made from Caron Simply Soft Eco 5 oz. skein. The color is, what else, chocolate! I used a very small amount of this, maybe a fourth of the skein if that.

Of course we had to have “sprinkles” on the cupcake so I used pink, cream and white pony beads and sewed them on with the pink yarn.

Sorry but I didn’t write down the pattern as I went along because I was winging it and I know I frogged some as I went so I probably wouldn’t have gotten it written down correctly anyway.

Hopefully I’ll get some pics late on of her wearing it and will post them when I do.

Blizzard Of 2011

2011-02-03T02:08:00.001-06:00

Well, we ended up with 18.4 inches of snow, way more than we usually see around here in Eastern Iowa.

Here are some pics of what I saw in the neighborhood.

This is the drift we saw when we opened the garage door so we could get the snow blower out. Hubby figured he would try to snow blow even thought it was still snowing heavily and blowing pretty good. We thought it might make it easier to clear it all off later on if we got some of it now. Ended up it didn’t make much difference because most of it just drifted back in.

Snow hanging off of the edge of the roof on the front of the house. This was taken about 9 PM on Tuesday February 1st.

This is looking down our street about 4 PM Tuesday. Before the snowplows ever even thought about coming by.

Here’s the same view about an hour later.

Remember the snow hanging off the front of the house? Well, I took this picture out our front room window. The snow hanging off the roof is about 2 feet long.

This is our neighbor’s patio on the house behind us. Doesn’t look to me like they are going to be using it or going out their patio door any time soon :)

Looking out our garage door about 7 AM Wednesday morning. Lots of drifts and the overhanging snow has increased dramatically. It had stopped snowing pretty much by then but it was still pretty windy.

Slightly different angle looking out the garage door. Drifts almost up to the bumper of our truck.

This is looking up the street in the other direction.

Drifts next to the truck and looking towards the street. No snow plow by yet as this time. See my poor mailbox out there near the curb? It’s on a 4 foot wooden post so that gives you a bit of an idea how high the drifts are.

Rocky says he’s hunkering down for the duration under this nice warm quilt hanging down off of the love seat. Do not disturb me!

So, that’s the blizzard of 2011 for me. Did you get hit by mega snow or ice too? Let me know. Truly hope we don’t get another one of these this winter. Luckily, we are retired and don’t have to worry about trying to get to work and we live on an “emergency snow route” street so we are one of the first streets to get plowed out in our city. Not so much for people living on the “side” streets in the area. The snow stopped about 7 AM Wednesday morning and as of 1 AM Thursday my daughter says the plows hadn’t been down her street at all yet. I hear on the news many of the side streets aren’t going to even get a single pass until sometime Friday. Really feel sorry for all who had to get out to go somewhere this morning. I saw our one neighbor across the street from us HAND shoveling his drive way at 5:30 this morning. Took him about an hour and a half.

More Snow ARGH!

2011-01-31T19:10:00.000-06:00

See that spot in the middle where it says QC? That's where I am. I snagged this graphic from one of our local news stations (and might I say one of the best meteorologist teams ever). They are usually right on the money. They are saying this will be a storm of "historic amounts".
G.....R.....E.....A.....T.
We are used to snow here in Eastern Iowa, lots of it, but not usually the motherlode all at one time.
Guess I shouldn't gripe cause I heard close to 30 states are going to get hit with this storm in one way or another, be it snow, sleet, ice or rain. But gosh, I'm OVER winter already, how 'bout you?

Where Are You Spring?

2011-01-29T11:15:00.001-06:00

Are you as ready for spring as I am? No more snow, no more cold. Guess I’m just having the winter doldrums. So, here is a pretty picture of a beautiful rose to try to help brighten up your dreary winter day :)

Old Family Pictures And A Journal Of Sorts Part 1

2011-01-26T03:23:00.001-06:00

I was digging around on my computer looking at old pictures and decided maybe I need to start posting some of them to my blog here and tell the story behind each one as a sort of historical journal for my kids.
I know some of these pictures they have probably never seen.
So today I am starting with mostly pictures of me. Then as I go along on future posts there will be pictures of my brother, parents, grandparents, and of course my kids :)
The majority of the pictures in this post were taken in Davenport, Iowa where I was born and raised. Also, they were taken back in the day before digital photos. Most were taken with old Brownie cameras. And the pictures from back then were usually black and white and printed on paper that had little scalloped edges.

This first picture was taken in 1955. I'm guessing I was about 6-9 months old. Not sure but that's my best guess judging by the length of my hair and my size.

This picture is my mom Elva. It was taken at Christmas time 1958. I remember that we lived in an upstairs apartment on West Second Street in Davenport near where the main post office is now in 2011. We didn't come from a well to do family so I usually remember the "good" Christmases. This was one of the good ones because I remember getting a doll that was as tall as me and she had hair that you could comb and she had her own wooden bed to sleep in. I think my dad made the doll bed. Wish I had a picture of that :(

This picture was taken in 1958. My brother Bobby was 6 and I was 3. I remember the picture was taken on the front stoop of the apartment building that my dad's sister Aunt Mary and her husband Uncle Art lived at across the river in Rock Island, Illinois. Us kids always looked forward to going there because we got to ride across the Rock Island Arsenal bridge, which is still there today. It was the first bridge built in our area and the trains would ran on the top of it while the cars went across the river below. It's part of Lock and Dam 15 on the Mississippi River and it has a swing span that would open and s---l---o---w---l---y rotate around to open so barges and boats could lock through the dam. Sometimes it took as much as a half hour for the span to do a full rotation. In the summer that got to be pretty hot because back then our car didn't have air conditioning. So sometimes we would all get out of the car and walk along the bridge to the swing span and watch it open and the boats and barges going through.

This picture of me was taken in 1959 making me 4 years old. I know my cousin Ronnie took this picture in the kitchen of his parents house (Aunt Alice and Uncle Harold) down on West Third Street in Davenport. Ronnie always was taking pics of us kids.

This one was taken in 1971 and I was 16 years old. My best friend was Evelyn and her mom's boyfriend Tony had a corner grocery store on West Second Street which is where this pic was taken inside of. Back in those days, neighborhood small family owned grocery stores were the norm. We didn't have the big super centers and such back then. I do remember there was an A&P grocery store up on Fourth Street. I used to ride my Schwinn banana seat long front prong bicycle to the A&P to get groceries for one of the older neighbor ladies. Ya like the granny glasses? I started wearing glasses 4 years before that when I was 12. I remember my first pair of glasses were plastic frames and they had those gosh awful pointy edges.

This was taken a year later in 1972. My dog Charlie was half beagle and half dachshund. I bought him for $5 from a friend who couldn't keep him any longer. That was a lot of money for a 17 year old who was working part time after school at the neighborhood drug store for a dollar an hour. And how about those lovely pants, lol? I made them in home ec class and wore the heck out of them. They were high class style then!

This is my mom and dad Elva and Frank. The picture was taken in 1980 and was one of the last pictures of my dad before he passed away in 1981. They were both in their 60's then.

Well, that's it for this round of reminiscing. Will try to do part 2 soon!

Christmas and Other Stuff

2011-01-03T01:15:00.000-06:00

I'm finally getting around to posting about Christmas.

We did our side of the family on the day after at my son and daughter in law's home.

Everyone brought a dish of food and we all chowed down.

Momma Nichole holding Peyton while she opens one of her Christmas presents. "See momma, I know how to open them!" She is 14 months old now and had a good time pulling the paper off of all of them.

Grandma made me a hat and scarf.

Grandma made me a Christmas teddy bear too!

I made hats and scarfs for everyone in the family this year. This is my son Frank (Peyton's daddy), and my step son Shannon. Frank is a Minnesota Vikings fan, thus the purple and gold :) Frank is the youngest of our kids and Shannon is the oldest. Somehow or other I didn't get pics of the women in their hats and scarfs. And the grandsons never sat still long enough to get pics of them.

Everyone just hanging out. Daughter Mindy, niece Becky, grandson Landon with his back to the camera, and my nephew in law DeShawn.

This is my son in law Jarrod. He is a HUGE Ohio State fan so of course I had to make his hat and scarf scarlet, gray and white.

Remember my rocking chair I refinished for Peyton? Well, here she is, sitting pretty in it.

She was overdue for a nap by now so hard to get her to smile for me.

Ok Grandma, enough with the pictures. I REALLY want a nap!

Now that the holidays are over, I can get back to crocheting for the babies. I have a lemon drop colored sweater in the works. Plus a friend of ours is expecting in June so I'm working on a blanket for her.

I will try harder to post more often this year, promise!

Gosh It's Been Awhile!

2010-12-04T11:22:00.000-06:00

Gosh, I didn't realize it's been three weeks since I actually posted anything here to my blog! Sometimes it just doesn't feel like there's much of anything of great importance to blog about. Do any of you feel like that at times?

This is what we woke up to around here in Iowa this morning. It started snowing HUGE flakes about 3 P.M. yesterday afternoon and was pretty slick out by rush hour.

This is looking out our front door. We got about three inches of snow, our first measureable one for this year.

It's really pretty but I'm not big on snow anymore. Maybe cause I'm getting older. Maybe cause I dread the thought of having to go out in it and shoveling the stuff. Not really looking forward to winter this year.

But, we have WONDERFUL neighbors. When I looked out his morning, one of our neighbors had snowblown our driveway and front sidewalk. All I will have to clear is the short walk going to our front door and the stoop. I'm sure the neighbors realize it's difficult for Dan and I to clear the snow with our health problems, and they just jump right in and are more than kind enough to do it for us without us even asking for their help. You just can't ask for better neighbors than that! We are so very thankful for them.

As you can see, the queen and king of the house aren't too concerned about the snow storm we had, lol. Holding down the love seat for their morning nap as usual.

This is just a simple preemie Christmas blanket I put together for our God's Tiny Angels group. We are having an emergency blanket blitz right now. We didn't have enough blankets made for Christmas to take care of all of our NICU's we donate to so we are all frantically trying to get enough blankets made for them. I have another one on the hook right now(Marie Anne, it's your rectangle granny blanket pattern!) and am trying to get it done in time to ship both of them off by Monday. I have about 5 more rounds to go and it will be done. The original pattern starts out with chaining 18 then following the pattern for a regular sized blanket but I started out with 12 chains then followed the pattern and I should end up with a nice 18 inch by 21 inch size for a preemie. Here's the link for the pattern if any of you want to try it, it works up pretty fast! Rectangle Granny Square Blanket Some of our other group members are using this pattern too and we really like it!

Here is the rectangle preemie blanket so far.

Well folks, I guess that's about it for now. I will try to get back to posting on a regular schedule again. I DO follow all of you regularly and sure enjoy reading about what you are up to.

GTA Donations November 2010

2010-11-12T11:26:00.000-06:00

November is the month we do our drive for Christmas items for the babies.

Most of these Santa hats were made by a lady that works with my daughter.

This is a preemie blanket I made with a matching diaper shirt.

This cute little quilt was made from vintage Christmas Precious Moments fabric. This is one of my thrifty creations because I found the PM fabric last summer at a yard sale and paid a whopping $1.45 for it. I had the batting and red backing.

Here is a closeup of the Precious Moments fabric. Isn't it cute?

I bought some Bear Claw pattern "cheater" quilt tops quite some time ago off of Ebay and just now got around to making up one of them.

I found this cute little fleecy soft baby blanket at our local Goodwill. It has pretty little cars embroidered on one corner of the binding.

Here's a closer look at the binding.

Just a couple of baby blue hats I made for the babies.

I found this bright circus quilt top at our local DAV. That's like a Goodwill shop for those of you that don't know, but the proceeds go to help veterans. I paid a whole 95 cents for the top, such a deal!

I had just a little bit of this skein of yarn left so I made a pair of booties out of it.

Another smaller blanket made from a granny square out of lavender, yellow and white yarns.

I didn't have a full skein of this yarn either so I ended up making a little dress.

That's it for this time. I didn't get anywhere near as much made this time as I would have liked to but Peyton's rocking chair and history book took up a lot of my time this time. Plus I was trying to get a head start on Christmas presents. Hopefully I can concentrate more on making things for the babies now, because we can use everything we can get! Every little bit helps, but I sure want to make more!

A Veteran's Day Salute

2010-11-11T11:28:00.000-06:00

LOUIS LLOYD POOL

Born 8-29-1920 Died 9-25-1944

This post has been created to honor my maternal uncle who was killed in action over Normandy, France during World War II. 415th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division

Most of my information is supplied by newspaper clippings that were saved from the DeWitt Observer by my mother, Elva C. Reiman (deceased) who was Lloyd's sister. Some information has been gathered from family members who knew Lloyd.

Louis Lloyd Pool was born August 29, 1920 in De Witt, Clinton County, Iowa to Charles Newton Pool and Bridgett Mary (Lizzie) Elizabeth Feldpausch.

He was always referred to as Lloyd, he never went by his first name of Louis.

Lloyd attended St Joseph's School in De Witt, Clinton county, Iowa.

Here is Lloyd's High School Portrait

After high school, Lloyd worked at Paper Products Factory in DeWitt, IA, and Nichols Wire and Steele Company in Davenport, IA. He was working at Frank and Sons Lumber Company, DeWitt, IA when he was called into armed services on November 19, 1942.

He trained at Camp Adair, OR for a year, spent a month in Arizona on maneuvers, and was then transferred to Camp Carson, CO for five months. He then was tranferred to New York where he was deployed to France.

According to newspaper clippings I have, Lloyd's mother received a telegram from the War Department stating that Lloyd was missing in action in France. She then received a telegram on October 16, 1944 stating he was killed in action in southern France on September 25, 1944. (I have been receiving additional info from kind readers telling me about the unit Lloyd was in and what battle, etc he may have been involved in at the time of his death.).

A memorial service was held for him on Monday, March 26, 1945 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, DeWitt, IA. Rev. John Moriarty conducted the services.

Lloyd is buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy France.

The DeWitt, IA Community Club did it's patriotic thing by giving out certificates to all men and women who served their country during World War II.

Here is a copy of Lloyd's certificate.

Here's a picture of a souvenir from Lloyd's first furlough home.

Looks like one of his buddies printed this on one of those old paper pill cups they had back in the 1940's. (Maybe it's a beer cup, hard to say).

I am proud to display these pictures of Uncle Lloyd's Purple Heart.

NOTES: Lloyd was killed 4 months AFTER the invasion of Normandy.

WIP Wednesday-Brites Babyghan and GW Score

2010-11-10T14:47:00.001-06:00

Here is my progress on my "Brites" babyghan. I looked back and saw I had 4 colors done this time last week, so I've gotten to where I have just about doubled my work since then.

Just starting on my eighth color. I don't seem to crochet all that fast I guess but I keep plodding along.

I think I have hit the bottom of my brights color selection so after this orange stripe is done I'm going to having to go back and reuse all my colors again.

Now on to some other fun stuff. Yesterday I needed to go to the grocery store but decided I'd pitstop at our local Goodwill first and see if anything there would scream out to me "buy me! buy me!".
Look what screamed at me!

The first picture is what I bought. I got a whole box of ALL......THIS.......YARN.....for the grand sum of $3.38! WooooHooo!

The rest of the pictures are just closeups of what was in there so you can see what all there is.

I ALMOST didn't stop at GW, sure glad now that I did. But I won't do it again on a Tuesday.

I didn't realize it, but our local GW has 25 cent day on Tuesdays. This week, anything that had a blue tag was 25 cents.

I should have realized when it took me 2 trips around the parking lot to get a parking space that something was up.

I'm telling you, it was wall to wall people in there. I've never seen so many people in there at one time. They had all their checkout lanes open but every one had at least 10 people in line. Except one lane, where one lady had her cart so full of clothes that it looked like a miniature mountain, seriously. Obviously, no one got in line behind her!

I don't know how they do it at other Goodwills, but at ours the people stocking shelves have a two shelf cart with totes on them that they bring the stuff out from the back on to put on the shelfs. The golden rule is that you can't take anything off of that cart, you have to wait til they put the items out or they can hand you something off of the cart.
I saw this box of yarn waiting to be put out on the cart. Well, I patiently waited right by that box of yarn until the gentlman stocking came back and asked him if I could please have the box of yarn on the cart. No way was I going to let someone else get it! So I thanked him profusely and almost skipped up to the checkout counters.
I'm happy I got this great buy, but at the same time, it's kind of sad to think someone actually gave yarn away! Do people REALLY part with their yarn???
I'm guessing someone passed away and the family just didn't have any use for the yarn so they donated it to Goodwill. Sad. Much of it is fairly old, but yarn doesn't get old, right? Most of the baby Jamie yarn has tags on them that say Michaels 1996. It all smells good, so it was probably part of someone's stash.
Lucky for me, my hubby is good about not griping when I come hauling more yarn home, especially when I get such a good bargain as this!
He knows I'm a yaranaholic and he's totally supportive of my crocheting for needy babies.
Well, that's my week, how has yours been?
Click the logo below to see what everyone else has been up to.

WIP Wednesday - Brites Crochet Babyghan

2010-11-03T01:56:00.000-05:00

Now that Peyton's rocking chair is done, I'm trying to concentrate more on working on crocheting baby items for the charity I belong to, God's Tiny Angels. So this week I am working on a "brites" baby afghan.

You see that Mr. Rocky had to supervise my picture taking, as usual. NOTHING gets done around here without his assistance.

I went through my yarn stash and dug out all of the bright yarns I could find. The majority of what I found was Red Heart Super Saver yarn with a few Caron One Pound skeins thrown into the mix.

They say babies like to focus on bright items and I really enjoy working with the bright yarns, so this seemed like the perfect project for me.
Just so you wouldn't be blinded by all the brightness lol, I decided to use white for a dividing color in between the colored stripes.
It's a no brainer pattern I used, pretty simple. I made a chain of 113 stitches for my start then everything else is all double crochets. Three rows of each color. Can't get much simpler than that!
I will probably edge it in single crochet for the first round then scalloped shells to finish it off.

I just had to show you this cute picture I got of Rocky and Baby. I call it the double decker cat bunk bed nap time :)
Obviously Rocky likes my new cushions I made for MY rocking chairs, and Baby seems to prefer sleeping on the cushion I put on the floor for her under the chair. She likes little cubbyhole places so under the chair is her preferred spot.

Poor Peyton has had quite the time of it since her birthday on October 27th.She tripped running and smacked the corner of her eye on a wooden bench. She got a nice goose egg and quite the shiner out of that. Then on her birthday she had to go into the hospital for awhile. Poor thing was vomiting and had diarrhea bad enough that she got pretty dehydrated and had to have an IV put in to get her re-hydrated. She DID get to go home that night though. She is just now starting to keep solids foods down. Seems like it's going around. The cultures aren't back yet but they think she probably has rota virus. I hadn't heard of that before but did some research and found out it's a pretty contagious virus that irritates your intestines. Seems it's pretty common for kids her age to get it, and you can catch it from other kids usually that are in a child care setting (which one of her little friends is). You get it from oral contact with fecal matter. So if someone doesn't wash their hands well after changing a diaper from someone who has it, or going to the bathroom that has it, it's easy to pick up the germ.Or in the case of a young child, chewing on something that has been in contact with the virus.
And to top it all off, her two top front teeth are coming in.
So all in all, poor little Miss Peyton has not had a good week.
How has YOUR week been and what are you working on?
Click the logo below and we can go see what everyone else has been up to.

WIP Wednesday-Chair DONE and Birthday Is Today

2010-10-27T08:32:00.000-05:00

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY to my grand daughter Peyton today!
The rocking chair got done with time to spare for her birthday party on Sunday.
The first picture is taken inside after everyone was gone and the party was over. She had lost her hair bows and shoes by then, lol.

Some of the pics are a bit blurry and the color is a bit wonky, but you can see how it went. She LOVES her rocking chair!
She's rocking away here.

Having a good time kicking and rocking.

And of course there's the traditional first birthday cake and having a good time getting all messy.

Daddy's holding her while she tells all of us "all gone!"

Happy baby clapping and having a good time, wearing her birthday tutu.

I'm on the run!
I don't think that child slowed down or stopped for a minute the whole time Sunday. It was hard to get good pictures because just about the time you thought you could snap her picture, off she went and you ended up snapping a pink blur.She most definitely is enjoying being able to walk and run. I know she wears her momma out by the end of the day!

I know this is supposed to be a WIP Wednesday project, but this was a looooooong WIP and I just wanted to show the end results. Everyone thought the history book of the rocking chair was pretty cool, and I wrapped the chair with the purple crocheted bunny sitting in it.
All in all, the projects were a lot of fun and I would do it all again.

Let's go see what everyone else is working on this week! Click the link below to see.

WIP Wednesday - Rocking Chair THIS Close To Done

2010-10-19T22:21:00.001-05:00

Here is the infamous rocking chair for Peyton with the first coat of stain on it. I actually am working on the second coat now so it's coming right along.
I am using the MinWax One Step Stain and Finish on it.
I decided on using Pecan in a satin finish. Gives it a nice sheen without being glaringly glossy.

Just found out this afternoon the birthday party is Sunday afternoon so cutting it close here, lol. Just like I said it would be.
I have been working on this in the garage which is unheated. The temps at night have been dropping down into the low to mid 30's. I've had to wait until early afternoon for the garage to warm up to actually stain this , otherwise it's still just a bit too chilly in the garage for the stain to dry properly.

Also, I've had to do each coat in stages, because it has so many little nooks and crannies and I need to be able to hang onto some part of it that's still dry so that I can turn it where I need it to be to coat each area.
It's been a lot trickier little project than I ever thought it would be, but I'm really, really pleased with the way it's turning out.
If I have enough time, I'm going to put a third coat on it, just to make darn sure it's good a solidly coated. Hopefully that way it will make it through another 50 plus years!
Thanks for your patience following my many posts on the rocking chair, history book of it, and the purple rabbit.
Oh yeah, been working on the lap quilt and cushions in between waiting for coats of stain to dry. Lap quilt is done, both seat cushions are done, and working on the back cushions for the rocking chairs now. Too tired to take pictures of those right now, maybe I can get those posted later in the week.
What are all the rest of you working on this week?

Fall Saturday In The Midwest

2010-10-16T19:09:00.000-05:00

What a beautiful sunny spectacular day it has been here in Iowa today. We made sure we took advantage of it because these kind of days are getting fewer and fewer.

Our grandsons spent Friday night with us because their dad had to be at work before the butt crack of dawn.So Dan and I got to spend some one on one time with each of them.
The big story for today is that Grandpa Dan took our oldest grandson Chase (who is 10) on his first squirrel hunt. I'm not sure which one of them were more excited about that!
They got up at 2:00 A.M. so they could make the 4 hour drive to our property in Missouri. Chase was so excited he had a hard time getting to sleep and it was after 11:30 before he passed out, lol.
He was real good about getting up at 2:00 A.M. though for me.
It is now 7:00 P.M. and they are on their way back to Iowa. Last report I got was that they got 2 squirrels so I am glad about that for Chase. I bet grandpa forgot to take pics of Chase with the squirrels before they cleaned them.
The main thing is Grandpa and Chase got to go hunting together for the first time.

Well, that meant Landon had to stay home with Grandma. (He is 7 years old). I guess he didn't mind that cause we got to spend some one on one time together. Usually it's both boys together and we don't really get much individual time.
This worked out great though.

I told Landon since it was soooo very nice out I wanted to work on the yard. His first question was "Do you have a rake that's my size?" Well, by gosh I did, lol. Here it is. I originally bought this short adjustable rake to be able to get to the back of the flower gardens and under bushes, but it sure fit the bill for Landon to keep him happy raking leaves for me. He picked up all the twigs and branches first that had fallen from the maple trees then got to work raking while I broke the branches into smaller pieces.

He was a really good helper, until Dad showed up to pick him up, darn it, lost my help too soon!

We got to spend a nice time outdoors together. When I thanked him he told "that's ok, that's what Boy Scouts do".

And look who was sitting in the kitchen window supervising the whole outside operation.

WIP Wednesday Day Late

2010-10-14T04:21:00.001-05:00

Wow, this week sure got away from me. So, I am a day late posting my Wednesday WIP.

This is recycle week around here and I don't know about where you are, but during recycle week the garbage guys pick up other junk that you can't normally put in with your regular garbage. Once a month we get to put our other "junk" out on the curb with the regular garbage and the recycle stuff.
So, all week long, we have been working on scooping out the garage. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of time in on much crafty stuff :( but the garage sure is looking better.It's not DONE, but it sure is a lot cleaner and much better organized. I REALLY wanted to get the garage straightened out before ......"shhh.snow" (yes, I said it) sets in, cause it's a whole lot easier to haul stuff out to the curb if you don't have to wade through the white stuff to get it out there. Since we can only do this once a month, by the time the next junk day rolls around, it will be the end of November, around Thanksgiving time, and you can just bet if I waited til then we would have snow up the wazoo and it would be a LOT of fun to do then. So that has been my week pretty much in a nutshell.
BUT, now that the garage is as done as it's going to get for now, I dug out a UFO and am working on it.
A LONG time ago, I started a quilt with the intention of making it for our queen sized bed. Well, we all know how good intentions go sometimes.
Here's how far I got on it:

Right now it measures about 40" x 60". I'm going to add another row to the top of it and that will make it about 45" x 60".
When I get that done, I am going to make a quilted throw to have on the love seat to use to cover up with on those cool night that are coming.

Here is a closer look at the material in the squares.
I have a whole bunch of the flowery paisley type of material that is on the bottom right of each square, so I am going to use that material to make the backing.

I have a whole bunch of the squares all ready made up, just need to be put together. So.....I have another project in mind for those :)

We have a pair of these really nice wooden rocking chairs. I got them as a retirement gift from my fellow employees and my boss when I quit working five years ago.
(If you look close, can you see Rocky taking a nap underneath the back of the rocker?) He HAS to be in the middle of anything I am doing.

Until now, one of these beauties has been in my bedroom, and the other one was in storage because I just didn't have room for it anywhere in the house.
Well, I have room now because I got rid of the old ugly beaten up couch. These babies are going in the living room so they can actually be USED! ('Bout time).
The extra squares that I have left over from the not ever finished quilt are going to be made into seat cushions and backs for the rocking chairs! So the covers on the rocking chairs and the lap quilt on the love seat will match.

Update on Peyton's rocking chair:
The first coat of stain is on, ready to be sanded so I can get the second coat on. Really got to get cracking on it, her birthday is the 27th, so time is slipping away on me! Too many projects, too little time. Like I've said, I will probably be putting the finishing touches on the rocking chair in the wee hours of the morning the day before the birthday party. I WILL have it done!

WIP Wednesday-The Book Is DONE!

2010-10-06T04:34:00.000-05:00

I have the book done!!! Wooohooo!! Well, all but one page, lol. The page with the picture of the finished rocking chair, because the CHAIR isn't done yet.
So, this will be a long post with lots of graphics due to scanning all of the pages and taking pictures of the cover that I made for the three ring binder.

My indoor pictures just aren't turning out as clear as I'd like so bear with me please, but at least you get the general idea.
I'm really happy with the sage green flowery fabric with the sage green braid added to it.
I ended up sewing my seams a tad too much, so......I had to hand sew the outer seams for the cover to the binder. THAT was quite the fun time, but it all worked out and looks really nice. I didn't have any more of this fabric and REALLY wanted to use it, so I made do.

I made a couple of little changes on the first page. There was some advertising down by the bottom of the heart that I wanted to cover up, so I found some felt hearts on clearance at Hobby Lobby and some heart confetti, so that worked out nice to finish up this page.

I'm not re-posting the pages I already showed on my previous post, so the rest of this is all of the remaining pages, except the one of the finished chair. That will come later when the chair is done.

All the rest of these are pretty self explanatory so here goes with all of the pictures. I scanned them all and some of them turned out a bit dark because of the "dodads" added to some of the pages. Since there were so many of them, I didn't fix up the pics, here they are in all their original glory, lol.

This is Peyton's daddy. Isn't he a cutie? He still has the big dimples and the loooong eyelashes.

I was four months pregnant with Frank in this picture, thought it would be cool for Peyton to see.

This is Peyton's Aunt Mindy and her daddy when they were younger.

This is when Dan and I got married and it shows Peyton's dad and all of her aunts and uncle on her dad's side.

Peyton's parents when they were dating.

One of her parents engagement pics.

A couple of their wedding pics. I really like the upper left one. It's not posed and seems more "real" to me.

All about little Miss Peyton's birth.

Family tree on her Dad's side.

Young pics of her dad.

More pics of her dad.

More current pics of dad.

Early pictures of Aunt Mindy.

More pics of Aunt Mindy.

Earlier pictures of me.

Newer pictures of me.

My parents, 1 year before my dad passed away.

Earlier pictures of my brother.

Newer pics of my brother.

Pictures of my mom, Peyton's great grandmother.

Pictures of my dad, Peyton's great grandfather.

My dad's dad, Peyton's great great grandfather.

My dad's mom, Peyton's great great grandmother.

So there you go, 35 pages later, the history book about Peyton's rocking chair is done.
I could have put so much more in it. It was almost hard to pare it down. And considering I have never done any scrap booking before, I'm very contented with the end results.
Now I have to get cracking on staining the chair, only 3 weeks til her birthday!

Let's go see what the other ladies are doing this week. Just click on the logo below.

Grandson's Newest School Pics

2010-10-05T11:23:00.001-05:00

Here are the newest school pictures of my grandsons for this year.

This first young man is my oldest grandson Chase. Today is his birthday and he is now 10 years old.
Happy Birthday little buddy, love you LOTS!

Chase is a very intelligent young man with a good head on his shoulders. I predict he will go far in life. He is very good at coping with life's difficulties and is great at helping others.
He is involved in football and baseball.

This second handsome young man is my youngest grandson Landon. He is 7 years old. He is our little comedian and likes to play jokes on people.
He is involved in playing organized soccer.

WIP Wednesday-More Of The Rocking Chair History Book

2010-09-29T00:48:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I'm refinishing my childhood rocking chair for my granddaughter who has her first birthday on October 27th.

For those of you that haven't previously seen them, these are the first three pages of the book that I posted last week. I scanned all of the pages I have done, so if there are some weird shadows it's from my scanner.

This is the rocking chair before I started to strip it down. The next page will be a picture of the chair after it's all done, which it isn't yet, so that will come later.

The rest of the pictures are pretty self explanatory so I'll just post them so you can see them.

I have more pages done but don't have them scanned yet to add to my blog. I'll try to get them scanned and posted soon, otherwise, that will be my update again next week.

I'm still fighting with bronchitis, the antibiotics weren't doing much for me so the Dr. put me on some steroids on Monday and I have to go back to see her on Friday so she can see how I'm doing. The steroids are starting to kick in after 2 days so I AM starting to feel better. Still coughing my head off and still kinda "snottified" and congested, but not as bad as I was. Going into my third week of this, getting old :) Can't go see my granddaughter while I have this, don't want her to get it, so that is irritating me more than anything I think.

In the meantime, I'll keep on working on her book and the chair as I feel like it.

I've never done any scrap booking before so I've been learning as I go, but it's been a lot of fun.

That's my WIP this week, what are you working on?

Click the link below and you can see what some of the other ladies in our WIP Wednesdays are doing.

WIP Wednesday-Rocking Chair History Book

2010-09-22T00:14:00.001-05:00

Still fighting bronchitis but determined to get some work done on the rocking chair history book before Peyton's birthday gets here!
Since I've never really done any "scrap booking" before, I decided to do some surfing on the web for ideas and some other scrapbook paper I could print for free.I wanted some more variety than what I had and money IS an issue right now. So, free is VERY good, lol.
One place that I got a LOT of really nice scrapbook papers and ideas is called Scrapbook Scrapbook.com
Their link is: Scrapbook Scrapbook .
I also went looking for tutorials on how to cover a three ring binder. Found a few good ones so that is the option I am going to go with to put the pages in. I attempted to cover foam board with some really heavy pretty fabric, but it gave me all kinds of fits and I gave up on that idea pretty quick. Plus figuring out how to get grommets in the cover and back so I could use rings to put it all together just had me very frustrated.

After digging through the craft room I found this three ring binder. I went through some of my fabric stash and decided I'm going to use this pretty sage green flowery print to make the cover, then use fabric glue to add the darker sage green braid for trim along the top and bottom of the cover.
I wanted to make the cover kind of old fashioned since this is a "history" and I think this fabric and trim will work just fine.
Sorry if some of the pics aren't as clear as they should be, or if the color is a bit "off". It was the operator, not the camera.
Should have taken the pictures when it was sunny out, not at night. I'll get the hang of it one of these days :)

This is the first page that's going to be in the book. Isn't it cute? I found it at the Canon Creative Park website. Their link is: Canon Creative Park Scrap booking
I printed the teddy bear paper out then ran it back through the printer to add the writing. I added pretty white loopy braid around the heart. Tacky Glue works great for adding braid and laces I found out.

This will be page two. It's kind of hard to tell, but the paper is different sizes of pink dots. I had some cute daisy trim with pink centers so I used that to make a frame around the writing.

Here is page three. It tells about me and the 58 year old rocking chair. The paper is a lighter yellow basket weave. The lace trim on the top is left over from a gift card hat box I made for my daughter's wedding reception 5 years ago. Then I used some teardrop shaped pearls to fancy up the lace some more. Those were recycled from an old wedding dress that I had used the satin on for something else.

Here's a close up of the trim. Hopefully you can see it better.

I have some of the other pages printed out but don't have them "fancied up" yet so this is all I have ready to show you for now.

Many more pages to go, hope I can get it all done in time. You watch, with my luck I'll be burning the midnight oil the night before the birthday party to finish it!
Out of necessity I have been digging through my stash in the craft room to create this book. It has actually been a lot of fun to do that! I keep finding more ideas I want to use and finding trims that make me says "oh, I used that to make this" and "gosh I bought that to make such and such".
It's been fun to be involved in the WIP Wednesday group. Makes me concentrate more on some of my projects, that's for sure. You should go check out what the other ladies are doing. Just click on the picture below.

WIP Wednesday-Sorry, Not This Week

2010-09-15T11:44:00.002-05:00

To all my great followers, I'm sorry to say I don't have a WIP to report on this week.
Right now I am fighting a bout of bronchitis and just haven't felt much like working on anything.
Much of last week I spend a few days at my daughter's because we had a garage sale on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Forgot how much WORK it is to have one.That's probably where I caught this bug I've got.
I did take my crocheting with me and worked on a few projects during lulls in customers, but didn't get as much done as I would have liked.
When I have felt like doing anything, I've been on the computer working on Peyton's book for the rocking chair I'm refinishing for her. This is a picture of the cover that my daughter helped me design (she's awesome at graphics). Not totally sure this is exactly what I want for the cover, but it's a good start. I do have most of the rest of the inside layout figured out and laid out. Got the pictures for it uploaded online last night so I can get them ordered. So I guess you could say I DO have a WIP this week.

Two Years Ago Today

2010-09-12T19:47:00.001-05:00

Two years ago today I suddenly and unexpectedly lost my only sibling to a cerebral hemorrhage.He was only 56 years old.I miss you every day Bobby. Rest in peace big brother.

10th Anniversary

2010-09-09T01:13:00.002-05:00

Today is mine and Dan's 10th wedding anniversary.

Here is our wedding picture. Obviously this is not the first marriage for both of us. We each have two children from previous marriages.
Dan and I are seated.
Behind us are my son Frank, my daughter Mindy, who was my maid of honor, Dan's daughter Shawn, and Dan's son Shannon, who was his best man.

Here we are 5 years ago at my daughter's wedding reception.

Our kids, Frank, Shannon, Shawn and Mindy.

And last but not least, our three grandchildren.

Chase

Landon

And little Miss Peyton.

WIP Wednesday - Crocheted Bunny

2010-09-07T23:28:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to make a crocheted bunny for my granddaughter Peyton to have to sit in the rocking chair I am refinishing for her first birthday. Well, he is ALMOST done! The only thing I have left to do is make a big old bow and tie it on. I think he turned out pretty cute.

I used a pattern from a Leisure Arts booklet called Toys For Tykes. It was published in 1994 so I'm pretty sure it is no longer in publication. But I watched Ebay for a long long time and finally won an auction for it a few years ago. Paid way more for it than I should have, but the critters in it are so cute! And they are way easy to make. Lots of parts and sewing together but well worth all the effort. I've made all of the animals in the book, and each one turned out just awesome.

Here's a picture of the booklet in case you want to haunt Ebay like I did and try to find one for yourself.

WIP Wednesday - Peyton's Rocking Chair

2010-09-01T01:45:00.001-05:00

,Earlier this month I posted about refinishing my old childhood rocking chair for my granddaughter Peyton's first birthday. Link to post is here if you want to read about it:

http://mamasu55.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-and-that.html

Here is a picture of what the poor old well loved 58 year old chair looked like before I started to refinish it.
I decided I wanted to do all the restoration by hand, no power tools. This is a labor of love for Peyton, and I want it to be just right.
I feel like I have more control on how it all goes doing it by hand. Granted, it's taking me longer than it would if I used power tools, but I just feel better about doing this way.

Here are some pictures from different angles of how it is looking at this point of restoration.

I'm finding it is taking me much longer than I had originally anticipated.

It looks pretty straightforward and simple, right?

WRONG!

Because it is child sized, it is presenting itself to be more of a challenge.

Some of the challenges:

It looks to be pretty smooth, etc. with simple scraping. Not so. There are lots of little nooks, crannies and crevasses that are giving me fits to try and remove the old finish from.
So far I have used a plastic scraper, an old toothbrush, a small flathead screwdriver, toothpicks, one of those skinny turkey skewers that you use to lace together the turkey after you stuff it, q-tips, and a stiff brush. Gotta get creative you know!

Then there are the round pieces. They don't scrape very easily with a flat scraper. So, I scrape as much as I can with the scraper, then take the old toothbrush to the round parts. Of course, that pushes the gunk into the crevasses where other pieces fit into the round pieces. Out comes all my other creative "pick it out" tools, lol.
After all that, I wipe the section I'm working on down with mineral spirits so I can see better what is left behind to still remove.

I'm finding it's better to do one section at a time. Don't even try to do the whole thing at once. And maybe because it's been awhile for me to strip anything, I need to do a second coat of stripper to get off the rest of what I missed. (Couldn't be my old eyes could it?!?!)

This is the stripper I am using. I really like it a lot. It has a lot of super good things going on for it. First off, it smells like citrus, very low odor, and you aren't gasping for breath while you are using it :)
Since it's a gel, it's super easy to put it on whatever you are stripping and it doesn't run off. I've been using an old paint brush and that works really well.
It doesn't take much to do the job. Even after applying it twice to everything, I have only used about a third of the jug. It's 32 ounces ( or a half of a gallon, U.S. measurement).
You can clean it off in as little as 30 minutes or up to 24 hours. I have found that 30-45 minutes is usually long enough.
If you don't think you are going to be able to get back to clean it off in a short period of time, slather the stuff on thick! Because if you only put on a thin layer and don't get back to it shortly, this stuff dries like cement and is a whole lot of fun to try and scrape it off, lol. ( I found out the hard way). If it does dry on you, I found the easiest way to get it off is to just recoat it with the stripper, wait 20-30 minutes, then you can proceed as you should have done :) This is the only downside I have experienced with this stripper.
Price and availability in the U.S. is great. I got mine at my local WalMart and paid something like $10.97 for it.
Don't forget to buy a bottle of mineral spirits to wipe any residue off as you go along. I bought the odorless stuff, what a difference. Got that at Walmart too. The odorless is a bit more expensive than the regular stuff, but you can BREATH while you are working and it's worth every penny.
Looks like I got pretty windy on this post, so I'll quit for now and keep you updated.

Cool Photo Effects Website

2010-08-30T23:22:00.000-05:00

Thanks to another blogger's site that I follow (and I don't remember which one since I follow so many), I found out about this cool website that has a neat program where you can do some pretty cool photo effects with your pictures.

Remember the pictures I took of my granddaughter Peyton riding a horse at the fair?I made this picture with the website I found. Pretty cool isn't it?!?!

I made this one too :)

The website is:
http://picjoke.com/

They have all kinds of cool stuff you can use. I spent a good part of the afternoon playing around there, lol.
Go check it out and have some fun!

Sunday With The Family

2010-08-30T02:50:00.000-05:00

Sunday was my son in law Gary's 50th birthday. Much of our family and many friends went to hang out with him and his wife Shawn to celebrate. They went camping at one of our local lakes and we all congregated there.
The hubby and I spent much of the past few days cooking because it was a potluck of sorts and we wanted to make sure there was plenty of food.
We raided our usually well stocked freezer and cupboards and ended up making baked chicken legs, baked a turkey and hubby boned it out. I made a big crock pot of chili and another crock pot full of green bean casserole (Susie Slop as my kids call it).
A bunch of us in the family are on restricted diets and/or trying to eat healthier, so I made some chocolate sugar free pudding, and sugar free jello with bananas.
Gary's daughter made the cake and Shawn bought sugar free ice cream so us diabetics could join in the sweet part of the celebration.
There was plenty of other food too so if anyone went home hungry it was their own fault.
Even though it turned out to be a pretty warm day (low 90's) with lots of sun (and no rain, yay) we had a decent breeze most of the day, so it wasn't too bad.
It was so nice to get out of the city and lap up the beautiful weather with so many friends and family.
I took my camera but kept forgetting to take pictures, duh!
I must confess I DID take more than a few pictures of my sweet little granddaughter Peyton. She's 10 months old now and growing like a weed.
So the only picture you get today are of Peyton :)

Sitting on G'pa Dan's lap watching Uncle Gary's birthday balloons floating in the breeze.

Ok, bored with the balloons. And maybe a little sleepy after eating lunch.

After G'pa Dan let me down, I decided to crawl up in this chair all by myself. Of course, I've got Dad trained to bring me a toy to play with and hang onto it for me :)

Ooooooh, pop! Hey Dad, can you catch this?

Even with all of the birthday preparation this weekend, I did make time to do some crocheting and got another Christmas present finished up.

This hat and scarf set is for one of the guys. I haven't decided which one is getting it yet, but at least it's done and I can add it to the Christmas gift box.

I made this out of Red Heart camouflage yarn. I knew I didn't have enough of that to use just the camouflage, so I dug through the stash and found this brown yarn called Polished mahogany. The brand is Vonnel. Have any of you heard of that brand before? I haven't. I must have gotten it in one of my "great deal" boxes of yarn from Goodwill or DAV thrift store. Don't really remember. I suspect it's a vintage yarn, but it's in really nice condition and it worked well with the Red Heart. I only had one skein of it too, probably not enough to really make anything else by itself, so this worked out good.
Here's a closeup so you can get a better idea of how it looks. The brown is actually darker than it looks in the picture and goes good with the camouflage. Someday I'll figure out how to take better indoor pictures and get the colors to show up closer to what they actually are :)

Well, that's it for now. I sure enjoyed my weekend. How was yours?

New Graphic Design

2010-08-27T01:07:00.000-05:00

Hey now, did you notice the new graphic at the top of my page here?
(Can't hardly miss it can you, lol??)
My grown daughter designed it for me :)
I was telling her that I'd sure like to figure out something snazzier for the header on my blog and she said "let me see what I can come up with".

So, here it is!

She has a lot of experience designing graphic arts and I knew if I put a bug in her ear she could come up with something way better than I could.
I'm really pleased with her design and I just had to brag about it.
She may not sew or crochet, but at least she got some kind of my "crafty" genes! Thanks so much Mindy, love it!

Backyard visitor

2010-08-26T16:02:00.000-05:00

I was out in the backyard a little while ago and happened to catch something move out of the corner of my eye. Luckily, I had my camera out there and was able to get a picture.
It's a little blurry, here's a pic of one of our residence groundhogs under the pear tree having a snack. He didn't sit there very long after he spotted me so I was lucky to get the picture.

GTA Donations August 2010

2010-08-26T11:42:00.001-05:00

August is the month that we do our sweater drive for GTA. I didn't get as many sweaters done as I would have liked due to the carpal tunnel, but every sweater helps. Plus, I don't crochet as fast as some of our other members do :) I swear, some of you must crochet in your sleep!!Anyhow, I also got a wild hair and decided that making some baby quilts would be fun too. We ALWAYS need blankets for the babies.
I'm going to show you my two quilts first, then on to the sweaters.

This first quilt was started a long long time ago and got put away as an UFO (unfinished object). I originally had grand delusions of making a quilt for a full sized bed out of this. Uh huh. I rediscovered it a short while ago and thought I really should do something with it. Each square is fairly small, a better size for babies. After measuring it, I decided it was big enough for a baby quilt so there ya go! I had started this by digging through all my scrap fabric and used all kinds of colors, which I think made it pretty unique. Backed it with a pretty medium blue solid so it should make a nice quilt for a boy.

This next quilt is a bunch of cute moose sleeping and being lazy. Something bright and different! I found the material at a garage sale for next to nothing. I'm thinking I paid a whole dollar for it. And I had the backing material in my stash.

Here is a close up of the mooses.

I just want to say that you know, you don't have to have a lot of money in order to be able to "pay it forward" and help out others less fortunate than yourself. My husband and I live on a fixed income of his pension, and if I can afford to help others, believe me, so can you! I get a lot of my yarn and fabric at Goodwill and DAV thrift stores and at garage sales. Plus, it doesn't hurt that I have my kids trained to give mom yarn, fabric, and craft store gift cards for my birthday, Mother's Day, Christmas, etc. :) Besides, I think that in their own way, they feel good helping mom cause in their indirect way, they are helping the babies too!
Ok, off of my soapbox now, and on to the sweaters!
We don't get as many sweaters for boys so I kind of decided to concentrate on them this time.
This one is made out of Lion brand Pound of Love.

This is a nubby tweed type of yarn. Don't remember which brand.

I'm thinking the body of this is Red Heart Super Saver with the arms made from Pound of Love. I didn't have enough of the brighter blue so just finished it off with a darker blue. I think it turned out pretty cute.

This one is for all of you Iowa Hawkeye fans out there! Baby sweaters can be something besides pastels all the time you know.
I remember that I got both of these yarns at DAV for something like $1.25 for both of them. Great deal!

Pastels are nice too, I just like doing brights most of the time. This is one of my exceptions. I didn't have a full skein of the multicolored pastel, so I just finished off the bottom with Blue Pound of Love and some white to finish the sleeves.The multicolored yarn was another Goodwill find.

This denim blue yarn was a Goodwill find.

Isn't this a pretty darker mint green? I have my husband trained too, lol. He found a box of yarn with 8 skeins of yarn in it at Goodwill for $4.38 and bought it for me. This was in that box of yarn.

This is just a pretty multicolored yarn that reminds me of autumn colors.

Another of one of those partial skein sweaters. I had JUST enough for the body and finished it off with bright yellow sleeves and buttons to tie it all together.

This pretty pastel multicolor was in the Goodwill box of yarn.

Another partial skein sweater. I finished it up with Caron One Pound peach yarn for the sleeves, bottom, and edging. I really like the way this one turned out.

This was a bright reddish orange yarn I found at DAV for 75 cents!

I must have been on a partial skein roll this time :) The nubby turquoise and white came from a Goodwill find and I finished it off with Lion brand white Pound of Love.

Last but not least is my super bright yellow made from Red Heart yarn.

That's it for this time around. There are other quilts and sweaters in the making at this time, but that's for the next round of donations.
The next quest for me is the Christmas drive.

Great Suggestion!

2010-08-24T09:34:00.000-05:00

A fellow blogger stopped by the other day and suggested I join her for her work in progress Wednesdays. I like that idea! So starting tomorrow, I will be posting some of my works in progress every Wednesday. Since I usually have numerous projects on the crochet hooks, or at the sewing machine, I shouldn’t have ANY problem coming up with a post every Wednesday, lol.

This is the gal that got me motivated to post on Wednesdays:

http://macrochet.blogspot.com/

Baby Scrapghan Update

2010-08-20T06:04:00.001-05:00

Slow but

Slow but sure, I am progressing on the baby scrapghan. Row two is finished and whipped stitched to row one. Still digging through the stash to come up with enough colors for the different blocks. I want to make it without duplicating any of the colors. We will see. Have to take it slow with my crocheting for awhile. My carpal tunnel has been flaring up and so has the pinched ulnar nerve in my right arm. But I am determined to not give up! Will continue updating you as it progresses!

God's Tiny Angels Blog Mention

2010-08-19T04:07:00.000-05:00

One of the crochet blogs that I like to follow mentioned that she was posting links to websites for Charity Crochet Groups and writing a little blurb about that group.Well of course, I just HAD to ask her to post a link and mention God's Tiny Angels. She went and checked out the GTA website, posted a link, and even posted a link to Peggy and Jess's Baby Ripple Dress pattern. Pretty cool huh?

I figured the more we can spread the word about GTA across the web the better.

Who knows, maybe it will even help get more members so we can help more babies!

Go check it out:

http://crocheteveryday.blogspot.com/

Crochet Baby Block Scrapghan

2010-08-15T19:59:00.002-05:00

I decided that I was going to clean out some of my smaller balls of yarn and ended up working on making a Baby Crocheted Block Scrapghan.
Since I've never written a tutorial of sorts before, please bear with me and if there is something that isn't clear feel free to send me a comment and I'll do my best to help you out.

After sorting through the stash, I decided that I was going to stay pretty much with brights and jewel toned colors for my blocks. And simply because I had lots and lots of it, I am using Red Heart Super Saver Aran for the border color.
You can use any colors that you chose, I just used what I had on hand.

Most of the yarn is Red Heart Super Saver with a few Caron One Pound thrown into the mix. I know these yarns are a little "stiff" and not as soft as many other yarns are. But......one of the ladies in my God's Tiny Angel's group told me that if you put a half cup of vinegar in your rinse water, it will soften this yarn up. It really does work, and doesn't smell like vinegar after you dry it.

I am writing this with the assumption that you already know how to crochet and know the basic crochet stitches.
Stitches used in this pattern are chain, single crochet, double crochet, and whip stitch for sewing the panels together. All stitches are U.S. terminology.
Also, if the pictures look backwards to you, it is because I am left handed, so if you are right handed, just imagine the pictures flipped over, lol.

Ok, now to begin.
Row 1:Chain 25, then double crochet in the fourth chain from the hook. DC across for a total of 22 dc's. Ch2, turn.
Row 2-10: Dc across, ch 2, turn.
Row 11-12: Change to your border color and make 2 rows of dc's with a ch2, turn, at the end of each row.
Row 13-22:Change to your second color and continue in pattern as written above.

Basically, you make 10 rows of each color to make a square, then 2 rows of your border color. Each strip is made of 5 squares with 2 rows of border color after each one EXCEPT at the end of your last square, do NOT make 2 rows of border color. Instead, ch1, turn, sc across, 3 sc in corner, sc down the side, 3 sc in corner, sc across the bottom, 3 sc in corner, sc up the other side, slip stitch last stitch to the corner stitch.
Then, ch 2, dc in first stitch of your single crochets, then double crochet around with 3 dc's in each corner. Slip stitch at the end.
You now have your first "strip" of blocks done!

Using the yarns that I did, my "strip" measured approximately 31 1/2 inches long by 7 inches wide. If you want your strip longer, just do extra squares and border rows before you start to crochet around the strip with your border color.

Pictures below should help show you what I did at each step.

This is my first color with the 6th row in process.

Here is the first block of 10 rows.

Here is where I am changing to my border color before I chain 2 at the end of my 10th row of block color.

Here is where I am working my first row of border color. As you can see, I crochet over my ends as I go so I won't have any ends that I will have to weave in later.

This is the end of the second row of my border color separating each color block.

Adding my second color block.

Working on the first row of my second color block.

Here is what my first strip of 5 blocks of color with border rows in between looks like. I was having trouble getting good color with my camera, but the yarns are actually much bolder than this picture shows.

Here is a closeup of the end of the strip, with the border crocheted around it.

I intend to make 4 rows of strips. Then I will whipstitch the rows together so that should give me an afghan about 31 1/2 inches long by 28 inches wide.

Again if you want it wider, just make more strips!

Then I intend to do a row of sc around, then a row of dc around. Will see what size I have then. After that I will decide if I want to add more border to it.

I am working on this in between other projects. Will show updates as I go along. I usually having 2 or more projects going any any given time, so it might be a bit before you get to see the finished afghan.

Peyton At The Fair August 7, 2010

2010-08-09T03:00:00.010-05:00

We had a fun morning at the Mississippi Valley Fair here in Davenport, Iowa on Saturday.
My daughter Mindy and I went to watch my son Frank and his wife Nichole's daughter Peyton show off her horse riding skill, such as it is.
Considering she is only a little over 9 months old :)
From my understanding, usually the kids riding are under age 14 and must ride alone, while someone leads the horse. Since Peyton is so young, the officials made an exception and allowed an adult to ride with her.
Basically, they just pretty much just allowed her to "show" for the fun of it.
As you can see by the first picture, she was having a good time up on the horsey.
She even got a ribbon!

I like this! I'm not scared at all!

Are we done yet??

Oooooh, shiny!

The shiney is closer.....maybe I can grab it!

Check out all my sparklies and my super cute little pink boots!
G'ma Sue bought the shirt (for next to nothing at Goodwill, since I'm gonna outgrow it in no time)and G'ma Lu sparkled it all up with her hot glue gun and rhinestones.
And my pigtails helped hold my hat on, even though I didn't leave it on very long.

Hey Dad, is Grandma about done taking pictures??

Ridin' around the arena so I can show off my cuteness :)

Waiting for them to hand out the ribbons.

All that just to get that??

Hey mom, can I get down now?

Ok, it's time to get off here and FEED ME!!

Oh yeah, isn't this lady riding with me pretty cute too?
(Almost as cute as me).

I've been really good with all this, now can I just get these hot clothes off?

This And That

2010-08-05T19:40:00.014-05:00

This is fair week here in Scott County Iowa so on Saturday I am going to go to it with my daughter. We are going to see my sweet little granddaughter Peyton. She is just over 9 months old and she is going to be riding a horse in a horse show! How fun is that?? I will be sure to take lots of pictures and post them later.

Here's Baby and Rocky, the queen and king of the house.

As usual, I have too many projects going at one time. We are currently working on a sweater drive for God's Tiny Angels, the group I belong to that makes items for needy babies at hospitals across the nation. I only have a dozen or so done, thanks to the carpal tunnel and pinched ulnar nerve, but hey, every sweater is one more warm baby this winter!

I also got a wild hair and decided to make a few baby quilts. Will post pics of my donations after I get them all ready and sent off.

Since the kids seldom read my blog, I can talk about the project I am working on for Peyton's first birthday in October. Many many moons ago, my parents bought a child's rocking chair for my brother when he was born in 1952. Now it is a family heirloom of sorts. It was used by my brother, then me, then his kids and my kids.

Since Peyton is my first biological grandchild, I plan on passing it down to her for her first birthday.

It's seen its share of bumps and bruises, so I am in the process of refinishing it. Then I am making a book for Peyton that tells the history of "Peyton's Rocking Chair".

I'm telling her about her great grandparents (my parents) buying it for her Uncle Bobby, and Grandma Sue using it too. Also telling about her Aunt Mindy and her daddy Frank using the chair too. I'm including pictures of my parents, Uncle Bobby ( who is deceased and never got to meet her but would of sooo loved her), me, her aunt Mindy and her daddy when he was about a year old. Plus stuff about her birth with pictures.

Then I'm going to take it to Kinko's and have it printed and bound in a book. This way, she will hopefully someday when she is older get to read all about her chair, and maybe one day pass the chair and the book down to her own children.

As you can see by the "before" pictures, it has been well loved and it just didn't seem right to give it to her like it is, so that's why I am refinishing it.

Oh yeah, and besides all that, I am in the process of crocheting a purple bunny rabbit for Peyton to sit with her in her rocking chair. It is abour 2 thirds done, will post pics when it's done.

GTA Donations June 2010

2010-06-11T05:09:00.007-05:00

This time of year, our God's Tiny Angels group works on making items for the babies for the 4th of July. Red, white and blue is the theme!

I started out making some diaper shirts since they work up really fast. I used worsted weight yarn for the bodies, then to edge them and make the ties, I used a thinner lighter weight yarn.

I had a bit of this bright blue yarn left over from another project, so I made a little hat.

One of my preemie blankets. I just made a blue square for the middle out of double crochet then kept edging around that with red and white stripes. My 7 year old granson said to me "Is that supposed to be like the flag grandma?" So I guess it turned out right!

This is just double crochet stripes edged in white.

I made a granny square for this one.

For something different I made a rectangle granny square out of a deeper red with white and dark blue.

Our next project is our annual sweater drive. Already have a good start on that. Still fighting with carpal tunnel and a pinched ulnar nerve, but I just keep on keeping on as best I can.

Pretties and Kitties

2010-06-01T08:45:00.005-05:00

Just for fun I thought I'd do some pictures of my kitties, and pretties outside.

Last year for Mother's Day, my kids got me 2 lilac bushes that we planted in the front yard. I didn't really expect any blossoms on it the first year, but lo and behold, I got ONE big blossom on one of them. So of course I had to take a picture! And here it is!

This is my neighbor's front yard with their peonies and irises. The white peonies are split from a plant that was started over a hundred years ago. Now THAT'S pretty cool!

Here's our apple trees out back just loaded with blossoms. Hopefully we will get some good apples this year.

And last but not least, the king and queen of the house, Baby and Rocky, holding down the couch. They occasionally allow the other one to sleep next to them (or on them, as the case is here). Doesn't happen too often so I had to get a picture of it.

That's all for this time.

For The Martin Family

2010-04-06T11:38:00.014-05:00

After Dan's dad passed away in 2000, and his mom in 2006, the "family farm" in Missouri was sold to settle the estate. Dan and his daughter Shawn recently went to our place in rural Missouri and went by the old farm. While they were there, they took pictures of the old farm. I'm posting those pictures here so the family and friends can see what kind of changes and improvements the new owners have made.

This picture was taken about 1999. You could always tell people to look for the pink house when they were trying to find the place. This is a view of the back of the house looking towards the road.

This is how the front of the house looks today with a new paint job and a new steel roof. Looks like they added central air and moved the outside attenna to the south side of the house.

Another view of the front from the road.

Second view of the front from the road.

View from the north side of the house.

And from the south side of the house.

Here's the new garage they built north of the house over by the nut orchard and where we used to pick blackberries.

Front view of the new garage.

Side view of the new garage from the road.

Another view of the new garage.

They sure fixed up the old garage. New roof, new paint job, added a window and a man door on the east side towards the house.

View from the house of the old garage. I see they kept the clothesline :)

Antlers on the old garage.

The root cellar. Looks like they planted a new tree in the yard behind the house. Cause the one towards the front of the picture wasn't there before.

Another view of the root cellar.

Member the old shed that used to be next to the old garage? Looks like they moved it over by the root cellar north of the path going up to the pond. I think they are using it like a leanto for storing firewood.

The old wellhouse. Looks like they added a ramp and some yard ornaments. See on the right side of the building? They kept the old pump and added some yard decorations.

GTA Donations March 2010

2010-03-23T02:32:00.005-05:00

All of these booties were made and donated by a lady who works with my daughter. Her name is Linda.

I handstitched the quilting on this little blankie.

Found this and the next one at the local Goodwill.

Just a little diaper shirt.

Maroon sweater.

Another little blanket.

Fleece blanket with crocheted edging and a little onsie.

Not too much this time. Been having trouble crocheting. Have a pinched ulnar nerve which makes my little and next finger numb. Makes it hard to control the tension on my crocheting, but I'll keep on trying, no matter how long it takes me!