CAL: week 13

August 24, 2013 by 11 Comments

Week 13 is already upon us!  Are you ready to dive in?  Let’s get started, and remember we’re using US terms!

Last week we finished with row 94:

cal95

row 95

With new color, hdc across.

rows 96-99

With 2 new colors, work the Catharine wheel pattern (click here for original instructions).  Here’s a picture so far:

cal96

row 100

With new color, dc across as instructed in the original Catharine wheel instructions.  You might want to count your stitches here, just to be safe.

row 101

With new color, hdc across.

row 102

With new color, dc across.  Here’s this week’s rows all together:

cal97

Don’t forget to weave in those ends!  For me it really does help make the whole blanket more manageable when I don’t have ends getting tangled everywhere, which is becoming more important as our blankets grow in size.  This week I don’t have a picture of the whole blanket — again I forgot to stop crocheting in time and didn’t remember until I was a couple more rows in, and I can’t give that big of a spoiler away!  😉

Can you believe we’ve done over 100 rows now?  That’s a lot of stitches.  I know that a few of you aren’t too fond of working the Catharine wheels, but I hope that the other fun stitches compensate adequately!

That’s all for this week — thanks for stopping by!

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felting in the wash

August 11, 2013 by 18 Comments

I’m no expert on felting, but the general process seems to include agitating your wool (by hand or machine) in warm/hot water.  Easy enough to do on purpose, I suppose, but inconvenient to avoid if you’re in a hurry to thoroughly wash your woolens.  It seems that you can even “felt” acrylic yarn over time, to an extent:

felt2

This is an acrylic blanket (Red Heart, I believe) that was made by my boyfriend Chris’ great-aunt.  It’s a full size blanket made with US single crochet stitches, and I can only imagine how many hours it must have taken her to complete.  It seems that she was very wise in choosing her machine-washable materials and denser type of stitch, for the blanket has held up very well indeed (you’d be very impressed too if you saw how my boyfriend and our dog abuse blankets, and you’d also understand why I generally try to keep my handmade items away from their regular use).  The blanket receives much wear, accompanied by many washes and dries.  It has “felted” a bit over time, as well, which has come in handy.  In the picture you can see the stitch definition pretty well, but if you try to tug on part of a stitch, the yarn doesn’t budge because enough fibers are interlocked.  Our dog’s claws (or Chris’ toes) therefore are extremely unlikely to catch and pull.  It’s perfect, and the chevrons are still in style!

My first ripple blanket, made back in 2011, I’m afraid to say hasn’t seen much use because I’ve been too worried over it’s immediate destruction.  It’s a twin-sized blanket and was made with Berroco Vintage Chunky yarn, which is 40% wool and not exactly cheap.  Inspired by the above blanket’s indestructible-ness, today I decided to try and get my lovely ripple to felt a little bit.  Here’s what happened:

felt3

The stitches did indeed begin to sort of “glue” together, although the navy stripes acquired some of the fibers from the other colors and now look a little rough.  That’s OK though — it’s fixable and the experiment gives me hope that with a couple more washes, I may be able to let go of the fears attached to the use of my treasured blanket!  It would be lovely to see it being enjoyed instead of just sitting in the linen closet.

For comparison, I’ve taken a picture of my most recent ripple, which is also a twin-sized blanket made with Stylecraft Special DK (acrylic).  It has not yet been washed because it, too, has seen almost no use:

felt1

Of all 3 blankets, this one has the best stitch definition.  I’m planning on washing it a bunch of times in a row the next time I have extra change for the laundromat so that hopefully it, too, can be indestructable and worry-free!

Have you had any experiences with felting that have turned to your advantage?  Or have you accidentally felted something against your intent?  If you have any tips or pointers for me on what to do or what to avoid while attempting to further felt my wool and acrylic blankets, please do share!

Thanks so much for stopping by everyone!

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CAL: week 11

August 10, 2013 by 8 Comments

Hello everyone!  Today we’re up to week 11 of our crochet along — can you believe it?  Are you ready to get started?  Don’t forget, we’re using US terms.  Here’s where we left off last week:

cal91

rows 79 & 80

With new color, work the two rows that make up the star stitch pattern (click here for the original instructions).

row 81

With new color, work hdcs in the spaces between the hdcs of row 80.  Check your stitch count at the end if you think you might be off one or two stitches.

row 82

With new color, dc across.

rows 83-85

With new colors, work the granny stripe pattern (original instructions found here).

row 86

With new color, dc across.

Here’s what these 8 rows should look like:

cal92

I don’t have a picture of the full blanket this week; I didn’t get a chance to take one in good lighting because this week’s been really busy.  My boyfriend has gone to another city to start a new job (I will hopefully be following him soon) and it’s much tougher cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of the dog, and working an hour’s drive away without his assistance.  I’m working more days, which is great.  Also, my car is having troubles, so I think I’m going to have to borrow my Dad’s truck so that I can drive to work safely while waiting to hear from the shop what’s wrong with my car (it seems to be the transmission but if the whole thing has to be replaced I’m SOL and don’t know what I’ll do).  I know that many other women do more than this in their days, what with kids or full-time/regular jobs, so I’m not complaining.  Just busier than normal, and stretched very thin.

The sooner I can move, the better, because hopefully I can find a cheaper place and therefore be able to take care of myself.  If that does happen soon, I’m afraid I might miss a week of the CAL.  I’ll make every effort to get it done, but during the moving week we might just have to take a short break.  Just wanted to give you a heads up that that might be a possibility — in fact, some of you might be relieved, because it’ll give everyone a chance to catch up, weave in neglected ends, or just rest those busy hands.

Well, that’s all for today.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

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ow.

August 9, 2013 by 28 Comments

What a couple of days it’s been!  My car needs a really expensive fix (about half of what the whole car costs, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen there).  In the meantime I’m driving Dad’s truck, but the first day I drove it it sat in the sun too long and the glue holding the rearview mirror on gave out.  Mirror swinging wildly by a cord, today I drove it to the shop to get it fixed.  I was planning on eating afterwards — they said it would be an hour.  It was 2 hours, and I was quite hungry and had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair.  Standing up to go pay, my foot which had been asleep without me noticing completely gave out.  I fell but caught myself against the wall and limped in pain to the cashier desk, wherupon I connected the cashier with my dad via tellephone and had to be led to sit down — my vision went black.  Someone had to drive me and my Dad’s truck home.  Now I can’t really walk at all.  Thank goodness Chris is home from his job and could look at it — he used to be an athletic trainer and so quickly identified what was wrong.  It’s a bad sprain from rolling my ankle.  It doesn’t hurt much unless I try to walk, which is a problem since I had to call my boss and tell him I couldn’t be there tonight and might not be able to go tomorrow.  It’s my right foot so I probably won’t be able to drive, much less stand for hours on end.  What scared me was the blacking out part, because I never actually fainted but my vision was gone, I was dizzy, and broke into a sweat.  Possibly low blood sugar.  Possibly low blood pressure.  Possibly shock from the pain.  It’s happened before but not this bad.  Not sure, but I do know that I was incredibly embarrassed and I NEED to go to work tomorrow.

Wanna see my foot?  Some people think feet are gross anyway, so if you do, look away!

foot1

Extra gross, right?  It’s not usually all swollen and multi-colored.  Actually I like my feet when they are normal looking, but this foot is just sad.  In real life it actually looks a bit worse than this, but you get the general idea.

Chris immediately wrapped it in an Ace bandage and put an ice pack on it and elevated it to the arm of the couch I’m currently lounging on.  Now it looks like this:

foot2

Now I’m all wrapped up in my cozy blanket (the ta-dah moment of which can be seen here).  It cheers me up and I’m not all tensed and panicky anymore (I freaked out because I was home alone for a bit and was scared I’d black out and not be able to get help).

I may take a nap.  I feel so much better now that Chris is here.  I literally don’t have anybody else that I know of who lives in this town that could help in an emergency.

On the bright side, I’ll have plenty of time to work on the CAL now, and I’m sure glad I went to the laundromat and walked the dog yesterday evening.  Maybe I can even convince Chris to cook me dinner.  He’s taking such good care of me!

Just wanted to let you all into my exciting few hours.  I’ll admit it’s very overwhelming (because there’s tons of other stressful stuff going on at the moment too) but to be honest typing it out gets me to relax a bit more about it.

I’ll talk to you again soon, I expect.  Take care, and don’t let your legs fall asleep and catch you unawares!

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CAL: week 10

August 3, 2013 by 6 Comments

Hey everyone!  Ready for this week’s CAL installment?  Let’s get started, and don’t forget we’re using US terms!

Last week we left off with row 70:

cal88

rows 71-74

Repeat the mirrored chevron pattern.  Click here for the original instructions.  Here’s all 4 rows:

cal89

row 75

With new color, hdc across.

row 76

With new color, dc across.

row 77

With new color, hdc across.

row 78

With new color, dc across.  Here’s what it’ll look like:

cal90

And that’s all for this week!  I managed to get a full shot of my blanket, although the color got a bit washed out:

cal91

I hope everyone is still enjoying the CAL, and I hope you’re keeping up with weaving in your ends!  😉

The pictures you’re all posting on facebook and Ravelry are great — it’s so cool to see everyone progressing!  The links to those are in the right-hand sidebar, as are some new buttons/links that will take you to each individual week.  It was requested by a participant and I agree that it should make things easier on you all.

Oh and one of the participants also set up a Ravelry pattern page (thank you!) so you can add it to your projects easily.  Click here for that.  I must apologize to the creator of the page — I had to take down the original picture because that’s not my picture (it is our inspiration picture but it belongs to this blog and I didn’t want it to seem like I was claiming that that picture was mine).  I really appreciate you making the page though — it was a big help!

That should be all for this week.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

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