Baby Afghans

Off to a family baby shower today, so you know I had to make something special for the little one. With baby afghans, I typically chose to do simple designs in highly washable yarns - they're meant to be used, washed frequently, etc. These are for a little boy, hence a lack of ruffles or other florishes.

This one is just a simple shell pattern. The yarn is a super-soft acrylic sport weight in a pretty yellow/turqoise/white ombre, and I used a little solid white for the border.

I opted for a reasonably tight repeat shell pattern so while a lighter blanket, it will still be quite warm. Also, as it's a lighter yarn, it took quite a few extra hours to crochet a blanket of substantial size, and it's a pattern that's easy for me to hammer out.


The other one I did is my favorite of the two.

I fell in love with the yarn, which is Red Heart's "Ocean".

I love the swirling blues and purples in it, so I let that guide me to a pattern. I chose a slightly more open pattern because it's a heavier yarn - standard worsted weight - and I wanted to have kind of a wave pattern to again pull out the ocean theme.

Size wise, it's quite a large afghan so it can cover Mom as well if she's cuddling the baby or be spread out to play on the floor.

I'm really pleased how this one came out, and have tucked instructions away because I could see making it again at some point in the future.

Here's a little detailing of the wave pattern and the edging:

And so, they are off to their new owners today and will be enjoyed.

A project for the bedroom

I'm taking a little break from stitching this week to work on a project for the bedroom:  two matching large doilies to put on the bedside tables.   I have stacks of doilies that I've crocheted over the years, but just not quite what I wanted.

I finished the first one over the weekend while on a road trip, and I'm currently working on the second one to match.  I thought it would be fun to show how second piece grows as compared to the finished piece.

Here's the first piece, finished:

It's made with size 10 crochet cotton (slightly thicker) and is currently 19 inches across.  Once I wash it, it will shrink down to 18 inches.   This is a pineapple design, which is the symbol of hospitality.  It's a very popular motif in doilies, and shows up regularly in patterns.  It's also one of my favorite motifs, and it ends up on a lot of my projects.

This is the first row of the second doily, which is obviously quite small.

The first three rows.  You can see how the pattern starts to take shape.

The first six rows, side by side with the finished doily.

As you can see, they're worked in rounds out from the center, so it grows fairly rapidly at first.  Obviously as the rounds get larger, the progress slows down.

Here's the center just about finished, and within the next 2 rounds, the bottom of the pineapple edging will start to form.

The bases of the pineapples are completed here. The interior of the design will be mostly covered by things like the lamps, a cup tray, etc, so for a bedside table, a simpler interior design like this works really well because the edging is highlighted.

The pineapples are about 2/3 of the way done here and you can see how it's all pulling together.

And they are both finished (on the dining room table here).   I still need to darn in the ends (you can see them hanging out still), then wash and iron with a little bit of starch, and they'll be ready to use.   The thread is 100% cotton so that makes them very practical for actual use, not just decorative.  

And yet another project...







This is a shot of the edging of an afghan that I'm working on. The "body" is a repeated fan design, and I'm slowly but surely working the fan edging right now. It's done in Red Heart soft white yarn, which makes for a nice warm throw that also washes well.

Lace!

I come from an English background, and as such, no furniture surface was "complete" without a lace doily on it. Not long after learning how to crochet with yarn, I started playing around with crocheted lace. These are two recently finished projects that will be Christmas gifts. Each is about 15 inches in diameter.

Both are made out of #10 crochet cotton in white (and both are badly in need of a bit of starch and an iron LOL). Patterns are from my favorite crochet magazine, Magic Crochet (out of print for several years now).

Full Circle

I first learned to cross stitch before I was 10 years old, and have been doing it on and off ever since then. There's been some periods in my life where I've done more and I've done less. For various reasons, I really wasn't stitching much between about 2002 and 2008 - I did a few projects here and there, but not very much.

I'd wanted to get back to stitching, so after finals were finished last spring semester, I visited a needlework store in PA (I am up there visiting my boyfriend often), and picked up the materials for Crystal Symphony (I had a choice of all of two Mirabilias that they had on hand LOL). So I got started back on Crystal (Nothing like a simple project to ease back into stitching, right?)

I worked on Crystal on and off during the summer, rotating with a filet crochet tablecloth (which I did finish):



It's worked from the center out, much like round lace doilies are worked. It's done with a size 10 thread, so it's a little thicker/more durable than a finer thread (the slightly thicker thread is also easier for me to work with - size 20 kills my hands and eyes). I've done so many afghans over the years (I learned how to crochet in the late 80's) that I rarely do them anymore - there's only so many I need :-). Extra lace pieces, however, are easy to store (and I end up giving away a lot of the smaller pieces).

A close up so you can see some of the detailing:

This is how far I got on Crystal Symphony before she got rotated out:

Crystal got bumped when I finally got the Mermaids of the Blue (Mirabilia patterns were a little tough to get last summer because of distribution reorganization). I really have not worked on her since - she didn't stand a chance once I started working on getting my Queens finished LOL.

With my finish of the Queens series last week, I've been kind of bumping around all week, deciding what direction to go in. I've been bouncing around projects this week trying but really haven't been able to settle into anyone. I ended up sitting down last night and spreading out all my WIPs and my kitted projects (an impressive pile, I must say) to basically work out what I should be focusing on for now.

Crystal is currently my oldest WIP, so I need to get back working on her for a while. I'm debating about simplifying the design, because I'm not thrilled with the chandelier at the moment. I may skip the frame entirely, or perhaps just leave that part out and lower the top edge of the frame. On the body, I have most of the colors filled in, and need to fill in a LOT of white, which will take a long time AND make it appear that I'm not progressing LOL. I was having trouble with her left arm (I did the flesh parts in over 1) so I frogged a chunk of that last night (ouch). I've since decided that over-1 just is not compatible with my eyes and my patience, so I won't be doing any more over-1's, but I'll have to finish up Crystal that way since it's nearly finished. As my official oldest WIP, I think I need to focus on getting her done.

There's also Edith Wolford, also started last summer, which has so little done that I haven't even bothered taking a picture LOL It's a beautiful purple and orange iris from Silver Lining, which I put aside because there's a lot of confetti stitching with very similar colors. I'm going to go back and start working it in 10x10 blocks (working off what I have already done), and I carded up all the floss last night so I can keep the cut floss on the cards as well to tell the colors apart better.

I'll no doubt work on some other projects as well, but I'm going to try to focus on getting these two finished this summer.