s'more pix for yer joy

Okey dokey, I'd folded up the flower~afghan and set it with the water~bottle sleeve/carrier, the three hot~pot~pads, and the assorted scrubbies that I've made for my husband's middle child/girl.

To the right is my stunningly talented husband, wearing his wiener~T and holding my walking~staff that he made for me.  If you click on the pic, it enlarges and you can see more detail, Detail, DETAIL.  I'll tell ya the story behind the wiener~T some other time.

tah~DAH!

Usually, I spread out afghans on the my bed from when I lived on the farm, before I got married.  We have it set up in a spare bedroom, along with my bookshelves and the vanity my grandfather made me when I was a child.  But right now, it's covered in material and patterns for the totes.  So I spread out the afghan that I've made for my husband's middle child/daughter, who just turned thirty last Sunday.  What you see here is actually the back side of the afghan.  I used Red Heart brand, acrylic, cornmeal, carrot, light sage, and claret.  I was not planning to use the claret, but I couldn't find more light sage and I didn't think I had enough.  Turns out I probably did~~but I'd already used the claret.  That's fine, cuz I'm also sending her some claret items, in addition to the rest of the items which are Peaches and Cream cotton, variegated green/yellow/orange that perfectly matches the Red Heart yarn used.  I may take a pic of all of the items together, but right now, they are in the room that my husband's youngest grandson {he's two!} is sleeping in and I don't want to disturb him.

gooooooooooooooood day!

This morning, when I got up, I had a headache.  I've had a pretty much constant headache now for about ten days.  I've taken stuff for it, but I'm thinking that part of it is the barometric pressure changes are killer right now.

My friend with whom I've been trying to get together since...awhile now, called and we did lunch at Waffle House.  Not the best Waffle House experience either of us have ever had.  Just snippity and snarky employees who were very sullen and even allowing for how much their lives may suck, it didn't justify their suckededness.

However, it was great to see her for a few and her babies are growing so fast!  Her oldest is such a cutie and she was showing me her boo~boo on her knee.  I asked what it was from, she said, "rocks".  Good answer.

The youngest is almost a year and she is such a plump lil thing, chubby in all the right baby ways.  I thought of Sunny, from Lemony Snicket's.  Now tho, I'm thinking of the dimpled Cabbage Patch Kids that were all the rage back in the eighties.

When I came home, my husband had finished putting the second coat on my walking~staff.  It's so beautiful, and when it is done, I'll probably take numerous pix cuz the detail of nature is amazing.  It's so humid out there, that it feels like it ought to rain some more.

Also, my husband, who is off today, helped me do up my sewing patterns for my totes/purses.  We did four pattern~packets.  We used the heavy brown paper that I'd mentioned before, and I gave him the measurements, they were all rectangular pieces with no extra curves or slants or what not.  That took most of this afternoon, cuz there were several pieces per pattern.  But now they are labeled, color~coded, each zipped in their own gallon~bag...so I feel very good about getting that outta the way for the weekend.

Hope you have a great one!

done!

whirly~curly~swirl

I am taking a short break from the flower~afghan, so decided to try my hand at crocheting a whirly~curly boa.  This is not following any specific pattern, tho I did review a few, each more different than the next with names like potato~chip scarf, boa, swirly~whirly, etc.  I incorporated some elements and added my own and here is the almost completed project.  The section on the right is finished, the majority of it lies to the left and I am working from right to left, so it is the area yet to finish.

I started with a no~chain foundation, then did two double crochet stitches per chain, turning the work so that both sides of the foundation were included {such that the foundation is the center with the rest of the stitches being round and round}.  On the next round, I did three treble stitches in each double crochet.  That is what I am currently doing to finish it.   So basically, it's the foundation, a round of double crochet, and a round of triple crochet.  That's it!

Click on the picture if you want to see more detail.

This is my wonderful husband of a year and a half.  Click on the picture for an enlarged version so that you can fully see his awesomeness.  We just spent the last week in Wisconsin, which is why he is wearing a hat and hoodie with Green Bay Packers motif~~~that and it was his birthday a couple weeks back {56!}.

But at heart, he's an MSU fan, as you can see by his shoes.  In this case, MSU is our very own home team, Mississippi State University~~go dogs!

Our lil chiweenie, Sophie, is a wonderful traveling companion.  She's just six months old, and is just too damn cute.  She was so very good for the trip, traveling in the car, staying in the motel {Motel 6, pets stay free}, meeting and staying with our bestman and his wife and their pooch.

We're glad to be home.  Yesterday, when we left Wausau, Wisconsin, it was snowing/sleeting and driving in that slush was ... fun...not.  We are now unpacked, laundry is done, mail is sorted, bills are paid, etc.  I'm looking forward to sleeping in our bed, a nice wide bed.  sigh.

Does not my husband look smashingly wonderfully good?  And to think just ten months ago he had been involved in quite the nasty wreck that fractured his leg in a couple places, among other injuries.  Sigh, he's my fabulous man.  allllllllllllllllll mine.  sigh.

taking a break

Well, I just wanted to post that I am taking a break, for about a week; so nobody get all worried and alarmed.  Have a great week, and see ya soon, grins, Debra

happy birthday, to my husband

new bed

 Shaddow has a new bed!

  My husband built it for her this afternoon.  It's solid, very.  And wonderfully green.

Ain't it sweet?

more "project~to~be"s

 In the last entry, I'd said that I'm partial to vines and leaves and autumnal colors.  Here are some of the combinations that I especially like.  My favorite color is green, particularly darker shades.  In this top picture, I have some darker green fabrics.  One is reminiscent of ferns.  One is a plush pattern with dark dark green and an even darker green.  The other is a wonderful weight, tightly woven.

If you want to view any of these fabrics in more detail, simply click on the picture.  It will show the patterns featured in the picture.  You can also get a feel for the type of fabric, the print, the weave, and the weight.

Pictured here is one of the top two favorites I have in this batch.  I love, Love, LOVE  this leafy print!  I hope to make a case to carry my laptop, both fabrics are heavy~weight and I'll reinforce the layers with plastic canvas inserts between the layers and lining.

This fabric is more on the bluish side than strictly green.  I really like this combination.  This features the other of the two favorite fabrics in the batch.

I especially love that there are several different types of leaves in this print.  Oh!  And see how nicely it matches the paint {"peppermint tea"} my husband and I have chosen for our home to be finished in?  *winks*

projects to be

In the last post, the shot of the entire bed top, which is covered in projects; you may note that there is FORTY feet of folded pressed brown paper.  I plan to use that paper for tracing and making patterns for my sewing projects, namely the totes.  Now where did I get the forty friggen feet of brown paper?  Glad you asked!  When amazon.com sent us Sophie's pet~zoom {a grassy looking potty pad contraption}, they sent it in a huge box, cushioned by forty feet of brown paper.  Shipping was free, which is a good thing, because I doubt that it was necessary to pack a plastic tray that was nestled inside of another plastic tray which was inside of one inch high box...inside of a box that was several feet long and high and wide.  However, it was awesome that amazon.com sent me pattern~making paper!  Wadn't thet nice of them?!?

Also pictured here are three combinations of material with tote patterns.  Our local furniture plant, FlexxSteel, sells the remnants and remaining bolts of discontinued and discarded upholstery grade material at the warehouse on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.  So I got each one of these sixteen several~yard swatches of heavy and mid~weight fabric for less than fifty cents each {I paid about ten bucks plus tax}.

Some of these patterns are free online, which I converted to word~docs and printed.  Others are patterns that a friend let me borrow.  She taught a class a few years ago on making purses/totes.  So I recently got in touch with her so that I could have some refresher lessons on what to do, cuz I want to make some large totes with various compartments so that I can put each crochet project, skeins of yarn, hooks, etc in its own tote.  That way, I'm not continually rearranging things, tangling yarn, dropping and unraveling stitches, and forgetting which hook I was using with which project.

I love the combinations that I've picked with several materials.  Normally, I'm not a huge print person, but several of these are so gorgeous that I can't wait to see the finished product!   I especially like the prints that feature leaves, vines, and autumnal colors.

bedful of projects

Here is my current project~cue.  A few of these are crochet, most of the future ones are sewing totes to hold crochet projects that are being worked on at that time.  Some of the stuff in the foreground is part of the package including the flowery afghan pictured in a few of the other previous entries.  The little round things with frosty white are actually scrubbies, good for dishes, non~stick pots/pans, sinks/tubs, etc.  They're made using the smallest round loom, acrylic red~heart yarn, and netting.  The stacks of hexagons are to be incorporated in the flowery afghan.  There is also a wine bottle sleeve {or it could be used to carry a water bottle, which is what this dudette always is toting} and there are several hot~pads, done in cotton.  The colors of the cotton pads are the same as the colors in the afghan, as well as the claret scrubbies and end rows for the afghan.

Two babies

My husband turns 56 tomorrow!  Seen here, he is cuddling Sophie, our almost six month old chiweenie.  Poppy is her favorite!  She loves him bestest.  nodding solemnly.

project status: about one~fourth

This is the back of the flowery project I'm currently working on.  The afghan will be made entirely of hexagons which are mostly double~crochet stitches.  There will be four rows of flowers like what is pictured here.  In between the rows of flowers will be rows of the light sage filling the spaces in between the flowers.  The both the left and right edges of the afghan will have a solid row of claret, as seen here.  All told, there will be seventeen rows of sixteen hexagons, or about 275 hexagons.  This will be for my husband's middle child/daughter.