Almost Done

The meal has been eaten and most of the house has already been returned to its preholiday position. While most of my attention was on last minute set up, babysitting a turkey and a ham, and stressing about time, I did get some crochet done. While I lamented that it was going too slowly, I started to look for solutions. The best one by far was the wide edging. It did take quite a lot of digging about to find the right one that could be modified to fit my needs,but once I found it, I was off.

The edging was from a free shawl pattern on ravelry. I'll find the link for it and share it on Monday if anyone is interested. I had to make a few changes to make it work not only around the corners, but since the shawl is rounded and the blanket is not, I needed to change some stitch counts so it wouldn't curve out too much. Of course then as the day was almost over and I was on the last round, I ran out of yarn, oh, maybe 8 inches from the end. So I undid the whole round and began again, this time removing another small element to make sure I'd have enough yarn this time.

 I should be able to finish it today and get it to its new owner for gifting. Then I guess it's back to making snowflakes for my mother-in-law, unless by some miracle, things pick up in the shop. It should be a pretty long weekend, hiding from the retail outlets.

Thank You!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of those out there that celebrate. To the rest of the world, happy Thursday! I am, as usual, hosting the family meal today. This means that yesterday was devoted to cleaning and then worrying every time the kids walked by that they undid some part of my cleaning.

When I wasn't cleaning, I was working on the crochet blanket. When I stopped to measure it, I got an unpleasant surprise. It seems it is not growing at the rate I thought it was. Good news though, my blind crochet on the car trip yielded no major mistakes. I'm afraid I'm going to be at it longer than I had hoped. I'll still get it done by the time it's needed...I think, but with not much time to spare.

Since it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of those out there that read my nonsense and ever so occasionally comment on it. Thank you to all of you who have ever bought a piece from me or a pattern, your support is appreciated more than you know. Thank you to all of you who have helped or encouraged me in my tatting journey. I have definitely been going through a rough patch, both creatively and sales wise lately, so thank you too for letting me vent here. I wish the best for all of you and I hope your holiday seasons are stress free and enjoyable!

(p.s.  If you're interested, you can get free shipping this season in my etsy shop with the code THANKYOU and do feel free to share the code)

Nothing Much

Well yesterday was the last day of schooling until Monday, but we went off visiting family here from out of town for much of the day. I did bring my crocheting to work on while we were gone, but like I thought, progress is getting very slow on it. I think that I only managed to finish 2 rounds during the day. Then in the evening we took a trip out of town for dinner and I crocheted in the car, in the dark. While it's good to know that I will likely be able to crochet should I go blind, I still haven't looked at it in the light of day. I'm really hoping that I won't have to undo anything due to my lack of sight while working.

Today is the last day before we host everyone over here for the big dinner, so they'll be some cleaning to wrap up. After that though, I'm just going to sit and crochet some more. I guess I'll also be crossing my fingers again for some need to tat something. Here's hoping.

More Blanket

After schooling yesterday, the entire day was  given over to crocheting the gift blanket. It's growing steadily, but since it's done in a round, each row takes longer than the last. I reached about the three square feet make last night, so technically I only have ten rounds left to go, but I'm fairly certain that I won't knock those out today. They are the longest rounds ever.

Today is the last day of schooling before the kids are off for the Thanksgiving holiday. That means their crazy is about to be unleashed and I'll have to expend quite a lot of energy to keep the house clean until we host the big meal. Most of the energy will be in the form of constant reminders to the children to not make a mess though. I already got the bulk of the cleaning done.

Here's hoping I get a reason to tat something up soon. All this crochet is giving me a bit of the claw hand.

Crochet Away

You know the funny thing about making things all the time, is that you get a reputation for doing so. While I obviously spend most of my time tatting, I also crochet, knit, sew, embroider, felt, etc... a fairly wide swath of crafts. I'm sure many of you are the same way. Of course at this point I am a much better tatter due simply to devoting so much time to it, but I digress. On Friday I was called and asked to crochet a baby blanket by my in-law's neighbor for a family gift. She's an absolutely lovely person, so of course I agreed.

I went right out and got yarn and started working. She wants it to be quite large, 4 feet by 4 feet and she'd like to take it with her back home in just over two weeks, so it's pretty much all I've done all weekend, except for cleaning. I chose a nice simple pattern so I was sure to get it done in time, but I'm still working as fast as I can.

The best part of receiving a request like this is that it completely takes my mind off my shop, which is still dangerously quiet. I now have far too much to do to worry about that. Too bad I have no intention of charging as much for the blanket as I probably should. Some people always get the 'friends and family' discount especially when they would never ask for such a thing.

So I guess this week is likely crochet, family, house guests, and food followed by cleaning, more crochet and crossing my fingers that the shopping begins in my etsy shop, so I can shop a bit myself. Yep, it's going to be quite a week.