My Mom's 50th Birthday!

Yesterday was my mom's 50th birthday.  We had a big party for her!

Creative Cakes Bakery in Robinson made an amazing cake!!  It was beautiful and delicious!

My mom, when she was about 3.

My mom and I.

Myself and my sister, Missy

We had to take multiple pictures because my uncle was trying to photo bomb us, so we were laughing.

Getting ready to cut the cake!  The little kids are excited for CAKE!

The leaves were sugar! 

My Great-Aunt Kathy and my Great-Aunt Sis on the left, with my Great-Uncle Jimmy standing on the left, my mom in the middle, and my Grandma Donna and my Pap on the right

My dad, cutting more cake

The neighbors, from left to right, Carl & Sue, and Sue & Tom

Me and Grandma Betty

From left to right, Jodi, Ben, Aunt Amy, Nora, and Ashlee

Family picture with nobody looking really, except my cousin Ashley, and my Aunt Janice in the upper left.

I had a big reveal recently and I told you I couldn't say who it was for.  Well, my granny stripe blanket was for my mom!!  Here are some pictures of her opening it.

I think she liked it!!!!

I hope you had a great birthday mom!!!

<3 Sam

Granny Stripe Reveal!

Hi Everyone!

I told you I had a huge finished item that I was getting ready to show you and it is my Granny Stripe blanket!  I've showed it to you as a WIP here and here.  Now it is finally finished!!!

This blanket was a labor of love.  I started it in June and finished it this past Thursday, so that means it took me about 3 months.  That's the longest I've spent on a blanket.  I really let myself take my time and work on smaller things as I went this time.  It ended up a lot bigger than I expected.  I didn't measure it, but I think it is about 65"x58" or so (165x147cm).  It was really hard getting a picture of it all spread out.  I was standing on my couch and I still didn't get it all in.

The pattern as most of you probably already know is Granny Stripes by Lucy of Attic24.  I made a slight change and did alternating stripes of 3 and 2 instead of all stripes of 2 rows.  I used 26 colors of Stylecraft Special DK yarn.

The colors from left to right are as follows:

Row 1 (top row):  Claret, Sherbet, Teal, Bluebell, Shrimp, Cloud Blue, Saffron, Aster

Row 2 (middle row):  Pomegranate, Clematis, Spring Green, Lavender, Magenta, Bright Pink, Grape, Apricot, Royal

Row 3 (bottom row):  Plum, Meadow, Turquoise, Fondant, Lipstick, Wisteria, Denim, Raspberry, and Aspen

The border was a round of granny clusters in Plum, then hdc in Turquoise, sc in Grape, and finally reverse sc in Clematis.

I have to give a BIG thanks to Cindy from Baxtersrest for sending me more Plum when I needed it.  I like to start and end a striped blanket on the same color and then I had the bright idea to do the first round in Plum also.  I ran out and Cindy quickly sent me the half she had leftover!  Thanks again!!!

I love the feeling when you finish a big project!  This is a present for someone and I'll reveal that later.  I'm 99% sure she doesn't read my blog, but just in case I'll wait to tell you!

Sam <3

Planned Random

Sarah over at Shabby Chic Sarah asked me last week if I was randomly choosing my colors for my Granny Stripe blanket.  I must admit, I can't handle true random.  What if I pulled the bright red to go right nest to the bright pink?!  So I do what I call a "Planned Random."

When I did my Ribbon Afghan that only had 8 different colors, I planned each color repeat as I went. 

Sorry for bad picture quality

With my Granny Stripe I have 26 colors.  Before I started I set them out in the order I wanted them.  There were a couple edits along the way, but this order pretty much held.

You can see the bright red in the middle of the bottom row (where I started) and the bright pink in the middle of the middle row.

After I finished those 26 stripes, I sat down on my floor, layed the blanket out and sorted the yarn until I chose my next order.  Voila!  Color repeat number 2! 



That might make the blanket wide enough.  I might have to add about 5 or 6 stripes after this color repeat.  If I do, it'll probably be my favorites that get a 3rd stripe.

This surprisingly took me a while.  I was sitting there (you can see my water bottle under the coffee table) and boy was I was indecisive.  I am doing rows of 2 and rows of 3 for my granny stripe.  If a color was a 3 row color in the first repeat, I was trying to make it a 2 row color, with a few exceptions.

Is this close to how you did your "random" granny stripe?

Lazy Summer Weekend

Ugh...its Monday.  My weekend was a good one.  I saw a movie (Friends With Benefits, very funny and good and I recommend!), relaxed with the bf, and went to the pool.  It was very much the typical lazy summer weekend.

While we were lounging on the couch watching TV, I got a lot of crocheting in!  I have a lot of progress on two of my big projects now.  I now have 10 squares finished for my Gram's blanket.

I had really been doing these squares very leisurely.  I'm not going to give her the finished blanket until Christmas and I have some other projects that have to be finished first.  So, I think it's a lot of progress. :-)

This next one has to be finished well before Christmas, and I think it will be.  I'm almost at the halfway mark.

This is my granny stripe blanket.  I can't say who its for even though I'm 99.9% sure she doesn't know I have a blog and wouldn't know how to find it.  You can never be too careful.  Currently it is about 65" wide and 20" long.  I have decided that since I accidentally started it REALLY wide, that the width will be the long side.  I think I want the finished product to be about 65"x50", but it's probably going to end up bigger because of a border.

I have so many projects that I want to start and already have the yarn for.  They are just waiting for me and staring at me.  I feel like there isn't enough time in the day!!!

Of the projects where I have EVERYTHING planned, including owning the yarn and pattern there are:

3 hats, 1 scarf, 1 wrap, 1 bag, 2 sets of pot holders, and 3 hanging kitchen towels

You see some of the small projects that I have been doing are for my Etsy shop.  You didn't know that I have one?!  Well...that's because I haven't listed anything yet.  I have 6 items made for it (2 scarves, 1 set of potholders, 2 water bottle cosies, and a hot drink sleeve) and I just think that there aren't enough items yet.  How many do you think I should have?  I was thinking about 15.

I'll let you know when I list everything and have my "Grand Opening"!

I thought that this was going to be a mini post just showing my progress over the weekend, but it turned out to be long! Whew!!

Sam <3

Yummy Yummy Yarn!!

Since I started crocheting a few months ago I have been addicted to Lucy's blog over at attic24.  She uses these awesome bright colors.  Everything is bright and cheery!  I started reading her blog right about when she revealed her Granny Stripe blanket.  She used Stylecraft Special DK yarn.

For the longest time those of us in the USA in the We Love Lucy ravelry group have struggled getting Stylecraft yarn.  NOT ANYMORE!!!  Someone in the group posted that on http://www.deramores.com/ they ship to the USA for free....FREE!!!

I could not help myself!!!  These are the colors I got:

Row 1:  Apricot (1026), Aspen (1422), Bluebell (1082), Bright Pink (1435)
Row 2: Clematis (1390), Cloud Blue (1019), Fiesta (1257), Fondant (1241)
Row 3: Grape (1067), Lavender (1188), Lipstick (1246), Magenta (1084)
Row 4: Matador (1010), Plum (1061), Pomegranate (1083), Raspberry (1023)
Row 5: Royal (1117), Sherbet (1034), Teal (1062), Turquoise (1068)
Row 6: Wisteria (1432)

Aren't they just awesome?!!!  I know what you are thinking 21 colors?!  I struggled to ONLY choose that many.  (side note, anyone else besides me think its weird that Magenta is a purple-ish color?)

So if you are in the USA go get yourself some Stylecraft now without paying super high shipping!!

-Sam