Crocheting Again

For a long time I had stopped crocheting, knitting, quilting, sewing, "doing" much of anything in the "crafty" sense. In fact before last October/November I can't remember the last thing I made or when I made it. I think it may have been a crocheted hat but I wouldn't swear to it. But finally last fall, possibly in October, I made what Hal calls an "ear sweater" aka a "headband" in hunter orange, that's a very bright vivid orange for him to wear while deer hunting during rifle season. I used Red Heart's standard Super Saver acrylic yarn. Then somewhere online I read about "potato chip" or "ruffled" scarves. So I searched for some patterns and made this one:

Since I still have this one I just now took a new photo so here it is. Besides not being "ruffly" enough I think the colors are too pale and boring. It's some yarn I had left over from an afghan I made my grandmother a couple decades ago. It's laying on a prayer shawl my neighbor made for me a couple Christmas' ago. I wear her shawl around my house a lot.

I decided it was too simple and not ruffly enough so I found and made this second one: I used Lion Brand Homespun yarn for this in apple green and cherry blossom. I have a love/hate relationship with this yarn, it is pretty but horrible to work with but I keep on buying it.

This really would be better if I could find the photos I am sure I took but...

Then I decided to make a modified one for my neighbor, and of course I can't find that photo, either. But I did find photos of the 2 I made for her great grand daughters as I was at the party when they opened their gifts. The girls I think are about 4 years old. I have deleted their faces for anonymity. The yarn used for these 2 was again Red Heart super saver. The one I made for my neighbor was Caron's Simply Soft in a maroon and white.

From what I could tell everyone liked their gifts.

As I was now in the mood to keep crocheting I decided to try a shawl. I found this pattern at Red Heart. This turned out to be pretty easy once I figured out that the starting chain of 182 really needed to be 200. I chose Caron's Simply Soft acrylic in off-white. It took me about 3 weeks working on it now and then, mostly while watching TV. I had a little trouble with the edging because I added 7 rows to make it longer so it threw off the count but all in all I think it came out rather well.

I have now started another shawl in another pattern using that insufferable Homespun yarn. (What can I say, I'm a masochist!) Getting the right number of stitches for the first row into the starting chain was a wrestling match between me and the yarn. I lost count how many times I ripped out the first row to try again. The rows themselves are worked in a simple V stitch but it's not even half done yet as every so often the yarn and I have to have a skirmish. So I don't know when or if I'll show a picture of it, it depends on who wins the final battle, me or the Homespun.

I suppose I'd better get back to it now before it gathers enough strength to attack.

Care for Cake?

So this is what I baked yesterday. yes, it's your delectable pineapple upside down cake. I just doctored up a coffee cake recipe from my trusty 1950's era Betty Crocker picture cookbook with some canned pineapple rings. I opted not to use those icky maraschino cherries. I don't know what people see in them. Yeah, they're pretty, but they taste wrong, totally unlike a real cherry ought to taste.

I think it's only the second upside down cake I've ever made. The last one was apricot made with fresh apricots off our tree when we lived in California. That was over 15 years ago. I think I won't wait as long to make another of these pineapple cakes. It's very tasty. There are only 2 pieces left.

Christmas 2012

As seems to be usual I've neglected my blog for months. So here are 4 photos from Christmas 2012, as usual without people in them. But lots and lots of dogs! Here is our tree. My younger sister pretty much decorated the whole thing herself and did a fine job. We agreed it was probably one of the best trees ever. It's a blue spruce Hal and sister's BF cut down and brought home from the hunting land.

 

I put it in a different location than previous years. This is where the dining room table used to be. That is now in the front of the house by the picture window. We rearranged the entire great room to make a better home theater experience. I'll have to post about that in a later post.

We got away from buying lots of gifts this year and only had Santa fill the stockings. I think we had a better time than usual. Sometimes less really is more.

And here we have Luna, in front, Lyra on the right and Ziggy with the Zigster's new fishy tug toy having a 3 way tug of war. At some point they removed the rope. I have no idea where it ended up.

Lyra and Ziggy with a stick. They played with lots of sticks. We went for lots of walks. They seemed to have a really good time and we were together for about 3.5 weeks.

I tried to get a nice photo of my pups in front of the tree. Generally, every photo showed them looking, bored, sleepy, annoyed or disdainful of the entire process. Perhaps I did not offer enough goodies. I also need to work on my camera set up.

So this wasn't much of an update, but there ya go.

Wait! In case you hadn't seen enough dog photos, here is one more!