Vacation Knitting, Part 1

Last week I was on vacation in Florida with my boyfriend/FIANCE!!!, his aunt and her friend, Tony. When I was packing for the trip I intended to keep the knitting/crochet projects light so I brought along a baby blanket pattern for my friend, Natalie, and then a couple of dishcloth patterns for Algernon‘s mom, Amanda, who is getting married this June. (I’ll post pictures of those once I block them.)

Fortunately for me, I had packed extra yarn b/c I didn’t know exactly how many dishcloths I would make. Tony saw me knitting and wanted me to make something for him, I asked him what he wanted and he said “Potholders.” EASY!! I just got on the internet to Michelle’s blog, found the folded crochet potholder pattern, and whipped these up in no time!

I used an entire skein of Sugar N Cream in Hot Orange and then about 1/4 of a skein of Hot Green with a size G/4.5 mm hook. For both of these I began with a 33 stitch chain. They are approximately 6.5″ square.

I am really liking how the striped potholder turned out! Since I have a lot of dishcloth cotton scraps I am going to try and make some more of these. I think they would be really cute with LOTS of different colors and different sized stripes.

I’M ENGAGED!!!!!!

Another FO – Another Amigurumi

I have not done so well thus far on completing lots of UFOs – this is only my 4th FO of the month! UGH!

Anyway!

Please meet Forest:

This is the Amigurumi Elephant from Lion Brand Patterns. I used Caron Simply Soft (since I have scads of it!) in Lt. Country Blue and a size G hook.

I started this back on the 4th when I needed a project that was easily portable because I was going to have to go back to Corinth for Jury Duty…Fortunately, when they found out I had relocated (7 years ago…) they excused me. My fault for never changing my voter registration, I know! So while I’ve been working on other projects, I’ve also been working on this while watching TV. I decided last night that I should just finish this up and get it out of the way! Now I have a new friend! 🙂 I am such a child, I really LOVE stuffed animals. 🙂

Here are some more shots of Forest in his new habitat – checking out his surroundings:

Let me just say that it is difficult to take photos of elephants, so I had my love interest do these. He’s so much better at that sort of thing than I am really. Usually he doesn’t like to take my photos for me, but he was much obliged last night since he knew I was having such a difficult time with Forest’s nose…I saw a really cute FO Elephant on Ravelry, where they had sculpted the nose/trunk and it looked so much better! How did they do that!?! Poor Forest, I hope he doesn’t get made fun of at school…

FO: Hungry Hungry Hippo

My friend Amanda has been ‘lusting’ after the hippo that I made for my mom, so I decided that I would put her out of her misery and make her a hippo of her very own! 🙂  I used a different pattern this time (found on Ravelry – of course!) , bittersweet’s Hungry Hungry Hippo.

I used almost an entire skein of Lion Brand Wool Ease in Delft (using up my stash!!!) and a size G/4.00 mm hook.

More pictures:

This was a bit hard to photograph b/c the head is so heavy compared to the rest of the body.  I couldn’t just sit it down on the floor and start snapping because it would end up resting on it’s head with it’s little back feet up in the air!

I gave him to Amanda this morning and she has christened him “Algernon” – I don’t know where in the world she came up with that, but she says that she might change her mind later!  Who knows, I might be back later this week with an update that Algernon is now Larry or Felix.

And in case you were wondering, I started Algernon in March, so his completion counts toward my UFO progress!  Hooray!!

March Dishcloth KALs

I forgot all about posting the 2 dishcloths that I made in March for the dishcloth groups that I belong to! Ravelry really makes me forget about my blog sometimes! I’ve decided to participate in these KALs for a couple of months since I have so much dishcloth cotton in my stash.

The first one I did was the March KAL for the Yahoo Group, Monthly Dishcloths.

I had a really hard time figuring this one out, in fact I never was able to! It is an Easter themed cloth, rolling the stone away from Jesus’ empty tomb. I really wish I hadn’t used lime green for it now that I know what it is!

March KAL for Rachels Knitting Room Group on Yahoo

Rachel designed this cloth for the group’s 1 year anniversary. This was my first time trying out a dishcloth on size 5 needles. It wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be, but I didn’t really get all that different of a result from these than I would with size 6s, so I am going to stick with them. That is what I am used to and it’s much more comfortable!

I’m doing the April KAL for Monthly Dishcloths now, but I’ll still probably wait to post that one until the end of the month and do all of the KAL cloths that I participate in this month at the same time!

April is for Housekeeping

I’ve done a little tallying with the help of my Ravelry queue and discovered that I have 11 UFOs lurking around my home!!

It is my intention and wish to complete some of these items by the end of April. I don’t anticipate finishing all of them (especially since 3 of them are afghans), and furthermore I don’t anticipate being able to resist the pull of any new projects, so I am going to set up a few guidelines for myself.

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Guidelines

1. Must finish an item before I am allowed to start an entirely new item – this way I will hopefully have fewer UFOs at the end of the month than when I started.

2. Any new items must be made from already stashed yarns, i.e. no buying new yarn for new project. Part of housekeeping is using the stash!

3. IF I finish an afghan then I will allow myself the discretion to start 2 new projects for that one finished project. If I want to. 🙂

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I really think that I can finish up most of what I’ve already started and at least 1 afghan.

My problem is this: Most of these projects are beyond boring! I hope I can gather up the will to finish them.