Harry Potter CAL, Red Hats and a Baby Blanket

Good Morning Everyone!  So far this week, I have been slowly producing.  It was a pretty busy week over all.  I had dentist appointments, coffee dates and house appointments.  So, the first half of the days have been packed with "Adult Life", my nights have been a little more flexible.

Many moons ago I made this blanket from Two Hearts Crochet. 

I was so over the moon with how it turned out, other than weighting about 25 pounds.  Her graphs are beautiful and worked really well in my SC format versus the original C2C.  Alexandra's generosity in making other graphs available was amazing!  While I was working away on that she announced that she would be doing a Harry Potter one next.  Can I just tell you that I almost lost it?!  Does that make me sound crazy?  I am pretty sure it does.

My C2C Crest

The 31 tote of shame

As I was finishing the Dr. Who blanket I went ahead and ordered all of the Vanna's Choice I was going to need to do the Harry Potter blanket.  This time I was going to do it C2C; I was going to stick to the original layout and I was going to gift it to someone.  Well...  obviously that didn't happen.  I did make the center block right away in C2C and after 6 months of weaving in ends, it went into time out.  It has languished in my beautiful 31 tote now for 2 years.


I figured, this was the most appropriate time to pull it out.  After all, isn't that what the Great Craftdown of 2018 is about?!  Using what I have...  Well, Tuesday night I worked hard to finish the Platform 9 3/4 block in C2C.  I think knitting has made me an overly picky crocheter....  My color work was horrible!  I could have ignored blurring of the image on the back, but I couldn't stand what I had on the front!  So a frogging I went...  I decided that my annoyance and lack of working on it for the last 2 years meant, SC, smaller and maybe gift it as a baby blanket.  The down side is, I still have this beautiful huge square...  The one piece I finished, the piece that took me 6 months to weave in the ends on... It also means, I have to redo that square...

My first three blocks

Well, this week I finished 3 of the blocks.  I am not perfectly happy with my Dark Mark square, but I am happy that I am making progress.  If I can keep up the pace of 3 blocks a week, I will have this done before Spring!  I will most likely enter it in the SC State Fair and gift it by Christmas, I think I have an idea of who will be getting this blanket already. 

If you are at all interested in the Harry Potter, Dr. Who graphs, please go and visit  Alexandra's blog or Face Book group.  There are so many options for CALs.  Right now the group is working on a Solar System CAL.  I think this might be a project for 2019 for my grandson.  Two Hearts Crochet  really is a wonderful blog and the FB group is made up of a wonderful group of people who are very supportive and happy to help you out!

As I mentioned last week, I am a member of a Prayer Shawl Ministry at my church.  Almost 6 years ago my priest gave me permission to start this group.  We are still going and some how we already have a surplus of shawls and lapghans.  I am astounded at how our small group has been so generous with their time and donations.  So I reached out to a few other groups with our church and our diocese to see if we could turn our hooks and needles to help them as well.    One was asking for baby booties and blankets, another is in need of hats for men and the last asked if we would be willing to make plarn sleeping mats for the homeless.

Curzon is inspecting my joins

I have a lot of yarn right now that is set aside from projects like shawls, so I easily could make baby blankets from those balls.  Right now this is my progress on my first baby blanket of the year.  It isn't fancy, but it is squishy and comforting!  I love working in C2C for things like this.  I am using Premier Sweet Rolls again.  I am really digging these cake style self striping yarns.  This colorway is Ice Pop.  In the next day or two I will turn the corner and start my decreases so I am about half way finished now.

Once I have finished this blanket, I will start in on a mat for the homeless.  One of the ladies at the church is supplying the plarn because I LOATHE making my own.  I have 4 balls, so hopefully I can go through that next week some time.

Curzon wants you to see the hats

Finally, I am still working on baby hats for Little Hats, Big Hearts.  I found a ball of Red Heart  With Love in Berry Red in my stash.  This is what I got done this week.  They won't need them for 2018 as so many were already donated, but I figure 2019 can get off the a good start with what ever I make this year.  I got 8 done last week, this week I have added another 8.  These are so easy and fun to make.  I have been taking my red yarn with me everywhere the last two weeks.

I still can't see a difference in my craft room, but I do have a pile of things to weave in ends on still sitting up there.  Maybe this coming week I can do that and finally share pictures of those as well.

Thank you guys for your support and please share your own projects, or plans for projects.  I want to encourage you all to work from your stashes this year and hopefully something I make will inspire you to do work or maybe even consider a new technique...

Love and blessings!

What did I get done last week?

This past weekend was actually pretty exciting on this front.  I spent a lot of time during the week working on getting my house back together from the holiday fanfare of the last 31/2 months and getting my menu planning back on track.  It took until Friday for me to get to my craft room and do anything up there.  Thursday I did have my Prayer Shawl meeting, so some work did get done while I was there.

Friday I started working on this paper weaving project.

Okay, it doesn't look like much there.  I was working on an idea I had for the shadow box that I am working on.  After a few hours, I got to this point. By this point, I knew that this wasn't going to work for my project, but I didn't want to box it up as a WIP that would turn into a UFO.  So I pushed though. 

I do like the way it looks, it just doesn't work for this project.  So, now, I have 4 random 4.5 inch squares to use in other projects.

While I was cleaning this month, I came across a small box that was in another box of random bits.  Inside were Scrabble tiles I set aside a few years ago to make a magnet out of.  Well, after a few years, this 5 second project did get done.  I can not express how loudly my eyes are rolling at my laziness right now.



 

Thursday night, at Prayer Shawl, my friend Peggy told me that she was working on some hats for Little Hats, Big Heart.  I have random balls and skeins of red yarn...  Why not!  Our office is doing their final round up in February.  Let's see how many I can get done.  This weekend, I crocheted these 8 hats.

I did a range of Premie, Newborn and 0-3 months for these.  I will keep all of the hats that I do in this range.  This actually used up 2 random left over balls of Ella Rae yarn I have had in my stash for AGES!  I don't even know where it came from.  I think it might have been something I was given many years ago when I was blogging about learning to knit.

I didn't have enough yarn left from doing my 8th hat to crochet even an extra small preemie hat, so I rolled it over to my on going scrap Hexie Blanket basket. 


I started this in the Summer of 2017.  Last Lenten season, I my goal was to make one shawl a week.  When I was done, I had a lot of bits left from the Premier Sweet Rolls I was using.  If you haven't looked at these or Caron Cakes, the left overs are really unusable unless you are doing a scrappy project.  I got 2 full hexies out of the red and while my bin was out, I decided to use up the bits from the the shawl, headband and scarf that I had already dropped in there. 

I got 24 hexies out of the bin and got all of the ends woven in.  So I am now up to a total of 240.  My goal is 400 before I start sewing them together.  Here are my first 200. 

The last project I worked on was designing this shirt for myself.  Coffee fuels my days, so yes, coffee is always a good idea!

Well,  I feel like this week was a success.  I can't see a dent yet in my room, but I do have a lot that got done!

Thank you all for your support!  I can't wait to see what you are working on!

Where The Great Craftdown of 2018 is starting from

I realized this week that my first post should have been my starting point.  If anyone starts following this blog, you would never know why this was a needed year long project and challenge.  Without further ado...  Here is my glorious mess!

Fabric wall and charity project supplies.

I know it is out of control.  It is amazing.  I have been super blessed.  This didn't grow over night. 

Many moons and a few houses ago, my room wasn't nearly this size.  I may do a post down the road that shows the 3 proper craft rooms I have had over the years. 

I started out my married life a few balls of yarn and just enough fabric for my next project.  I actually found crafting that way to be very hard.  If I finished what I was working on at 10 pm, I was up the proverbial creek craft wise. 

When we were a little more stable financially, I started to pick things up that were marked down 75% or more.  It started with a ball here, enough for a sweater there...  When we moved in to our old house on Trenholm Rd, I still really didn't have enough to need more than a Rubbermaid footlocker.

The yarn wall and desks

By the time we moved 4 years ago, I had our sun room filled with yarn, poor organization and worse "work space".  I know that saying "sun room" makes it seem like a large space.  It wasn't.  It was part of an old car port that had been built in.  We couldn't figure out what to do with that space because it wasn't large enough for a twin bed and barely had enough room for the card tables and large filing cabinet I had in there.  But it had GREAT light and was cozy.

We moved in the Spring of 2014 or our Landon rental.  We decided that the best room for the craft room was the front bedroom.  It had a small walk-in closet and fronted the house so I could keep an eye out for company and the mail truck.  This was the first time I really felt that I had a space to work in and store my horde in.  Within a year and a half I had bought better storage.  I inherited one of the L shaped desks I am using now, so for the first time I had a stable surface for things like sewing. 

Over our 3 years at that house; I got the cubes you see in my current room and I found the cutting table that is up in my floor right now on 80% off sale.  I also kept buying- "Just in Case", "Oh, it is 70% off", "Isn't this pretty!"- yarns and fabrics.  It wasn't until a year ago I got into paper or vinyl crafting.  For Christmas 2016, my wonderful, loving and enabling husband bought me a Cricut.

Total Side Note-- over our 13 years of marriage, he has never once commented on my horde.  His philosophy in general is, "Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."  So as my hording of craft supplies got out of hand, he was right there with me encouraging me to get that clearance of yarn; that going out of business fabric; you might want learn how to do that glass work there; you can never have enough beads....

Back to the vinyl and paper horde growth...  It happened over night...and it didn't stop until January 1st, 2018... well, kind of... So at first it was making decals, playing with faux leather that came in the Mystery Boxes that Cricut offers, cutting some cheap solid card stock I got at Joann's during their post Christmas sale...  As my immediate joy in playing started to slow, and I was getting confidant I knew what I was doing, I found Michael's Hot Buy paper pads...  "This is pretty!", "I have to have 2 of these", "This matches that other card I have"...  You get the point.  So, I spent time trying to figure out what to do with all of these gems that just had to come and live with me...

I found Youtubers like Maymay Helms (she will most likely never see this, but I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!!!  WILL YOU ADOPT ME!!!!) and Lindsey, the Frugal Crafter who use these beautiful products to create cards.  I saw people like Jess at Jess Crafts using the cutest paper in the world to make make oodles of cards to send and donate...  Let me just tell you, I now own so much Doodlebug it isn't funny and I blame Jess...well and self control...but mostly Jess....

Now, I dove in to card making in 2017.  It started with some simple cut and glue cards from Design Space on Cricut and it just went off from there...  I have boxes of cards now...  I sent out Halloween cards to 30 people, Thanksgiving to around 60 and Christmas to around 90-all handmade.  I loved ever minute of making them and I already have my St. Patrick's Day cards ready to finish off.

Curzon wanted me to make sure you know that he didn't pose for this picture

But not knowing what I was doing in ordering, I would order 3 paper packs when I really only needed 1.  I was getting 2 6x6 Doodlebug pads when I really only needed 1.  This isn't even counting all of the 12x12 pads I got just because I was in love and surely I can make cards out of those too....

I went stupid in 2017.  This was the first time I had a truly new craft to play with in years.  I had no idea what I was doing and what I would really need.  So...  A whole corner of my room is taken over with paper and vinyl.

If I get a follower at some point, I am sure it will come up, I am not going to just go and donate my supplies.  If I find things I don't want or don't want to work with, maybe, but I am not doing a purge.  The point is for me to use what I have bought not just get rid of it.  As of April, 2017, I was still really liking or in love with almost everything that made the move and didn't get donated or given to friends.

Well,  I didn't mean to write a novel today.  I did think I should take a moment to explain why, "The Great Craftdown of 2018" was so necessary. 

The Great Craftdown of 2018....Hopefully....

So I wanted to go ahead a post here on this blog that I have let languish for last 3 years....

I am going to work very hard to actually keep up this blog.  I won't call it a New Year Resolution; it is just a goal to get back into blogging and keeping up with sharing and tracking what I am working on.

What is the Great Craftdown of 2018?  What is the goal?  What and I am doing to measure my success or failures?  Well, that is fairly simple...

• To spend less that $150 total on supplies- This excludes things like glues, mats for the Cricut, thread needed to match fabric...I haven't made a choice about if patterns count.
• To use up extra supplies in my craftroom
• To purge things I will never use-gift/giveaway (if I ever have a follower....)
• To try new things (there are plenty of new crafts in my stash)

So far this year, I have completed some projects.  I only have one picture though.

I knitted a hooded poncho and matching cowl.  I used up 12 balls of Patons Bohemian yarn.

I also have made a Valentine's Wreath.  This one I do have a picture of.  I used some 12x12 paper I had from last year, boa from Christmas 2016 at Hobby Lobby and a plastic ornament from who knows when.

I did finish off 2 shawls I started in 2017.  One was using some old Patons yarn  I had on hand after making a Spring poncho.  The other was using Premier Sweet Roll.  I used the left over Sweet Roll to make a scarf and headband.

So far I have spent $0 on crafting in 2018.