An Early Valentine's Present.

Who has the bestest hubby ever? Me! I had to work all weekend, and hubby decided that I needed something to break the monotony. He said he wanted me to know that he appreciated all the hard extra work I'd been doing lately (so sweet!) and he'd just gotten a supplemental check from work... So... Guess what I got???

An iPod! The super cool 80 gig one. I have all my music and pics on it and it's not even a quarter full. I really love it, and it's so great to be able to listen to whatever I want with out having to reload music into my old, smaller 1 gig player.

The only thing we were worried about is scratches. The back is shiny silver metal, and fingerprints show like mo fos, so... I made Sassy (that's her name) a sweater!

Pretty cute, huh? There is a flap that goes over the front to protect the screen when it's in my purse, but I need to get a button, so I'll show you pics of that later. I'm going to write up the pattern to put on Ravelry since I couldn't find a crocheted one that I liked, and I know how many people out there have iPods.

As for an update on Granny, she's doing better. She's out of the hospital and in a rehab facility. We're not so happy about having her there, but we can't lift her at home, so it's a necessary evil. I keep telling her the faster she gets better, the faster she comes home, so we'll see. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. They're working!

Prayers

I'd like you all to pray for my granny. She broke her hip on Sunday and the doctors are a bit worried about her heart. I am a firm believer in the healing power of prayer, so I'd greatly appreciate any that you would send her way. Thanks friends!!!

Changes

Notice anything different???


I bought safety eyes for the monkeys from this site. I feel much better that my silly nephews won't be able to eat these ones :) I also decided to try a different eye shape. Made a solid rectangleish shape and added the new eyes to that. Hubby even agrees, they look more like monkeys now!

Quick note!

Go visit my friend Oiyi and see her new, beautiful baby girl!

http://oiyi.blogspot.com/index.html

Finished Gift!

I finished Granny's pillow and made a scarf to match.

As far as the pillow goes. I l.o.v.e. it!!! I think next time, it would be really pretty to find a florally fabric for the back of it instead of the crochet. We'll see!

The scarf pattern is called "One-Skein Scarf" and can be found here. It's pretty infamous in the crochet world. The thing worked up really quickly, but I find it a bit narrow, which is ok for my little granny, but if I make more i'm going to try to tweak them... Maybe, a bigger hook, and then if that's still too small, a bigger hook and 2 strands of yarn held together (or bulky yarn). I'll let you know the test results! Anyways, here's more pics!

Flower Pillow for Granny

Thank you all for your kind (and helpful, Carola!) comments about the boys blankets. After all that work, and a talk from hubby about not trying to do toooooo much, I've decided to put those blankets on the back burner. They just weren't special looking enough to me to give as a gift for their first birthday. They'll get the monkeys, tho!

A couple of you asked how I attached the fabric to the crochet part. All I did was lay the blanket on top of the fabric (which was on my floor, right-side down) and then tied it like a lap quilt, then I hemmed the edges with a sewing machine. It's really pretty simple if all your edges are straight. There are instructions (for quilts, but it's the same process), here.

Now... a new, quick project!

Can you tell what it's going to be????

How about now???

I am SOOOO IN LOVE with this pattern! It was written by Julie Armstrong Holetz at Crochet Me. You can get a free copy at their web-site, here. It's really supposed to be a purse, but I added a few rounds to both the flower part and the border, and I'm going to stuff it to make a pillow for my granny's birthday. Oh, and I didn't have any bulky yarn, so I just held 2 strands of worsted weight together. I have all kinds of ideas in my head! Can you imagine a whole blanket of all kinds of colors of these beautiful roses???

Blanket H*LL

These big boy blankets are DRIVING ME CRAZY!!! I don't know why, but when I make these "big granny squares" the corners always end up being waaaayyyy longer than the middle of the sides of the blankets. So, I thought that when I tied the fabric onto the crocheted part, that I would stretch the crocheted part and everything would be hunky-dorey... Well, yeah, that didn't happen! It was all wavy and not laying flat at all, so I had to rip out the 2 hours worth of ties that I'd done and start over. Here's the progress...


I had to take desperate measures and I, gulp, ironed the acrylic yarn blanket. That's a big "no, no" supposedly, but I think it worked. I pinned it out into a rectangle and then placed a cloth over the thing and steamed the heck out of it with the weight of the iron touching the blanket. And now, the sides are alllllllll even. Yeah!

I've pinned the fabric to the edges now and just need to take it upstairs to hem them. Now that I know how much work this is, I'm not in the mood to do the other one! Which is not good, since I only have until Feb. 2 to get the second one done!

And, here are pics of the finished best friend blanket, since she has it now. I think she liked it ;) She said it kept her sooooooo warm, which is great, because she is ALWAYS cold!

I'm sooo in love with it. Now I wish I had time to make one for me!

And, one more thing. Here's what my brothers like to do with the boy's monkeys...