Scraptastic Wavy Shells Afghan

I finished this one up yesterday. I'm still in the process of writing up the pattern. Overall, I think it turned out pretty well. I'm still amazed that I actually worked all the ends in as I went along. I didn't know what to do with myself when I got to then end and just had the one end to work in. :)

The Penguin Blanket of doom is finally finished! Hooray!

This blanket has been my bane for over a year, and I'm sooo glad it's finally finished. It is made up of 266 individually crocheted granny squares, and then assembled and finished with a green 5 row single crochet border. It ended up being 36"x47".

I started crocheting the squares in the fall of 2007, doing a lot of it while on my lunch breaks at school. The squares were small and worked up rather quickly. The only problem was with making 266 squares, there were an insane amount of yarn ends to sew in, which I absolutely hate. So, my ginormous pile of tiny crocheted granny squares got tossed in a bag and set to the side.

Every once in a while, I would pull out a few at a time and work the ends in. Eventually, at some point in October 2008, I finally had all the ends sewn in and pinned the squares together to begin assembling the blanket. Because of the various colors of blocks, there ended up being a lot more ends to work in after crocheting the squares together. So, once again, I put it to the side, but not out of sight this time.

I got tired of the unfinished blanket taunting me, and finally decided to sew in ends a few at a time while watching TV and taking breaks from other projects. I figured that the semester break from school was a good time to finish off some of these WIPs I have lying around.

After staying up all night New Year's Eve, and trying to stay up the rest of the day and go to bed at a decent time for once (as in before 3 or 4 am) in hopes of getting my sleep schedule back on track before the semester starts, I picked up the blanket again, somewhere around 2:30 am while watching the Moral Orel marathon on Cartoon Network :) and finally finished it! And of course, it left me saying what I always do after dealing with something like this. I WILL NEVER WAIT UNTIL THE END OF MY PROJECT TO DEAL WITH THE YARN ENDS! NEXT TIME I'LL DO THEM AS I GO ALONG!

Burgundy Aran Fisherman Afghan

This blanket was the last project that I completed in 2008. It is 48"x68". It was worked with 2 strands of yarn held together, and contains 5 pounds of yarn. Super warm and snuggly to cuddle up with on cold days. It is made up of cable, popcorn, and diamond panels. The color is actually darker than the picture shows, and is a deep burgundy. I decided not to add the fringe, but still may end up doing so, depending on my mood.

Scraptastic - WIP

I recently discovered that once again, my yarn stash was getting out of control. I don't have a lot of room to store my yarn, so I decided that rather than go out and buy even more for a project I was designing, that I would come up with a large stashbuster instead to free up some space using some of the insane amount of acrylic yarn I possess. I came up with this shell stitch pattern and then decided to use white to tie things together. I started with a stripe of white, then 8 stripes of colors randomly selected from my stash, then white again, lather, rinse, repeat. This afghan is 52" wide, and is currently 24" long, so I've still got a lot of work left to do on it. I have to say that I'm extremely proud of myself for actually working the ends in as I go for once, which I never do, instead of leaving them all to do at the end.

Cotton Market Bag

More market bags, this time in cotton. I used a cone of variegated brown cotton yarn with some hints of red for this project. I love the way it ended up with these wavy stripes. Funny thing is, I'm making a second bag from the same yarn, and the stripes are nowhere to be found. Funny how that works out sometimes.

Octavio Octopus

Here it is, my latest amigurumi creation, Octavio Octopus. I decided to use some variegated blue, green, and yellow acrylic yarn I had lying around, and then also crocheted the eyes in black acrylic yarn. I'm really having fun with making the amigurumis, but have decided to finish up a few afghans that have been hanging around incomplete for quite some time. I hope to have finished pics of them to post soon.

Bleachout Shirts

My husband and I have been making T-shirts using a bleaching process. Various techniques can be used for different designs and such. These pics are an example of a shirt made for personal use recently. The praying mantis was the hubby's idea, which I found funny since the female praying mantis decapitates and eats the male after mating. Anyway, I particularly like the drips on this one. More to come.