More Projects

Well, I was itching to get the second blanket started after I finished the first one.  The only thing that was stopping me was a lack of appropriate yarn.  My husband wanted something less thick than I used on the last blanket, and one of the local yarn shops was having a sale on Superbowl Sunday.  So, I went in to see what they had and found this!  It is Cascade Yarns, 220 Superwash Sport.  It's a sport weight, 100% wool yarn that can be machine washed and dried.  That was a requirement as well, MUST be able to be tossed in the dryer.

I chose 6 colors, a pink, a purple, a mint green, a coral shade of orange, an ivory, and a turquoise.  I started off with 2 hanks of each, though at some point I will have to get many more.  This is one of the times that I really appreciate my husband, I brought the yarn home and he liked the colors as well.  Also, we had also both agreed on what granny square we liked better when I had made some just to try (which was when he decided I should make another blanket LOL.)   

I am super excited to be making progress on this one!  I've now also made 3 squares of purple.  After I made the first square and settled on how many rounds to make it, I figured out how many squares I will need to make for it to fit on our bed, after I add a border to it.  The grand total will be 210 squares.  WOW.  The yarn I have for it currently will make 48 squares total.  I will definitely be getting more yarn, but that will have to wait. Thankfully with a granny square design, I personally don't find matching dye lots to be too important. I may stick with just these 6 colors, or I may add more.  Not sure yet!  But for now, I am just working away on the yarn I have.  Each time I finish a square I count down how many are left, right now it's at 15 down, 195 to go!  That's a little overwhelming but considering I got the yarn less than a week ago, it's not so bad.

But, enough about the blanket (for now!) I have another project to share!  Today, we had a fun little incident where a bird managed to fall into our fireplace.  Eric managed to get it out, and let it out so it could fly away and on with its life.  But I took that opportunity to check our chimney flue.  I suspected it was open for a while now but was too lazy to check (bad me!) and of course if a bird got into the fireplace, the flue must have been open.  Turns out, the flue is stuck so it will only actually close half way.  After a brief google search I decided trying to fix the flue was too complicated.  Trying to insulate the fireplace seemed a much better idea!  And a couple short hours later, here we are!

My original intent was to use an adhesive backed magnet strip around the edges to secure it.  I went off to Hancock Fabrics to get everything I would need, not sure whether or not they had the strip magnet or not.  I didn't see it there, and, well, I'm not a fan of just asking.  So I devised an alternate plan!  Since our fireplace bricks come out passed the fireplace opening, I chose to use tension rods.  And lucky me, they were on sale!  I ended up using 2 tension rods (one on top, one on bottom) as well as some blue fleece (color chosen by Eric.  It worked out well!) and lined with Insul-Bright.  I brought out my sewing machine for the first time in YEARS... not sure really whether it would quite work or not.  It was handed down to me by my mom who had it for goodness knows how long.  Welp, I set it up and like many things made YEARS ago... it worked just like the first time I sewed with it when I was little.  It ended up being a super quick and super inexpensive project- the rods and the fleece both being on sale made it total to less than $30.  Not bad!  I wish I had thought of this ages ago.  I don't feel a draft in the living room anymore and who KNOWS how much this could have saved on our electric bill when it was colder out.  But hey, it'll help now!

One last project, that's not even so much a project, is this little thing I was playing around with.  It's just a different crochet stitch, which I found via Pinterest.  It's a linen stitch, or woven stitch.  I tried it out with some yarn I got from a friend of mine, and I am loving how it looks!  It's only a little swatch... I haven't yet decided what kind of project I can make with it, and goodness knows I have my work cut out for me with the blanket!

If you want to try out the woven stitch yourself here is where I found the instructions for doing it.

I look forward to updating everyone with the progress on the granny square blanket!  And hopefully finding my camera to add some better pictures!

~Katy