How About An Update?

I see I have gotten out of the habit of updating this thing!  Some of you may be wondering what is going on with me.  I know some may be interested in the move.  And at least once of you (you know who you are!) is interested in that blanket.  So, here we have updates... I will start with the blanket.  It's the shortest update:

I have made virtually no progress on the blanket since the last blanket update.  My size on the squares has varied a TON and I had to go through and sort the ones out that were just FAR too big and set them aside to redo them.  In November I spend almost an entire day just redoing squares while at a dance competition that I refused to compete in.  I wanted to go to the event, because those will be few and far between after the move, but I was stressed out that weekend and really just wanted to relax.  So that is what I did!  I partied and danced with friends at night, and spent Saturday in bed in the hotel room with the competitions on the TV while I crocheted.  I might have made a square since then, but I don't remember, I got started on Christmas presents, and then I got focused on knitting socks from a book I got for Christmas.  But have no fear!  I have NOT given up on the blanket!  NO!  I will be bringing every single square and every hank of yarn for the blanket with me as we travel across country and then hop a plane over to the island.  I intend to have an entire suitcase dedicated to yarn. While leads me to an update on the move...

It is almost upon us.  Yikes!  And yet, none of it is scheduled yet.  I have one last appointment for my medical screening so I can be put on the orders, so we can schedule our move and have our plane tickets booked.  Good times.  That will happen this Friday and once that is all set we can get that all scheduled.  What we are HOPING is to get out things packed and taken away the last week of February.  My last day with my kiddos at work will be the 21st... that's right, a week and a half left with my kiddos :(  Then I will have that last week to tie up loose ends with work, and clean the house.  Eric's last day at his command is Feb 28... then hopefully, March 1, we will be out of here.

From here we go to NJ to say goodbye to his family for probably overnight (I am HOPING to make it at east a full 24 hours.) then up to Syracuse to spend the rest of the week with my family.  After that... dance competition!!  I have to get one last one in.  From there it will be off to Ohio to stay with some of my relatives.  Then to Nebraska with some of my other relatives.  After that we don't yet know, Oklahoma?  Montana?  We have relatives in both.  Or we could go through Colorado.  After that- Las Vegas!  Maybe for a couple of days.  We will see.  Then, there is again the chance that we MIGHT... maybe... take a cruise outta LA.  It's a good price.  I don't see how we can turn it down, it will be our 4 days to celebrate both of our birthdays which he will be deployed for, plus an early anniversary celebration.

Then we fly to Hawaii... and get started with our new life.

Did I mention our cats are coming across country with us?  Four cats.  One back seat.  We got them a tube thing for the backseat so they can move around and have a litter box... Well... could get interesting... We will see!

~Katy

Blanket Update and a Project For the Shop

Well, I promised that I would upload some pictures of the blanket soon and this post will not disappoint!  I've also added some pictures of some fingerless gloves I am working on for the shop.  I feel bad that I have only been working on things for personal projects basically all year so far!  But first up, here's some shots of the squares for the blanket with all the colors! 

First up!  The whole lot of them in the bag I keep them in.  Don't they look all pretty?

And here they are keeping my legs toasty warm ;)

And laid out, one of each.

And a couple pictures of what will be fingerless gloves.  The second picture captures the color much better, and it's such a gorgeous color!  I can't wait for these to be done, though, it's hard to get good pictures to list them without my camera.

And that is all for tonight!  It is a pain in the butt making a post out of a slew of pictures from my phone.  Blogger likes to mess up the formatting and jump the photos around. What a pain!  But anyways back to watching Dexter then some much needed sleep!  I hope you've enjoyed the update- oh!  And speaking of updates!  Nails are STILL looking great...just two super tiny chips at the tips of my thumbs.  Not bad!  I think this polish will stay until my nails grow to the point where they look weird. Very nice.

~Katy

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

Two Debuts!

I know, I have been quiet the past few days.  Things are pretty great!  AND!  I have a couple things to show you and both are in the same pictures.  I started making a new item for my shop (and no, I still haven't sewn in the ends of the two scarves so I can list them, I need to do that this week, like really.) I got inspired by the scarves I was making and decided to make a cowl!  I don't normally like cowls, but I felt like the ruffles would work well with it.  I made it in pink and purple, pink in the center with purple ruffles on each side.

The other thing being- I got my hair done on Saturday!  I got it cut and I got it dyed!  It's a very pretty red now, at the suggestion of my husband.  So here is the cowl, on me,so you can see both!  I even made silly faces for you.

~Katy

Big Project!!

So some of you may know that I love to crochet.  I love to crochet so much that I started making more than I could use or give away and I opened an online shop, first on Etsy, and now on Zibbet (because Etsy is horrible, people.) which if you want you can check out here... http://www.zibbet.com/kakers

Anyways I don't just make things for the shop.  I make things for ME and for my family as well.  Last year at Christmas Eric and I picked out yarn so I could make us a blanket and well, it's been somewhat slow going but I've been working on it more lately and it's getting pretty close to done!  It needs to be wide and long enough to cover us both at the same time.  I'm actually starting to think there's a chance I may not need the last skein of each color that I have in order to finish it!  But we will see.

This was while I was working on it last weekend...

And I went ahead and took a few more pictures to share with you :)

(Splenda wanted in on the action)

(So did Honey.  Yes, these are different cats.)

As you can see it has a little length to go but it's looking good so far!  I'm going to be so proud once it is done, I've never finished a full sized afghan before!

~Katy