A Reprieve?

Not sure that's what I'd call this, but it *might* be an improvement:)

After stitching a bit more on 'Horses in the Night' (and complaining the whole time) dd agreed that she might be able to find a horse chart she and I could agree on. I should have guessed it would be a Heaven and Earth Design that she chose, one that is even bigger than the one I had been doing, but at least the charting on it is better. So here is where I got with 'Horses in the Night'...

Thankfully this pic shows the colors better. All purple/blue-purple. And there are about 7 shades of it just in this little area. I didn't count stitches, but I think this is close to 250 stitches, 2 threads over one on 18ct fabric. I don't think I'll throw this away yet, just in case, but I'm happy to not be working on it anymore!!

And the little I got done last night on 'War Pony'...

This is ONE shade of blue, so far, one thread over one on 28ct fabric and is close to 400 stitches. So much easier to stitch since there isn't as much confetti stitching (there will be on parts of the horse and the grass, but it's not all over the chart). There are over 250,000 stitches on this chart, I figure if I can stitch 400 stitches EVERY SINGLE DAY I can have this done in 2 years, in time for dd's high school graduation!! hahahahaha!?!?!  Okay, maybe I should be looking at having this done for her college graduation? :) I'll do what I can and see where that takes me. I sure hope she will still like horses then!! :)

Crochet Madness!!

I put the finishing touches on the last of 3 crochet projects I had going and I am so excited to have some finished things to show off!! I've been more into knitting at the moment, but find it takes me so much more time to knit a project than to crochet. I like the end result of knitting better in most cases, but a girl's got to have a finished project to show off every now and then - and an excuse to start new projects!!

So here are the 3 crocheted projects that have recently been finished...

Lady's Peaked Cap

I made this for my dd, and the only thing she ended up liking about it was the colors:) Actually that's what I didn't like about it, so that sounds about right, lol!! This is my first time making a hat and neither one of us knew what to expect as to the fit, etc. Still it was an easy pattern and didn't take too long, I will be giving a different pattern a try next time.

Pretty Ripple Baby Blanket

Sorry, the colors got a little washed out in this pic. The month of May was a mostly rainy (and gloriously cool) month and I had a hard time getting any kind of decent light in the house. This was made for a friend of my hubby's 2nd child. They decided not to find out the sex of the baby, but like more of the blue/greens/traditionally male colors even for a girl. My hubby's friend picked the colors and didn't tell his wife I was making it (I had made one for their first child as well), so this was a surprise for her. Her baby wasn't due until this week, but she had their daughter, 3 weeks early, so this wasn't quite ready in time. Thankfully, baby and mom are doing well:)


South Bay Shawlette

This is the first shawl I've every made and I love it!! I even got to use it a little last month, which is very odd and rare here in Kansas where we can very easily be in the 90's in May, but we even had a low in the 30's this year!! I did extend this pattern so that it was quite a bit bigger than the original since I'm not a 'shawlette sized' girl:) And I didn't add the boarder because I liked the scalloped edge of one of the rounds in the pattern. Now that it is in the 90's it'll get put away until Autumn arrives.

So a very productive month as far as crocheting goes anyway. Now if I can be as productive with knitting this month, that would make me very happy!!

BTW, all the above projects are from free patterns found on Ravelry, so go have a look if you are interested!! :)

Update and New Starts

Last month ended up being pretty quite on the blogging front for me. I tend to get that way this time of the year. All the busy-ness of the end of the school year/beginning of Spring, makes me what to hide away and be quite when I get the chance. But now all that busy-ness is done and we have Summer ahead of us I feel like I can come out of my shell and start having fun with the blog again. This year I will actually be spending a bit of the Summer on my own. Dd has a few activities that will have her gone for a few days here and a few days there, so there will be much less running around and (hopefully) much more stitching/knitting time for me!! That sounds like a very enjoyable Summer:)

I have manage to keep my hands busy though, so lets see what I've been up to and what will be new on the needles for this month...

Stitching...

Stitching has been taking a bit of a back seat to knitting/crocheting and I don't see that changing in the near future, but I did get a bit done. First is the progress I made on my May 1st start...

Not much, but I have loved stitching this. The colors are great and the pattern is easy and fun:)

I also made some progress on my YOTA project, but didn't update it last month. I've finished the big tree, both birds, a little of the alphabet and all the inside boarder for the Birds of a Feather Mystery SAL (With Thy Needle and Thread). I will be putting this away for a little while so I can work on 'Horses in the Night' for my dd. It's been a long time since I've worked on it - and I think I only have around 100 stitches in it, because I really dislike this pattern...

This pattern is going to be so time consuming and I really hate that the background has so little definition in it, even the black horse gets a bit lost in the pattern. Dd spent a lot of time looking at horse patterns though, and this is the one she liked best and I have been putting it off for a long time, so I need to get back to it, like it or not!! :)

I even have a finish for May. This is A Tisket, ATasket, from Black Bird Designs...

BBD was my stitching group's designer of the month for our exchange block project. I don't do many of the exchanges, but this one was easy as I have lots of BBD charts:)

And for my new June project...

Heaven and Nature Sing by With Thy Needle and Thread. I love the deer and bird in this piece, but I'm not so happy with the angle, a bit too prim for my taste. So I'm going to leave her out and bring the deer/bird over a bit. Mine will turn out smaller and I think work as an Ornie pretty well.

I also have a patriotic exchange I am signed up to do, but I haven't decided on what to stitch yet. I really need to dig through my stash and get it figured out!!

Knitting...

The last knitting update I gave I was halfway done with this bag...

and I really haven't gotten a whole lot further. I feel like I've been knitting a lot, but most of my projects are in the stage where it doesn't look much different from the last updates, so I won't post them right now.

I do have a couple new projects though. I started this next one just because I couldn't stop myself;) and it will work with a KAL I joined (*side note... On a previous post I noted that I'd never joined a KAL, I should have kept it that way since I've now joined 5!!! I did make sure that most of the projects I currently have going will work for at least a couple of them so that I don't have to start too many new projects!!*) ...

I'm having a little issue with the Strangling Vine Scarf. It should be a lacey scarf and so far you can't see the lacey pattern in mine. I'm liking how the yarn is showing off the wavy-ness of the pattern, though I was hoping that there would be more purple in it, and so far it has only shown up on the bottom rows. I can't decide if I should change needle sizes (do I go up a size?) or keep going and hope that when I block it things will be better.

And then there is my new June start, except that I started it a few days before June because I was really excited about it!!



This is Anne's Imagination Cowl by The Sampler Girl. For the stitchers that read my blog, you may recognize The Sampler Girl as a cross-stitch designer, and she IS!! I didn't know that she also designed knitting patterns too!! What a great find:) And I love this cowl, and the yarn - it is soooo soft!! This is really proving to be a quick, easy and very fun pattern, so I'm hoping it'll knit up in no time.

Crochet...

I actually got the most done with crochet this past month. I had several projects that were so close to being done and once I get buttons on a hat I was making, I will have finished off 3 projects!! I'll post an update on those later this week so I can show them all off at once.

For a new project I actually took apart a knitted bag I was going to make and am going to crochet it instead. I had a comment on the last post that suggested crocheting would be much faster and easier and I am sure she is right. The knitting is fun, but takes so much time and I really want some project bags done, so I will do crochet and see if I can't get a few done. Here are the colors of the first...

I'm kind of doing my own thing with this bag. I want to do a star (or daisy) stitch with the blue yarn, so I wanted to the pattern with the gray yarn not to stand out too much. I've chosen to do a new stitch for me...the wattle stitch (found directions HERE) for the gray yarn. I think this will go together well, but we will see:)

That's it for now, hoping to be back in a couples days to show of my crochet projects. Have a great day!!