Happy Sunday

Happy Sunday everyone! Now that I have a normal Monday - Friday job, I have to say, the weekends go by way to fast!


So I have a little good news to share with everyone, my husband and I have decided to move into a bigger place, and I couldn't be more excited!! And what comes with a bigger place? An extra bedroom just for me and my yarn! Wooohoo, my own craft space!

Of course the creative side of my brain is excited as can be and I've had my eyes glued to Pinterest browsing ideas for my room! I have all of this yarn that I need to organize!! Where do I begin?? And of course all of the decorating!! Why no make some decorations made out of yarn! Perhaps some yarn garland? Oh yes, some colorful rainbow yarn garland!

And it is never to early to start! I have decided to start a rainbow granny stripe afghan. The pattern I'm using is actually very easy and the pattern can be found here. I love this womens blog and I'm always looking at it for inspiration! Especially since she has her own little studio! Did  mention I can't wait to decorate mine!?!?!

Ok, so the above yarn is Redheart, i must craft on a budget for the time being and Redheart is cheap in price but is also soft. It is 100% Acrylic :: working on a 5mm hook :: And the colors, make me feel very cheery!

And here are the colors that are in my little yarn basket I made.

Cherry Red
Lavender
Light Raspberry
Turqua
Spring Green
Bright Yellow
Pumpkin

So i started on my granny stripe blanket a few evenings ago, sat in my living room, hooking that oh so lovely foundation chain (161 long, double bed width aka full size). Anyone else dread the foundation chain? Wiggling about with that long chain, counting like mad, being oh-so-careful to get the count right. Because certain patterns like this,t he count is CRITICAL!

Then after that dreadful chain, comes the tricksy first row, working the stitches and again counting like a mad woman and praying to the yarn angels that you will not have to frog that first row! Because you know, you won't know if you made enough chains until the last stitch of that row!!!

And qouldn't you know it, I had the count right the first time! No frogging was needed! Woohoo!!!!

And now onto the patter we go. I love granny squares, but I love the simplicty of the granny stripes! So after the foundation row and the first row and that dreadful counting is over, it's a happy, delicious, and skippy breeze! So now the easy hooking can begin! Zooming up that row making those cute clusters, nothing can stop me now.

Well unless my crafters ADD kicks in, "Ooo another pretty pattern to work up."

Row after row, so easy, so happy, so strippy, and so amazing!

I am really loving this pattern and loving the colors!

I am hoping that some of you wil be granny stripping along with me! Give it a go! If I love it this much, so will you, I promise!!

As I said earlier, I am moving in just a short 5 weeks. I need to start packing along with working a 40 hour full time job! So I may be a little MIA for the next few weeks, but I'm thinking an hour a day to work on projects won't hurt, riiiiight? I have to have my daily dose of yarn!

However, this move, is going to be so worth it! A whole room to myself that the hubby can't touch! Don't mind if I do!

Have a great week everyone! Stay warm! And think, there is only 6 more weeks of winter left! I know, I'm ready for it to be over to!


-Taylor

Happy Tuesday

Good Evening everyone! I hope all of you are having a great week so far! Tomorrow is Wednesday! Woohoo!

 

 Yep, another frigid day here in Ohio. Had about another inch of snow last night. 

 But, what's this in the sky? The Sun? I almost forgot what it looked like! I have a case of cabin fever for sure!

The good thing about cold winter days, gives you the best excuse ever to just stay inside all day and work on some new projects. So far this year I have been pretty busy! And I'm slowly going out of my comfort zone to try new things.

I'm becoming a ruffle scarf making addict! I have a bunch of skeins of this yarn, and they can't wait to be made into scarfs!

I was thinking this year that I will be participating in some local craft fairs. Just to get my feet wet in the craft selling world. I mean what's the worse that can happen? Not get that many sales? Oh well, just get right back up on the horse and keep trying. The harder you try, the better you do :) 

Do you remember when I said the other day that I want to start making cuter items?

Does this newborn frog hat qualify as cute enough? (I will write up the pattern and share).

Or...

How about these baby Converse booties :) A special order for my newborn niece! 

I promised myself great things this year, and so far I am sticking to my own promise :) 

Now, since it's a frigid winters day, I thought it would be a good day to start on a rainbow baby afghan. So far the colors are working very well with each other, and I cannot wait to see the completed project. 

Nice, cozy, and soft :) Have a good night everyone!

xxTaylor

Snowy Weekend

It's been a few months since I've blogged! Oh no! But it's a new year, and I promised myself that I would work my tail off to be an awesome knitter/crocheter/blogger this year! So here we are, and here we go!


First and foremost, I hope everyone had a terrific New Year! Can't believe it's 2014 and already half way through January!And winter, well is defiantly in full swing here in the States. Minus zero temps and snow! Lots of snow! I know I'm ready for Spring to hit so I can get back into my photography! However, it is winter so a hike down to my favorite waterfalls is in order soon!

Yep, snowy. But not to overly cold... For now.. After all this is Ohio..

 

Atleast it makes everything look very pretty :) 

Now, nothing like a hot cup of coffee to warm you up on just a cold Winter day. Mmm Vanilla and Hazelnut!

 A few weeks ago I had a nice little chat with myself. A new year means a whole new agenda in life. I decided that I really need to take a different approach to managing myself and my life. I don't have a lot to juggle these days, and in order for my to contine to feel happy and upbeat, it's essential that I keep on top of things. What this basically means is that I need to alter my natural free-floating tendencies and create a little more structure to my days. Yes, a little more organisation and structure would be very good for me, I decided. Just a little, nothing too harsh or stifling. This structure would allow me to carry on doing the things I love (and the things I am committed to) but in a less chaotic, stressful way.

I decided this year that I will go out of my comfort zone with well, just about everything in my life. Knitting and crocheting harder things to better my skills, such as, create my own patterns, continue with harder skills, and try harder more complicated patterns. And with my photography, go WAY out of my comfort zone and try newer things, play around with Photoshop more to create better images. 

So, lets begin this adding more structure and organization with my life. Today, well I organized all of my yarn, and tools (lets hope it stays this way). 

I have come insanely addicted to double-pointed needles in the past few months! Like, really really addicted! So far I've only been making hats with them, but I plan on going out of my comfort zone really soon and trying something a little harder. Can't be that hard riiight?

(Btw, doesn't that hat make you feel really really happy? I think it would make fun socks!)

I'm loving the double ribbed stitch! Makes hats so stretchy to fit over the wee lads head! 

One of my many goals this year, is to knit a bunch of hats to donate to the NICU at one of the hospitals here in town. My niece Twylah was born on Christmas day, 6 weeks early and she has been in the NICU ever since just to get a little help breathing on her own. But luckily, she's doing amazing and should be released this weekend!

But my sister(my best friend) told something very very sad. There are some babies who are there by themselves, their parents don't come to see them until they are ready to go home :( So my goal this year is to knit them up some little hats and some little teddy bears to keep them company! 

And with all of this said, adding some rows on this ripple afghan I've been working on for quite sometime now. It'll be done someday haha! But come Monday, I need to start on a Mickey Mouse graphgan for my nephew who turns 3 in two months! Wow time flies!

 Have a great evening everyone, and happy yarning!

What's in my yarn Basket?

Happy Tuesday everyone! How is everyone doing on this fine Spring day? Although I look outside and still see all of the snow from this Spring snowstorm many of us got hit with over the weekend.

Tired of the snow and cold yet?

I know I sure am...

Maybe these little lovely flower bunches will help bring a little spring weather, just maybe.. I am ready to plant my own bunch of flowers outside :)

But in the mean time, to warm us up a little, I have a yummy pot roast with carrots and potatoes in the slow cooker, and it smells amazing!



How about we get to what is in my basket :)

These past few weeks I've been stuffing my yarn basket with more projects than I should, and it's over flowing! So no more stuffing until I get at least two of the afghans I have in it done.

Told you guys its overflowing...

First thing in it is a octagon and square afghan :) And the greens I chose for it, look amazing together.

I think my favorite kind of yarn is the Red Heart super saver. It's really cheap and it's so soft! The greens I chose to use for this were:

#661 Frosty Green, #0624 Tea Leaf, and #0389 Hunter Green

This pattern is very simple, it's a basic octagon and granny square pattern! 

For this afghan I did use Red Hearts Octagon & Square throw pattern.

However I did change it up a little bit, when it tells you to *hdc in the top of ch-3* for rnds 3-8. I changed it so that it was *ch1, slst in top of ch-3* instead of the hdc. It looks a whole lot better, trust me :) 

 

I didn't have to use this pattern, I could have made up my own, but I'm still learning how to make my own and make sure I write it down as I go. I tend to get "lost" in the moment ;) I'm sure all of us crafters do that from time to time.

 I've been working on this for almost 2 weeks now...

I have all of my squares and octagons done now...

And Mr.Kittyboy approves of them and says that they make a nice pillow for him... :)

Now comes the fun part, stitching them all together, which is the part I dread oh so much! I took a break after I finished making the motifs. I started stitching them together this morning, and so far it looks amazing!

  

 Can not wait to see what it looks like when it is completed! However this one will be given away to my mom for her birthday next month. But it's so easy, so I can just make my own :)

  

Remember my ripple blanket I've been working on? The brown tones one that I made a tutorial for?

 It's coming together slowly... :P Soon as I finish this octagon throw, this ripple afghan will get finished! Even though I have a ton of new ruffle yarn to make some pretty scarves, I will be good and finish what is in my basket first :)

 

Busy, busy, busy and sneak peeks!

Good afternoon my lovely's!

It's a winter wonderland yet again here in Ohio! So while it's doing this outside, I'm nice and cozy in my little apartment working on something new I've taken the time to finally learn!

With that being said, I have two different afghans started and somehow working on both at the same time ;) Who says you can not multitask while knitting and crocheting?

So with that being said here are a couple things I'm working on...

I love my purples..

bobbles..aka puff stitch..


With those 2 little sneak peaks in mind. How about a little photography from me and my mom's little in the middle of winter hiking trip to some haunted and old train tunnels in southern Ohio..

Well ok, first a little winter photography first. The night before we went down, it had ice stormed over night and so all of the trees were covered in ice and it was so beautiful!

This first tunnel we came across was the Haydenville Tunnel in Haydenville, Ohio which was one of the old mining towns of southern Ohio. This side of the tunnel is now caved in and you can not walk into to far unless you wanted to climb over rubble(which I wanted to do). Never go in there without a flash light!


The next stop of the day was Moonville Tunnel, outside of Zalesiki, Ohio. According to myths and the town this one is very haunted. But of course didn't get any ghost action. (Below is the bridge you had to cross to park the car to hike to the tunnel.

 

Oh and of course you have to pass over a creek to even get to this tunnel. And since they ripped out the old train rails that connected all of these tunnels there is no bridge to make it to this one. So you see that little nice green creek. Yes its a creek. But with all of the snow we've had, it was a little to high for us to walk across it. So.. We had to take the long way around and up a big hill to get to it.

But as you can see, we made it. I've been wanting to visit this tunnel ever since I was little, and I finally made it! (See the old rail-road wire pole? Cool!) And the trail was actually the old train tracks! You can see the train track rock still.

And then... You have Kings Tunnel. Which surprisingly you can still drive through. We didn't though, just walked through. Which I'm not gonna lie, I was scared of this one. Its made out of wood, so the sides of it have gaping holes in it. Hey! You never know what kind of animals or even humans who make those huge holes their homes. 

On a good note though, those holes still had a ton of coal still in them, so of course I had to snag some for a keepsake. Oh and the cool thing about this tunnel though, you could still smell the old train fumes from when they went through the tunnels.


And our last stop of the day were the old Berlin Coke Ovens, WAY back in the goonies, literally. This is were they would melt the coal back in the early 1900's. Should see the bridges that we had to cross!

I have much more hiking to do in my home state that's for sure!

Hope I didn't bore you guys to much! I'll much more yarn creations in the days to come :)


-Taylor