Bad News Bears

So this week I have been particularity bad.  Instead of working on my brother's Christmas Present I *gasp* started another afghan.  Yes, this is one of the projects I've been dying to start since Christmas when I found this gorgeous Caron One Pound Yarn, Ocean 611.  So I'm making a giant Granny Square with lots of squares within squares with various Caron Yarns I found in my collection, Midnight and Azure are reused from the Catan Afghan while Cape Cod Blue came from my knit Afghan as well as my sister's crochet afghan.  This way I'm going to have a really big (king-sized bed) blue afghan!

Now since this is a Granny Square I was warned that the middle part works up really fast because the square is so little but as you spiral around it, every row takes more and more time and yarn.  However after two days of crocheting I can't wait to get started again!  I decided that each color stripe will be 15 rows across, nice and thick.  So this is what I have so far:

Supernatural Nametags

After watching a lot of Supernatural I clearly needed to make name tags for some of the characters.  Sadly I had to make Sam's name tag before I ran out of time to make Dean's.  :(  But first came Mom and Dad Winchester!

Bringing in the New with the Old

As you can probably tell, I'm new to blogger but not new to blogging.  I recently had to revamp my other blogs to clear up some space and regroup.  Thus this little regular-quadrilateral of the internet was born.  And through this rehash I found some pictures of past projects that are pretty dear to me: the first quilt that I made.  Now usually I would say that was years ago!  It doesn't deserve a post now and it would be too much effort to back date it or anything like that.  However just yesterday I fielded a call from a family friend asking, "Hey do you know anyone who would be willing to make a surprise t-shirt quilt for my son?"  Unfortunately, I had to say "no" because I have way to much work to be making a quilt, especially at my little flat.  But it got me thinking of the summer of 2008.

When my brother moved out of the house a few years ago, I decided to make him his own little bit of home to bring back with him.  So, over the summer I went to my Grandmother's place and I made him a t-shirt quilt in 3 weeks flat.  Luckily my mom basically refuses to through anything out especially things like t-shirts, which means I had a ready stash to chose from when I set down to make the quilt!  Now the trick with a t-shirt quilt is that you have to put interfacing on the back of each t-shirt block in order to stabilize it... otherwise it will be practically impossible to quilt and your quilter *will* murder you with a rusty needle to the jugular vein.  Don't Bleed on the Fabric!  I made them 15.5in blocks including seam allowance, which seemed to work out fine.  And for those blocks who needed a little extra to get to the full 15" we always have leftover fabric from those wild beach pants my grandmother made for us when we were kids.  Anyhow Long story short this is a picture of the quilt when its still on the design wall awaiting finalization.

Also that little banner of animal paws running up the right hand side of the quilt will actually be turned into a header.  I couldn't bear to turn this paw-print t-shirt into just another 15" square... I mean how could you they covered the shirt: front, back, sleeves, and collar.  I couldn't choose where to cut!  So I cut them all out individually and used every single one-there were a lot!  I machine appliqued them down on the borders and sashing with a little Heat'n Bond and zigzag stitched clear thread.  However, I believe this is a picture pre zig or zag but let me tell you that was a lot of work!

2011 Resolutions

This year I have so many projects that I want to get started and more importantly FINISHED!

The to do list:

• First before anything else (and that's what's killing me) I have to finish my brother's Christmas present, which is *drum-roll* a Settlers of Catan Afghan!  It is looking fantastic!  All of the land hexagons are done and I only have 20 or 30 more ocean tiles left... which is not so great. IT WILL BE DONE!  But not by this weekend when I next see my bro 'cause that would be hard :)  All this crocheting really means one thing:  BUFFY AND ANGEL ARE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER!  I've been watching season 4 of Buffy and season 1 of Angel and I can't wait to watch my next episode while crocheting the afghan which is the real reason I have to so many arduous hours of television... clearly.  :D
• After that I want to learn how to knit socks.  For Christmas I asked my eccentric aunt for sock yarn which she supplied!  YAY!  And then best of all I got back from traveling over New Years to find a package waiting at my door... "hmmm what could it be?" I asked myself.  I opened it up and there was more sock yarn and a knitting socks book!  my aunt is hilarious.  So I'm all ready to start that and I think I have the right sized needles and pattern already.  Best of all I have a companion on this sock adventure.  Both of us have never knitted socks before and she's never knitted at all!  I am a pretty experienced knitter but not so great on double pointed needles... we'll see.  But... What Time Is IT?  ADVENTURE TIME!!!
• Then I promised one of my friends to crochet a snow wampa plushie which is somewhat inspired by the Think Geek plushie.  I already have the white yarn and the RED VELCRO!  Now you ask me why velcro?  Because he WILL have a removable bloody red arm!  *Squee! Fangirl!*  I love Star Wars and since I already have lightsabers we can battle the evil snow wampa and chop off his arm!  :)  Since I can't find any kind of pattern for a snow wampa...  I admit it is kind of obscure so I'm not too disappointed.  So once again I'm going to make my own pattern!  I'm loosely going to base it on this bear pattern on Lion Brand (which offers free patterns and you can sell any of the stuff you make based on them!)
• Lastly (for now) I went to Jo-Ann's during their yarn sale and I couldn't resist this beautiful colored pound of Caron Yarn.  I think I now have every color of blue Caron yarn!  Which means I have to make an another afghan!  I think I want to make one giant Granny Square so it will be loose and quick to make!  Hopefully I can make it look like a square within a square within a square with all of my different colored blues.  The only downside is that if it's a square than it's either going to be a personal sized throw or the size of a king sized bed... lets just say that there's a big size difference between the two of them  :D  We'll see what happens!