My Gold Medal Porjects for the Crochet Olympics!

Well this is the "Drops Circle Jacket" that I've been wanting to make for well over a year now. It was a pain and I had several rows that I had to frog and re-do but in the end, I am extremely happy with the end result! This was made with 3 strands of thread held together and a size J hook so it worked out very nicely. I opted not to make the sleeves and didn't do the button closure since I would rather close it with a pin.







This is my Pineapple Shawl! It's actually a doily pattern that I converted into a shawl by simply using larger yarn and a larger hook. I used Bernat Softee Baby and a size J hook. This one also gave me a few troubles but after getting through a couple of tough rounds it came together nicely.

A few FO's!

Yes I know, I have been lax with my blog lately... Ok, so I've been very busy and have actually completed a few very nice things so here they are!!!

This was made for one of our engineers at work. He and his wife just welcomed their 2nd child into the world a couple of weeks ago, a little girl. I actually made this out of odds and ends of baby yarn and think it turned out lovely. It's a basic shell pattern and I got it from CPC. I believe the pattern name was something like 5 day newborn blankie or something like that.


Here's a close-up of the stitches:

This one I just love! It's actually a pattern for a chair back and I stumbled across it on Ravelry and someone else had decided to take the pattern and instead of a little hook and thread, she used WW yarn and a larger hook and came up with a shawl so I decided to give it a try! It only took me about 48 hours to complete it and I just love it! I had some baby yarn in my stash and used that. I think it actually would look better all one color and it shows off the pineapples better when I'm not wearing white underneath it but at least you get the idea! This is the back view:

And the front... I used a nice pin to keep it closed during the day. It's nice at work to keep the chill off my shoulders!


And finally a one skein project that worked up in a couple of hours. I got the pattern from the latest issue of Crochet! and used a skein of Red Heart Rasta I think... I made it for Weight Watchers... Our WW group at work's leader always takes our name tags, puts them in a bag at the end of each meeting and draws a name for a prize. Well, she always forgets to bring a bag so every week she has to go into the cabinet and take apart a brand new package with the books and stuff in it to get a drawstring bag out just to draw names and I thought, geez, it's nothing to make a little drawstring bag. So I made it for her and she was tickled pink! I love the colors of that yarn but I swear it's made with bits of straw or something. It's the harshest feeling yarn I've ever felt...

My favorite room in the house!

THE GARAGE!!!

I know, that sounds a little weird but here goes... We have a really cool garage! As you can see from the pictures below it's got the really nice screens on it so if we have the garage door open it's almost like a Florida room. Not to mention the all-weather carpeting which makes it very nice out there. (These pics were taken the day we moved in a year ago. It looks a lot different now!)






We have several things out there now (I need to take some new pictures) including 2 tables with lots of chairs (we play cards and stuff out there a lot), several cabinets which hold all of our board games, puzzles, playing cards, etc., as well as a full sized fridge which is stocked with cold beverages most of the time, a stereo, window A/C to keep it nice and cool on those very steamy hot afternoons and we even have an electronic dart board on the wall.

For the past few months I have really enjoyed going out there in the evenings to watch my movies on my portable DVD player and crochet. When it got too hot to crochet out there I started oil painting. I then started listening to audio books while I painted and now I go out there almost every night for at least an hour to paint and listen to one CD of an audio book that I'm listening to at the time. I esp love to go out there when we have one of our summer thunderstorms. It's so neat to watch it from the safety of the garage yet almost feel like you're outside.

What's funny is that this was originally supposed to be Doug's "getaway room" but he hardly ever went out there so I started to. I think eventually he'll start going out there. We'd like to put a small TV out there, run our dish service out there and once we buy new furniture put the love seat out there and he'd really like it out there then... But for now, every evening after dinner for about an hour, me and the doggies relax in the garage!!!