Quick Quilt

Just a quick quilt, made entirely out of fabrics that I had laying around- more goes out the door! Each block is 10"x7.5", and then they're all stitched together, 5x5, for a lap-sized quilt. I used an old scratchy fleece blanket for the batting in the center, so it should be very warm. There is a little bit of bunching of the batting in the center, but it's not too bad, and to be honest- I'm just not willing to take the whole thing apart to fix it. The batting is held in place by top stitching across each row, about .25" inch off from the seam.

All in all, a pretty easy pattern, I finished this off in about a day, from cutting to final topstitching. I used some lavender fabric with little roses on it for the back- I had a substantial amount of it, since at one time I thought I might make a dress with it (and then it sat for 2 or 3 years...).

Once again, goes to charity unless someone wants to claim it for themselves.

Another Afghan

Just another afghan, made (almost) entirely out of yarn I had sitting around. A long time ago, when I was learning the 'basketweave' crochet pattern, I thought I would make an afghan using it. The basketweave uses a lot more yarn than regular crocheting, and it ended up being way too thick, and with not enough yarn (yarn was given to me, so these colors/dyelots were in limited supply), so I quit halfway through, and let it sink to the bottom of one of my project buckets.

I was recently digging through my buckets, found these yarns, and decided to rip out the whole half-finished afghan, and start fresh, this time with squares. It was a MUCH more efficient use of the yarn that I had, and this time I was able to finish the project. I had to buy an extra skein of the ecru color; I managed to find a similar weight and color, but other than that it's all yarn I had around- more is leaving the house!

On a related note: this afghan goes to charity (Project Linus) unless someone wants it.

PS: The basketweave was recently resurrected, but this time with a lighter baby-weight yarn- much more pleasant result.

Net Bag

Found a pattern for a net-style bag in a crochet book that I bought at the craft store.. and I just wanted to know if I could do it! It looked neat, and I remembered having some net bags when I was a kid, two, that we used at the library to carry our books, so there was some reminiscing attached to the pattern as well.

I bought some purple cotton yarn, because it would provide a solid line, with less stretch to it (unlike poufy acrylic boucle-style yarns), as I assumed the bag would get a fair amount of stretch simply from the way it was made. The last thing I wanted was a bag that was a reasonable size when you first looked at it, but stretched down to your knees as soon as you put it on.

The pattern ended up being pretty easy! I had to adjust it a little bit, since the pattern in the book was developed for a thinner yarn, but ultimately it was just 9 half-double crochet stitches on either end, and then alternating 3 double crochets with 4 slip stitches between, working the doubles onto the previous row's slip stitches... it was pretty easy, once I got the rhythm down!

To finish it, I just sewed up the side, and then continued building half-double crochet stitches along one of the anchored ends to make the strap. When I stitched up the other side, I did the same thing, and built that strap. Then all there was to do was tie the straps into loops, and stitch in any/all loose ends!

This bag needs a home.

Baby Blanket

A coworker of mine's wife is having a baby! Babies are great! At the time that I started working on this blanket, he said they were going to be surprised as to the gender of the baby- so I chose a yarn that was mostly yellow with some rose and blue accents, and a border of yellow. Later he told me that it will definitely be a boy, but too late to change yarns!

Either way, it's dreamy soft, though I used an "adult" yarn for the main part of the blanket, and a "baby" yarn for the border. I also alternated the type of crochet for each row- intermixing single and double crochets. By the time I had used up both skeins of the main yarn, it was still and awkward rectangle, too wide, not enough rows. I made up for this with the border- there are four rows on the long sides, and only two on the short ones (all single crochet for the border).

I don't really have a baby of my own to model this one, but my kitty is the closest thing I have... so I baited her with a couple treats into being my model. (:

"Yarn Blanket"

I've been working on this afghan for a long time. I think I started buying the yarn last fall... and just worked on it between projects or TV time through to about a week ago. It took a long time to finish, but it also spent a fair amount of time sitting in the project bucket while something else took center stage (for example, I made another granny square afghan for my sister for Christmas, and another for another friend at the same time, both of which remain unchronicled in blog form, and likely never will be).

The yarn is brown (bought in the big pound skeins, I needed a lot!), with reddish accent stripes. Stripes are uniform size, but the distance between them is however I was feeling that day. Also, this afghan is enormous. More than long enough to cover all of my boyfriend, who is roughly 6' tall (I didn't ask for specs, but he's taller than me).

This afghan needs a home. I already have enough blankets, and don't need another- if you or someone you know would like it, let me know! If you know a good charity in the Chicagoland area that would take it, let me know!

And then 11 months happened...

Maybe you've forgotten I have a blog. I mostly did too. I'd make projects and think, "oh I should post this to the blog..." < /thoughtprocess >. It didn't ever happen. And then to have to follow up the desk project! That thing took so long. That thing is what my computer is sitting on as I type this post up.

Regardless, blog is back, here is a blanket. I've been crocheting for years, and I'm a wicked packrat, who will not throw away scraps! Neither will my mom- there are bits of the yarn from my older brother's baby blanket in there. And bits from baby blankets made for coworkers, and bits from afghans I made for friends & family, bits of yarn from small skeins that were given to me solo, and bits from skeins I bought for small projects that never left the yarn bucket. So it's a scrap-square-afghan, and it now resides in the apartment of my friend and neighbor, as pictured. (:

Used white to border each square, to hold the design together. May or may not be visible in the picture, but I did end up using a number of different whites. Used a cream color to single crochet around the edge and keep the edges from being too delicate.

Refinished Desk

One day I was walking home, and I saw this desk next to the dumpster in this little parking lot area for one of the buildings on the block north of me. I went in for a closer look, and it was pretty ugly, but not broken. I lifted it up, and discovered it was sitting on roller feet, and was lightweight. A little too bulky to carry home on my own, so I enlisted some help for that.

Once I had it, I starting thinking about what to do with it. I looked at different hardware online, because the plastic/metal/wood combo had to go. I considered painting it plain white. I considered staining it. I knew I had to sand it down first, it did have some old finish on it in the grains, and a couple rough corners. So I took a trip down to Clark Devon Hardware (so helpful!), and picked up some things that I thought might be necessary.

After laying down the cheap plastic dropcloth on my living room floor (I have no basement or garage) I got to work with sanding. Sanding is a lot of work! It took longer than I expected it too, and I ended up with some sore muscles the first time I worked on it- my legs from crouching for a couple hours, and my shoulder and back from the continuous sanding back and forth. Not in as decent of shape as I thought!

About halfway through sanding, a coworker recommended using a stripper- he said that it was really easy, you just wiped it on and wiped it off. It was pretty easy to put it on, as he had said, but getting it all off was a little more complicated. I ended up having to scrape and sand even more to get it all off, and even still, there were still some grains that I just couldn't get to. It was somewhere at this point that I used woodfiller to close up the holes on the bottom drawers so that they would be smooth once I put in the new single bolt hardware.

Once I finally had finished the sanding, I had to make some hard decisions about what to actually finish it with. I was still torn between painting and staining. I wasn't that crazy about painting anymore, but there were still some really deep grains that had retained the previous finish; using a beltsander in my living room would have been a little much, I WAS trying to maintain half of the room as a usable living room. However, my dad recommended that I might as well stain it, if that was what I wanted with it, and if it looked really bad after that, I could always just paint over it. So, I went with stain.

After looking at all of my options, I chose the "Golden Pecan" color, from the 'minwax polystain' collection- theoretically, you should be able to stain and polyurethane with one product. Due to my novice status as a woodworker (I haven't done any of this since middle school) I suckered myself into buying the 'pre-stain' product, for a 'more beautiful, even finish'. I don't know how much it actually affected the finished product, but I used it. I then stained.

When the stain had dried, I decided that I really didn't want to go with another coat of stain, as recommended, I liked the color it was at. But, it didn't quite have what I felt to be an appropriate coating of polyurethane. There were still some places where the polyurethane coating was thin, and where I would feel uncomfortable putting something wet on (for example, there is a nice cold MGD next to me right now), so I headed down for yet another trip to Clark Devon, and bought a little can of polyurethane. AND MAN DOES THAT STUFF STINK! I put all the fans I own on high in my living room, and then took myself out for a movie. Good thing I don't have roommates, they would have really pitched a fit over that.

And then it was just waiting the 24 hours for it to dry completely; after about a day and a half and borrowing a drill from a friend and making the holes for the last two knobs, I moved the desk to its current position in my 'dining' room, another day later, I started moving all my art supplies into it. And now it's useful again (did I mention that the state I found it in, involved some check book ledgers from the 60s? clearly hadn't been used in a while)!

For the complete set of photos, from start to finish- this was a request from various people I talked to mid-project- go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68414952@N00/sets/72157627282157530/