My lap continues to be a playing board for cat chess. The stakes have been raised as the blanket I’m crocheting gets larger and there is actually room for a toe beans.
Yes. There are cat hairs crocheted indelibly into the blanket.
Check mate
Whatever it takes
Summer is coming to Texas, which means it will be hot. Hot during the day, hot at night, and hot in the morning. I found a recumbent stationary bicycle so that I can get some exercise this summer, because I have historical data that I won’t go walking in the summer heat. I also know that I am easily distracted, so I have two arm bags with different projects set up on the machine, and there is a stand for my phone so I can get some learning in while I craft and pedal.
Throwback Thursday: Harvey
In August 2017 Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas and flooded many of our neighbors houses and property, displacing them for months on end. At the beginning, we didn’t know what we were in for, but our youngest did have a fear of storms, so we made a cake.
The storm wasn’t a furious one, it was a sulking behemoth that just sat over us and rained constantly for days and days. We had just recovered from a house fire two years before and were fortunate not to add flood to the house history. Many of our neighbors were not so fortunate, and had to be evacuated by boat, with flood lines two feet up in their living rooms.
Grow light stand
When our halogen light from the nineties finally gave up after 30 years of use, I deconstructed it and couldn’t bring myself to throw out the nice heavy base just yet. When rearranging my plants on the kitchen counter, and moving the grow lamps on stakes, I decided to combine the grow lamps with the old lamp base.
I had to get longer screws to secure the posts of the grow lamps into the stand, but I had some that worked in the garage. The result was quite acceptable.
Yarn chicken redo
I lost at yarn chicken on a baby blanket edge. I needed to make two more scallops to finish and there just wasn’t enough yarn. Rather than scrap the whole edge, I ripped out just the last side and redid it so the scallops spanned 6 stitches instead of five. This gave me less scallops overall on that edge and I had enough yarn to complete the edge.
The blanket is based on Mary Maxim’s Easy Diagonal Blanket pattern, but done with alternating two rows of white, purple, and pink. I deviated on the edge too, by doing a single crochet all along the outer edge to hide yarn ends, then making 5-double crochet scallops along the edge.
I used acrylic yarn for the blanket because it is machine washable and dry-able, and new moms do not need any gift that can’t be easily washed.
Critters and Craft 