One, Two, THREE

I had to rip out the back of the vest because it seems I can't count to three. I was suppose to skip three chain spaces for the underarm, but I left four spaces instead. I had the entire back done and had started on the left front before I even noticed there was a problem. I tried the back again last night, but couldn't keep up with what row I was on and had to frog again. (This is not mindless crochet, and I was trying to watch 24, Season 3, Disc 2. Not a good idea to try to do both at the same time.) I'm going to have to write down the row numbers and cross them off as I complete each row.

Demon Kitty all grown up. Sorry about the sleep in his eye. He hadn't had his morning wash yet.

Placemats and Tablerunners

Bron's been working on things for her new home, and it made me remember that I have some patterns from Annie's Attic for tablerunners, placemats, and things like that. Of course, I had to go through my pattern collection and look for those patterns and booklets.



This one I thought was done in separate leaflets, but all of the patterns are combined into a little booklet. It's title is simply Dining Decor and was published in 1983.









Then I found one called A Dozen Mile-A-Minute Placemats and Matching Tablerunners. I was surprised to see that most of these are done in acrylic yarn like Red Heart. There are only three out of the twelve that I would actually like to make.









The last one that turned up was purchased on sale from Annie's last year. It's called How to Crochet the Celtic Way. I've actually made one of the trivets using this method, so I can say it's much easier than it looks. The trivet was pretty flimsy, though and wouldn't do much to protect your table.

I've wasted all of the time I can, so I guess I'd better get back to work. I've got towels to fold, and sheets to put into the dryer. I need to mow grass, but everything is still fairly wet today after the rain yesterday. Besides, my nephew has had my lawn mower for a couple of weeks now and hasn't returned it. I've left him a message telling him that I really need it back. I love the boy dearly, but he's just like the rest of the Neys (except me). He borrows things and doesn't return them. Then you have to nag and nag until it's returned. or in some cases, just go steal it back.

Work in Progress

I'm still trying to reduce some of my yarn stash before buying too much new yarn. Last year I purchased some Paton's Grace from ebay at a great price, but there were only six skeins. I found this vest pattern in the book pictured below that used Luster Sheen, so I decided to give it a try with the Grace. Amazingly, I was able to get gauge with an F hook.
This is the book that has the pattern I'm using. I purchased it here. It's organized into four sections based on the seasons and gives a variety of patterns.
It's worked up quickly once I was able to establish the pattern. It was pretty rough going at first because the youngest cat is pretty needy and wants to sit in my lap whenever she's awake. Everytime she jumped in my lap I lost my place in the pattern and messed up the count.
This is an attempt to show you a closeup of the stitch pattern.

I'm on the back now, and then I have the left front to do. The only seams will be the shoulder seams. There's a bottom edging added last to give the vest more length.

Kitchen Stuff

Little Kitchen Helpers by Leisure Arts is what I call a "pity purchase". It's one of those purchases I make when I'm trying to be frugal, but I'm feeling very sorry for myself about the whole experience. It's that feeling I get when I look down see only food and cleaning supplies in my cart. (Surely I'm not the only person who finds cleaning supplies depressing.) If I can pick up something like this, I can feel so much better about the whole shopping trip. These little books are cheap, and they aren't fattening. That's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned.
I used this little book to make the pot holders shown below.

The pattern for these three dishcloths was found on the ball band of the Bernat Handicrafter's Cotton I used.
The knitted cloth was made from a pattern found in the latest issue of Creative Knitting.
These two pot holders were made using two strands of cotton held together and crocheted with a K hook. These are very quick to make.
This pattern also came from the book shown above. It was actually suppose to be made using two colors, but I didn't have a solid color that matched. I'll probably use it as a hot pad because it's too big and floppy for my taste. I won't put the hanging loop on the next time I use this pattern. I decided to leave it on this one because the loop is made at the beginning of the round rather than at the end. I was too lazy to frog it and redo the edge without the loop.

All of the above took about ten skeins of the Handicrafter Cotton. You get fewer yards with the Handicrafter, so another brand would probably make more than seven items.

Deneen's Cap

This is my version of Deneen's cap published in the spring issue of Crochet Me! She asked me to test the pattern for her, and I agreed. This is a great pattern with some interesting details. The fbsc she used on the edge adds interesting detail and texture, and she used method of making color changes that I had never thought of before. Everyone should give it a try. You can see it at http://www.crochetme.com/ and read about it on her blog at http://deneens.blogspot.com/.

Here's a closeup of the stitch detail. You can see the fbsc along the edges.

She also has a great dishcloth pattern she developed using the fbsc to give it a good texture for scrubbing those dishes. I like this pattern not only for the texture, but also because the cloth isn't huge and doesn't stretch out so much when it's wet.