There's my baby!

My little cutie is wearing a dress from The Children's Place.  Does anyone notice the crocheted straps and neckline?  Helloooo?  Crochet is in fashion, people!

A cowl for....

I don't know.  Maybe me.  But don't I look bad ass with my frizzy hair and handmade goods?

Made with Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick in the colors of brown and cream.  Here's the pattern.  The only thing I didn't like was trying to join the chain without twisting it.  I had to like restart a gadzillion times.  I wonder if I could get away with wearing this in the classroom without looking like a huge dork.

Project queue...

...is outta control.  Like I have time to work on the 40+ projects I just added.  Ah well, we'll see!

www.nataliedee.com

Seen in Michaels

Interesting.

Swap Update

So, I've been assigned a partner in the Lion Brand Swap through Ravelry!  I'm so excited and I believe I've mentioned that about a gadzillion times on the group discussion board.


This swap has to do with favorite colors and based on my partner's likes and dislikes, I come up with a package to send off to her with little yarn goodies and treats.  Think of it like pen pals but with presents!


I've been repeating her color choices like a mantra in my head: light purples, dark blues, deep greens....light purples, dark blues, deep greens.

Swap

So, I joined a swap on Ravelry.  Details to follow...

A sweater for Murphy

I used the Bombay Love Sweater pattern from Rima Aranha.

I used Lion Brand Yarn - Vanna's Choice in pea green and Wool-ease in mink brown.  I got the buttons from one of those major craft stores in a baggie of about fifty assorted buttons.  The buttons are actually not a matching pair.  One is an Isaac Mizrahi button and the other had no name on it.  It's kind of nice to know that all those extra buttons in the world can be re-sold again for a crafty purpose!

Book Review #2

http://www.hookedforlifepublishing.com/

So, I finished this book that I bought last summer during our road trip around the States.  I read it in the car and it made me long to crochet a bit but doing that in the car would make me sick and whenever we hit a stop it was more interesting to walk around the area or set up camp.  I read the book again these past few days and my final verdict on it is that I enjoy this book.  It's a collection of essays about the joys and pains of crochet.  I learned some new terms like beer can hats and scrumbles - no clue what they were so I had to google them and here they are:

Beer can hat:

extremecraft.typepad.com

Scrumble:

yarnoverpullthrough.typepad.com

It looks like we have extremes of crocheting...  a super "classy" beer hat and free form crochet which in this particular example is soooo pretty!

Some things I didn't like about this book were the long streams of run-on sentences.  It drove me nuts and she definitely has made that a craft in itself and has no apologies for it.  Lastly, her essay about how she hates that crocheters are referred to as hookers because she doesn't want to be compared to a "woman of the night" was super annoying and I felt like she just wanted to complain about something.  Eh, so what if we're referred to as hookers?  It's funny word play and isn't that what writers looove?  Let's reclaim HOOKER my fellow crocheters!

I did a little research on Mary Beth Temple and found out that she has her own podcast called, Getting Loopy (word play? hmmm...)  and has her own blog right here on blogger: http://www.alpacaaddict.blogspot.com/.  Check her out!

In other news, I did finish the other Bombay Love Sweater for Murphy (pics soon!) and I'm back at working on the Christmas presents!

An afghan for Jen

Yesterday, Jen received her early birthday gift and loved it!

I used Lion Brand wool-ease for the yarn.