Sorry, not sorry! My Crochet Rainbow is hurtling along at light speed and I’m obsessed and super happy.
I am now into the teal ball of yarn with only dark blue and purple left to add to the main body of the blanket. Then I will take my off white yarn and do a crocheted border around the outside. Depending on the finished dimensions of the rainbow I made add more edge rows on the ends than I do the sides to make a decent rectangle.
Or I may say screw it, its 2020 and just crochet around and make whatever shape it turns out to be. It will probably depend on my mood, lol
This last week was our last hurrah with Green Chef. We liked their environmentally friendly business models and it was super easy to make all the recipes. But they just didn’t knock our socks off on a regular basis flavor wise. And for what they ended up costing it just turned out to not bet a good fit for our family. The kids basically hated all of the dishes except for the burgers.
We gave it one last hurrah with the Japanese Fritters with veggies and rice. Basically rice with edamame and ginger, seasoned broccoli and cabbage fritters with siracha aoili.
I will have to say, this was a definite hit. It was savory and spicy but still fresh tasting. Both the hubby and I said we would most definitely do this again. For a meatless dinner it was very filling. And it looked very good plated up.
Next up in our food adventures is Home Chef. The recipes appear to be more kid friendly and more affordable. Our first week includes Spicy Crispy Boom Boom Shrimp….my mouth is watering!!
My current obsession is this amazing crocheted rainbow. It’s all I want to work on. Literally. I haven’t picked up my Radiate or any of my other knitting projects in days.
After factoring in dishes, bedtime and laundry I can crochet about one full ball of bulky yarn a night. I did have a bit of a false start with the yellow. I knit the whole section and realized I had lost an edge stitch or two and my blanket was veering inward. So I ripped back and I’m starting over.
I am learning a lot about better placement of my crochet hook. I made some mistakes in the pink section but I’m improving a whole lot in the red and yellow. It’s perfectly imperfect and I think a great metaphor for the dumpster fire that is 2020. It feels really good to have mojo about something again. My brain feels excited and engaged and I could use a little more of that.
I am now officially a school pickup and drop off Kindergarten mom. Thanks to the weirdness that is 2020 the husband and I now have to plan school drop and school pickup into our work day. And with temperature/mask checks….the car line can be long.
I’m going to leave the politics and drama out of this and I’m not soliciting any advice or input. My family made the hybrid learning choice for Jellybean because that is what we need as a family. It will be CrAzY stressful and I have already forgotten to pick up Jellybean after school (it was day two of in person #momfail).
So I’m choosing to use this roughly 30 to 40 minutes a day to knit in line and have chats with Jellybean about superheros and the best snack foods. For as long as this lasts I hope to get some bonding time with Jellybean and maybe crank out some more socks.
PS. My Big Bang Theory project bag makes me super happy.
After my disappointing turn with PB’s crochet blanket I decided to work on one that I know will be more successful. Thanks to my tossing of the stash I found that I had almost a perfect rainbow in bulky acrylic yarn. This yarn is DEEP stash from 2013-ish consisting of some Premier Chunky Solids and Loops and Threads Charisma. Both are an 100% acrylic 2-ply yarn with roughly 100 yards per skein.
I did cheat and buy the yellow and sage green from Micheal’s to fill out my rainbow that I was missing from stash. Thank you curbside pickup! My only disappointment was that there was no orange available in my stash or in the store. But this is a stash busting project so I’m plowing ahead!
I pulled my N or 10 MM hook and a tote bag from Chelsea yarns and kitted up this project. I really finding that I enjoy the really large scale crochet. It is really easy to see where my hook needs to go and the projects go SUPER fast. So I get that quick win of a finished object. And this project will clear roughly 1,100 yards of deep stash from my bins.
After finishing that blue baby blanket last week I got itch to pick up PB’s Baby Blanket. I tried continuing to crochet but I ultimately decided I hated smaller crochet hook and the gauge I was getting. So I ripped it out.
Then I got a wild hair to re-cast it on and started just a simple knit garter stitch baby blanket. I sat one evening and worked back to where I had used all the yarn I had pulled out. It is a lot stitches bunched up on a needle and doesn’t look like much.
What I can’t decide is if I like this any better! Chenille yarn is super hard to knit with as it is very grabby and hard to get any needle that is not super sharp into the stitch. I really prefer to crochet with chenille but hated my first attempt. But I’m determined to use this yarn. I have two big cakes of this Caron cake yarn of it that I would like out of my stash!
I may move this project to time out until I can figure out what I want to do next. In the times that are 2020 I really find that I can’t work on a project that doesn’t excite me. Or at the very least I can’t touch projects that make me grumpy. In the meantime I have a different crochet blanket floating around in my head. What is this craziness!? Where is all this crochet mojo coming from?
Our garden has dwindled down to just one jalapeno plant and one bell pepper plant. We are pretty satisfactorily neglecting both but they seem to be putting out a bumper crop. I filled this bowl in one picking.
We decided to make jalapeno poppers with this go around to see how hot they are. I am just going to slice them open and put in some seasoned cream cheese and wrap the whole situation in bacon. The hubby and I plan to bake half and air fry half to see what happens. We are in a ‘wing it’ kind of mood.
When I was tossing my stash I found a sock blank that I had had cranked for me. The yarn is lolodidit in her Hippo for Christmas colorway. I got wondering if I could make some knee high socks out of the gloriously long tube. I am pretty sure based on the length of the tube I could end up with decently long socks. I think my next step will be to measure this tube and do a little math. I don’t have any true knee socks in my drawer but I’m not sure this tube will fit over my robust volleyball player calves. Math will definitely be key here…
I have some coordinating contrast yarn in grey from Cascade. I could split the tube in half and pull back a little bit to re-knit and add toes in the main color. I could also rip back the ends and re-knit ribbed cuffs in the main color I could also knit the cuffs in contrast color. That would lead me to use the remaining contrast color to cut in heels.
It is important to note that I still need to finish my Retro Rainbow vanilla socks to free up my size 0 sock needles to even start this project. But one problem at a time…
I kind of fell down the crochet rabbit hole and couldn’t put it down. And then viola…I have a finished Blue Baby Blanket!
Pattern: Crochet Blanket of my own improvisation
Hook: N or 10MM Hook
Yarn: Bernat Blanket Ombre in Teal Dreams
I cast on a whole whack of chained stitches and just started doing a half double crochet stitch. And then I worked through the first ball of yarn and started the second. It was at this point I realized based on my unscientific and not counted cast on, that if I continued on this path I would end up with a long skinny rectangle. And that wasn’t what i was going for in a baby blanekt. So I crocheted until I got to something that was square-ish and then I started working around the edges to add a border with my remaining yarn.
I ended up with a 29 by 33 inch blanket. So while not square, its close enough for me. I really found this a project I couldn’t put down. With the super bulky yarn it I could really see progress. And that just felt so good! I got two LARGE skeins of yarn out of my stash that amounted to roughly 439.6 yards out.
I have no plans for this FO. I think I will just put it in the gift box and wait until I have a need for a cute baby gift. But this has left with me with the itch to do another one of these projects but that would mean buying more yarn for a project I don’t have a recipient for. I think I will put a pin in that thought and see if it keeps coming back.
I got over my disappointment for my first attempt at the DK Ripple bralet and re-cast on. I went up two whole pattern sizes this time to account for my gauge in the first go around.
I managed to complete the stretchy cast on again and get working in the round for the 1×1 twisted rib. Twisted rib is not my favorite but it doesn’t last long for this project. I think I may sit this one aside for a bit until I can finish the sleeves on my Radiate pullover. I really feel like I need another FO win to boost my mojo.
So for now, I think I’ll stick to one sweater a time! Happy Knitting!!
