Mid year update

So half of 2022 is gone - well, more than half now as it's August. I happen to think of this blog and thought I'd do an update. Of course, as always, you can see the posts as they happen by going to crochetcabana.com over at Wordpress. At the moment, that's where I do the regular posts.

This year has been the year of scarves. A young relative is fighting for her life at St. Jude and I am sending scarves for her to give to her caregivers. This is a way to both give back to those who care for others and to bring a smile to her sweet face as she loves choosing just the right one for each person and giving them out. I began making these at the end of April. 

Before I started on scarves, however, I completed a number of other projects.

In January 2022, I finished a Doctor Who afghan, an Eagle afghan, and a memory afghan .

You can find the blog post here. 

The blog post can be found here. 

The blog post can be found here. 

In March I made all the pieces for a Kitty Couch, as well as a wee afghan for the kitty. My daughter put it all together.

I also finished a huge afghan - the Lovely Lines CAL by Becca at Mayhem & Majesty. The CAL is free but you can choose to purchase the pdf if you are in a hurry - which I was and I did. It finishes in November 2022 so there are a number of parts you can get for free right now if you want to start it.  

You can find the blog post here. 

In early April I finished a musical afghan called Beethoven (blog post), also by Becca at Mayhem & Majesty.

I also made a unicorn (blog post) afghan. The pattern is the Celestia pattern at OwlBHooked.

Here are just a few of my favorite scarves. I set a goal for myself of 50 scarves and have surpassed that. I'm working on #68 now. They are still needed and bringing smiles. :-) 

Some of them are patterns from my scarf pattern page. Some became new patterns that were added to that page. Sometimes I make them horizontally and sometimes vertically. I try to make each one different but there are some repeats though in a different color. I favor the front post stitch and the front cross stitch so a lot of them use those stitches.

If you like making scarves, another site with loads of ideas is Kim Jiries blog. She made 115 scarves throughout 2011. I'm thinking I might like to beat that, just for fun. 

That concludes my update for January through mid-August 2022. I hope you enjoyed seeing what I've done. Check out the more recent updates at Crochet Cabana. 

Happy crocheting!

Sandie

Revisitng 2021

As you know, I've moved to Wordpress but every now and then I like to pop in here at Blogger. So let's review the year!

Many of the projects for the year were scarves and wee blankies. I won't reproduce them here as there were so many. If you need more information on anything below just go to the Wordpress site and look in the month mentioned. 

In the latter part of 2020 I made some strips and sent them to my friend Sandy over at the Bridge and Beyond. She assembled them as she had time and this is the beautiful result of our joined efforts. I so much love how this came out!

In February 2021 I discontinued the Facebook page. I didn't feel there was anything there to warrant keeping a page. I mostly just posted a link to the blog post. It just felt redundant.

In March I attended a zoom yarn tasting! This was my first experience with a yarn tasting. It was fun! The way it works is you purchase a sample pack (less than 1 oz of each of 6 yarns) and make something with the small samples if you want to. Then on the zoom we talk about it. The yarn was all by Berroco. It was hosted by McNeedles. Here is the link but it's long over now. My favorite of the samples was called Handpaint. 

In the spring I worked on a CAL by Sirdar - the Sweet Blossom afghan by Sue Rawlinson, who quickly became one of my favorite designers! I found many of her other designs and purchased them. I bought the kit for this afghan and it went to my niece as a wedding gift. It was a fun project and nice to have a group to talk to about it as there was a Facebook group created for the project. Many of the crocheters went on to do other Sue Rawlinson patterns as well.

In June I purchased a Wool Jeanie. It quickly became one of my favorite and most useful tools in my crochet arsenal. I even bought one for my daughter and she agreed!

In July I finished a hippo afghan which I put aside for a Christmas gift. The pattern is by Becca at Mayhem & Majesty.

In August I read One for the Hooks - the newest book by my favorite crochet mystery writers, Betty Hechtman. 

At the end of August our area was hit by the devastating Hurricane Ida. We are still not recovered from that. We are personally still waiting to have our roof replaced but are otherwise okay. We are hoping that will happen next month (February 2022). We did not have Internet for several weeks and had spotty phone service so I wasn't able to do any updates to the website for a while. We didn't have power but we did have generators and a window unit so my daughter's family stayed with us until power came back on. We were kept pretty busy and it was hot as we couldn't run the generator constantly so I didn't do much crocheting.

If anyone is interested here are the Ida facts I gathered along the way for our street.

Hurricane Ida (8-29-2021)

Power out 8-29-2021 to 9-10-2021 (13 days), boil water to 9-17-2021 (20 days), limit sewer usage to 9-19-2021 (22 days), curfew to 9-20-2021 (23 days), no Cox Internet to 10-2-2021 (possibly 10-1 during the night (34 days)[note: Internet was steady for a day, then went out, then came back for a few days),  burn ban rescinded day 48, debris pickup discontinued 12-5-2021

My husband had just had a birthday and had gotten a pellet grill so we had that and a regular gas grill as well as a small camp stove. My daughter's chickens survived so we had fresh eggs, which is a staple of my own diet! 

In October I was back in gear with crochet. I made two little heart blankets for twins due in the spring. the pattern is from Mayhem & Majesty and is called Woven Hearts. I love her numerical filet patterns and have bought several of them.

October was a busy crochet month! My grandson's favorite color is orange so I made him this little afghan. I didn't use a pattern. It is just strips using dc. The yarn pattern seemed to need a simple stitch.

In November I finished an afghan for a relative going through troubled times.

I also made an afghan from my nephew's daughter at their request. They have two daughters so I decided the younger daughter also needed one. :-) The first one uses my Shell Scarf pattern, made in strips and then joined. The second one is the Beginner's Luck pattern I've used many times. 

Also in November, I began work on putting up the patterns by my friend Diana Sharp, who passed away a few years ago. Her family gave me permission to add them to the site as they are not available anywhere. I did several of them but had to pause on that project as I had surgery in December on my right thumb and couldn't crochet for a time. I am back crocheting but still having physical therapy.

That's all for 2021. I hope you enjoyed this look back at the year in pictures. 

Happy Crocheting!

Sandie

Happy crocheting!

Sandie

Minecraft and Emojis

I thought I'd stop by and post a picture of the second finished Minecraft afghan and more. Minecraft Pig, Creeper, Skeleton, Chicken, Sheep, and Steve. The finished size is about 50″ x 75″.

For the patterns I used bead charts from MiniEco except for the chicken which was a quilting chart from Rainy Day Designs. 

In addition to the Minecraft afghans, I recently finished an Emoji afghan. The pattern for the squares are part of the CAL at Mayhem and Majesty. You can purchase the whole thing if you're impatient like me. :-) 

I've worked a number of patterns in the numerical filet as designed by Mayhem and Majesty. Here are a few. 

She has many patterns for free and for sale. I've been very happy with all of the ones I've gotten.

Happy crocheting!

Sandie

Minecraft

My two grandsons, ages 7 and 4 are Minecraft crazy. With that in mind, I went a little crazy myself and started making Minecraft afghans. They are made of 3" granny squares. 

The first one is Minecraft Steve with his sword. It is about 60" x 67". So many tails!

Then with even more crazy I decided to do several smaller pieces of characters. I'm not quite finished but have these done. Here are Minecraft Pig, Skeleton, Steve, Creeper and Sheep. I'm currently working on Chicken. Each of these are about 24" square. 

I used a G hook and sport yarn for all of these. Steve with sword is Knit Picks Brava Sport. Some of the other pieces use that yarn also as well as Bernat Baby sport and Premier Everyday black.

I used the beading patterns at Minieco for these. For the chicken I'm using a different pattern from Ten Sisters. I'll add that picture here when it's done. As you can see I haven't sewn in all the tails yet. I just tucked them in for some of the pictures.

Remember that most of my posting is now done at Wordpress. You can still get to it through crochetcabana.com  or https://crochetcabanablog.wordpress.com/ 

Happy crocheting!

Sandie

Off my hook

Reminder that I no longer keep up this blog regularly. My main posts are at https://crochetcabanablog.wordpress.com/ .

Here are a few things off my hook recently.

The first few are from a course with the American Crochet Association. Some of the stitches have videos. There are 30 stitches in the course I'm currently taking. I'm enjoying going through them. These are paid courses, not free.

The first one is the Bobble Stitch.

This one is the Jeobneun stitch. 

This is the Cable Towers.

This one is #24 Climbing Shells. Very simple repeat. I used I Love This Yarn #353 Menthe Dye Lot 911010 and an I hook.

You find the pattern in Leisure Arts leaflet 63 Easy to Crochet Pattern Stitches Combine to Make an Heirloom Afghan. This is a 1987 leaflet that has been reprinted oodles of times. You can find it many places. At Knit Picks  the leaflet is on sale as I write this. You can buy and read reviews at Amazon as well.

These scarves are straight double crochet, worked horizontally.  I chained 203 with a Furls K hook and the Woolspun yarn on this one. The color is Forest Print. They are about 6-7″ by about 76″.

This is my Super Bowl scarf. I saw a pattern at Lion Brand to make one and even though I didn't actually watch the Super Bowl, I made the scarf. 

I chained a little bit more to make it wider. For half time I worked 25 rows of double crochet. There were 99 rows without half time ones. I measured it at the end of the 4th quarter section and it was about 48″. I decided to just add more on the end to make it close to 60″ which I think of as the average length needed for a scarf.

I used I Love This Yarn cranberry and a gold that did not have a label. It wasn’t planned, just what I had on hand.

The darker cotton is Lion Brand Comfy Cotton Blend. The color is called Cloud Nine. The blues and greens are made with Lily Sugar ‘n Cream Emerald Energy Ombre.

Happy crocheting!
Sandie