Hello from Michigan!

Vacation is going great so far! Made it home to my parents without any missed flights, lost luggages or any other assorted traveling problems. My niece and nephew surprised me at my parents house when I arrived so I took them out for dinner in my cooooooool car. Its much cooooooooler than Grandpa's I was told =) I rented a convertable, so they were excited about that.

Went to a friend's wedding on Saturday, my littlest neice's birthday party on Sunday and today it is off to the beach! Burnt skin here I come! It will not matter how much lotion I put on, how often I put it on, what strength it is, with my lily white skin it is guarenteed I'll come home lobster red. *sigh* I wish I was like my sisters and Mom who only have to look at the sun to turn tan. Me, I look at the sun and fry.

I will not be posting much the next 3 weeks, so I hope that everyone is having a great summer and will talk to you all when I am back in Belgium!

The week of WIPs continues....Try 2

Okay, the first message sent on its own for some reason so lets try this one again....

The week is moving along great so far. No new projects started - a record I think! *grin*

I have finished the centers of the Baby Blankey Grannies I am working on. The centers are all pink and the outer section will be in green. The pattern comes from Crochet today!'s March/April 2008 publication. Very cute!

I'm working on my WIP at work a little bit - I have a Crazy Cloth in one of my desk drawers and I'll pull it out a little bit after lunch for 5 minutes to work on it. This one is being done in a variegated Anchor Magicline. Love the colors.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Vik who helped me with the Knit in Stitch below concept...it was a duh moment. It helped too that I put an extra stitch out of the pattern on each end so its not looking funky any longer and has a cleaner border...now lets hope that I have enough yarn! It calls for 120yds and I have 147yds but I think that will make the scarf too short.....it remains to be seen though! Loving the look of it though...I might need to make more!

I think that is it for now. I leave in a week tomorrow for 3 weeks - 2 weeks in the US with my family and 1 week in Chicago looking for a new job. That is right. I am moving back to Chicago. We are thinking that I will leave in Oct / Nov but it depends on the job I find.

Talk to you all soon!

Happy Birthday Ismet!

Just a big happy birthday to my boyfriend Meti.

Ps to Meti - Te dua pak *grin* err shum

Sunburst Lantern

Here is the first finished WIP for my Week of WIPs:

Project details:

Pattern: Lantern Potholder by American Thread Company

Thread: Coats Manila Bay Cannon Cotton Thread bought from Mimi

Hook: Size 1.5 Inox

Time: Several months due to SEVERE procrastination

Final Opinion: Love it!

Now on to the next WIP or two!

Knit one below? Huh?

Does someone, anyone have any experience with "Knit into the stitch below the one on the needle"?

While not really a WIP since I frogged it to start back over (semantics), I have been trying to make the Last Hurrah Scarf also found on Ravelry here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/last-hurrah-scarf

My issue is that I can not grasp the knit below concept...you want me to do what? When I thought I had it my whole project fell apart....rather amusing looking back but at the time I was not so happy!

The advice on Ravelry is "Also called a double stitch: insert your right needle knitwise into the center of the stitch below the stitch on the needle and knit, catching both stitches"

Huh? So I put it into the center of the stitch below, but how do I manage to catch both stitches?

I am sure this is something VERY simple but my simple little mind can not grasp it!

Week of WIPS

Once again I feel like I am overrun with WIPs and some UFOs that just won't make up their minds if they are going to be frogged or finished.

So, due to this horrible habit I have of working on umpteen things at one time, I am declaring this upcoming week my WIP week. No new projects started, just working on those on my hooks and needles.

I got an early start with WIP week and worked on this today:

Cute eh? I love how it turned out - the Katia Cotton Club was so soft and silky to work with. I see more dishcloths in my future....I am glad that I have other Katia cotton-club skeins in my stash which I can still use since this yarn has been discontinued.

I have been working today on the lantern.....I could easily still finish it tonight, but my fingers are sore from weaving in the thread ends! I crochet with thread really tightly, so its difficult sometimes to weave in the ends, and there have been a lot of ends to weave let me tell you! I have 6 of the sections finished, two more to go, and then the final assembly. In order to cut out the number of ends that I have to weave I am attaching the sections together as I go, which will eliminate 12 ends to weave.....which left me with 52 ends that I had to weave.....not that I am counting or anything =)

I hope that everyone had a great weekend!!!

Week of WIP updates coming soon to a blog near you!

Back to our normally scheduled programming

It has been just a few days since I talked about crafting so I figure that it is about time...that is what this blog is about after all!

First of all, thank you to all of you who have commented and talked to me about my Weaved Hotpad. I've met a lot of new people thanks to this pattern and received a lot of nice compliments which mean a lot to me. I hope that everyone enjoys the pattern!

Yes, I been knitting and crocheting....and its not Play Yarn Food! Amazing eh?

I tried to start the Seafoam Vest from Interweave Crochet's Spring 2007 editin...yes, I tried a wearable. Follow the directions for my bust size.....realized after 2 rows that there was no way unless I became anorexic would the thing ever (and I do mean ever) fit around my waist. I would not consider myself fat, I know I have a few extra pounds (don't we all?) which need to be shed, but I'm healthy and happy so no crash course dieting for me coming up. So that one was frogged and the magazine hidden away to not taunt me.

Speaking of my Weaved Hotpad, I have finished the fourth version of it, this one using two different variegated colors for the ovals and a solid square.


On the needles, I've started another dishcloth. This one using Katia Cotton Club (I think that it has been discontinued) in a pretty green on my Grandma's size 3 needles. The pattern is Spring Up Flowers found on Ravelry here with the pattern on Kristen's blog here

I have picked back up the hook again to work on my Lantern Potholder. Since the picture was taken I've weaved in all of the ends (they are hidden underneath all of the sections) and finished another white section. 3 more white sections to go, the final outlining in yellows and then the assembly and I'll e done....its taken me almost 8 months to get this far....I should be done at this rate by Christmas! =) Nah, I've just not really worked on this project - had others that I wanted to get done, but this one has moved up in priority so hopefully before I leave for summer holidays in 2 weeks.

That is about it for now. I have an urge to create some stitch markers so those will be showing up on my blog soon I am sure! Although I really don't need any more stitch markers so I have no idea what I will do with them, but I'll think of something I am sure!

Thank yous from Megan

My niece Megan owes a big thank you to Anita. Recently I was picked as a winner on Anita's blogversary contest, and she sent me a little gift. My niece opened it up and was squealing with glee at what was inside!

Oh boy! Look what is in here...

They are donuts!!
Or they can be used as goggles....
Megan called the beads on top "jewel sprinkles" and is totally in love with them my Mom says!

Thanks again Anita - she loves them and sends big Thank You's to her Aunt Kim's friend!
_________________________________

She also got that day all of the food I had been making her (my Mom took it back with her).....I think she has enough finally! =)

Sleeping Beauty.....

Here are some of the pictures from our trip.

Sleeping Beauty Castle in Germany.....


Look! We're in Austria!!
A side trip to Brugges Belgium during the week that my Mom was here:
Our stop in Lucerne Switzerland - the Lion of Lucerne monument which is for 700+ Swiss Guard soldiers who died while protecting Louis & Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution - very moving carving!

Some Alpine Horn players in Lucerne - very pretty music!
Meti & my Mom in the Grand Place
Is it me, or does Meti look a little bit like Bono when he wears my sun glasses?
Me & My Mom while in Belgium waiting for the Canal Boat tour.....
That is it for now!

Pictures are coming....

You will have to wait for the pictures, but I can tell you that me and my Mom had an excellent time together!!   We took a trip to Brugges one day on the train.  Which was fun - no driving, got to work on some knitting.  And spent a lovely afternoon wandering around Brugges with my Mom.   We then decided that we needed to take a full fledged road trip.  So we left on Thursday mid-morning.   Drove out of Belgium, into Luxembourg....kept on going into France and right on out into Switzerland.  Did actually stop at a rest stop where I introduced my Mom to Carmel Magnum Ice Cream bars - oh yummy!   Ended up that evening in Zürich where we wandered around and had a great dinner.....I had cheese fondue (of course) and my Mom had a yummy stuffed chicken breast.  We ended the night by going and watching a Euro Cup soccer match - Spain versus Russia I think it was - at the Fan Zone in Zürich - tons of people and a HUGE movie theater size screen to watch it on - what fun!   The next day we headed on the train down to Lucerne.  Decided to take the train for convenience and we needed to head back toward Zürich anyways for our next destination.  Had fun walking around Lucerne - a very pretty little city.  Only disappointment was the low cloud cover in the mountains - really hazy and not easy to see even though the sun was out!   Hopped the train back to Zürich and off we went.....towards Germany.  Although we detoured through Austria to get there which was unexpected, but that was the way Lucy my GPS lady told me to go!  Ended up in Füssen Germany after traveling behind an insane semi-truck driver from the Netherlands!  Curvy mountain 1x1 roads, and the Semi-truck was just a truckin along at 100km an hour.  A few times he had close calls with other trucks / cars / curves.  He took off and passed a car once and me and my Mom looked at each other and went "Waoh!"   And then we were on the first of our autobahn experiences, but we were too busy looking at the Alps to really go fast.....no worries, that came later!  =)   Füssen where we ended up the night is the closest large village to the Sleeping Beauty Castle right at the foot of the Bavarian Alsp...talk about gorgeous!!!  The next day we walked up to the older castle before walking up the mountain to the Sleeping Beauty Castle - both were gorgeous with magnificent views.  Of course we had not had enough walking so we decided to walk back up to the first castle to go to the gift shop there where we had seen a really gorgeous bowl for a wedding gift that my Mom bought.    After all that walking we decided to head back toward Belgium..Home Lucy!  Of course Lucy tells us we will be back at 12:40 in the morning....okay, not so bad.  autobahn here we come.  Oh yea - vroom vroom vroom.  I got on the autobahn and let my little Audi wagon go......hit 200 during a windy stretch which was not so nice - just wanted my Mom to say she had went 200km on the Autobahn (about 125mph).  Backed down to my cruising speed of around 170km (105mph) where we toodled along until I got really mad at a car which kept cutting me off and then slowing down, speeding up to pass me then slowing down again.  So I told my Mom that I was going to get away from him.....so vroom on the gas peddle.....next thing we know I am cruising along at 210km (130mph) and we look at each other and neither of us felt that we were going that fast!  Once away from the car though I backed down to my cruising speed.  We hit a Burger King for dinner at a rest stop...SLOW!!!  There added 45 mins to our stop - argh!  then of course we get going again and some genius in highway maintenance decided to take the 3 lanes down to 1 lane right where there is a major junction.....there added about 30 mins.  So we ended up getting home at about 2am.  Safe and sound though and glad to sleep in my own bed.   Took Mom to the train yesterday morning and was sad to see her leave - had a great time and both me and Meti enjoyed having her stay with us.  Wish she could have stayed longer!   Thanks Mom for coming over and for a going on the road trip with me - lots of fun - wish we could do it again....Want to come back and go with me through Normandy? =)