Completed Projects

Over the past few months, I have been busy with several knitting/crocheting projects. I'm quite proud of the results, so let me tell you about them!

This elephant baby blanket is for a friend's new baby. I tried hard to finish the blanket before the baby was born, and I think I did, but I haven't seen my friend since so it is still waiting to be given. This friend also knits and crochets, so I always feel like projects I give to her need to be more advanced than what I might give other friends - although I'm sure she'd still be grateful, she would see right through a basic project that would 'wow' most other people. This spurs on my creativity. I didn't have a pattern for this - I made it up. In knitting, there are two different textures you can make, depending on whether you "push the bumps to the back" or "pull the bumps to the front." That difference in textures is what made the elephant (it is all the same colour, despite the differences in the pictures). I figured out what to do when by tracing a pattern on graph paper off a computer screen. It took a long time, and there are a bazillion stitches, but it's an achievement I'm proud of!

I made this aphgan for Katie and Patrick for their wedding:

I've made this pattern once before, seven years ago, and I was really impressed by how much I remembered! I would consult the pattern about what to do next, but instead of fighting to understand crazy pattern language, I just remembered what that meant. Yay!
I started making this blanket with plenty of time - so much that I had time to take a break and work on other things (like the baby aphgan). By the time I finally came back to it I no longer had plenty of time, and this was the project that I was frantically finishing at the last possible moment, Thursday night before the wedding. So much intense crocheting (with tension a bit too tight) put a lot of pressure on my ring finger, and the next morning my finger was still numb! I've had to slow down my crafting this last week, because it turns out that I hold my crochet hooks and knitting needles in the exact same spot on that finger, and I think I dented a nerve or something.

I also made the gift I gave Katie for one of her showers last month: a dishcloth flower arrangement. I made her a bunch of dishcloths, folded them into flowers, and stuck them in a flowerpot along with some dish soap. Someone told me that it was one of the most creative shower gifts they'd ever seen, and I felt proud to hear that.