Sew I See!

I decided that I was no longer interested in finishing a "Granny's Daughter" afghan.  You need so many of those tiny, one-round grannies, and I shuddered at the thought of weaving so many ends into such miniscule pieces... The ratio of crochet-time to weaving-time left something to be desired.  So, there I was with 170 micro-granny squares.  What do to with them?  Make a cushion cover or bed-runner in strips, in the style of the Granny's Daughter afghan?  Use them as granny square "seeds"-- just add more rounds to them?  Join them "as is" to make a small cushion cover?  I'm sure there are even more possibilities, but what I settled on was to give them a second granny-round-- all in white to unify the range of colors-- and make a couple of cushion covers.  (To have enough micro-grannies for two cushion covers, I had to whip up 26 more, but it was do-able.  Much more do-able than drudging through another 600+ of them.) However, instead o...

Here are a few photos of the latest finished doily: I like the star in the center-- and the little bands framing the exterior of the pineapples.  The pineapples themselves are okay, but nothing extraordinary.   I gave this one to my maternal grandmother for her birthday.  It went pretty quickly and blocked out nicely.  Again, no pattern info.  (Sorry.)

I was true to my word.  Last night, I worked on weaving the ends of last year's Mystery'ghan (which I ended up calling my Bellingrathghan).  There were many more than I remembered, so I had to finish them up today.   But now they're done! The afghan doesn't lay quite as smoothly as I'd like, but I'm probably just being too picky.  Even with the rumples, I think it's pretty-- especially for a stash-busting project.  (I was trying to use up some of the Caron Simply Soft I'd accumulated.  While I like some things about that line, I don't like that it's so different in size from the other acrylic yarns I use, so I'm trying to avoid buying it, now.  I might make an exception if I were buying enough for a specific project, but for "mix and match" purposes, it's not a favorite.) Here are a few photos, with the now-standard disclaimer that they could be better.  Maybe I'll take another photo or two with better lighting... somed...

Last night, I finished stitching the last round of the WIP doily.  I'm trying to talk myself into weaving in the ends and blocking it.  Maybe tomorrow... If you're just here for the crafty stuff, you might want to skip over my "Order in the House" manifesto below.  (g)  Just jump down past the two sets of dashed lines.   - - - - - - - The past couple of days, I've put a little time into cleaning up my craft room.  Again.  (I get the feeling that I've written more than one blog post about this before-- and probably drawn similar conclusions-- but that doesn't mean that this can't be the time that it sticks.) While sorting through the stacks of things that have been out on messy display for months (oh, okay, years for some of it), I realized that for too much of it, the issue was not simply that I hadn't put it away because I was planning to use it again (or finish it) soon, but then never did (though that is still an issue).  Rather, the ...

Various and Sundry: The linen stitch cowl was put on almost-finished hold because I'm not sure how "tall" I want it to be.  Also, because I was getting a little tired of it.  (I do love the way linen stitch looks, though, and I'm saving all my smaller remnants of wool-based yarn for a linen stitch scarf.  There are some gorgeous examples on Ravelry.) - - - - - - - When I put down the cowl, I picked up some old, on-going WIPs.  The "So Ugly It's Cute" afghan and the "Granny's Daughter" afghan, to be exact.  I added 40 mini-grannies to the Ugly-Cute bag and 20 micro-grannies to the tin where I'm keeping those.  I have more of each kind waiting for end-weaving before I can add them to the tallies. If I keep the Ugly-Cute afghan on the small (one-person) size-- and I probably will-- I think I can glimpse the end of the project, in the distance.  (Well, I can glimpse the end of the mini-granny-making portion.  Then there's...