One a Day

Surround Yourself With Happiness

Where do you go to surround yourself with happiness if you're a crocheter? To Ravelry of course! The Ravelry site offers a wealth of friendly inspiration for people like me, you know...those who are just poking their big toe into a sea of wonderful.

While I was surfing, coffee cup in hand, some of my favorite, artfully inspiring blogs, Gingerbread Girl had a post about a group... One a Day... on the Ravelry site. This is great I thought, a group made to push me along to finish the never ending granny square by encouraging the groupies, myself included, to complete one square a day... hence the name... clever I thought.

I'm thinking that it's a group that you can just jump in, as some post people are on their 2nd week, and some are on their 4th, and I am now on my 1st. Tuesday is the day to reveal your progress for the week, so here goes...

I started The Granny back in the beginning of summer. I have 5 rows of seven squares completed and, as you can see in the picture, 2 squares finished on the 6th row. My intent is to have 9 ish rows, maybe 11 rows to complete the afghan. I think that when I get there, I'll know when I'm done.

So please join me in the Ravelry Group by clicking on the icon below, and don't forget to visit me next Tuesday for the Tuesday Tallies, my progress (I hope!) on the granny.

xoxo,
Nicky

How Many Do You Have???

Helllooo my fellow crafters...
Today's post is all about "stash" confessions!

OK, I'll start... I have more yarn that I care to admit! But... for some reason it still isn't enough. One of my very favorite things to do is to find small, independent yarn stores and go for a visit... and, by the way, I have a few indie yarn-store-visit posts I'm working on. The thing is, when I visit these cutsie little stores my creative gears begin to turn, and I am seduced into the idea of yet another project. I can't help myself. I need, need, need to buy enough yarn for said project because you never know when you're going to get back there. It's really all about being prepared. Really.


I am not the kind of girl that starts one project and sticks with it until it is finished before I start another! Oh, no. I need to have a few things going so I can choose which to work on according to how I'm feeling. Do I feel like I want to take the time for a lot of color changing? Or am I feeling lazy and want to veg out with long lines of color? Or am I feeling really lazy and just can't deal with any color change at all? It's all about the choices :)

With that said... Are you like me and have many projects going on at once... or do like to start and finish before moving on?

Above is my granny square I started over the summer, and with all that color changing, it's not the one I go for when I just want to hang out in front of the TV, or listen to the kids read their 30 minutes a night. I also have this one going...

The colors aren't all that exciting, it's Shaker from Lion Brand Home Spun, but it is super fabulously soft and will match everything it gets thrown on. I have, however, hit a road block and can't seen to find this particular color of yarn to finish. I've looked at 3 different Michaels stores only to find an empty bin labeled "Shaker". UGH! Oh well, that's OK because...

... I just bought yarn is some fabulous colors to make this...

I can not take credit for this picture, as I found it on Tangled Happy , who... follow me now... found it on Moogly. It is a free pattern, so I thought I would share the fabulousness here. Isn't the internet fun? When I saw this pattern I loved it immediately and off to the yarn store I went. My reasoning for this is it's a smaller baby blanket and it would be easy to travel with... Hey what ever you have to tell yourself in order to rationalize, right? I haven't started it, but I'm ready to go.

I've also been thinking about a ripple. Oh, how the world is my oyster.

Happy days,
Nicky

Wool & Co.

I had some extra time, which doesn't happen to me often these days, so I decided to make the trip to St. Charles and check out this little yarn shop I had been googling over on the internet. Wool and Co. is only about an hour from my house, yet I can never seem to get there. I really hadn't a plan as to what I was going to buy, but I just knew that I needed to go... TODAY.

The town is super cute and has all the luxuries... cafes and coffee shops to get a tasty treat or a spot of Joe, a theater, a music store, you know, the kind that sell actual instruments, and of course a store full of wonderfully, colorfully yarn! I would have loved to walked the town... antiquey stores, and quaint little boutiques to find the perfect gift for a treasured friend, but I was on a mission. I couldn't get inside the yarn store fast enough.

It was better than I imagined!
The first thing I wanted to do was touch everything!

It so reminded me of my grandmother's needlepoint store she had when I was a kid. It was called Pick-A-Stitch in downtown Naperville, Illinois. I'm talking in the late 70s... yikes! She too, had a big table in the center of the store welcoming any and all who wished to work on a project for the afternoon. Those chairs were always filled.

The yarns were endless...

And this one had the cutest little tag... All the way from Greece!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the sneak-peak inside my sorta local yarn shop...
Good times had by all,
xoxo
Nicky

PS. I am still working, slowly but surely, on the colorful The Granny 2.0!

I guessing that I am close to half way... I am most looking forward to the border :)

A Day at the Races

Arlington Park

Arlington Heights, Illinois

Another summer flew by and left me feeling some regret that I hadn't fit in all the fun summer activities I had planned before the kids went back to school. So... this weekend I decided that the family would go watch the horse races!

The grounds were magnificent, right out of a movie.
It was incredible... I had no idea how much fun it was really going to be.

I had never been to a horse race before. It is very elegant. Before every race handlers parade around the horses, hoping the onlookers see something they like.

Then the jockey mounts their horse and walk a lap around in efforts to encourage you to run upstairs and place your bets!

As you can tell from our ticket we are big gamblers... $2 to win, place , or show... we actually won $13 on this ticket. Go big!

You couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day... 68 degrees F with a breeze... perfect. We had awesome "Executive" box seats that were right on the finish line. And to make our experience even better, we had a TV to see the finish up close. How fancy is that??

And even if you don't have your own private TV in your box... there is a giant TV in the in-field so you don't miss a thing.

All-in-all is was a great day with the kids.
One super fun summer activity... Check!

Summer Update

I would like to start off with a picture that reminds me of warm summer days. It has been over a month since I've updated my blog... and for that I apologize. We have had a very busy summer, me and the kiddles. Some good, and some not so good.

On to the good...

We have had a absolutely wonderful time at Grammy's pool. The summers here in the Midwest are HOT! And for a stretch, every day was like 95 degrees. The only thing one could do outside, aside from melting, was to swim! We have been at Grammy's at least 3x a week! My sister has 5 boys, and along with my 2, there is always a party!

During the heat wave we had a wicked storm that blew down some extra gigantic trees, taking out our electricity with them. So for 3 days we campered in the driveway. We hooked up a generator and wa-la we had air conditioning. The kids thought it was so fun! Once ComEd began the repairs we were trapped because the trucks took up the entire lane. Below is a picture of the lane that leads to our house with the ComEd trucks taking over. Really, by the time they got there my neighbors and I were so grateful...

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The not so good...

My dad had open heart surgery and is not doing so well. Each day is better than the last, but it is a slow go! And even though I have several WIP (work in progress) projects, I have decided that Dad needed an afghan for his hospital bed. Below is the first skein... 20 or 21 skeins in total to finish the project... he is 6 foot 3. I didn't want to make a lap blanket, but one that you could snuggle up to your neck without letting your toes peek out! It is a very simple, but thick, half double crochet. The color is Shaker in the HomeSpun line from Lion Brand Yarn. This is more of an elegant looking afghan, and not my traditional whimsical style. I figured first, he's a guy, and second he's 68 and would probably not want a rainbow of colors draped across his couch.
The kids call it "The Healing Blanket Hooked With Love". Right now it is the size of a scarf... I have a lot of work to do in order to finish, just as my Dad has a lot of rehab to do himself!

So in a nut shell... this summer has been swimming for the kids and hospital visits for me. Not what I planned, but am glad that we are all moving forward!

Busy Busy Busy!

Boy, oh boy, have I been a slacker!

I haven't picked up a crochet hook in like 2 weeks. Life sometimes gets in the way of relaxing down time, and I feel that I haven't had any of that in quite some time. Above is a progress-picture of The Granny 2.0. At this rate I hope to be done with it before school starts up again.

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Last weekend we celebrated America's Independence on the 4th of July.
The kids loved it! We went to the Sandwich Fairgrounds and watched fireworks.

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And we went camping...

Camping sounds like it would be relaxing... and it was at some points... but it was really a lot of work. You'd think I would have a lot of time to get in some hookin' action, but I just couldn't fit it in between the bicycle parade and the greased watermelon relay race!

We had so much fun that when we got home I had to take a nap :)

Hopefully this week will be back to normal...
xoxo
Nicky

Midwest Folk & Fiber Art Fair

Fiber Overload!

I have never seen such beauty all in one place. I was so overwhelmed, I didn't know where to start.

From the beginning...
Bean and I made the drive North from Yorkville (where we live) to Grayslake, which took us about an hour and a half... not bad. We pull into the fair grounds, walk up to a very nice, very big, farm building, and as soon as you walk in BAM! you are hit with the most beautiful colors I have ever seen on yarn. (remember, I'm new to this!)

It was hard picking which pictures to share, I loved them all!

There was all kinds of fiber...finished yarn, yarn ready to be spun, and raw fiber waiting to become roving?! I learned a lot of new lingo on my trip.

There were several booths with fantastic fiber goodness for sale.
Bean and I shopped.

There was some pretty crafty things out there...

Like these slippers -

They were hand felted and $45

I saw these little cuties. They were just shapes crocheted together that made me think of garland at Christmas, but this kind of garland could stay up all year round in my opinion!

They had lots of demonstrations... drop spindle spinning, felting, knitting, and crocheting. Below is a lovely girl showing us how to use a spinning wheel. I had no idea spinning wheels could be so expensive... like $700! Yikes! Most of the spinners like to spin without shoes??

Then we came to the Vintage Fibers booth....with real live English Angora rabbits. Uh oh! I was hooked (no pun intended) when Vintage Fibers showed me that you can harvest the Angora, mix it with Alpaca, and spin it into yarn. Oh my! I had visions of lovely trim on fancy scarves and arm warmers.

We took the photo...

...and then picked out our bunny!

His name is Hawk Nelson.
That's what was already on his papers, but Bean has changed his name to Hawkson.

Bean is now a proud owner of her very own bunny!
Then it was on to Farm and Fleet to find a home, water bottle, and hay for our new addition!

Needless to say, I did not come home with any fiber of my own because I am such a softy for my kids. I couldn't afford to buy both, and I couldn't resist, "Mommy, can we have one, pleeeeeaaassssseeee?"

xoxo
Nicky