Best Intentions and all that

So much for resolutions or intentions or whatever I was calling them.  No blogging, minimal blog reading, and minimal stitching the last month.  I have been crafting, just not a lot of stitching.  I came down with a wicked cold and have been working from home the last week - much to my co-worker's relief.  I was thinking I'd have all the extra time in the evenings for stitching and was looking forward to great progress with the birth sampler.  Unfortunately, I was too muddled to count and quickly realized that I'd spend one night putting in stitches and the next night taking them right back out.  So no stitching but I did crochet.

First though, it's  time.  TUSAL is hosted by Sharon at It's Daffycat and is just about the easiest SAL you will ever participate in.  Collect all those bits of thread that you snip off in a container and once a month post a photo.  Link your blog in the check-in post and your done.  No stress and no pressure.  So far this year, here is my ORT production:

I'd like to say it's because I'm so frugal with my thread but it's more, I'm just not stitching that much.

The stitching I am doing has been on the Savannah Birth Record.  I last stitched on it a couple weeks ago and got it to here:

I am feeling so much better and have almost finished up the things around the house that were neglected for the last 10 days, so I hope to spend some quality time with this today.  I do need to get a move on and get it finished.  Jack's three months old and I don't want to be giving this to him when he's 3 years old. 

Speaking of Jack:

His servants parents have been sending pictures on an almost daily basis to the family Snapchat group.  It is fun to see him grow.  I'm heading to Michigan the end of the week for his baptism.  Can't wait to see everyone. 

There's another great-nephew in my circle of friends.  This is Jax.

Isn't he adorable?  He was a little eager to get started so came the end of December instead of late January.  He spent a few weeks in the NICU but he's home and getting Mom and Dad (that's great-Aunt Shirley holding him) trained - his mom said if she'd known she would not have picked "Boss Baby" as the theme for the baby shower - seems it gave him ideas.

So back to crafting.  Lots of crochet pictures to follow, so if you're not interested in that, you can stop here.  The rest of you are warned...

So I mentioned in my last post that I was going to do a temperature afghan/throw/blanket.  Got all my yarns and got started.  I was crocheting along and loved the way the colors were working together and was very happy with my progress:

I can already hear the experienced crocheters out there, but for the rest of you.  I finally decided to measure a row so I had an idea of how big this would be.  Well, each row is about an 1".  Doesn't sound too bad does it?  BUT there will be 365 rows and that makes the completed blanket about 30' long - well, huh.  So I thought, I'll just do two 6-month ones, but then it dawned that they would be 15' long each - I did say I was a bit muddled from the cold didn't I? - so I pulled it all out and started over with single crochet.

Both pieces are photographed on the same board so you can see the difference - there is also an extra row on the single crochet piece.  It's still going to be 7' or so, but that's a manageable length.  Starting over had the added benefit of giving me balls of yarn so I've been using the yarn bowl my sister gave me for Christmas:

Right after Christmas 2018 I started thinking about Christmas 2019 and making gifts for folks.  I found several patterns that I liked, got everything organized and then did nothing.  Over the last three weeks, I've started all of them.

This is a corner to corner pattern and will be for my son.  I actually started a knitted throw with this yarn a year or so ago and didn't like it.  The yarn has been staring at me since.  I love how quickly it works up and it's easy to pick up and put down so I can do a section or two when I have a spare few minutes.

Isn't this one cute (and yes it needs blocking)?  It's a fun one to do.  I have this red, a yellow, a bright blue, a lime green, and a bright purple for the bulbs.  It's going to be a very colorful throw.

Centers of these will be cranberry (above), hunter green, moss green or bronze.  They'll all have the same background color.  A much more muted color palette then the lights, but I think it will be pretty.

And finally:

This one just makes me smile.

Standard time ends today here in Virginia.  I am one of the people that does not do well on daylight savings time - my body doesn't care that the clock says 3:45 AM and it's time to get up, it says it's 2:45 and no it's not.  I will be counting down the days until we switch back (it's all a silly idea anyway).