Moooving Along With the Herd

I spent a fantastic day visiting with my Auntie, and with my Mom (who is up from Florida) today.  I come home and find an email notification that AOL will be closing down it's website and blog (journal) services.  YIKES!!!

Therefore, along with the rest of AOLers in my shoes, I'll be needing a new place to roost.  And QUICK!

Recommendations are greatly needed! 

I'll be keeping the dot coms so finding the new sites will be easy ... but I will need to figure out how to save years worth of blog entries, and get a new website up and running before October 31st.

This means blog posts here will be much, much fewer until I can find some new digs.

So please, if you have recommendations on where I should move both my blog AND website, please let me know ASAP!!

Many thanks,
~Dee

Very sheepy after a day at the fair

I have coffee brewing; a big pot.  I am tired.  Very tired indeed but have much to do today.  Crocheting too!  :)

My family and I spent yesterday walking our legs off at the Eastern States Expositon.  It was the last day for this fair and there was much fun to be had, complete with dodging rain drops and finding the best fudge vendors in all of the land!  (OMG the Pumpkin Pie Fudge is fantastic!!)

One of the highlights yesterday was getting to meet Linda, the lady who entered that beautiful victorian crocheted gown that she hand-spun the hemp for.  She was a delight to meet and said the dress is from a pattern that was published in the early 1980s, and for those wondering about the hemp yarn she spun -- she spun it to be "Z" twist.  I gave her my card and invited her to join the many thousands of other crocheters, knitters, and spinners on Ravelry.  I hope she does.

Coffee is ready, enjoy the pictures.  :)

Stemming Along

Raveler (one who participates in discussions on the Ravelry.com site) Lynne suggested, after I posted my Tulip preemie pattern for use in the "Knit One, Save One," campaign, that I should add a little green leaf and eventually a stem.

I'm tinkering with the idea ... here's prototype #1 where I decided to add a base & stem to the Tulip cap:

 

 

If there is interest I'll attempt to provide the "how to."

 

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Stitch One, Save One

I really enjoyed participating in the "Caps to the Capital Campaign" spearheaded by the Save the Children organization last year (see blog entry here).  I crocheted over 80 preemie caps, part of the 282,000 caps collected from around the country!

Then I saw a little blurb that at the recent CGOA Regional Conference (if memory serves me correctly) Save the Children announced a re-launch of this program ... requesting folks once again crochet and knit caps to help save babies lives.  Could this be true? 

It is!  The campaign is called "Knit One, Save One," part of Save the Children's "Survive to 5, Save the Children's commitment to saving the lives of babies." and children.   Get involved, pass the word.  :)

NOTE:  If you have access to Ravelry, I have started a new group dedicated to this drive:  http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/knit-one-save-one

Deliciously Spoiled

Remember this project?  I found the pattern in a German magazine called "ONLine" back in February but didn't work it up until June, taking nearly three weeks to finish. 

The pattern is called "Model 13" in the ONline Stricktrends 14, Frühjahr-Sommer/Spring-Summer 2007 issue.  (for those interested in googling it.)

In one of the groups I participate in on the Ravelry website, a few months ago we were discussing our favorite crochet magazines and I mentioned this one.  (For the record, ONLine magazine is a bi-textural magazine featuring crochet and knit patterns.)  From time to time I would go to the ONLine website and dream about getting more issues.  Dream I say because finding them here in the US has proven to be very difficult.

 

Why not order them directly from the ONLine website?  Good question!  Because shipping the magazine to the United States (just shipping mind you) was over $50!  For a magazine. Their policy is to use an overnight carrier rather than postal service.  Fifty dollars for shipping, I don't think so.  So dreaming and wishing continued.  As did our conversation on Ravelry.

Then one day I received a private message with an offer too good to pass up.  Now I'm the proud owner of not one, not three (I found two issues on clearance at WEBs), but SIX issues -- and every issue is delicious, packed with inspiration!!!  The interesting thing about my magazines is that those I purchased here in the States have the directions in English, and the magazines direct from Germany are in -- you guessed it -- German!*  How cool is that?!!!  Thank you Hilary!!!  :)

* No, I do not speak/read German, however, this adds to my collection of "crochet patterns from around the world" where I have patterns from Japan, France and Russia.

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The Skinny on Lines

As a 5'2" tall woman I like to wear vertical lines.  Vertical lines, we've been taught, not only make the eye go up and down giving the illusion that we're taller, but also that we're thinner.  So vertical lines it is, and has been since, well, since forever, or at least since the second grade when I started to have some say over the clothes my mother purchased for me.

It seems it's all a myth!  Apparently those vertical lines are not going to slim me down!  A bunch of UK scientists got together to do a study and found that vertical lines make us look six percent  w  i  d  e  r .

WIDER! 

Eish!  Kind of makes me wonder if we really did send a man to the moon.  :/

So now I need to ask myself, do I crochet myself up a garment from the neck down (creating horizontal lines), or do I continue to favor vertical lines because it seems to handle gravitional pull better (forgetting the study results for a moment)?  What's a girl to do?

I think I'm going to continue crocheting up what I like, regardless of which way my lines/rows go -- and I'm definitely asking Santa to consider bringing me one of these.

HHCC'ers 6th Appearance at the Big E

Yesterday was a lot of fun!  Our CGOA Chapter, The Happily Hooked on Crocheting Club, made it's 6th appearance at the Eastern States Exposition, locally known as The Big E.  For six years we have gotten up early in the morning, traveled north to West Springfield, Massachusetts, to promote and demonstrate crochet for the day.     According to the Big E officials, there were 75,661 attendees yesterday -- a new record for "Connecticut Day" -- and I think we talked crochet to about half of them throughout the day!!  (*a slight exaggeration, yes, but it sure felt like we did, and it was a blast to do so!)

What was different this year is that we were provided with a wonderful booth, and that FEZA provided us with yummy yarn to crochet with for the day.  Mission accomplished: there was a steady stream of people coming to our booth and talking crochet with us!  One of my favorite visitors was from Vermont ... "How long have you been crocheting," I inquired.

"About four weeks."

"Fantastic!" I exclaimed.  "And what was your first project?"

"A chain."

I smiled.  "And how long is your chain?"

"About 20 feet!!  Now I'm working on a scarf with real stitches."

This visitor was a young man of seven years.  And his brother crochets too.  ((I asked his mother to email me some pictures of their crochet work so I can post it here.  I hope they do.))

When not (wo)manning the booth I got to check out the entries and talk with the coordinator a bit.  There was some confusion about if my skirt had placed, and after a few minutes the mystery was solved.  It did.  (Flip through the pictures to see how it did.)  There were many wonderful items for the eyes to feast upon!

A fun time was had by all!!  :)