Three Years Blogging!

Have a Fun New Year’s Eve Everyone!

I’m ready to ring in the new year!

I never do reviews or anniversaries on this blog. Not because I don’t like them but because I never think of doing them. Then I see all these posts with monthly reviews, and then yearly reviews, and tell myself I’ll do one too and then I don’t. Then there’s the blog anniversary ones and it gets me thinking about how I don’t even know when my blog’s anniversary is! Blasphemy. 🙂

This post is my attempt at playing catch up. I admit that I had to go back and check when I started blogging and it was on Dec. 18th, 2014. So I’ve been at this for three years! Seems like just yesterday. Even though the 18th has passed already, I’m going to look at it as my blogaversary month (it’s still December!). 

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A Nudge From Mom – Swatch Found

Yay! I found it! {Jumping up and down with glee} Where was it? I’m embarrassed to say, but I will confess. It was nowhere near where it was supposed to be. I’m also pretty sure I checked there already and didn’t see it.

See that mess that is the top shelf of my craft closet? See those clear bags with junk in them? The one on the top left has scraps of rags I sometimes use for stuffing my dolls. It’s sitting on top of the looms.  I rifled through that yesterday (among every other place in my office/craft room) looking for the swatch. And I do mean RIFLED! I didn’t find it. The clear bag on the right sandwiched  between a white bag on top and a white bag below was pulled out as well. That one has baby clothes in the event I want to make large dolls.

The swatch was on top of and to the back of the clear bag on the top left.

Knowing it was originally in a clear pouch that had other mis-matched pieces of crochet I didn’t know where else to put (things like little flowers and bows, disembodied doll arms and legs and my mom’s swatches), I opened up my big blue bin.

On the cusp of crochet overload!

I’ve been furiously toiling away on the life-size doll legs while binge watching medium shows, when I just had to put them down.

Legs are almost done!

I already watched all of the Long Island Medium episodes that were available on Hulu and today, I was burning through Monica the Medium.  My back was hurting, my eyes were watering and I wondered how long I had been sitting and crocheting. Turns out it was a really, really, really long time. I needed a break.

I got up, had some lunch and then spotted this naked pillow on the couch. It was naked

Freebie Friday – Crochet Diamond Pattern Afghan

I’m very excited to have found a pattern for my mom’s rebozo (shawl) that I had previously posted about. I always loved it and when she passed away, it came to me.

Mom made this over 30 years ago. Still beautiful!

It’s like a little hug from mom 🙂

Just recently, out of nowhere, I saw an image of it on Pinterest. Even better, it had a free pattern. I love the age we live in. As time passes, I’m finding more and more vintage patterns of things my mom made that I don’t know how to make. It’s a nice feeling finding them. I was actively looking for those patterns but finding this one was more like a gift from mom, precisely because I wasn’t actively looking for it. I am so happy to be able to share it.

This is the image I found online. Looks the same to me.

Freebie Friday – Crochet/Yarn Hacks

How to lose two hours browsing the internet without even knowing it. You start your search with a very straight forward agenda that should only take a few minutes but somehow end up completely off base from where you started. Next thing you know, you’ve lost two hours (or more :-)) looking at things you had no business looking at. I started out innocently enough planning a quick search for items for a birthday wish list. Before I knew what hit me, I had deviated from that plan almost immediately.

I was looking for items I could put on my wish list for my upcoming birthday. I stumbled across these cute jewelry designs for crocheters that I thought were really awesome.

I can make this!

 

Instead of putting them on my wish list, my first thought was that I could make these. This naturally led to a search of small crochet hooks. I don’t know how much time I wasted on that errand but I found really cool hooks (but not the ones I was looking for).

I fell for this one which sent me on a side search for sterling silver crochet jewelry.

How awesome is this one? I love it.

Crochet Doll for a friend

My co-worker and dear friend has gone off and left me to go back to college in another state.😔

I’m so sad she’s gone but supportive of her decision and extremely excited about her new adventure. Working with her made my job such a joy every single day. Her last day was also our last day before our holiday break. I wanted to give her a gift that was both a Christmas gift and a going away present. I hoped to make something special that would let her know how much I would miss her.

I thought about the different things I could make but in the end, it had to be a doll. Although I make and have made a variety of things, I’m a doll maker at heart and I couldn’t send her on her journey without her very own doll. But it had to be SPECIAL. Not

Rediscovered Crochet Pieces

One of the benefits of cleaning up and decluttering your space is that you find things you forgot you had. I was helping my son declutter his room and encouraging him to toss or donate the things he no longer needed or no longer had any meaning to him. In the process, we came across some crochet pieces I had made for him years ago. He had them on display in a bookshelf that he hardly ever looked at anymore. There were some things there that went into a donation box. I asked him if we should donate the crochet pieces too.

When he was younger, he was very into a game called Crash Bandicoot. He loved it so much, he asked me to make him a couple of items from the game. There was this box that the main character used to jump on and break. There were Gems as well. He laughed when he saw the crocheted gems and said they didn’t look quite like the gems he remembered from the video game.

This was the type of reference I had for the gems.

Mexican Mother’s Day

We always celebrated Mother’s Day with my mom on May 10th because that’s when she said it was really Mother’s Day. In Mexico, it always falls on May 10th. So today, I’m celebrating Mother’s Day with my mom in my heart. My mom passed away almost three years ago and my siblings and I went through her things and kept those items that were the most valuable to us sentimentally. With the recent passing of my oldest sister, her children did a similar thing and generously passed some things back to us. I was fortunate enough to get some of my mom’s finished crochet pieces.

Mom was pretty amazing and some of her best pieces are gone but here are two of my favorites.