I finished Tim's blanket! This is the second of 3 "brother blankets". They all use the same yarn (different colors) and pattern. 

The color (Cheyenne) is a little more accurate in this photo, although that doesn't matter because I can't find any place where this yarn is still available in this color.

Here are all the details:

Cascade Cartwheel Yarn, 7 balls, it's labeled color 18 but that color number doesn't exist. I think it's color 18 - Cheyenne.
Pattern from BagODay Crochet, pattern repeat is 8 stitches plus 3
​I used a K hook and chained 147 stitches (with an L hook)
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Here are the Eddie and Tim blankets ready for delivery whenever I see them next. I'll see Tim soon. I might see Eddie before Christmas. He likes handmade quilts and blankets so he might make an effort to get it. We were talking this weekend and actually said "I'll take all the handmade quilts and blankets that you want to give me." That was nice.
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As I make these blankets I add the leftover yarn to this corner-to-corner blanket. Eventually it will probably be a small lap blankets, maybe for a wheelchair. I really don't like having leftover yarn balls.
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Since I finished 2 blankets this month I started 2 new ones. First is the third brother blanket. This one is the "David blanket" and the yarn color is called Santa Fe. I don't think this color is available anymore either.
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The second one will be a donation baby blanket in Mandala Ombre yarn. I'm doing a ripple linen stitch using this pattern. This is my swatch so that I could check my hook size and determine how many repeats I needed (18) for the size blanket I wanted to do.

I'm all set for crochet projects for a couple of months.

Yesterday was our From The Heart get together at the Ashland Library. It's really just a opportunity to get together with people and knit and crochet. Everyone works on whatever they want. 

After I shared the 3 hats I made last week I decided to keep working on hats for another week and see how many I could have done by today. Including the original 3, the answer is 10! They are in the middle of collecting hats and scarves for local schools and I turned in these hats for boys. These will be for older boys because I purposely made them kind of large.

They may not look like much here, but on the head, they actually look really nice. I used these patterns:
Perfect Guy 2.0 beanie
Chunky Guy Beanie

​They are the same hat but using different size yarn so the counts are a little different. But you could just go with the Chunky Guy and adjust the number of rows that you do. The patterns aren't as different as I expected.  I also adjusted the number of rows that I did with each yarn. Most requied one extra row of double crochet. It's a very easy pattern and great for charity hats for men. The stitches are double crochet and single crochet in the back loop. That's it!

The yarns I used are all 5 and 6 weight:
Premier Puzzle
Bernat Softee Chunky
Permier Serenity 
Lion Brand Hometown

I used an K hook on the 5 weight yarns and L on 6 weight.

I will make more of these but not for a while. I'm going to return to my brother's blanket and my summer cardigan. I have a new charity blanket planned to start soon. 

I also dyed the additional fabric that I needed for Red Sunset so I hope to start the cutting for the borders Sunday and to get the binding on my veterans quilt.

It's been a good couple of days around here! The weather has been beautiful and I've accomplished a few things.
After finishing the blanket I decided to take a hat break. This time of year the local charity pust out a call for lots of hats. I had a skein of Premier Puzzle and I decided to pull it out and see how many men's size hats I could get out of if. 
The answer was 3. 
I looked around for an easy hat that was specifically designed for men and I found the Chunk Guy Hat on Etsy. I generally don't buy hat patterns because there are a gazillion free ones on the web but I really liked this one and it was only $5. I'm glad I did because it's well written and makes a very nice hat! It has 4 sizes and I made one large and 1 extra large and used a K (6.5 mm) hook.

You might wonder how I know it will git a large man's head.

Well, I tried it on! Last night, after I created this post, I also had Chris try it on and I got the seal of approval. 
I had never worked with Premier Puzzle yarn before and I really liked it. I would definitely use it again and it's a very affordable yarn.
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Here's what I do with my scraps. I do not want to every have boxes of scrap balls so I started some corner to corner projects and, so far, I have one for each of 3 different hook sizes. I'll add any yarn that fits the weight of the blanket in progress. If you look at the "I" swatch you can see that I even added in the tiny bit of gray yarn that was leftover from the blanket I shared Wednesday.
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I don't' usually talk about food because my food allergies make my meals boring and I don't do much cooking or baking. But last week I found a new gluten free baking book called Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple: A New Way to Bake Gluten Free. I saw the author on YouTube and she seemed to have a lot of credibility. I got the book and ordered all of the special flours and tried my first recipe yesterday. Look at those beautiful baguettes! They taste delicious too! If you are gluten free and vegan, I highly recommend this book. It has other baking recipes too, most that I can't use, but it was worth it for the bread recipes.
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The main thing I'm working on this weekend is the Red Sunset quilt but I also have the privilege of delivering a new batch of 23 veterans quilts to our hospital contact.

Football is back and that means Sundays parked in front of the TV! You know that I rotate the crochet projects that I'm working on and Sunday was the turn for this blanket. I was so close to finishing that I stuck with it and finished it during Monday Night Football. I am very happy with it and would absolutely do this pattern again. All of the details (mostly notest for myself) are at the end of the post.
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The original plan for this blanket was to be a wheelchair blanket so I made it 37+" wide. But I also wanted to use all three skeins of the gray yarn and that made it about 52" long. It's way too long for a wheelchair blanket but it will be great for someone getting dialysis or chemo treatments. From The Heart will surely find a good home for it.

I bought the gray Yarn ID yarn at the Hobby Lobby clearance this past summer and paired it with some Pound of Love in navy from my stash. That tiny ball is all that's left of the gray. I love it when that happens. I bought the POL for another project and, I have to admit, that it's one Lion Brand yarn that I do not love. It's not a bad yarn but after I got through the 5 pounds that I have, I'll not buy more. This particular skein had multiple sections of yarn barf to detangle. There are other basic yarns that I like better (Premier Basix, Hobby Lobby, Lion Brand Basic Stitch on sale).

The Yarn ID yarn I would absolutely buy again. It's really soft and great to work with. I think it's a little beefier than a normal 4 weight. If I were making a blanket for a family member or friend I'd not think twice to spend $5.49 (or whatever it costs now) to make a blanket. It's  lovely.

Here are all of the specifics:
Blanket finished size: 37 x 52
Pattern: Sober Granny by Christa of The Secret Yarnery - she has excellent tutorials and patterns, did not do the border
K (6.5 mm) hook
Cast on 26 sets of 4 + 2
Crochet alternating 5 rows in each color, beginning and ending with navy
Last row:
CH3, 2 DC in 1st SC from previous row
* SC in CH2 space from previous row, 3 DC in SC from previous row*
SC in last CH2 space
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I've started doing a little sewing back on the Red Sunset quilt but most of it is just organizing and prep work now so nothing camera ready. Hopefully I'll have a photo to share tomorrow. I also need to go through my stash of veterans quilt kits and pull one to take to sewing Friday with my quilt club friends. I've missed 2 months so I'm looking forward to getting back.
For today, I thought it was time for a crochet update.
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This is meant to be a donation blanket and I'm really please with how it's looking. Originally in envisioned it as a wheelchair blanket but I think it's going to be more of a lap size because I have enough of the gray yarn to do two more gray stripes. That means 3 more blue stripes. I've got loads of the blue yarn. It's Lion Brand Pound of Love. The gray was a clearance yarn from Hobby Lobby this year. I generally love all Lion Brand yarns but I'll probably not buy Pound of Love again. I know it holds up well but there was endless yarn barf in this skein. Eventually I had to take the remaining yarn, untangle it and wind it in a ball. 
I probably have 5 more skeins of POL. It might get donated. But I do like how this blanket is looking and I'm sure it will find a good home.
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Tim's blanket is really coming along nicely. I'm almost done with the 5th skein and there are only 2 more to go to finish this one up.
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My crochet sweater has stalled a bit. I got to the bottom border  and I need to find a substitute stitch pattern. The pattern instructions are great but there's a stitch that collects a lot of loops and this yarn is so splitty that it's nearly impossible to get the hook through the loops. I just can't do a stitch like that 100+ times. There aren't enough profane words to get me through that. I'll try to sit down this weekend at some quiet time and figure out something else to do.

Here's a closeup look at the bottom border where I was experimenting with another stitch but the math didn't work out right. I need a clear brain to figure this out.
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While we were staying at the hotel Friday night (and I watched Virginia Tech lose embarrassingly to ODU), I took in my hat project bag to have something to work on. I didn't want to haul in one of the big blanket bags. Instead I got a start on a new chemo hat. I'll take this with me tomorrow when I go to the Social Security office for an expected interminable wait. I'll take snacks too.

Yes, in theory, I should be able to do everything online but I tried that for a week and talked to the "help desk" 6 times to no avail. I can't get an online id. I gave up and decided to just go in person to the office that doesn't accept appointments. Tomorrow might end in a mood......

It's been a few days but since we have a stay-at-home rainy day today I thought I'd take some time to catch up. Weather-wise, this has been one of our more "interesting' vacations to Maine. We seem to have a rotation of bright-sunny, cloudy-but-still-outdoor, rain-indoor days. Today is the rain day, yesterday was absolutely perfect and Wednesday was cloudy but still nice for a long hike.

Today I'm going to start with the update on my projects because I know most of you don't care about my vacation photos.
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On the crochet front I have mostly been working on the two blankets and only in the evenings after the Cribbage match is over. I'm at a point on the jacket where I need to be able to concentrate on the pattern instructions and that's not good to do when friends are around to talk with. I can do these blankets without any thought at all and I alternate between them.
This is my brother's (Tim) blanket and it's over half done at this point. I'm on skein 5 of 7. He'll definitely have this by the time cool weather hits Virginia.
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This is a donation wheelchair blanket and it's moving along at a good pace too. I'm not quite halfway through this one. It's going to be a very nice, soft and warm blanket.
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Today I'm working on cutting out the next set of fabrics for the Judy Niemeyer Tequila Lime quilt. I'm calling it Red Sunset after the gradient that I'm using to make it. It took me an afternoon to get the papers sorted, cut out and the colors planned. Today is all cutting. These pieces will finish the main section of the quilt and then I have a whole other set of papers for a border to bring this quilt to queen size.
I am still really enjoying working on it.
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I thought I'd take a minute to answer a great question from Kristen. She asked if I wouldn't have the same quilting challenges that I had with the Summer Sunset quilt. If you remember, I had planned a lot of custom quilting on that quilt but there was so much bulk in the seams that it was really impossible to do that. It was that quilt that made me realize the genius of Judy Niemeyer designs.

JN specifically designs her quilts so that points do not meet at major seams. See the green circled areas? You can see that none of the points meet at a major seam line. The yellow arrow shows an area where points should meet but they are purposely designed not to meet together. Visually, you can't tell but for quilting it's wonderful. Even the diamond at the end of the sawtooth border (white circle) has a flat bottom so that there aren't 5 pieces joining at one point. The curved petals in the center also meet off kilter (orange circle) to reduce the bulk. It's really genius and I'm sure that other designers use this method now too. 

​Now on to vacation.

After my last post on Tuesday, we headed into Bar Harbor. The boys were headed to a local brewery restaurant and I, as the designated driver, was planning to walk around town and do some shopping. Well, I walked down to the harbor front and noticed people off in the distance walking on the "bar". It's never been low tide when I was down there so I immediately changed plans and headed that way. Bar Harbor gets its name from Bar Island and the land bridge that joins it to the town when the tide is low. This is the view from bar Island back to Bar Harbor. From this vantage the town looks kind of desolate but it's not. It's very busy and touristy and I'll try to get some photos the next time we go into town when I will actually do the shopping that I had planned. There's even a nice yarn shop there.
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Because it rained Tuesday I put the brakes on any climbing hikes for Wednesday. You'll see why in just a minute. So we took a beautiful 5 mile hike along the Jordan Stream Path. We had low expectations and just did it to have a long walk. We were very pleasantly surprised by a beautiful hike and some great scenery along the path.
You've got to love a place that can have granite stepping stones!
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Most of the property on this hike is outside Acadia on the Land and Garden Preserve. We could hear people with chainsaws doing trail maintenance and we were gifted with this treasure on the trail. The tree had died and one of the workers created this chainsaw sculpture for the hikers to find. We actually met the guy about a half mile down the trail where they were building a new bridge over the stream. 
The Preserve is an absolute treasure thanks to the generosity of David Rockefeller.
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My favorite sight on the walk was the Cobble Bridge that, I think, was built in 1917. It's stunning and one of the carriage trails for walking, horseback riding and cycling goes over the bridge. The whole walk reminded us of The Hobbit and it made for a great day.
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Yesterday we were ready for a challenging hike and we really picked a good one! We started at Jordan Pond, one of the more popular places in the park. You really have to be there before 9 ( or after 2) to have a hope of getting a parking space. We try to get to our hikes between 7:30 and 8:30 to avoid the crowds and to get the best parking. We were too late to park at the Bubbles for the path that we really wanted to take but Plan B was perfectly fine.

We hiked up Spring Trail to Penobscot Mountain. Spring Trail is very steep for the first half and I had to turn on my inner monkey to climb with all of my limbs. The trail up most of the mountain isn't too steep, probably more mountain goat pace over bald granite. The payoff is 360 degrees of spectacular views. This is just one view looking over Little Long  Pond. It was on the right side of that pond where we hiked the day before. That's the ocean beyond.
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After Penobscot we hiked down the mountain a little and then back up to hit a second peak at Sargent Mountain. It's the second highest peak at 1373'. More amazing views awaited us there. I think that Sargent Mountain is a much more fun hike than Cadillac, the highest and more popular destination.

The yellow arrow points to an approximate location of our base camp.

Hiking down Sargent proved to be even more challenging because there were several areas with some streams running over the path. If it's mud that's not much of a problem but water on granite is a bit slippery. I slithered down bits of this path! ​I can attest that REI makes the strongest and most durable hiking pants ever.
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Yesterday was the day I discovered that the tread on my boots is a little worn! I slipped 3 times and got this nice bruise on my wrist.  I thought I was going to be able to ride this for a lot of pity points for a few days but no deal. It's pretty much cleared up today. It never did hurt, but it looked impressive for a few hours!

Weather forecasting here is hilariously wrong every day. It's a Maine feature. Today was supposed to be overcast with low wind. It was going to be a good day for kayaking. Instead we've had fog, rain and wind and it's turned into a quite nice sewing and reading day.

One of our friends left yesterday and we have another arriving tomorrow so Chris, Ian and I have a couple of quiet evenings. Things will be much more energetic tomorrow after Dave arrives. Ian is already planning our hike for tomorrow. No steep climbs after all of today's rain. Just a good long walk.

​Hey everybody! Long time, no see. We are into week 2 of our vacation and it’s been “restful” to say the least. On the way up I started getting sick. By the time we got to the stay-over hotel on the 2-day drive, I had a full-blown coughing cold. Not covid, we tested twice. Just an old fashioned horrible cold. I haven’t had one of these in about 10 years. It’s been a long time since I’ve coughed this much and this hard. It was Olympic level coughing.
 
Fortunately, for me, it pretty much rained the first 4 days here. Chris was able to get out for a long walk on the first full day (last Saturday) and that was it. We were rained in until Thursday. For me, it was fine. All I wanted to do was sleep anyway and I had a pretty view. Chris got the cold by Tuesday. Then our friend came in from England Thursday. Fortunately, I was well on the mend by then and I took the disinfectant wipes to every surface in the house and car before picking him up and so far, he’s good. He has his own bathroom in this house and we have been using lots of separation and care to keep him germ free. Chris is feeling much better and I’m almost 100%. 

Yesterday I was up for a 3.5-mile easy hike in Lily Bay State Park, a lovely little state park. Today Ian and I tackled Mount Kineo. It’s 3.4 miles and the first half is very steep up the edge of the mountain. The exertion was good for clearing out the remnants of the cold. When we got back, we found that Chris had taken a long walk himself so I believe that we are now ready to get back into full vacation mode. We did get to have our first (of many) lobster dinners last night and it was wonderful and such a treat!

I think we have a couple of days of hiking left and then we expect more rain Thursday. You can see from the car that we are 8 miles on dirt roads to get to our cabin! We aren’t disappointed or mad about the weather or our colds. This is the roulette that you play every day of life. We’ve enjoyed having some beautiful scenery to help with our recovery and we both have weathered the colds well. This is just life and I tried to make the most of it with my stash of crochet projects.

​For most of the time I’ve only had energy for crochet and have worked on 3 projects in rotation. I’ve made really good progress on all of them. This is Tim’s blanket and it’s almost half done. I’m glad I bought a lot of colorways of this yarn because I don’t think I’ll get tired of making these blankets. I think they are beautiful and the yarn makes a very soft and squishy blanket.

​This is the progress on my cardigan. I’m loving this too! I’m really pleased with my second garment. I think it’s going to fit fine but won’t know for sure until it’s finished but I think it’s pretty no matter who it fits. The pattern is written so well. I'm delighted. I'll share the pattern details in a later post.

​Since I finished the baby blanket at home, I brought along yarn to start a wheelchair blanket and this is it. Chris says it’s a Civil War blanket but if my niece happens to see it she will think it’s a Longwood College blanket. I’ll post the pattern link when it’s done but I can tell you that it’s a pattern from Christa at The Secret Yarnery on Youtube and is one of her baby blanket patterns. I like it a lot and her tutorials are excellent. She’s coming out with a new one tomorrow that I will want to start when I get home. 

A couple of days ago I finally felt good enough to get out the Judy Neimeyer pattern and start my quilt. These patterns take a lot of brain power to do the planning and set up. I do think that her patterns are the best written patterns around and they are priced appropriately considering the complexity of design, cost of printing the foundation sheets and the thoroughness of the instructions. Here’s where I am on piecing the blocks to make the center of the quilt. Progress will move along a little faster now that I’ve gotten started.
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I’m not sure if I’ll post again before we get to Acadia this weekend. We have to drive into town to the local library for wifi access. I’m definitely not reading blogs until this weekend and then I’ll catch up.

I squeaked in another finish before we leave this morning! This is a wheelchair shawl for donation. It started as the Carrie Penny shawl But I'm slowly making some modifications to give ti a more defined neckline and a modified front edge. Once I get it the way I like it I'll write out some instructions as best I can. It's not quite right yet but it's really close and this one is perfect for using.

The yarn is Mandala Tweed Stripes and I think I used about a skein and a half. I like this yarn a lot, which is a good thing, because I bought a bunch of it on sale.

This very simple edging on the front is one of the modifications that I made and I really like the effect.

The things I posted this week might be my only finishes for August! This is my last post for a while. I usually try to leave some scheduled posts but I spent too much time this week hanging out with friends and I didn't have time to schedule out 2 weeks of posts. The first place we stay doesn't have internet but I'll get to the library a couple of times and make a few posts but there won't be daily posts at all this month. I know that you don't care! Probably when I post you will know that we had a rain day so let's hope for very sporadic posting.

I have a few projects that are really close to done and I'm trying to get all of them wrapped up before we leave. The first on the list is this baby blanket. 
The pattern is Wrapped In Love
The yarn is Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn, about 750 yds
Hook size I (5.5mm)

It looks really square right here but it's actually pretty darned wavy. Blocking helped and it will be fine for someone to use but I hate it when blankets aren't square. I really just need to stop doing granny style blankets because mine never seem to work out right.

I do like the yarn though and the blanket is nice and soft. I'm hope the recipient won't be as picky as me.

I also finished another chemo cap. This pattern is the Big Sky Beanie from Knots of Love. 
The yarn is Lion Brand Feels Like Butta and I used an I (5.5) hook. I like this patter and will use it again.

​I modified it a little and added 2 additional rows of HDC at the end plus a row of crab stitch to give it a nice edge.

I introduced my newest crochet projects last week and I have been making some good progress on them. If you are interested in knowing any of the patterns go back to last week's post where I have then all listed.

This project seems to be moving along fast but that's always the case with granny square projects. But this is a very easy pattern that doesn't require too much attention so it's pretty speedy. I like how this yarn is looking. 
In this photo it looks really square and flat but it's a little wavy so I will probably need to block it. I think there will be three rounds of hearts and maybe a few solid HDC border rows.
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This is the progress on Tim's blanket. The yellow marker is where I was last week. I'm closing in on the second of 7 skeins of yarn. This one will be going on vacation with me for sure. I think the baby blanket might actually get done before I leave.
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I'm really enjoying working on the Mimosa Spring. The red marker on the left is where I was last week. It's going a lot faster than that tshirt top did. I think crochet garments need to be made with more open stitches patterns to avoid boredom. This pattern is really clever because it's worked all together without much seaming. I started at the shoulder and worked the back yoke and then went back to the shoulder to work the 2 front yokes. Once the right yoke is done I'll start working front and back together to join them and work to the hem.
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So far so good on all of the projects. Switching projects every day is making such a difference for my hands. I will continue to do this for all of my future projects.