What’s on the Hook

I've had a few projects on the hook lately.  Some were frogged and discarded, other have made it on to WIP status.  Here's peek at what I've been working on:

Couch Blanket

I'm in love with this blanket.  I have tried three or four different variations, frogging it each time.  Now it's about half way done and I really like it! I'm hoping the rest goes quickly because I have a great idea for the border to work up.

Baby Blanket

This is such a sweet blanket.  The hearts make it perfect for a little newborn - wrapped in love.  You can find the pattern here and here.  The second link is the original pattern, and the first is a re-write of the pattern that I found easier to follow. I can't wait for this one to be wrapped around a little one!

New Soap Savers

I've been hard at work designing new products for the holidays! These are the first off the hook.  A bit smaller, more compact, and with tighter stitches.  I found that the old soap saver bags stretched a bit, so I'm hoping these won't as much. So far my tester is working beautifully! Once I have these all made and I'm satisfied with them, I'll be putting the other ones on sale, so watch my Etsy shop for those!

Pillows

I've been making these sweet little 12" pillows to sell.  They are the perfect accent pillow, and I've been making them with chunky yarn so they work up quickly.  This one will be another 12" one made with the scraps from the other three.   You can find the other pillows in my Etsy shop!

Color Me Lately: What's on the Camera

So I took August off from blogging.  It was great to get away, have some opportunity to relax and not worry about the blog. But now I'm back to work! I'll be doing this series a bit in the future.  My goal is to work on my photography skills a bit and get used to taking the camera with me everywhere. Here's a bit of what I've been doing in August:

We went to visit my grandparents in Puerto Rico.  This was taken on the shore at a nature preserve near Humacao.  I love the color of the water and the rawness of the beaches.

This was on top of a battlement constructed during World War II in Puerto Rico.  It was a good climb to the top!

Beautiful flowers in my grandparent's backyard.  Husband was lizard hunting while I snapped photos of the the flowers.

On our way to our anniversary trip, we stopped at a yarn store! Beautiful store, and a wonderful owner.  We chatted for a while, she taught me how to spin a bit (more on that soon!), and then we visited with her alpacas! So fun.

Final anniversary location: Harper's Ferry, WV.  I loved this little town. It's well preserved and each shop has some interesting facts about the town.

Overall it was a great month! Lots of good travels and time spent with friends.  Definitely worth taking some time off the internet!

Color Me Lately

Lately I've been trying valiantly to reduce the number of works in progress I have sitting around the coffee table.  It started as a need to clean up the living room [my craft room is under siege at the moment by spare furniture from the bedroom. Anyone want a box spring?] and that blossomed into a need to clean out my work baskets. But I'm pleased to say that this has resulted in several new items going up in the shop, and some beautiful new works are being created [because of course I hated what I had started on months ago!].

Here's a peak at what's on the hook lately:

New Wedding Blanket

This is one that I have started over three times now. Nothing seemed to fit! Finally I stumbled upon a project I had started with this stitch, tried it out with these colors, and now I'm in love.

New Baby Blanket

This one isn't planned for anyone.  It's mostly a way to work on this new stitch, and so far I'm....eh about it.  I like the stitch and I like the color, but I'm not sure a whole blanket will work well.

New Pillow #1

I really like this one! Aside from some frustrations with miscounting every few rows, I really like this stitch pattern. It's made from my big store of scrap yarn, and I'm loving the color combos.

New Pillow #2

These squares were originally going to be a huge blanket for our bed, but I got bored. So I'm giving them new life as a pillow and I really like the way it's turning out! I'm excited to finish it up and get it all put together!

Color Me Lately

Oh wow what a crazy few weeks it's been!! I feel like I've been running every which way and doing 17 things all at the same time.  I kept telling myself, 'Just make it to May! Things will calm down then!' which of course they haven't! Here's a snapshot of my life lately:

Craft show

I did my first craft show! I was at the DC Meet Market last Saturday.  It was a beautiful day and there were lots of people at the market.  Unfortunately, those lots of people didn't all stop at our booth. We only had a few sales, but I learned so much about doing a show.

Etsy store

I spent a lot of time updating and refining my Etsy shop this weekend.  There are a ton of new items in the shop! Beautiful coasters, napkin rings, face scrubbers, and soap saver bags are all new.  Keep an eye out for new washcloths to do up in the next few days too!

Creative Bug course

Aside from all the crafting that's been going on, I've been taking a few courses! One is this Creative Bug class on Building a Creative Brand.  I'm really behind on it, but so far it's been really good.  I just finished the episode about writing a business plan.  Thankfully, my business plan draft was pretty close to what they recommend, but I definitely need to work on budgets and that kind of thing more.

Designing

And of course, I'm keeping up with creating new products! I have a list of things to create just for the summer that I think will be amazing and I'm so excited to start working on them all.

Here's to growing!