Snuggling under Blankets Making Blankets

Winter Blankets | Color Me Reckless

I always use the wintertime to work on new blankets for around my house, and to get a jump on wedding blankets for the year. It's the perfect time to work on something warm and snuggling, that keeps you warm as it grows. There is nothing better than coming home from work, freezing and exhausted, and curling up on the couch with a warm blanket on the hook and a cup of tea steaming next to you.

I like to have several blankets going at once, because I get bored with the same thing fairly quickly.  Even just mixing up the colors in a new blanket with the same pattern works to keep me interested.  And I like that when I get tired of blue and grey, I can jump into red and white.

Winter Blankets | Color Me Reckless

I just started a new blanket on Saturday.  It's an ombre corner to corner, and I absolutely love it.  I love the different hues of blues and I love how easy (and count-free) the pattern is.  While I love my ripples, counting each stitch so I know where to increase or decrease is frustrating after a while! It's great to be able to really zone out and let my mind conquer other problems.

Corner to Corner | Color Me Reckless

Introducing: The Hip to Be Square Quilt

I'm so pleased to introduce this beautiful blanket!

This is the blanket that inspired this post on frogging, as I had made almost the whole blanket with hexagons, and then decided to rip it out and start over! I love the way it came out - I love the variation on squares, and the colors.

This was made as a wedding blanket for two sweet friends getting married this summer. I'm so excited to see what they think of it! (Slash incredibly nervous...).

As always, this blanket will be up in my Blanket Portfolio for you to check out whenever.  You can also order your very own Hip to Be Square Quilt by using the custom order form.

New Blanket Palette!

I'm so excited to start working on a new baby blanket - and even more excited to be making this blanket for a dear friend of mine! I have been planning this blanket since they got married almost, and am THRILLED to finally be able to bring it to life without jinxing anything!! Here's the color palette I've chosen:

Any guesses as to what it will look like?

Buying the yarn soon...just a few more sketches and I'm all set to start working!

You Can Now Order a Custom Blanket!

I am so so pleased to be able to announce (although if you've been on Facebook, you've seen this announcement already!) that you can now order a custom blanket right from this website! This is something that I have been wanting to do for a long time now, and finally got everything to work right on the site to be able to announce it! Making blankets for people is something that I truly love doing, and now this will make it even easier.

There will be lots of changes as I refine the process and play with the organization of the page a bit over the next few weeks, but the bones are there and ready for orders :)

If you see any problems with it, please leave a comment on this post, and I'll make sure to fix it ASAP.

Thanks!

Organizing and Catching Up

I love October. So many yummy fall flavors and scents.  It gets me in the mood to do some new creative projects and to clean up my space.  I started working on crochet beaded necklaces, which, for me, meant sorting out the knot of embroidery floss I had wound up in a ball.

So I repurposed some mini clothespins from the wedding and found a way to sort through it all! The little scraps ended up on the little pins, and the bigger pieces are on the medium size pins.  They look so cute in the little glass jar.

In other news, I went to visit my sister in New Jersey and we went apple picking! I love picking the apples fresh from the trees and then coming home and making something yummy out of them.  This batch I made into homemade applesauce in preparation for getting my wisdom teeth out yesterday.

I've made applesauce a few times before, but this is by far the best batch I've made.  It's so sweet and tangy and the same time, with just the right amount of cinnamon.  I only wish I had made more!

These apples are just for eating - too tart for applesauce.

Amidst all of this, I've made significant progress on my baby blanket.  It's just about halfway! I think I will be able to make my Nov 30 deadline with ease.

And I made socks! I've always wanted to try to make socks, and I found a relatively simple pattern and got to work! The only thing I don't like about crochet socks is that they take a long time to make...But I really like the finished product.  I might have to buy some more sock yarn and make some more. Christmas presents perhaps?

What have you been up to in October?

I Hearby Declare September as Blanket Month!

I like to start things. In particular, I like to start making blankets. There's something about gathering the yarn, deciding on a pattern, getting to work, and seeing that tiny blanket grow with each square or row you stitch. My problem is that I get to a certain point, usually about a quarter of the way through, and my motivation vanishes.  It's not as exciting when you can't see the growth as much. It's not as thrilling when you are stuck doing row after row for this unending monster.

So. I am declaring September to be my 'work on all current blankets in progress' month.  Hopefully this will force me to get it together and finish one of them!

Here are the three I have going right now:

This one has little basketweave squares. It's about half way finished, and I got stuck when the thrill of using up the yarn in my stash ran out. 

This one was me learning how to do hexagons.  I made a bunch really quickly, and then got tired of making the same thing over and over. The funny thing is that this yarn was previously used in a granny square blanket that I am pulling out to make these hexagons.  Something about this yarn is giving me a massive mental block about finishing something!

And this last one is a blanket for a friend that was going so well the first day! I had made 7 of the 24 required squares before I checked the gauge and realized I was 18 inches short! Ugh. So I had to undo the 7 made squares and start redo-ing them bigger.  Talk about motivation sucker.

So that's where I'm at right now.  Hopefully, when I check back in at the end of the month, there will be at least one done!

Work in Progress Wednesday: Blankets and Bracelets

As I mentioned on Monday, this weekend did not see a lot of work happen.  Well, this week hasn't been much better.  I blog at Redefining Eco as well as here, and I spent much on Monday and Tuesday working on new website-y things for there.  While this blog came together pretty easily, with pieces just seeming to fit together, Redefining Eco took a lot more work.  I'm glad it's just about up and running now though. All that being said, I didn't get a lot of time to work on my WIPs! I was able to add a few more squares to the Stash Buster Blanket.  It's starting to take some shape now! It's now square, but starting to lose a bit of shape on the sides.  I think I'll start up on the boarder just to give it some structure.

I've done some reading about how to make my cuff bracelet better.  I've heard that using fabric stiffener might work better than wire, but I like the idea of being able to shape the bracelet to the size you want it to be.  It makes it a bit more personalized, I think.  I have a second one started that I'll give the wire another try with.  We'll see!

Lastly, I'm working on re-updating my etsy shop! It occurred to me that now that I'm writing about all my crafty things, I should make it a priority to update the shop.  Here's hoping I find some time soon to add new things to it!

What are you working on this week?