Holidays are over!

OK - managed to finish all of my gifts just in the nick of time! Had a wonderful holiday with all of my family, friends, and extended family. Now I am going to attempt to create -or shall we say recreate- a pattern that I designed for a quick beanie type cap. The problem is that I gave my creation away as a gift! :) Oh well, off to recreate it while it is still fresh in my mind!

Crochet by Candlelight

Oh my goodness! Never in my life have I ever seen such devastation. We forget how powerful Mother Nature really can be. The Blizzard of 78 was nothing compared to this. We lost our power late Thursday; managed to buy a generator (we were so lucky!) and had power and heat by late on Saturday. We are fortunate as our power came back early this morning (Sunday). My husband is out using the generator to help warm up others - have generator, will travel. We have a big family so he is very busy. I have food cooking for anyone who stops in to get warm. Not much else to do while the power, telephone, and cable companies work non-stop to get power restored to everyone.

My daughter and her family had to go to NH and stay with her Dad for a few days. The little one is only 5lbs and could not have withstood a house with no heat.

OK - so now to the title of this post. Guess what? All I could do was crochet during the power outage. It was tough when nightfall came, but I gathered those candles around me and managed. I complete 4 beanie type caps and will post the exact pics later, but they are similar to the one in this post. The pattern is from www.headhuggers.org. I made several of these for my mother-in-law when she was going through chemo. They are great - they really do hug your head and they are very quick to whip up. Be sure to whip some up to donate!

Just Another Busy Day

Very busy at work today, but sitting down to crochet now. I still have gifts to finish for a Christmas party on Saturday. Better get moving! Thought I would share some info about a great charity to contribute to - either by crocheting or knitting or a cash donation.

I have two grandchildren that were born prematurely - Gracie (now 2) and her newborn baby brother Carter (3 weeks old). Gracie was born 9 weeks early at 3lbs 7oz and spent 26 days in the NICU. Carter was born 5 weeks early at 5lbs 6oz and spent about 2.5 weeks in the NICU. The NICU can be a scary place and when Gracie came along we had never imagines we would find ourselves spending several hours a day there. With all the machines and noises, and those tiny, tiny, babies, it was so comforting to see they had handmade blankets and hats. Something to keep them warm and it made it seem so much less sterile.

So, ever since Gracie was born I have been knitting and crocheting hats for the NICU where they were born. I have also made several blankets. I have found the majority of the patterns for free on Bev's Country Cottage (http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/) site and the Project Linus (http://www.projectlinus.org/) site.

I am looking forward to coordinating some Crochet parties with my family and friends to focus on one day of work on hats for the NICU. If we can manage to hold a couple of these sessions we should be able to create some scarfs and hats for donation to local children in need.

If you would like to read more about Gracie and Carter, you can check out my daughter's blog on the right - under my blog list.

Take care and have a wonderful night!

Weekend Crochet

It was a crazy, busy, busy weekend! I managed to finish several hats including the one above. The pattern for this one came out of "Crochet For Babies" by The Needlecraft shop. I used Vanna's Choice yarn and followed the instructions for size 2. Mine came out large enough for a teen/small adult. I usually use a hook one size smaller than the pattern, but for this one I didn't and I am still happy with the results. I will probably try a lighter weight yarn and smaller hook the next time. This was a fun pattern! Check out my latest crocheted creations in My Crochet Slideshow!

Welcome To My Crochet Blog!

I love crochet so much that I decided to create this blog to share my passion. Which is true, but the real reason it was created today is that I was up most of the night for my real job. While I was waiting for pieces of the project to be implemented, I needed to stay awake! We finished at 1am and were back for the second round at 6am.

With the holidays quickly approaching I, like many others, have multiple projects to finish and the clock is ticking! I will be sharing pictures of my projects, my favorite free pattern sites, and eventually some pattern creations of my own. My daughter and niece are coming over today to work on their projects. I will post pictures of our creations at the end of the day. Have a wonderful Saturday and if you are out there shopping, I feel for you!