crochet — Page 10

Potpourri Thursday

January 3, 2013 at 9:21 am by Claudia

snowtracks1

snowtracks2

It’s been busy out there on my front lawn. Lots of activity. And, no, those aren’t my tracks. One thing I love about the snow in the winter is that I can see the evidence of the animals that live with us here on the property. Mostly deer, I suspect, but also bunny rabbits and other mysterious critters. I have a feeling they might have been munching on my boxwood – that seems to be the direction in which those tracks are headed.

It is very cold here. Very cold. I need to hack at some of the ice on the driveway but I haven’t as of yet. My neighbor did a great job of snow blowing the driveway so I could get home on Sunday night. Thanks, Fred! What a relief it was to be able to drive up, park the car and make my way up to the house (relatively) easily.

msscout

Someone didn’t do well with boarding. I think that the techs at the animal hospital thought she was doing okay because she was relatively still and wasn’t barking much. But when I got her home on Monday morning, she was extremely agitated and nervous and it took several hours to calm her down. She wasn’t herself. And I noticed a large area of red skin on her elbow where she had been chewing – something she has started to do when she is anxious. I know my girl and she was very upset. I quickly came to the conclusion that, at the age of 14 and after years of never being boarded, she just can’t handle it. She lost her brother this year. She was very sick twice. Her dad is away. It’s too much for her. So I will take her with me next week. Gulp. We’ll be staying in an apartment building. She’ll have to do her business on walks in the park. I’ve arranged for an apprentice to sit with her during the time I have to be at Tech/Dress and 1st Preview – so that she has some company and doesn’t bark out of anxiety.

It will be an adventure.

afghan

Last night, I started weaving in all the ends of yarn in the afghan. I think I’ll crochet some sort of edging and then it will be finished. I’m awaiting a delivery of quilt batting and backing fabric. Once that arrives, I’ll baste the 3 layers together and my next project will officially be the hand quilting of our bed quilt. I need something to work on in the evenings with Don away.

As I wove in yarn ends last night, I watched Platinum Blonde on TCM. Have you ever seen that movie? It stars Jean Harlow, Loretta Young, and Robert Williams. Who is Robert Williams, you say? That’s what Don and I said the first time we watched this wonderful film directed by Frank Capra. This guy was one of the best film actors I’ve ever seen. Simply one of the best. I was stunned the first time I saw him. Naturally, I wondered why I had never heard of him. The tragedy is that this was his first starring role in a film and everyone involved with it knew he would become a star. He steals the film from everyone else on the screen. This was going to be his big break. The powers-that-be were grooming him for stardom. Three days after the film opened, at the age of 37, his appendix ruptured and he died of peritonitis.

Heartbreaking. And Jean Harlow would be dead 6 years later from renal failure. Such talent, both of them, and gone so young. I find this sort of loss haunting. Such untimely deaths with so much potential unrealized. If you can ever watch Platinum Blonde, do. Williams was brilliant. What a tragic loss. Thank goodness this brilliant performance is preserved on film. At least he has that. And we have that.

tripod

I’ve been playing around with my new tripod. That was the present from Don that I opened via Skype on Christmas morning. This one is pretty fancy and I look forward to more tripod adventures. I used it to take that photo of Scout.

I haven’t taken down my Christmas decorations yet, mostly because I have to go out to the shed to get the boxes. Did I mention it was cold, icy and slippery? I may do it today.

We’ll see.

Happy Thursday.

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Holiday Nesting

December 26, 2012 at 8:08 am by Claudia

afghan

I needed something to keep myself occupied over the holidays. With a lot of time to fill, I pulled out the afghan/throw I started crocheting….well…a long time ago. It was put to the side when I started crocheting all the Obsession Scarves. I’ve spent an enjoyable few days plopped on the sofa in the den, watching The Bishop’s Wife and Meet Me in St. Louis and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (that movie breaks my heart, every time) and old episodes of The Rifleman and The Big Valley.

This is a variation of the ripple stitch in seemingly random colors ( but not really). It’s a scrappy throw for the den. Because it’s so big, I usually leave it on the sofa between bouts of crocheting.

Of course, my little nester had her eye on it and it wasn’t long before I saw this:

scoutafghan

and this:

scoutcrochet

That girl sheds like crazy and everything in me wanted to move her back down to the other end of the sofa. But it was Christmas and, let’s face it, her hair is going to get on it anyway, especially if we use it in the den.

Besides, she’s awfully cute.

I’m glad Christmas is over. It was a long day, punctuated by a couple of Skype calls with Don and phone calls with my sister and dad. I got to say Merry Christmas to my mom, which I’m grateful for. Any sort of phone conversation with her nowadays is very rare and very short – she is not doing well.

I did make myself a special vegetarian holiday dinner: mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, steamed asparagus, some Quorn (which is a chicken substitute – no meat for me), jellied cranberry slices ( I love them) and my grandmother’s Cloud Biscuits:

biscuits

Ummm mmmm good.

I’m off to run a few errands as we have a winter weather watch up for this afternoon and tomorrow. Yuck. I want it to be out of here by the time I have to drive to Hartford on Friday.

Thank you for all the holiday greetings!

Happy Wednesday.

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Goodies: For Me & For The Shop

November 26, 2012 at 9:36 am by Claudia

Blogging friends, who are true friends, of course, are lovely indeed. Saturday afternoon I went out to the mailbox and found a package from sweet Judy Clark. Yay! A birthday present!

Be still my heart – that little wall pocket (birdies! sweet little house!) is adorable. I remember admiring it on a previous A Favorite Thing post of Judy’s. Bless her heart, she remembered that and sent it to me. See the vintage Singer sewing machine manual on the right? That was in the box, too.

The other item needs a wee bit of explanation. If you recall, last year at this time I started to obsess about the little Nisse made by a Danish company called Maileg. I saw them peeking out at me on several blogs. Finally, right before Christmas, I found a wee nisse in the Garnet Hill catalogue. That started it all.

It was the little guy on the right, who normally lives on my desk in the den.

Several months later, Judy made her own version of a nisse for me – the sweet girl in the center of this photo. And a few months later, Miss Judy sent me the two nisse that are on either side of sweet girl.

Is Judy an enabler? I think so.

Back to the birthday present:

I don’t know how on earth she did it, but Judy found this canvas bag from Maileg.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I am in Nisse Heaven. Would you care to lay a bet as to how many nisse I can acquire?

I warn you, you may lose. I am nisse-crazy.

Thank you, Judy. Judy is a wonderful person and an amazing crafter and seamstress. You should visit her blog and her Etsy shop, which is packed full of her gorgeous creations.

But before you do that, I’ve 3 new scarves listed in my Etsy shop. Yes, I’ve been crocheting like crazy.