Yes, I'm still here.

Well, it's been a year since I posted, and much has changed while everything seems the same.  I'm going to get back into blogging slowly, so today's is a crafty post.

I'm working on a Crochet-A-Long (CAL) on Ravelry.  We're making blankets/afghans that are crazy quilts of colors and patterns.  Each person's is inspired by a single pattern, but each of us is making a very different blanket.  Here is the beginning of mine:

I started with 5 rows of hdc:

I rolled it up and it made a nice little roll (little being relative - it is about 5 inches across at the longest point).  This roll makes it easier to transport and less likely to tangle among itself.  It's approximately 10 feet long.

Next I did a chevron section.  It went well in the main pattern section, but the edges came out a little wonky.  There will be more chevron sections, so hopefully I can figure out my edging by then.

Here's a look at the edge.  Ideally, I want the greens to be equal and the purple to be no larger than its role in the rest of the segment.  Obviously, that didn't happen in this case, but it didn't bother me enough to make me pull it out and start over.

As you can see in the edge photo, I've moved on from that chevron pattern to another section of hdc.  I'm going to be putting 4-row hdc spacer sections between each of the stitch pattern sections.  Some stitch pattern sections will be wider than others, and I hope to bust a lot of stash with this blanket.

Sorting is Open!

Sorting opened today for the next term in the HPKCHC.  This term, for some reason, I felt inspired to write a poem to the Sorting Hat.  I wanted to save it somewhere, but had trouble figuring out exactly where.  So, as a way to save the poem I wrote, I am putting it in this blog post.

Oh Sir Hat you always bring
Joy to all seasons, Fall, Winter, Spring
The students all wait eagerly
To hear your song of unity

Two terms I have played, this will be my third
Each term I've cherished your every word.
Crafting became more fun when I found the House Cup
My faith in my abilities has gone up and up!

Classes in the castle are so much fun
I only wish I could do every one!
Someday I will manage to craft all the things,
Until then, I'll just be content hear the Hat sing.

Coasters

I wanted to make some coasters out of dishcloth cotton, because the purchased coasters that we already own were not quite up to the job in the current heat.  They'd keep the water off of the surface, but only until it pooled up enough to spill over the edge - something that was happening frequently even with my "thirsty" sandstone coasters.  So, I decided to make some coasters that could be used alone or in conjunction with another coaster.  The result is exactly what I wanted.

My set of four coasters

The only downside was that I ran out of yarn when I was working on the border of the last coaster, so that one has a different look.

Note the oddball border?

For crying out loud, I'm KNITTING!!

So yes, I knit in public (KIP). It happens. Lots of people do it (though not many around here, it seems). Monday night, we had a rare opportunity to go to a movie with friends. As is usual for me, I took along my smallest current work in progress (WIP). I can knit in the dark by touch if it is a simple stitch and does not require me to follow a pattern, and that is what I do at the movies. It keeps my hands moving and keeps me from eating popcorn (which I'm really not a big fan of anyway, but if it's there, I'll eat it).
Jodi (one of the people we went with, and the one who sat next to me) just did not get it. There are now commercials before the previews (how sad is that?) and once we got settled in our seats, I broke out my WIP. Jodi exclaimed, "Sara! Why are you crocheting? Are you that bored?" and before I had a chance to reply, she turned to her husband Randy and exclaimed to him that I was crocheting. I calmly corrected her, "I'm not crocheting, I'm knitting, and it does not mean I'm bored since I am fully capable of multitasking, thank you very much."
Throughout the course of the rest of the commercials and the previews, and into the movie, Jodi would occasionally lean over to me and tell me to stop crocheting. She even leaned across me to talk to my husband and tell him to make me stop. Well, since I wasn't crocheting, I had no trouble ignoring the request (though actually ignoring her was harder). I only stopped when I realized that I had picked up a stitch somewhere. I couldn't see well enough in the dark to find the mistake, so I put it away and settled in to watch the rest of the movie.
If I had thought I was truly distracting her, I would have stopped without a problem. But I know for a fact that she only noticed me knitting during the movie because she saw me doing it before the movie. And if she ever would have looked closely enough, she would have noticed that my eyes rarely left the screen, so obviously I was watching the movie. I actually was more engaged in the movie before I stopped knitting than after. She moved about and made much more noise than I did with her insistence on checking to see whether I was still knitting.

The sad thing is, what annoyed me the MOST about it is her insistence on calling it crocheting! I love to crochet, and I do it well. But I can't do it by touch and therefore would never crochet in a dark movie theatre. The first mistake on her part I will overlook, but the continued repeated mistakes still bug me.