A or B ?

I am confused ...
I tried crocodile stitch once before and it worked out fine, but trying to make another baby booties (for another little princess that will soon join our family) repeating what I did before the boot top came out weird ...

A:

And looking at boot top A I thought that I should just attach the top of each crocodile scale to the dc of previous row and make it neat... but it still looks weird - neat, but weird :D

B:

Label for Big Bright Blanket!

As I am now obsessed with finishing the BigBrightBlanket and I have only one corner left, the need for label got kind of pressing ... A while ago I asked you for ideas for the label, unfortunately the only suggested possibility was to crochet letters and sew them on granny square. Idea itself is great and I love how the alphabet looks like, unfortunately it would probably come out as big as a baby blanket I made a while ago :D and I wanted something small..
But I finally got IT! I should try to do it like I made the rabbit decoration for easter !!! :)
Unfortunately the first time I tried it came out looking something between trapezium and parallelogram ...

progressreport - BigBrightBlanket ツ

Just one more corner!!! and about a gazillion ends ..

So finally! Here is the 3rd corner!
If you look careful enough there are three different ways for rectangle granny square used in this corner! Two of them can be found in links of inspiration, but the third one I hope to share with you soon ;)

Pants!!!

My baby boy had a perfect pair of pants that could be used in this weather as warm underpants unfortunately he worn them out crawling around the house almost a year ago (then they were a bit too big and now they barely fit) .. so I made him a new pair out of a stained T-shirt! It took me just 3 of his nap times to finish them..

Oliver in the new pants :)
and in background me and my baby bump ..

I made them a bit longer and wider than the original .. babies grow so fast!!!
and if you are interested here are some pictures of the progress ->

Budēļi - the Latvian Halloween

Today is 10th november a names day for Mārtiņš (closest equivalent I can think of in english is Martin) and otherwise known Mārtiņdiena (so this would be a Martinday and as it turns out we are not the only ones who celebrate it). This is a happy celebration of the end of quiet time called Veļu laiks and a beginning of joyful and derring-do time budēļi.

Veļu laiks is the time between Miķeļi (another names day on 29th september) till Mārtiņdiena (10th november) .. a quiet time .. a time to thank the ghosts of our ancestors leaving some food and drinks for them to feast on. Remembering those who have left our world and telling stories about old times. Our ancestors spent this time preparing for winter. Nowadays most of us just go to the store for almost everything .. but a lot of people still make their own jelly or pickled cucumbers and stuff like this.

Budēļi is kind of like halloween but lasts not just one night but from 10th of november till the end of february (precise time would be 7 weeks before Easter), although biggest activity is around Christmas and new year. The name itself has grown from a word meaning - to stimulate, to urge, to encourage.

For latvians the masked visitors went from home to home with good intentions. Scaring away all the bad and evil with loud behavior, singing songs, playing "drums" on pots with wooden spoons and so on .. and of course laughing a lot. These masked visitors were welcomed and usually gifted with something that the hostess had to give (pie, bacon, dried fruit... ).

In nowadays however a lot more children choose to celebrate the american Halloween unfortunately they do not know what it means .. and it's used just as excuse to go around asking for the candy ...

So today my little family will get a bit fancier dinner than usually in sundays to celebrate the beginning of this joyful time budēļi.

Let's get the party started!
so I am off to the kitchen to prepare the cake and everything else :)

misshaped granny square!

Anyone who has ever tried to make a blanket out of mismatched size squares will know my pain of weird spots where nothing seems to fit...
There's always a possibility to make about a million small squares or use a rectangle here and there .. eventually get a straight line for a bigger square and after a while start that same cycle again.
sometimes it can be fun but most of the times it just gets on my nerves..
- why I am telling you all of this?
- I have found another way to fill the gaps! ;)

Let's welcome the misshaped granny square in to the BigBrightBlanket family!

The trick for making a misshaped granny square is to figure out the length of a starting chain and thickness or the rounds necessary.