Random rambling: my little tricksters

* when you love to be naked
And are old enough to know how to take off your clothes ... easy game till mom figures out a solution and "help" you wear something that is hard to get out of .. it works for about a week and then you have grown and can outsmart her again - pee in your pants and mom will have no choice but to help you undress ... (evilgrin)

Sam now, Oli 2 years ago 

When this happens after what seems as an eternity spent trying to dress up that screaming monster I just want to cry ... thank god most of the times we are not in hurry to get somewhere so its just frustrating for me.

* drawing is easy!
especialy when all of the drawing is done by the grownup .. "please draw me a car, tractor, airplane, helicopter ... flower, tree, house ... pig, cow, bunny ... " after you have listened to your mom about hundred times why you should draw at least some of the stuff yourself just keep repeating previous sentence and after a while you can easily say just "NO, you!" and pictures will appear as if from nowhere!

Oli always, Sam sometimes

Bag full of Triangular madness!

Second bag that I have made myself :)
using a pattern of my own. (that is still not written down properly .. it's been almost a year since I started .. soooooo lame to find out I am slower than a slug when it comes to actual work)
btw, I have started two blankets using this triangle pattern .. and of course none of them are close to finishing line (knowing me that's just obvious)

A bit more about my bag.
made 2 sides. about 20x25cm.
crocheted them together making bag bottom and sides. about 4cm wide.
and then made a strap. 130cm long and 3cm wide.

Scrappy Rug

Today I had my first yoga session on my still unfinished new yoga mat :)
It was a bliss ... all those colors inspired me to better myself (I am still pretty bad at all asanas but I love the way I feel after my workout). hopefully tomorrows session will be longer but with two little ones in the home no-one is ever sure of anything ..

how it started ...
I had a bowl with leftover yarn balls collected from frogged jumpers and previous projects. All those incompatible colours and yarn weights kept me thinking what to do? And as always answer was so simple! Take the lightest and thickest yarn and crochet away together!

Random rambling: Cosy living

So far I have been apartment person ... I have lived in quite a few apartments I have loved and called my home ..
Now that we have been living in our new old house about 3 months now I can honestly say - I am a house person ... and we all are hopeful to be able to stay here throughout the winter as well. (heating might be a problem)

Unmarked territory

I am making a jacket!
something my instagram friends already know ..
First time ever I am atempting to crochet a piece of clothing for myself ... as you have probably noticed normally I am a bit obsessed with blankets ...

what changed?
I thought it would be faster, simpler and I could finish it by the end of summer .. how naive !

so this is about as far as I've gotten .. doily pattern finished, jet it is just a back and two armholes .. I can't even call it a vest and leave it at that because it doesn't cover anything in front or even sides, jet I have no real plan how to add rows nicely so that it makes sense and looks good in the end ..

so much for an easy fast project ... naive me ...

pattern for this particular doily I found in pinterest and I actually used just the scheme seen in pinned picture because the link it led to didn't make any sense to me .. 

I have made few more pictures as it grew if you'd like to see ..

pencilcases

You have probably heard that time flies when you're having fun …
or kids .. or fun with kids …

School year has started in our home too
This year Oli joined the big kids group. And Sam is going to start kindergarten in a week with all the other babies … and with all those lists of needed supplies and stuff I almost feel as if we were getting ready for school ..
As a meditation in this stressful time I chose to make pencil cases by myself :)

Shape it as you want!

When Oli was just born we celebrated the quiet moments by solving a jigsaw puzzle together. 5000 pieces is quite a lot and makes a huge picture … for a while it hang in our corridor but after remodeling it got stuck under our bed … and now when Oli is about to turn 3 years old I have made a wall hanging out of it again :)

puzzle cut in shape of Latvia lying on my floor

I cut out the shape of Latvia because I love all the different ways americans celebrate the shape of their states (with string art, jewelry, on mugs and t-shirts and that is just the tip of the iceberg!) and my country's shape is close to my heart so I thought why not and woala!

If you want to know how I did it just read further ;)
if not just skip ahead, skip ahead ..

Salmon lasagna - Salmagna!

Spring is coming!

To brighten up our weekly meal plans as well as our mood (I have been quite gloomy this week because Sam is teething and enjoys to be carried around all day long (including naps, god forbid I try to put her in bed .. )).
so I was browsing hypermarket  and thinking about the good old boring (well our regular, kid approved) meals and i ran in to salmon and so the idea of my own salmagna was born :)
few hours later it was baked and minutes after that it was gone. to be clear - it wasn't just four of us who ate it.. Sam loved it, but I am not sure Oli even tried it because he saw grandma with the cake just before we sat down for dinner...

but the fact it disappeared so fast means it was good and will be reappearing in our weekly meal plans :)
and hopefully next time there won't be any distractions and Oli will at least try it .. (he is going through some weird phase. if we let him he would eat only cookies and drink milk .. just like Santa Claus :D)

There is more than one color in this row! ;)

Here is my current wip (work in progress).

I call it Sam's universe, because I hope that this will be first blanket for my baby girl that she doesn't throw away during her naps … she loves twirling around the bed and all of previously tried blankets have been recognized just as obstacles :D

Original pattern is called Sophie's Universe and is well written and just fabulous!
It is a CAL (crochet along) so far there is 6 weeks but there will be 20 - it is gonna be a fabulous blanket :)

But here in this blog post I wanted to talk about the tulip row from week 5 (round 39) because I wanted to make colorful tulips and that's what I did!

Happy New* year!

*well I did miss the European one and it is too early for the Chinese one .. lets say this is new year entirely for me :)

Lately I have been too preoccupied with my family, gifts, parties and trying to get some sleep in between night shifts at the "milk factory", that I just didn't want to think about my crafty new years resolution … but I can't hide from in any longer so here IT comes.

My Crafty NY resolution.

V-stitch baby blanket

Fastest baby blanket I have EVER made!
It is really fast growing and it turns out so soft and looks amazing. Ideal for crochet newbie! :)

This one I made for my soon to be born niece and I am thinking that I should make another one just for fun.

Btw, for you out there and myself in the future - you should not work every row (and color) from one side as I did but start each new row at the beginning of the previous one. Otherwise your blanket will not be square or rectangle but rather a parallelogram...

There are some more photos that I made as the blanket grew :)

BBB progressreport: The last one.

It took me 3 years ... (well i did a lot of other stuff in between, but anyway 3 years is a long time)
But I finally DID IT - My Big Bright Blanket is done. and it took me just about two months to get to actual writing of this blogpost :D

I love how it turned out :)
and here are my little princess trying to "help" me with blanket pictures :D

In numbers:

• 3 - is for the number of years it took for me to finish it;
• 6 - is for layers of edging I chose to do till it felt right and the hearts ♡ on my squares;
• 15 - is for all the different yarn colors I used;
• 18 - is the number or blog posts I have written about it (including this one, all the other pregressreports and squares, schemes and formulas that I made up for this blanket)
• 46 different square patterns used (well I might have miscounted, it got quite difficult after 20);
• 50 is the number of skeins of yarn I used (at least)
• 2151 stands for grams this baby weights :) well I actually expected more..

BBB progressreport: Edging

I made one little mistake … and so my 6 layers of edging are a bit wiggly ..

And as the layers were put on one another it wiggled a lot more ..  but I kind of don't care for it to be perfect so I went with it.

For next time thou I might prefer it to BE perfect so I am logging here the possible solution for future me.