Sprouting Again

Back camping again at the Chewawa River....Such beauty in the bark of the trees and in the green moss, the sound of the river....

It's a great place to start working on my Sprout #2. This time using a less expensive yarn, Lion Brand Baby's First, a blend of cotton/acrylic. Much less expensive to use, and a different feel altogether than the first Sprout. I'm working on a size 10 needle this time. This picture wanted to present itself sideways:

I am using up alot more yarn with the bigger sized needles so I ran to get more in the same dyelot.  Now on to the 3rd skein and about midway through the blanket. So I figured on a total of six skeins for this project. Since I got the first 4 skeins on sale for $2.99 ea, it was a great deal. It will cost me about 1/2 as much as the first Sprout blanket I made.This yarn is 10 ply and the ends are very hard to weave in as it is very loosely plied. It is more comfortable however, since it is cotton/acrylic, to knit with in the Seattle "heatwave" we are now finally experiencing! The second time through this pattern is going much more quickly. I don't like reading from charts, as some people prefer. I like reading the written word much better. So I translated the chart into written directions to follow the 2nd time around. Overall, it is cute, cute...and the end result with be a slightly larger blanket than my first.

Crochet Me a Parade

I tried my hand at crochet for the first time. This is an easy headband that is free on Ravelry and the tutorial I followed on Crochet Geek, got me going on the crochet flower. This was my first attempt at a flower and it was not too bad, not too good either....But fun to try. I made the headband to match the little dress I made previously for a shower gift. 

 Modeled by the bear:

 Shown with the dress.

 Next I tried doing another one with some leftover cotton yarn and really watching the tutorial, pausing it when I got stuck trying to learn how to do a: half double crochet, or a double crochet or a triple crochet. That means I had to pause it ALOT!

 Somewhat better that time. Still alot to learn.  It was like making a long chain and then coming back and doing things to the chain and depending on how many things you do to the chain and how many repeats, this caused the flower to grow. 

We ran up to see our local Brier Parade tonight. Now that the kids are grown, I miss going to it with them. We still enjoy going as "oldsters" and it is a full-fledged event; complete with fire trucks, police cars, noisy race cars, antique cars, marching bands, Boy Scouts, dancing horses, Mexican band, drill team, and bagpipes,basset hounds, pirates, vigilantes...You name it! This year I happened to be near the mascot for the "SeaScare" event. SCARY, huh?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR!!!!!!