My Hooks have a Home

I broke down and bought the matching hook holder from Furls for my hooks! Love it!

From what I can see in the Furls cart, they only made three of them. I di notice while I was inspecting the hooks that two of them have an issue so I am going to have Furls replace them. They are great about that. My "E" has a backwards bent shaft and my "F" has the hook slightly crumpled on itself. Hopefully they won't be upset that I relabeled them myself. They can easily peal it off I'm sure if it bothers them. This week I've made I think 3 more washcloths to sell at the shop I work at (Atlantic Beach Arts Market in Jacksonville FL) and I've been working on my wool blanket.

The blanket is a bit slow going because I have to work with two yarns at a time and if I'm not paying attention, I put the increase stitches in the wrong place and have to frog it back. FYI this is the Cathedral Rose Window Afghan I'm working on. I finished the last row of this light blue last night. Before I move onto the black columns that are between the first round of circles I have to sew in, I'm going to weave in all my tails that I have accumulated up to now. I usually weave them in as I go, but with this pattern, I have to wait until I'm at a point that I end both yarn colors and can turn the piece around anyway I want without tangling up the multiple yarns I'm working. It's really not that hard, just slow. I don't like the tail weaving particularly, but it is satisfying. So next is to make the black columns that I will sew the yellow circles onto. I found that on the first blanket with this pattern I made, the sewing part was really very meditative. I enjoyed it. But honestly, I enjoy everything about crocheting so I'm being a bit repetitive, haha. We currently have two kittens we are fostering and one of them loves to curl up in my lap and chew on the yarn I'm working on. Every night I have to fight with this kitten to not chew my yarn apart. She's so cute. I know this has nothing to do with yarn but I wanted to share about my daughter. I order her Hello Fresh every once in a while and she cooks dinner for us. It's kinda pricy but it is teaching her to cook. We laminate the recipe cards and she will go through them to decide what she wants to cook us for dinner between paydays. It's fun and dad and I don't have to cook! Last night she made us the recipe in the middle. She doesn't like to eat meat so I get her the vegetarian options when I can. I think it's a lot harder to cook vegetarian options that really do taste good and are healthy then to cook meat. Meat is easy, veggies not so much. We used to get Blue Apron also. We just like to switch it up.

Here is my other main activity: soap making! I have a small soap making business. I need to get around to getting my website back up. In time, in time. These are the soaps I have ready to package for sale. From Left to Right: Blackberry Sage, Sea Pearl, Black Current Vanilla (My Favorite!), Rosemary Mint, Orange & Clove, Orange Spice, and Orange. I dehydrated the oranges myself.

All I do is bevel the corners and slap an adhesive label on them. I used to shrink wrap my soaps but after getting two sever scar forming burns on my arms I decided it's not worth it. At the time my kids who young were shrink wrapping them but after I burned my arm that stopped right away. I hadn't realized the danger in it.

Have a great weekend!

One more Washcloth down

I just wanted to post a picture of this pretty washcloth I made. I used a scented version of Lily Sugar & Cream yarn called Fleur De Lavender. It's available at Michael's. This particular version of their yarn has some scent added to it that will thankfully fade after you wash it. I'm not too keen on the scent, but I loved the coloring. It turned out really nice.

Winding yarn

Like most crocheters, I have multiple things I am in the process of making. One of which is a heirloom quality superwash merino wool Cathedral Rose Window afghan. I already made half of this blanket once before as a gift but I used Red Heart Super Saver Yarn. Now, I know most crocheters seem to like RHSS yarn a lot, but I am not one of those crocheters. I would consider myself more of a "yarn snob". Sorry, not sorry. The textural feel of any100% acrylic yarn makes me cringe. I went and bought the dreaded yarn for this one gift I made but I will never willingly buy that yarn again if I don't absolutely have to. I hated working with it. I hated the the way it felt on my hooks. And even after doing the required wash and dry to "soften" it up, I still hate it. It's a beautiful blanket, but I want the one I'm going to snuggle under to be really nice. My personal blanket is going to made from solid colors of Cascade 220 Superwash wool. Since the colors I want to use are not all available in the merino version, I have to use a mix of superwash 220 merino and superwash 220 regular. If you look at the Raverly link above you will see pictures of the finished blanket on the left. The very top one that's all purple colored, that's the same yarn I used to make my gift blanket. The second picture that has the blue fade to orange back to blue, that's how the blanket I'm making for myself is going to look. It's actually a kinds of challenging pattern. As usual I've had to tweek it a bit for me to understand it ll. I'm really glad I made this blanket once before I went to make mine because It's kind of hard to follow. For example, the pattern says to use a "H" hook for the very first center circle, then make the 8 around it with a "G" hook. Well this turns out to make a floppy center circle. So I just made the center circle and the 8 surrounding it all with a "G" hook. Problem solved. So back to why I'm even posting. I spent some time last night winding my yarn into yarn cakes on my winder.

The yarn is really squishy. So what looks like a large ball before I wind it turned out smaller then expected. But I imagine that's from the tension I put on the yarn while winding.

I have my project in a bag I keep together and now that all my yarn is wound it takes up much less space in my bag. I was getting tired of the ball of yarn flipping around all the time in the bag while I was working. Now it can sit nicely in my yarn bowl and come out well behaved. Thank you yarn winder.