I started crocheting this shawl at the beginning of March. It’s an easy project to work on when I’ve had a rough day and I don’t want to worry about counting stitches or looking at tiny little holes in my cross stitch linen.

I finished it on Saturday 4-2-16. I still have to block it, but all of the stitching is done.

The bad thing about this project? It makes me want to do more crocheting. I have an addictive personality, so that’s not a good thing! I have so many other hobbies now that I don’t really need another one!

I tried to get a good picture of the detail. When you look at it closely you can see the star-shaped flowers that make up this shawl.

I’m hoping that once I block it the detail will really pop out. Again, because I used the variegated yarn it might not pop out as nicely as a solid color would allow the design to really shine.

A way to feed my newly-found crochet habit, though, is to crochet edges on fleece for babies in Haiti. As part of the Dresses for Missions we try to send not only the dresses, but blankets, caps, shorts, and little things like that for babies. You see, in Haiti they usually end up putting the babies on the floor to spend most of the day. If I can crochet for the comfort of the babies, then I’ll gladly toss that into my bag of tricks, too.

Between Goodwill, the clearance rack at Hobby Lobby, and a really good sale at Hobby Lobby I managed to get this pile of fleece for blankets. I spent a few hours the other night attempting to square up the fleece and round the corners. I say, “attempting” because I’m not a quilter so I’m not very good at the whole ‘squaring up’ thing when it comes to fabric. When I was researching different ways to do these blankets I found that most of the women who make these like to use about 1/2 a yard per blanket. Considering how these are going to be used I decided that I would use an entire yard per blanket so that they could be folded up for more padding. If they last then maybe they can be used to cover up the children as they grow. Either way, it should be an interesting experiment!

If you’ve known me for any length of time, or have been following my blog, you’ll realize that what I typically end up doing is researching a topic, trying to figure out how I want to go about it, and then I jump in with both feet. That’s what I’m doing with these blankets. The leaflet that I borrowed from my mom goes into this whole explanation about the math and how you need an even number of holes for this pattern or an odd number of holes for that pattern… and it made me tired. I sit and look at numbers all day so I haven’t wanted to read the information on the patterns to understand it. I will at some point, but for now I’m just going to wing it. If it doesn’t work out then I’ll go back and read the information on the math. I used the special wheel for my rotary cutter that puts the holes in the fleece for crocheting, and since it seemed to work out perfectly, I’m hoping that I won’t really have to worry about the numbers. Am I lazy or what!?

This isn’t crochet, but I really want to share it. This is the winter head band that I had asked my mom to make me a few years ago. Actually, it has to have been around 5 years ago that she knitted this for me. Anyway, this is my FAVORITE winter accessory.

This isn’t a good picture, but this is how it looks when I wear it. I always get weird looks, but I don’t care. It’s not a hat, it’s essentially just a big circle like some of those headbands that you see people wearing when they ski. Except, I wanted a wider one because I couldn’t find one that felt like it completely covered my ears. Plus, I have sinus issues and this one completely covers my forehead and helps to protect my sinuses up there from being assaulted by the cold. It obviously does not keep airplane landing gear from landing on the top of my head, though.

My mother-in-law wanted one, so my mom made her a purple one with the fun fur. Then Jay’s grandma saw our headbands and wanted one, too. Considering she’s in her late 80’s I didn’t think that she would want a silly-looking one with the fun fur. I had my mom make her a plain one. Boy, she was NOT impressed. She wanted one with fun fur! So I had my mom make her another one and this time she was pleased as punch!

I don’t knit, but I know that my mom won’t be around for ever so I might actually have to learn how to just so that I can make my own head band when this one finally bites the dust.