Granny Stripe Baby Blanket

I have never been to good at crochet as I always had a hard time getting the edges even, but have always love the granny afghan. I have seen several people do a granny strip afghan for temperature blankets, so I decided to be adventurous and try my hand at crochet again. I am glad I did and am loving how quick and easy this is going so far. It will be a gift to a friend of mine who is having a baby boy. I only started working on it Friday and this is my progress until Saturday night. I think next year this pattern will be my temperature blanket.

Temperature Blanket Update Days 1-5

I have gotten a few days behind in working on this but thought I would show my progress thru day 5. I cast on a little over 300 stitches in garter, and am using the circular needles. The highest temp so far has been 57 with the bright green color and the lowest temp 28 the light blue.

Here are the ranges I have used so far:

Bright Green 55-64
Green 45-54
Bright Blue 35-44
Light Blue 25-34

I have included both the high and low temp for each day.

Homemade Pizza

I love to make pizza but still had a few issues with recipes that I saw. I ended up really liking one from Taste of Home, and I didn't use the toppings they did. I think from now on when I make a pizza it will be with this crust. My apologies if this post makes you hungry, I had thought of scheduling this to be later in the day, but then thought at least if it is early then you can get the ingredients later in time for dinner.

Christmas Gifts 2016

I made all of the Christmas gifts in 2016 and already have a head start for this year as well, which was mostly because I had quite a few problems either finishing or finding the needing items to finish other projects. I made five pillowcases and I due have two more to make (the fabric was sold out), and several knitting washcloths, and several handmade EPP ornaments.

I made the pillowcases a lot bigger, but just have them folded in the pictures.
I made two of these for my nieces which they enjoyed.

This one was for my mother who enjoys gardening.

This one was for my Dad who is a huge fan, I plan to also get similar fabrics for the other two pillowcases I still owe my sister and her husband.

I made this one for my husband who is a huge fan of the Simpsons.

This is one of the ornaments completed, I made one for each niece with their name and the year. The one with the snowmen are halfway done and it was for my sister and her husband. I made one with bears for my nephew.

Temperature Blanket 2017

I am excited to start this year with doing a Temperature Blanket. Basically, every day you take the highest temperature in your area (some also due both low and high temp.), and knit or crochet a row with a particular color for that degree. Some even go back and due a "historical" temperature blanket of events such as a year someone was born,wedding, etc. I plan on just doing a garter stitch, and haven't decided if I will just due the high temp or both. Here are the color ways I have picked;

95+ Red
85-94 Burnt Orange
75-84 Orange
65-74 Yellow
55-64 Bright Green (it is brighter than the pic shows)
45-54 Sage
35-44  Bright Blue
25-34 Light Blue
15-24 Dark Blue
0-14 Purple

I plan on making a notebook to keep track of all the temperatures of the year and my journey, just in case I get behind. I think this is also a great idea to do this for crafts such as quilting and perhaps weaving. There is a group on facebook and I have seen a few posts on other people's blog showing the colors and degree's they have chosen. It should be fun and interesting to see how it turns out.

Getting Caught Up...

I have quite a few posts to put up this week and perhaps more after that. I hope that everyone had a great holiday and New Year's. I did quite a bit for Thanksgiving and made a homemade Apple Pie for the first time, it wasn't all homemade as I didn't make the crust. I just put butter, salt and pepper on the green beans. I did something different with the turkey breasts this (now last) year, I took off all the skin and added a rub of different spices and cooked it in the slow cooker. It was really good and had lots of flavor. I made the homemade rolls, they were ok turned out more biscuity that I would have liked. The sweet potatoes most were the homegrown ones, but a few store bought ones as well, then I added brown sugar and butter to them. In order to save time though I made them the day before and they had more flavor.

One of my cousin's got married in early December and I was unable to attend the event, but made some hand knit dishcloths as gifts. 

I made two of each color and each pattern.

Knitted Dishcloths/Washcloths

These are some small projects that I have done while at the doctor's office and watching tv. Since I don't need as much yarn compared to working on a scarf, so it easily fits into my purse or small container to take along. Obviously, the dishcloths/washcloths aren't this big, but I wanted to show the varied and vibrant colors.