New Obsession

On my quest of making all my Christmas Presents (something I should have started in at least October), I stumbled across a pattern which I had never seen before. The GRANNY STITCH!

What an interesting stitch. Seriously, I'm loving how easy the stitch is and how quick I can bust out the squares.

I bought this book Vanna's Choice Color it Beautiful Afghans because I'm making a zig-zag blanket for a friend. For the life of me, I couldn't get the ends of the blanket to be straight. Well in this great book which fixed my blanket issues, I discovered the Granny Stitch, more of, the Granny Stitch in a square. I really recommend this book to hookers first starting out. It has great information in the back on the different stitches and has several different patterns that I actually would use.

Let me take a step back for a moment. I found the wonderful Granny Stitch when discovering this wonderful blog: Attic24. I started her blanket with my left-over yarns. But the Granny Stitch just kept popping up over and over....and then I stumbled upon this book during some Black Friday shopping.

I'm not a fan of the colors of the Beautiful Afghans, but I love the patterns. I took one look at the Granny Squares and knew I had to make my mother a shawl which she could wear in the house when she was cold...now I have 20 squares done of 75 (5 columns of 15 squares each). I'll post some pictures when I finally find my camera. I believe its hiding from all the Christmas Decorations that are still scattered in my apartment.

I love weekends where I can get some hooking done. Only 20 more days for me to get some more gifts done. Eek!

Happy Holiday Hooking!

-sno

The Batman Blanket

So. Sometimes I get so excited about projects, start a million projects, and have loads of yarn. But this time around, I had to be timely. The project was for a friend's child. I wanted to make a special present for my Denny (my nickname for the kiddo) and with some internet searching, Project Batman Blanket commenced.

Here's the pattern I found on Craftsters:

From there, I doubled all the spots above, added in a boarder below and next to (around 33 rows of pure black below and above, while there's an extra 40 stitches on the left and right) started hooking. I wish it really was that easy.

This is was after I finally stopped my hooking and realized that the Batman Symbol was no longer in the center. I had lost count of my 40 stitches on the sides. Therefore, changes had to be made because the symbol had moved at least 10 stitches to the right.

See the yellow string on the left? I have the identical one on the right as well. They were my place-markers to tell me where the 40 stitch edge came so I knew where to start the symbol counts. I also decided not to cut any strings unlike the first attempt. I was threading in strings as I went...making life so much better. That graphing paper under the blanket is the pattern I followed. I took the original and doubled it, graphing it out on paper. And then I counted out each of the rows. Made my life WAY easier than trying to do it on the fly. Definitely the three tips I would try to do if you're attempting The Batman Blanket.

After all summer of hot hands and one redo, I finally was able to wrap the present for my favorite four year old.

My friend was kind enough to email me the pictures because silly me, I forgot to take a final picture of it before I wrapped it. I heart this blanket so much, I think I want one....maybe not until the holidays are over though ;)

Here are the specs:

Hook: G

I used a G because its the hook I use for everything. The pattern on Craftster uses an I. Choose what you want...the G made for a tight blanket.

Yarn: Black and Yellow Red Heart Yarn. I unfortunately can't tell you how much I used because I ripped out the first blanket. Buy way more Black, that's for sure.

Stitches: All single stitches. The only issue comes when going back and forth between yellow and black. You have to count the actual stitches because the blanket will look different with the tops of the stitches laying over the next stitch. If that makes sense.

Leave a comment if you have questions...I realize that this is not a tutorial but I would love to help with your own blanket if you have questions!

Hook on friends!

-sno

A Huge Edit

A change of pace.

A new idea.

So....I've been hunting for blogs that I can follow that have patterns and different ideas for Crocheting. Personally, I am not one to make fluffy sweaters of fantastical colors or items which you probably don't have a need for. There are a couple of great knitting blogs out there but there just doesn't seem to be crochet blogs out there. I decided to delete the previous Flightly Adventure Posts in order to post what the point of this blog was. To Crochet.

I am the one to make blankets for friends, baby booties in superhero colors, and am on a mission this year to make homemade presents for the holidays. This is where I'm going to keep a record of things I create, the stitches and yarn that get me there, and hopefully a couple of new patterns made along the way.

I might post food recipes too. We'll see.

The plan is the following:

1. Post up Projects
2. Post up Patterns
3. Post up step-by step tutorials
4. Links to other hooking items

So, watch out world. Here comes another blog. Hopefully, a helpful, funny, and interesting blog.

Happy Hooking!

-sno