I forgot to post pictures of the spats pattern I was trying to make

Here we are again at a familiar place... me, apologizing for my absentmindedly forgetting to post a picture of a project I promise to share with the two people that actually read my blog.
Here are the spats~

Since I made the boys each a unique pair of knit fingerless gloves, of course they lost them in the first day and a half. I managed to scrounge up one pair and Mick, the darling, agreed to model for me. These are actually Mase's pair, but he is about as manageable in front of a lens as an ... um... unmanageable thing. Sorry, my brain keeps different hours than my body and that was the cleverest thing it could come up with on it's own.

Bring on the SHAWLS

I love crochet for the cool months and I stock up on projects to start. I fell in love with the new Lily Chin shawl Gathering Leaves and wanted so badly to make it, but can't afford the pattern. I looked around for something free that was close and found the Growing Leaves shawl ~ which is not only knit (so not my forte) but it's in a chart form. Meydani no comprendo. Sucks for me... so I decided to make up a pattern with leaves in it myself. Trouble is, I'm not good at creating shawls.
I started with a Caron Simply soft skein to practice with. I hooked and frogged, hooked and frogged, over and over again. I finally stumbled into a pattern that WORKED, changed to my coveted cashmere then found out about 15 rows in that I forgot the spaces in the first half and it made a weird hill then evened out into a flat horizon... yeah. No way I was frogging yet again, so I kept it as 'personality'. What's with the coveting, you ask? My mom gave me some truly gorgeous yarn she reclaimed, a wine-red cobweb weight cashmere blend. Lovely and bouncy and I kept it out of sheer greed.



I am thinking of names for it, so far Autumn Leaves is stuck in my head. It's so... blah. I want something memorable and I don't know that it would fit if it were made in green or blue or pink, so the Autumn part might have to go. the leaves look suspiciously like diamonds, too. Hmm, I'll have to ponder longer and hope it just comes to me.
mom was also generous enough to buy two patterns from Annie's Attic that I am just dying to make. One is the Cathedral Rose Window afghan because it was just gorgeous and something I couldn't really approximate on my own. it will be for my bed, I think, I always get too cool at night and I hate turning up the heat because then Mike gets too hot. See my issue? It would also be beautiful downstairs on the couch when I feel like cuddling up with my hook and my Netflix Instant Watch que on the TV. Oh, and cocoa! Can't forget that.

I did mention I love crocheting in cold weather, right? Good. :)

The other pattern Mom bought was the High Top Crocheted Boots pattern. You know, she loves slippers but I have yet to see her wear them. In the cold she wears thick socks and tennies, in the heat (depending on the plans for that day) it's flips flops or a pair of garden clogs. Anything in between the two extremes finds her barefoot. But not slippers. Oh well, I hope she'll wear them just because they are so comfy looking.



I almost forgot to add! My boys love getting winter stuff so every year I make them new hats and mittens. Every year they love the hats and quickly discard the mittens when they impede the snow fun. This year I was brilliant, genius even, I made them fingerless gloves! Simple and easy - k1,p1 ribbing for the cuff, a few rows of stockinette, work a thumb, then a few more rows stockinette. Of course it was slightly more involved than that, but you get what I'm saying. 1 pair took me about an hour. I'm making some more later tonight :)