Gotta love a good sweater

The season is warming little by little, the trees are sprouting once again and the snow is melting off. Of course, I have to crochet a sweater.
In my defense, it's difficult to find a pretty sweater pattern that fits a woman of my generous size, so when I DID find one, I had to make it.
I found it at canadianliving.com ....No one will care if I'm American, right? Good because it's a great site.
I decided to make mine in a deep claret red and in the store, butter yellow seemed such a soft and pretty contrast so I chose that for the cuffs and neck. After putting it together though... the yellow brought out the red in the claret making it look less wine and more tomato. In turn, the red made the yellow more vivid. It looked a little like I should top a burger. I was almost thankful that I had screwed up and the sweater was a lumpy, bumpy, gap ridden mess as it gave me a good excuse to demolish it and start over.
The finished sweater looks lovely IF and I do mean IF you can follow the pattern. Each different size is in inches or centimeters, making for a much more accurate fit. However, each size has a variation in the pattern, the result being that someone decided they could economize by writing confusing jumbles of rows and pattern sizes and repeats. The pattern was no written to be easily understood even before the bright idea of interchangeable instructions between sizes entered the writer's head. Now that I've warned you, here is the link to the pattern.
A warning for anyone attempting the Crochet V-Neck Pullover!
It's worth it, the pattern stitches are easy to make, but be sure that you have no interruptions or you may do what I did and make the wrong sizes for different sections. Bust and sleeves were for the largest, waist for the second smallest, and hips for my size. At some point I got confused about what hook size I was using as well (my child's fault, he stole my current hook and case of hooks)and made part of it in a smaller gauge.
No pictures, I frogged that sucker the second after I took it back off. Here is how far I got since frogging it and restarting last night.

Box-of-Chocolates Cake

I don't celebrate Valentines Day, but I do love to make heart & love stuff. Like, really love to make it. I do this kind of thing all the time and February is a great time of year to collect ideas and recipes for indulging my little obsession the rest of the year.

Since today was a very special day, I made this cake for my husband. Just a reminder of how glad I am that we met that day and how wonderful my life with him has been. I don't know why it does that half-picture thing, but if you click on it you can see the whole cake.



Today turned out to be memorable again - in 2001 I met the man I would spend the rest of my life with and in 2009 I got a call from my mortgage broker with the news that we are approved for the USDA loan we applied for!!!! We're buying a home!!!! If my mom is reading this, I mean to call you tomorrow. If she's not, then PFFFFT, why aren't you reading my blog, Mom? Neglect, pure and simple.


OH, yeah, back to the cake. I got it round-about. I was giggling at Cake Wrecks blog and found a recipe on a blog mentioned there, Bakerella. ZOMG she's awesome. Her cake looks so cool, mine is nowhere near that good. In my defense, I was letting kids help and I am not experienced with fondant.

Tomorrow is SPECIAL

February 12, 2001 I was introduced to a new employee at work. He was polite, nice, really had a way with people without being schmalzty. This was a good thing since I worked the phone in the IT dept. of an ISP and he was a new tech.
That day I teased and tormented him unmercifully over the IM - why? Because he was too nice and I was in a mood. He was confused at first but then gave as good as he got and I admired that. We were instant friends. In May, my SIL walked with me to get coffee during a break at work one day and in the middle of crossing a busy street, asked me if there was anything between us. WTH? He was the first guy I really felt an uncomplicated friendship with so I hadn't even considered anything more. Turns out he was a little ahead of me there, lol. We went on an official "date" in the end of May and it didn't take long for me to realize I hadn't just found my best friend, I had been a little blind to the fact I had been falling in love. We were married July 20th that same year.
We now have three beautiful boys, ages 5, 3, and 1. I don't think I knew what real happiness was til I met Michael, he makes me believe I'm beautiful.
Mike, if you read this, I love you more with each passing year and I can't imagine life without you - I would never want to. Years, decades, forever.

Green is a welcome color right now

So much snow and ice here, I long to see green again. Fortunately, a friend asked for a trade - cloth diapers for crocheted hats. Woohoo! My kind of trade! It was sheer chance that I had the color she wanted in the fiber she wanted and just enough to make both hats with three inches of yarn left over after the last stitch. I'll take a picture of them this afternoon before I send them on their merry way. She has good taste and I enjoyed making them, even if they were fast and fairly simply. I think she'll like them both :) But I'm egocentric. Riiiiiiiight.

I forgot my camera

Now that I have it back, it's hard to remember that it's no longer missing and I can actually take pictures of my crochet projects. hopefully, someone will take pictures I can use.
I was hosting a Fall Swap and today the boxes got sent out. You heard me, FALL swap and JUST NOW got sent out. In January. There were lots of reasons, mostly due to delays from every direction and the fact that I was a bit cocky about hosting this swap... completely disregarding the fact that I've never done it before. You know what, being a participant and hosting the dang thing are TOTALLY different.
In any case, the boxes got sent out today and I realized about two hours later that I never took pictures of my contribution to the Swap. Dagnabbit.

Have you ever seen amigurumi patterns by Ana Paula Rimoli?


Now you have!
I have that book, Seriously Cute Crochet. Love her stuff. She has a free cupcake amigurumi pattern on her Etsy store and I made those as well as my own pattern for a mug of coffee/cocoa with a smiley face. Now that I am looking at her Etsy store, I see where I got my inspiration for the mug, it looks a lot like this one. Mine is bigger, about 3 inches tall, has a question mark shaped handle higher up and no felt cheeks or plastic eyes. I used black yarn to make a little V-shaped smile and up-side-down V eyes. The cupcakes were altered a little as well since I was making them for people with kids. Instead of beads, I made a solid colored icing top and used a glittery multi-colored yarn to make sprinkles. They turned out great. Have I mentioned I love her patterns?
My sons all do, as well. Each of the older two asked for cupcakes of their own in wild colors and the youngest tried to snag one and run off to slobber all over it. Even my husband commented "nice cupcakes". I'm pretty sure he meant the toys.
I'll make some more and take pictures this time.