What I Have Been Up To

My, my how time do fly! I've been through 3 trips to the hospital with kidney stones, hubby was in the hospital for a week and my FIL was in the hospital for 2 weeks.

I've made a birthday dress (sewn this year, not crocheted ) for DD's 6th birthday and have finished my swatches for my CGOA Basic Stitches course as well as the swatches for the TKGA Learn To Knit course. The knit swatches are ready to get in the mail, well as soon as I get them blocked and I need to block my crochet swatches too, but I also need to get the question part of the course finished. I'm hoping to get the knit swatches sent off this weekend and the crochet course completed and sent off by the end of this month or the middle of next month at the latest. Here's the dress:

I'm still plugging away on the gift afghan for that family member. I can't say too much about it, because I think they read my blog occassionally. But, after losing the pattern book for a month, I finally just ordered another one. If I find the first one, I'll take the extra one to the library. Anyway, I did finally get the new one in and was able to get started back up on it. I now have 3 of the 7 strips together. I do have to get more yarn. I haven't been able to get all the yarn I need at one time, so I'm depending, rather foolhardily I admit, on the "no dye lot" thing from Red Heart. I'm sooooooo tickled with how it's turning out. I can't post any pictures because of the whole "they might read it" thing.

I'm almost finished with an Operation Purple Heart comfort ghan for Heartmade Blessings. I got to within one square of the border and ran out of yarn. Arrg!!!! So I have to wait for DH's payday to get more yarn for that too. I'll get pics up as soon as I get it done though.

I found the doily I made last year for another family member and then lost it. I have it carefully packed away until after Thanksgiving when I will get it out, get it blocked and wrapped for under the tree. I am so glad I have at least one out of the way and I don't have to worry about it.

We recently found out that our beloved martial arts teacher and his wife are expecting their first baby! Yeah!!! I love making baby stuff. So I'm making an Adoring Hearts afghan and maybe some little clothes too. The afghan is going to be white with different colored hearts. Each square, or at least each set of squares will have a different color of hearts. I'm rather excited about it. I'm going to use primary colors instead of pastels. I am a firm believer that babies need bright colors. They can actually see the contrast between white and bright colors and the bright colors will be much more empowering, I guess, than will pastels. After all, little boys used to be surrounded by red and other power colors, while little girls were awash in pastels supposedly to make them more docile and "feminine". The expecting parents are going to wait until the big day to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. That's another reason I'm doing primary colors.

School started today for the kids, so I should have more peace and quiet to get some work done, I hope so anyway.