Better late than never.

I promised my stepmom an afghan for her birthday...on October 31st. I seriously worked furiously on it...once I finally got it started about 3 weeks before her birthday. Yes, I am a professional procrastinator.

I presented her with a half-done afghan in October and a promise to get it done before Christmas.

Wait a minute...it's 2 weeks before Christmas now. I guess that means I actually finished early! ;-)

Organization is Beautiful!

So, I'm a pretty simple girl when it comes to shoes. Depending on the season, I will generally choose 2, maybe 3 pair to rotate through. They are almost completely worn though by the end of the season and then I buy a new pair.

However, I had a significant amount of shelf space dedicated to just my shoes in my walk-in closet...a sincere waste of space if I've ever seen one.

I'm mean, seriously... I only need space for about 3 pairs of shoes. The rest can totally be packed away until I need them again. I could find a much better use for FIVE shelves....so I did.

Isn't it just beautiful?!


Before my stash was all packed away in bags, and I had to rummage through each one to find yarn for a new project.


Along the top shelf, I have sorted tubs crochet hooks and supplies, thread yarn, cotton yarn, and specialty yarn.


The shelves are, of course, sorted by color. It is so pleasing to the eye that I just want to stand in my closet and look at it. I know, it's a little insane.

Finished just in the nick of time...

Sunday was the day to turn in all submissions for the State Fair. In addition to the baby dress and booties I made, I had picked out a pattern for a baby blanket that I liked and felt like I could finish up in time.

Nevertheless, I still found myself in a bit of a pickle on Saturday. I still had an overwhelming amount of the blanket left to do, but had invested enough time in it that I didn't want to call it quits. I gave it my best push, and literally finished it JUST in time to drive to the fairgrounds on Sunday and enter my submissions.

After snapping a few quick photos of course...

State Fair and A Baby Shower

It was almost one year ago that Chad and I rounded up the kids, picked up my dad and stepmom and headed to the state fair. In order to get discounted tickets, and just for the fun of it I had submitted a couple of photographs I had taken and so had my stepmom. We were all excited to see them displayed and I was especially excited to visit the crochet exhibit. I wanted to get a good look at it, because I knew I wanted to make some entries this year.



However, things didn't go quite as planned.



Our little Baby L was due in just three short weeks and I had been having some contractions here and there all morning. That was not at all unusual for me. Nevertheless by the time we walked around the fair, I was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable. Chad and my parents wanted to visit some other booths while I looked at the crochet. But by the time I got to it, I could barely walk. I found a bench and prayed that Chad would get back to me soon. An eternity later (ie about 20 minutes) he did and we left and went straight to the hospital. That was just the beginning, as I was admitted and in labor for about 30 more hours before Levi was born!



Thankfully, this year I expect my visit to the crochet exhibit at our state fair to be less painful.



And I'm even going to enter a couple things...despite not getting a close observation of the competition last year.



I just finished these cute little cowboy booties which I'll be entering into the baby booties division...

They are made from 100% wool and the white is alpaca.


E3 has told me that he would like a pair of these as well and with the most serious expression said, "without a snake inside". That's a Toy Story reference..you know, "There's a snake in my boot!"
I'm also entering this baby dress I made for my friend when she had her little one. And finally, I'm working on a baby blanket to enter. That's all I'll have time for as the deadline is this weekend.

...Speaking of baby blankets, I just went to another friend's baby shower this weekend. I gave her a baby blanket and hat for our sweet little one. He's due right around the fair time as well...maybe I should warn her.

They're ready!!

Preemie blankets galore! We've finally got them all collected and ready to go.

My girls helped me to roll each blanket and attached hat and tie a coordinating ribbon around them. We slipped a small typed note from us as well.

Our goal was a total of 35 blankets and we ended up with 45! ...19 boy blankets and 26 girl blankets.


I separated them for easy distribution. So above are the boy blankets.


I also pulled out a few with particularly small hats to give to the particularly small babies.


Here are the girls blankets.


And the girl blankets with the tiniest hats.


Look at this precious bonnet for a micro-preemie. The bonnet is only about 2 inches high.


They're all ready to go!

Two blankets and a Pitiful attempt at Amigurami

I'm singing praises that we have finally collected enough blankets for the NICU service project. I'll be wrapping them up and getting them to the NICU in just a couple of weeks.

Here are the last two blankets I made:

And here is my pitiful attempts at amigurami.... First, I tried to make a quick frog for a birthday gift. It didn't turn out the way I wanted at all, but Baby L loves chewing on it. G9 watched as I searched online for amigurami patterns and begged me to make the bom-bomb from Mario. After I finished it, E3 wanted a blue bom-bomb and E6 wanted a Mario star (not pictured).






I think I'll stick with baby blankets.

Headbands for Sale

I'm attempting to keep a record with pictures of each of my crochet projects this year. I often give away (and sometimes sell) my crochet so it's nice to have photographs that I can look at.

I recently starting selling some things on etsy.com including headbands. These pictures are all posted there, but not here, so here goes...

Pink Jeweled Flower Headband

Three Crochet Flowers Headband

Crochet Fireworks Three Strand Headband (I've made two of these so far.)






Patriotic Stars Headband (I've made two of these as well.)





Red, White, and Blue Braided Headband



Crochet Sunflower Headband

All of my crocheted headbands can be purchased at my etsy shop: Little Ones Galore.