They're done!

Got the two afghans done for my granddaughter's friends. The pictures are above. The smaller one is about 32 x 20 plus ruffle and the other is about 53 x 25 plus ruffle. I decided to go with ruffles on both. Hope the kids like them.

Now I'm dividing my time between several crochet projects and computer learning. Indiana Sheltie Rescue is having a picnic in Sept. to celebrate 10 years of rescuing shelties. I'm making a prototype dog mat to see what everyone thinks. This mat will be made of yarn scraps to I might eventually use enough yarn to justify buying more! During digging out the yarn for the mat, I found a couple of UFO's (unfinished objects) and will get them ready for the picnic too. I'm going to have some of my crochet stuff there to sell. ISR receives 20% of most of my sales and 100% of things made from scraps and donated yarns.

Then there's this computer thing. ISR is now using Twitter as their 'official' communication tool. Well, I have a blog, FaceBook, PhotoBucket, multiple email addresses, etc. So now I'm learning yet another system - Twitter - and also learning a system I got to manage it all! At my age, who'd have thought I'd be knee deep in technology! I think I need a laptop to keep up with it all from my rocking chair!

Only for the grandkids

In the past two weeks I've taken on a couple of new projects that have taken me away from my intended pursuits. As a bit of background, I've done a couple of small blankets for my granddaughter which she loves. She calls them 'poofies' - who know where that came from! Two weeks ago when she was staying with us, she said two of her little friends needed poofies too. She even knew what colors she wanted for each. Well, what crocheting granny worth her salt could turn down a request like that? I certainly couldn't. So I've made two small afghans - sized appropriately for a 2-year-old and an 6-year-old. I finished the second afghan this afternoon and blocked it. Oddly enough, both afghans came out not quite the size I wanted, so I've blocked both of them before adding the edging - not something I normally do. I've decided to do a white ruffle edging for the bigger afghan since the colors are white and shades of blue for a little girl. The smaller afghan is also for a little girl and it's white, pink and blue. I may put a white shell edging on that one. But I've still got all the yarn ends to weave in and then crocheting the edgings so I'll be lucky to get them done this weekend. Until then, not much is getting done!

I worked on 'the' tablecloth for a while tonight for the first time in probably 2 weeks. I just finished round 47. It has passed the point of taking one hour to crochet one round. So it's going to progress more and more slowly as time goes on.

I've not made much progress in putting numbers together for figuring the hours of work in a crochet piece. I really wish I'd spent more time absorbing things my uncle the engineer told me. At one time I had mathematic formulae for figuring things like how much thread I would need to increase the size of a doily from X" to Y" and other things like that.

Better Late Than Never

I'm still working on 'the' tablecloth but it's slowed down recently. This most recent picture shows it about two weeks ago. It was at about round 42 and I'm up to about round 51. It's grown to over 38" in diameter.

I'd been intending to get back to this for a while but life has a way of interfering. Since the last time I posted, we've added a new family member and we're all in the process of settling in together. We are now fostering a Sheltie for Indiana Sheltie Rescue. He's getting accustomed to us and we to him - the canine equivalent of seeing how everyone squeezes the tube of toothpaste. Now we're waiting to see if we will pass or fail the course 'Fostering a Sheltie 101.' One of the biggest challenges we face is continually finding new foster homes for the dogs because the foster families fall in love with the dogs and adopt them. Eventually, even the biggest family reaches a limit and there's no room for a new foster dog.

It's been a cool, wet summer in Indiana but we've not had any major storm damage here from all the rain, wind and lightning. The Indiana State Fair is going on and it's always fun to go look at all the exhibits, animals, activities - and PLEASE don't forget the food!!!

I recently had a fellow Etsian tell me that my work was under-priced. That got me to thinking about how to explain to you about the time involved in something like a tablecloth. I'm trying to come up with some figures but it's a slow progress. I'll try to have it organized into something semi-coherent in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, hug a Sheltie!