My Monday Project

After roller-coastery week of both extremely good and bad news, I was feeling pretty numb-headed yesterday. From the one-year birthday celebration of the grandtwins (good), to the horrible destruction of hundreds of tornadoes across the South (at least our family is okay!), to the excitement of the royal wedding (sweet!), to enjoying a sewing day with Natalie (also sweet), and then finally to the news of bin Laden's demise (bad AND good), I felt pretty jerked around. The perfect cure? Finish a project.

I had help from Creative Yarns in Macon, GA. The ivory yarn above came from there with the fabulous help of Christy Ott, owner of CY. First I ordered five skeins of the now-defunct-and-never-to-be-more Mission Falls 1824 cotton from Christy's site after a LYS search and then online search. Turned out she was actually out of stock, so she cancelled my order and refunded my card. Then do you know what she did? She contacted the folks at MF and bought about three bags of this yarn and then sent me my five skeins! This allowed me to finish this project I started almost a year ago with some leftover MF 1824 cotton I had in my stash. I wanted a little crochet piece to freshen up and springify the house. This is just the ticket.

Early yesterday morning (thus the dark pic) I laid out the blocks. I used the Coffee and Cream block from 200 Crochet Blocks by Jan Eaton. I had made some in monochrome and some mixy-matchy. Then I decided to line each block with a round of single crochet to make them easier to join.


Once I got all the blocks edged, I tried some different configurations to get it just how I wanted.

Then I put the strips together by single crochet into the back loops, RS together...

...and then joined the strips into the nine-patch one-piece using the same technique.

I then added a round of single crochet around the whole thing, then a round of double crochet, then another round of single crochet before finishing with two rounds of single crochet in the green. My original plan was to make it bigger, which is why I ordered five skeins of the ivory. I think I'm satisfied, which leaves three of the skeins for something else. I think I want to knit something with it, like a newborn cardi.

This little guy still needs a blocking, but I'm pretty happy with it. It does what I wanted--brightens up the place.

Along with Mr. Sun, who has made an appearance today. Ahhhh...That's better!