Wednesday

Goodwill shelf looking happier
Originally uploaded by GroggyFroggy

Where does the time go?

Here's a little shelf I bought at Goodwill for $1.00. A couple of coats of paint and it's better than new. I adore it. It's over my craft table holding beads and stuff.

It has little "roses" underneath. A little surprise if you happen to be under the shelf. ha!

Here's the little fabric birdie I made. It's my first one but I know I'll make more. It's good practice for me. I'm a lot freer with my dolls because I just draw and cut and they look like whatever they look like, but with this..well, I wanted it to look like a bird!

And here's the bird that Karen sent me, hanging from another birdhouse. Isn't it cute?

This is a little quiltie I did. I printed the image from flickr onto a transparency and then transferred it to Tyvek with Mod Podge. I colored it in in a few places with watercolor pencils. I sewed that to another piece of Tyvek that I had painted and then layered some fabric and quilted it. I've really been having fun with the transfers and am really pleased to see that Mod Podge works so well. If you click on this to see it bigger, ignore that yoyo. Boy, did it ever give me fits. I was trying to sew the edge so it would have a nice clean finish but the fabric kept getting pushed down into the feed dogs. Grrrrrr. I think I need a new sharper needle!

Look what I finally did!!!! I was determined to get the Granny Square figured out this week. I sat down with a book on all kinds of needlework (that I bought at my favorite used book store a long time ago) this morning and finally got it right. I'm going to be making lots more of these. I'm looking forward to using up all this yarn I have. I got a huge garbage bag at a yard sale a couple of years ago for a dollar. It doesn't exactly have my favorite colors or types of yarn in it but it has been wonderful for practicing. Hopefully I'll use it up and then will be able to do some cool things by the time I buy some really fun new colors and weights.

While I was at it, I decided to try an Irish Rose. Love it.

I also started this vertical stripe afghan yesterday. A while back I talked about doing the ripple one but I was doing something really wrong, with each row getting shorter. I decided to just get used to the hook for a while, learning to loosen my grip and stuff. This afghan is a very, very easy double crochet and gives me a sense of accomplishment since it goes so quickly and looks really nice and even.

Does anyone else's thumb (or whole hand) go numb when you crochet? Sometimes when I embroider, too. I try to loosen up and relax but before I know it, my thumb is numb again and I have to stop what I'm doing, shake it out and then figure out where I was. It's kind of annoying. Any tips?

Thanks for all your sweet comments on the last couple of posts. I really appreciate them.