Finished and Unfinished

There's only two and a half months to go until the end of the year and I can't believe how fast the time has gone. One of my goals for this year was to crochet 10 projects, ranging from quick and easy to hard and time-consuming. I'm happy to say that my completed messenger bag crossed off # 10 on that list. However, there are three other projects that have been pushed aside. I would like to finish them before the year is out. The unfortunate part is that all three of them are blankets. When Gram first let me sort through (and use) all of her yarn stashes, the goal was to come up with projects that didn't require buying more yarn. Unfortunately, most of her yarn doesn't match in color, texture, or size.

Ripple Afgan

I wanted to make a more complicated pattern with this blanket, and therefore chose the ripple style. Most of the yarn being used (so far, six colors in all) came from different stashes around my gram's house.

Baby Blanket #1

I got this idea from a pattern I saw online almost a year ago. The top strip still needs to be sewed together, and then all four strips can be sewed to finish the project. The picture doesn't do the colors of this blanket justice.

Baby Blanket #2

This is a blanket I started to make during the spring. It's longer than planned and it might not turn out to be a real blanket. There's only one skein of that yarn, which is halfway depleted, but I'm not about to pull out stitches and start over.



PEAR JAM

I finally caved and made pear jam. I was quite disappointed by the outcome because it looked nothing like what I had pictured in my mind. And it didn't taste like what I was expecting either. But I let it cool in the fridge overnight and put some on my toast this morning. It tastes FANTASTIC, though it doesn't surpass what I had last year. I went to a monastery last summer and they made this pear jam/pear butter concoction from their own pear trees. Friends and family will say that I've been obsessed with making my own ever since. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account as to how much I was making, so we have a giant tub of it if anybody wants to come try some.

Wish me luck,

~Staci~