Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Wishing

Just dropping by to show my progress on Tropical Fruits.  Will post more when things go back to normal.  My mother-in-law is in the hospital due to leukemia and I am praying, hoping and wishing that she will be alright and that everything will be fine.  She's one of the kindest persons I've ever known.

As of April 12, 2011
As of today
Take care everyone!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

It's Raining Threads and Yarns!!!

Yes, it is!  Please, read on...

When I enrolled in Dreams for crochet lessons, I met there Arlene, who came to know about Dreams through this blog.  She enrolled in Hardanger lessons and we became stitching buddies.  She told me about a store where they sell yarns and threads by the kilo.  One kilo of cotton thread costs P170 (around US $4.00) and one kilo of yarn is P270 (more or less US $6.00) So, addicted as we are, we went there.  Let the photos do the talking:

Yarn and Thread Store in Rosario, Pasig

Outside the store, you'll never know how much yarns and threads inside
 







I ended up buying 6 kilos of threads, but I will show the photos in another entry soon.

Now, onto my crochet lessons in Dreams.  Do you know that it's very hard for me to concentrate on my lessons there as these are all around me:

Yarns and threads in Dreams Yarnshoppe







Because of these, I am always telling my teacher that I need to rest my eyes for awhile, but in truth, I will stand up and stretch and then . . . touch these beauties and think what I will buy before I leave the store.  Sick?  Yes, I am.  And I need my thread medicine!!!

Have a nice week everyone!  And to all of you, thank you very much for reading my blog.  And big, big thank you to those of you who leave comments as well as to my followers.  They mean so much to me and you're my inspiration in my updates here.

Hugs to you all :-)

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Being Good, Blocking

Last Saturday, I had colds so I stayed home the whole day being good by finishing all the backstitches on Morning Lake.  Isn't it funny that I had to be sick just to finished it?  :-D

Here it is being dried:
Now, all it needs is some ironing and then framing:

And I also have some progress on Tropical Fruits, not much, but still progress as they say :-D

Last week's:
As of April 4, 2011
And this week's:
As of April 11, 2011
Also last week, I did post this photo of my doily project which was unwashed and unblocked:
Last Sunday, I washed it and blocked.  Kim asked what blocking is all about.  You can find here the explanation.  But in short, it is the method of “molding” or "stretching" your finished work into the shape that you desire.

I used this styrofoam as my blocking board where I cut my needle organizers from:
Here's the doily being blocked while still wet after washing:
I thought blocking is as easy as 1-2-3.  But it is not.  I think I've spent more than 30 minutes trying to get the perfect shape and yet, to my eyes, it is still not what I wanted.  I counted all the pins I used, it's 96 pieces!

Here it is now on the table and you can now see it's true shape unlike when it was not blocked yet:
With lights on

Without lights
 My mother put the candles as decoration.  Maybe I will try to look for candles with contrasting colors.

Thanks for reading this week's update.  Take care everyone!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Confession, Obsession

Confession time... I did so little backstitching on the Morning Lake, so there's still no picture to show you.  But I did start on Tropical Fruits.  Here's my little (so little) progress on it:

I did finish a crochet doily which was my project for my crochet lesson.  Here it is, unwashed and unblocked.  I used Canon cotton crochet thread no. 10 color SC021 here with Susan Bates crochet hook size B1.

This is the Japanese crochet book where I've gotten the pattern of the above doily:

Lately, I am obsessing over these Japanese crochet flowers that they are all I wanted to make.  Last time, I've shown you the multicolored ones and also the green/gold-green combination.  Last Friday, I bought from Dreams some yarns:

And these are the flowers I made from the yarns:

They are huge!  Please see the difference:

Have a nice week everyone!