It is the end of year Clearance sale in the shop. It is my time to clean some things up and you get a huge savings. I do not price the blankets much lower than this, ever! So stock up on cup cozies as awesome teacher gifts. Buy some blankets for the wedding season coming up and they also make great housewarming gifts! Be sure to buy it when you see it as the items in this clearance sale will go fast!
There are cup cozies marked down.
Christmas ornaments are marked down.
Infinity scarves are marked down.
Ponchos are marked down. Crocheted blankets are even marked down 25%.
Pretty much everything is 25% off in this clearance sale!
Today, I am getting stacks of bibs sewn so they can be available in ChocolatesBabyShop.etsy.com. I can’t wait to get to the photography part. I am adding a bit more to the geeky line of bibs and I actually found some Dr. Who Tardis fabric. I have so much to share that this post should really be two posts but I am short on time these days to condense this down any smaller. I will start with the blankets that I listed for sale this past week. These granny square blankets will be in both shops. This green and lavender granny square is throw sized. It is perfect for keeping on the end of the bed or back of the chair for quick warmth. Crocheted of soft, warm and washable acrylic yarns it is infinitely useful. It is 42 inches square.This beautiful pink granny square baby blanket  and the aqua and purple blanket are both be available in ChocolatesBabyShop. The pink blanket is 32 inches square and the aqua blanket is 27 inches square. They are both crocheted out of soft acrylic yarns. These washable yarns a great allergy solution to wool yarns. I have spent a huge amount of time with family the past several weeks. It is just that stage of life, I guess. My Mom is is downsizing into an apartment from her house and is moving to town. I am excited as we will get to spend more time together. I have been adding her stash to mine and the sewing room is even more chaotic than normal. I feel a bit sleep deprived and I have been low on energy to sew so waking up this morning to a blast of energy is beyond my understanding. It has been one of those days. A day when I get huge amounts done.  I fixed a baby shirt a friend was having issues with. I also got all of this done this morning as well; before noon! This is the before photo. I trimmed, sewed, pinned and turned right side out all of these bibs.Since I seem to be accomplishing things, I am going to dash off before the coffee wears off!
I feel like I have hardly had a chance to breathe the past month or so. Do your days get that busy? First we took vacation and then packed two of the kids for college and dropped them off. It seems as though we just keep running in and dashing back out to take care of this chore and that chore. Â I came down with a migraine that has stuck around all week and tends to make me just sit and do nothing. It isn’t a bad migraine but it does make me creep around in dark rooms.
I have been working on this blanket here in my spare time. I love the colors in it and I showed you the yarn first several weeks back.
Here it is in the beginning. It is going to be a beautiful Autumn striped blanket.
There are such beautiful stripes. I put three blankets on hold as I am waiting on more yarn. So, now I have five or six WIPS sitting around waiting on the final touches and one waiting to be frogged. I think it needs to be frogged, but I am not sure.
This new crochet throw has had a rough start. I frogged it several times right at the start. I tried two different greens before I settled on this one. This is new throw is a beautiful deep mossy green. It will be a beautiful throw when I get finished with the border. It will be a perfect size for a lap blanket.
I have struggled to find time to crochet this week. The only time I have found to work on this new crochet throw was at night and it was difficult to match colors then.  It has been several years since I have made a throw sized blanket. Here are the last two I made. http://www.ravelry.com/projects/chocolatedogyarns/granny-square-53
I have been out and about this week. I got to spend some good time with my Mom. We had a great visit. We spent time laughing and remembering my Dad. He was a good man and a great father.
Talk to you later,
Karen
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for special sales and new items.
True confessions: It appears that I have started so many new things that I am totally overwhelmed. The new school year has called for a complete change in routine. I seem to be the spending a  large amount of time waiting. I tend to take small projects with me until they get too big to travel well. I started several projects last week. When we were cleaning up the house this past weekend, I noticed that I have these 4 bags, just from last week!
1 baby and 1 full size blanket
2 full size blankets
7-8 yarns for baby bonnets
1 baby blanket
So these are my works in progress or WIPS. You could also call them PIGS (projects in grocery bags!) Here are some up close photos of the actual projects started.
I am not sure what I think about three of these. The granny square, star stitch and the baby bonnet. So, I am letting them rest while I think it over and see what I think. I really don’t like the Granny square so I will probably unravel all the limey green  and start over. I’m not sure I like the grey blanket. I started the star stitch to learn a new stitch and I’m afraid that it isn’t comfortable to crochet as I have to keep counting.
This doesn’t even include the scrap blanket that is too big to travel.
The weather is supposed to cool off at the end of the week. Hopefully, I will find time to work on/under this blanket on the weekend. What are you working on? Do you start more than one project at a time?
Karen
Update:
I never finished the baby bonnets. They were too fussy for me and I don’t have a baby to model them for me. Â They are still in the bag and it is over 2 years since I wrote this. Wow, usually I am really good at finishing what I start. I did finish the baby blanket with lavender and green. It is beautiful and sold super quick.
The scrap blanket is finished and sold! Here is the reveal post for it.
I am finished with this Granny Square blanket. I am so excited. It has been a fun, quick blanket. This blanket started like this, just a mix up of various granny squares of all different sizes. It is also a scrap blanket as it used up various little balls of yarn that I had in my yarn bowl. I had many different squares left over from different crochet blankets and I added to them to get a more uniform size for the granny square blanket. The crocheting went fairly quickly as these squares are larger than I normally crochet.
I love the bright yellow that is added to each square.
I used white to join each square and to give the squares a little definition.
Now here is the final unveiling!
Look at all the beautiful red, white and yellow. The squares are so cheerful. This granny square blanket was such fun to crochet.
I started the border and then ripped it all out and restarted the border. I love the new border
The border is a lightly ruffled picot edging! I am so excited to get to show it to you. You can find this blanket on etsy here.
I remember going to my Granny’s house for a week or two in the summers. Once a week we would gather (I say we, but it was mainly my mother and Granny) all the laundry in the house. Loading it into the car we would take it into town to the laundromat. It had a screen door that had a broken spring. It smelled clean like soap and heat like the driers that were stacked on one wall. There were all kinds of ladies at this laundromat. They would load all of the clothes into the washers and the last load would be my Grandpa’s overalls. He was a tractor mechanic and his overalls and work shirts would always go in their own washer with the Oxydol detergent. Then they would sit and wait for the washers to finish. There was usually a chance to drink a pop out of the machine in the corner. It was cold and sweet and very bubbly. Granny didn’t put her clothes into the dryer we would take them home to her house and hang them on the line. ALL the clothes on the line, even our underwear, though Granny would put them on one of the middle lines of the clothes line. As kids we would run through the cool wet laundry feeling it flap on our arms, but not too much as it would pull the clothes down.
My grandmothers would never let their clothespins stay on the clothes line. They were kept in a bag like one of these. They would bring the clothespins after their laundry day.
My other Grandma, we called her Gran, would also dry her clothes on the line but hers was an umbrella style clothes line and she could stand  in one place and hang all of her clothes. The queen sized sheets fit on the outside line and the socks on the inner lines closest to the middle pole. It turned around and she would hang and turn the line and keep hanging the clothes until the basket was empty.
When our children were little I had a clothes line and we hung our clothes to dry. It was a way of saving money. We had a clothes dryer for wet laundry days. It seemed that the kids created laundry for fun. If we didn’t do laundry; at least three loads every day. They now do their own laundry and it keeps that monster under better control!
I have long wanted to add cute little hats to my crochet baby blankets. These baby afghans are just calling out for some cute newborn hats. I recently opened the baby shop. While I was getting it online and started, I had a couple of days where having baby hats was a great idea. I just ran with it. Here they are, the blankets and the hats on the same page.
baby hats
They are beautiful and I will be adding more crochet baby hats with matching baby afghans as I get the time. You can find these in my shop at www.chocolatesbabyshop.etsy.com. I am off to get some things completed for graduation.
I have been thinking of a second challenge. This one has to do with crocheting  and granny squares. I have seen so many beautiful squares and I want to make them all. Did you know that the average granny square blanket uses at least 100 squares? So if I make 100 different squares I should have enough for a blanket. If I make a couple of each design I would easily have a nice sized crochet blanket. I am not going to give myself a time limit on this challenge but I am going to make 100 different granny squares and then make them into a blanket. Here is my first square. It looks a little wonky and needs to be steam blocked.  This pattern is found in the book The crochet Motif by written by Edie Eckman.
Today has certainly been very odd. Hubs was home for part of the day and then left for work halfway through the day. So it has felt off balance all day. We were out of bread, so lunch was a rather yummy potato soup made from hash browns, left over ham bone broth, ham pieces and home made biscuits.
Anyway all of this to say that I got a huge long three hour nap in the middle of the day. I got my next crochet blanket figured out down to the number of squares per color! We now have homemade bread and I have no idea what we are eating for dinner! Woohoo, it seems I am on a roll! Well, not really, but the blanket though is a beauty and seems to just roll of the crochet hooks. The colors are incredible. I am not going to give any sneak peaks this time until it is finished all 248 little 4″ squares! I think it would give it all away.
I have been working on a new pattern for fingerless gloves and after three pairs I am about ready to kick that into production. The pattern is simple and there is no sewing involved.
It is a version somewhere between the red ones above and the grey ones below!
So that is what I have been working on. OH, the sewing machine part came in and I have been working away on #10 The quilt. I hope to be finished with it soon as well. I feel a bit like Einstein to be able to diagnose and order the correct part for my machine!
 Crocheted blankets are even marked down 25%.
