swap

i joined a ravelry group in january called Dishcloths R Us and they have monthly swaps- just a dishcloth, knitted or crocheted, and a postcard from your area are to be sent... easy peasy and minimal time commitment. i have to say it's been a lot of fun!

in february, my swap partner was PaulaE, from the UK. her profile said she likes the colors purple and green so i hooked up and sent off this:

 and received in return this knitted beauty:

i signed up for march too and this time was paired up with Michele from Maine. this time i thought i would challenge myself to knitting a dishcloth in a pattern not written up by someone else. this is the result:

i have a pink sweater vest that has this knitted diamond pattern on it and used it as the basis. it was easier than i thought it would be to stitch it up, however i used needles twice as big as i should have so i ended up with a rectangle the size of a dishtowel. since the group was not named Dishtowels R Us, i decided to fold it in half, single crochet around the three sides and add a loop. i love the texture [and the color of course]! i have to say though, it took waaaayy longer to make than if i had crocheted one, but once the challenge has been made, there's no going back! [by the way, would anyone be interested in a tute for the diamond dishcloth?]

Michele sent me this fantastic dishcloth:

i just love the pattern and will have to see if i can find it on ravlery....you know, to add to all the other thousands of patterns in my favorites :)

what i've been up to...

The weather is wonderful! 

The boys and I have started golf lessons... Golf = Summer around here!

On Friday evening, Mr Dill and I spent what seemed like hours unwrapping all the loveliness sent by Cathe @ JSIM. I still can't believe I won her giveaway! I was mentally creating projects for the items as they were coming out of the box! I spent the rest of the evening organizing it all, using mostly the containers included in the package. Thanks again, Cathe!!

I spent a lot of time Sunday cleaning off my three season porch. Actually it's really more of a two season porch- in Spring and Fall it is totally usable but not so much in summer or winter since there is no heat or air conditioning out there. If we leave the doors from the main part of the house open, we can cool or heat the area but only to certain low or high temps. Last summer, I set up the porch as my Etsy space, where I keep the vintage stuff I've listed and the kazillion things I have not listed yet [and wouldn't you know it that garage sale/flea market/auction season is here and so my pile to list is growing already!] I'm really hoping to get the porch set up so it's easier to take pics [windows on all three sides make for wonderful natural light out there] and list items as well as have some crafting space for work and/or storage. We'll see how it goes and how quickly the weather gets really hot!

And here is a bracelet I finished up last week...

It is six joined granny squares with a loop and vintage mustard yellow button. I really love how it turned out and was the brain child of the random crocheted shapes I mentioned in a previous post.

So what have you all been up to?

busy bee...

... I can't believe it's been a full week since my last post! So, what have I been up to?

-Flying to Columbus OH for work for a couple of days. It snowed our last night there (Thursday) and I took these somewhere between Columbus and Detroit the next morning

 

 

-Lounging around the house all weekend after I got back to Des Moines since I wasn't feeling well (sorry, no picture of that!)

-And when I was feeling like it, making stuff like these granny circle earrings after making various granny shapes (and I have a plan for the squares too)

-and this ruffled granny square dishcloth

This particular granny square was an experiment. I had seen a larger square in color quadrants made of smaller grannies and then sewn together. I wanted to see if there was a way to create the quadrants within one larger square but without having to re-start each color in every round. And I think it worked out great! Now, I'm sure someone else has thought of this long before me and who knows, there is probably a pattern out there, but this one I actually figured out on my own... and to be honest, I'm pretty proud of myself! :)

It looked really cool without the ruffled edge too, but I decided to add yellow to the outside since that was in the center. And then I thought: "Hey, maybe I can submit this to the Ruffle Your Stuff craft contest being held by Disney at rufflesandstuff!" There's a lot of really cute things being submitted, so you really should go check it out and/or submit your ruffles, if you haven't already!


Now tell me what you all have been up to in the last week?

granny square...

...pillow cover. I needed a new pillow for my desk chair during my 'winter break' and decided that surely I could just make two granny squares, sew them together and then insert a pillow form.

Of course once I got started and realized how large the spaces in a granny square, I decided I would need to cover the pillow insert as well. I also decided I would need some way to hold the insert in without a zipper (I need more practice first! :D) and while I'm at it, I might as well just make the whole things washable. And I wanted to use buttons to hold the squares closed.


So here are the pieces (I ended up using different buttons because I needed five across instead of four)

 

And here's everything all put together

  

  

Did you notice that I reversed the order of the colors on each side? Would anyone be interested in a tutorial on this pillow? 

And there's a great story about the chair the pillow now calls home (I have a 'thing' for old wood chairs... might make for a good post series?)

Had a great weekend since I spent most of it thrifting, flea marketing and antiquing. I'll be sharing my finds this week- some for my etsy shop and some for me! 

Have a good week everyone!