I made big progress and got the whole Sunflower themed Granny Square blanket all attached (horizontal and vertical) using a single crochet stitch to join the squares in both directions.
Here it is on the “Design Carpet”:
Here is another photo:
Now I am adding a single crochet border around the whole thing, likely several rows of single crochet, I’ll decide as I go along.
And then it will be time to weave in all the thread tails that are hiding in the back!
Oh I did try to make finishing the granny square blanket a portable project on like to I did with the individual granny squares, where I would work on them while riding in the car…
But it was a disaster and we had the “Great Hunt for the Lost Crochet Hook” in the car as well yarn tangling and blanket in my feet tangling disasters. So I had to finish it in my living room sitting in a chair to limit the drama – ha!
House Holiday Decorating
After I got the blanket assembled I felt very industrious and with the help of John got the Christmas tree up and the fireplace mantle decorated for the holidays!
It was fun to pull out our ornaments and various decorations and see them again! I missed these three holiday bears that I’ve had for over 25 years – they’ve held up pretty well:
I also put up this copy of The Night Before Christmas that John has had since he was a child.
The pages are on the verge of falling apart but I like reread it every year.
I got all 11 rows of 12 sunflower granny squares each, connected vertically. I also began connecting them horizontally.
It seems like I am so close, but so far away from finishing. I have many horizontal rows to single crochet together and then I need to do a border around the whole thing to “square” it/neaten it up.
Then I have all the ends I did not already weave/crochet in to weave in 😦
But I try to focus on far how I have come and how much closer I am to being able to snuggle under my sunflower blanket!
Weather is weird in my part of Colorado and it is at time trying to be Spring, then Summer and then switches back to Fall. To encourage Fall to come to us in full force (bring on 40 degree days!) I made a batch of yummy Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins:
I think I’ve posted about these muffins before but here is the link to the recipe by Sally’s Baking Addiction:
The recipe looks tedious because you have to make 1) the streusel topping, 2) the cream cheese filling, and 3) the pumpkin muffin BUT it is totally worth it. I put on some good music and before I knew it I had to components assembled and they were baking the oven.
John was naughty and have two once they cooled down but they were VERY tasty with our coffee/tea!
I love New York City (NYC) and I’ve been there many many many times. This is a continuation of the post Time in Times Squareabout the couple days that my sister, John and my nephew L spent in NYC in October 2025. This post is a little bit about our wander from Soho to Chelsea one day, with most of the time spent in the West Village.
I grew up in Long Island, NY and Albany, NY. I remember when I was 14 years old in the late 1970s taking the train from Long Island to NYC with a high school friend. We were two teens wandering around NYC unsupervised. Perhaps not the safest idea nowadays but it seemed okay (maybe back then).
Because I’ve been to NYC so many times, when I visit, which is usually with my sister who loves NYC also, we like to focus on a specific neighborhood(s) and just enjoy our times like locals. We are very “un-touristy”.
Some Background on NYC and How I’ve Visited Over the Years
If you are not familiar with New York City, it is comprised of five (5) boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island. The boroughs are then divided into neighborhoods.
For examples some of the well known neighborhoods in Manhattan are Greenwich Village, Soho, Tribeca, Chinatown, Upper East Side, Central Park, Hell’s Kitchen, Harlem, Meatpacking District, etc.
Image credit: Wikipedia
The challenge with visiting NYC is there is SO MUCH TO DO and SO MUCH TO SEE that you have to narrow your visit to just a specific section to really enjoy it (at least in my opinion). Here are some examples:
Back in 2017 when I attended Quilter’s Take Manhattan (see posts from my blogging category Quilters Take Manhattan), I pretty much only spent time in the Garment District and Central Park area (I spent the most amazing day on my own at the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of the most magical places in the world in my opinion).
When my sister and I attended New York Fashion Week in Manhattan in 2021 we primarily hung out in Soho and accidentally discovered the “Little Paris” micro-neighborhood that we didn’t even know existed (a cultural heritage project and micro neighborhood occupying the stretch of Centre Street between Grand Street and Broome Street – Wikipedia).
So what I am trying to explain in a very long-winded manner is when I visit NYC I focus on a small part of NYC each time I visit.
And that’s what we did in October. We stuck primarily to the Manhattan neighborhoods of West Village, Soho, and Chelsea.
The Tiniest Yarn Shop
While in West Village we discovered what I call the “tiniest yarn shop I’ve ever seen” – West Village Knit & Needle. There maybe smaller ones but was impressively small!
We took the narrow stairs down to the shop in a brownstone’s basement:
There was barely enough room for John, my sister, my nephew and I to maneuver around (they were great sports stopping at bookstores and craft stores whenever I came upon one) but here is a little tour:
The staff was very friendly and one of them was working on an amazing cabled cardigan:
That is some serious cable knitting. I tried to learn to knit cables when we were visiting Ireland in October 2022 in a class taught by Helen of Knit with Helen but I have yet to finish the cabled knitted headband project she gave me to take home!
Helen is the one who knitted the tiny cabled sweater worn by the tierneycreates Beastie:
tierneycreates Beastie with Mattie Beastie (both wearing tiny cable knit sweaters by Helen) and John Beastie in Dublin, October 2022
(By the way we are returning to Dublin in 2026 on our way to visit London for the first time. Aer Lingus flies out of Denver now and we can fly directly, for a reasonable price, to Dublin and then hop on an hour and a half flight to Heathrow. We had such a wonderful time in Ireland 3 years ago we want to stop there again for a couple days before heading to the UK)
I am all over the place in this post, what was I originally blogging about? Oh yes – wandering around the West Village in Manhattan.
We Snuck in Some Thrifting
While wandering around West Village we came upon a charity thrift shop – Housing Works Thrift Shops and just had to peek in.
My sister and I love thrifting (we usually find a thrift shop or two on our sister vacations) and I seem to have corrupted John, who at first appeared to be tortured whenever asked to accompany me into a thrift shop. He now seems to enjoy them and was excited to pop into this thrift shop for a wander.
Yes that’s John in the photo above buying something at the thrift shop.
And a Couple Other Places
We didn’t just torture John to thrift stores and yarn shops, my sister surprised him with a visit to the famous Garber Hardware a family owned and operated hardware store in business since 1884.
John was happy wandering this cool hardware store!
We also visited a couple independent bookstores and this one was my favorite – Three Lives & Co.
I had a wonderful chat with the bookstore staff who told me that surprising a lot of people from Colorado has visited there store recently (what?!?! are a bunch of fellow Coloradans all sneaking over to NYC?!?!). John bought a book as did my nephew but I just bought some postcards and bookmarks, as I need another book in queue to read like I need a hole in the head!
We also ate our way through the neighborhoods we visited picking up little treats, snacks and tastes here and there. There is SO MUCH GOOD FOOD in NYC its difficult to even put into words.
For example while wandering we stopped at a wonderful little tiny sushi counter and got a little sushi roll snack to fortify us for our continuing adventures.
Okay you might be asleep now but that’s the end of this post 🙂
Postscript
I misled you, there is a little bit more to this post.
In this post I mentioned the tierneycreates Beastie (Beastie Adventures). I realized she has not “guest blogger post” for a long time on my blog. She used to be quite active. I used to also have Mike the Miniature Schnauzer (who passed in July 2024) “guest blogger post” quite a bit. I think when he passed I just stopped with the “guest blogger” postings.
But in the future I will be bringing back the tierneycreates Beastie as a guest blogger. She has been primarily hanging out in her “apartment” in my studio and I realize it’s time to take her on some adventures again (I have to give her stuff to blog about!) 🙂
Update on the post 48 Granny Squares Now Connected – I now have 84 sunflower granny squares joined together vertically! I am plugging along 🙂
So 7 out of the 11 rows of 12 granny square each, are done and just 4 more rows (48 granny squares) to go.
Then I am of course going to single crochet them together horizontally and add a single crochet border all the way around to anchor everything. After that I will decide if I want to make a fancy border, etc.
Revisiting a Hat I Started Last Winter
I made 137 sunflower granny squares while riding in cars, planes, trains and sitting at events beginning May 2024. Now that the making of the individual sunflower granny squares is done (and the blanket is finally being assembled) I needed another portable project.
I used a variegated ball of yarn I found thrifting with little idea of what the different colors would be since it was already rolled into a ball and I could only see a little of the color changes!
It was my leap of faith hat!
So on Friday John’s son Z was visiting and we took him to the Denver Film Festival and saw the premiere of the film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, starring Danile Craig, I brought my hat and worked on it in the car on the way to the event and at the event before the film showing began (we arrived early to get good seats and had a bit of a wait before the movie started).
Here’s some additional images from the festival including the lovely Chihuly chandelier that hangs in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House where the film was premiering.
The film was really fun and I recommend it when it premieres on Netflix in December.
I was so inspired by your awesome comments on my post 137 Sunflower Granny Squares Completed that I decided to make a big push yesterday to start getting the blanket assembled from a year’s+ of granny squares made while on the road (as a passenger of course, it’s difficult to crochet while driving, ha!).
“Fantastic! A truly graphic representation of the miles spent on the road”
“All those little squares of sunshine!”
“It will be so beautiful to sleep in a field of flowers!”
“Miles of travel and happy memories, a field of flowers to keep you warm.”
“A certain amount of serendipity seems to fit in with the carefree sunflower theme.”
I searched YouTube for the best method to put them together and decided to go with single crochet. I looked at a bunch of videos and went with this simple one:
So here are 48 of the blocks joined into 4 rows and laid upon the “Design Carpet”.
I have 137 as I mentioned in the previous post on this project, and I am thinking instead of using 120 for a 10 by 12 block layout, I should use 132 for a 11 by 12 block layout.
In case you are curious of what my plan is, first I am crocheting vertical rows and once all those are together, then I was connect the horizontal rows with single crochet. So it will be a bit unwieldy until that part but it will make less ends to weave in.
It was actually very relaxing once I got my rhythm to join the granny squares together. While joining them I fell into some sort of strange YouTube rabbit hole and ended up binge watching Barry Manilow performance videos.
Okay so I shared a little about this back in 2016 in this post Shameless “Thrifting” (wow I have been blogging so long) but when I was 12 or so I was OBSESSED with Barry Manilow.
While other kids of my demographic were obsessed with the Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, I was totally in love with Barry Manilow. I remember having a giant poster of him in my room (not sure where I got it) and my father walking into my room and being appalled (my parents were more traditional R&B and Jazz music people).
So I remember when I was around 12, Barry Manilow had his first TV special. It was like 1977 and there were no VCR, TiVo, etc. recording options and most things were not replayed from live telecasts. My parents made my sister (my brother wasn’t born yet) and I go to a party with them on the night on the Barry Manilow Special.
I had a complete meltdown and thought my world was ending because I had to miss the Barry Manilow Special. My parents were not understanding and I was made to go to the party.
(Note this is not me but image from web)
While working on the blanket last evening and falling into the “Barry Manilow Rabbit Hole”, I did search YouTube for any videos/clips from that special I missed back in 1977 (which Barry Manilow ended up winning at Grammy for so it must have been good!) and I found a couple but could not find the full special. That would have been fun to sit back all these years later and finally watch it.
My musical tastes have changed quite a bit over the years but whenever I hear Barry Manilow I get nostalgic for that innocence of a 12 year old girl who thought his songs were all that love and relationships were about.
Well I am sure that is more about me than you wanted to know but occasionally we overshare while blogging, ha!
After lots of time on the road during various roadtrips in 2025 I’ve exhausted my supply of “center flower” yarn for the Sunflower themed Granny Square blanket I’ve been crocheting while riding in the car.
So it is time to make it into a blanket!
There are a total of 137 granny squares!
This might seem tedious but I counted and photographed how many of each different mix of yarns squares (21 different versions of the square*) of the 137 squares I made (the count of each type in lower right hand corner):
I’m not using all 137 squares in the blanket. I figure I will make a 10 square by 12 square blanket and use 120 squares and save the rest (17) for a couple small projects like a pillow or something like that.
I decided not to use the “design carpet” to lay out the sunflower granny squares. Instead I separated them into VERY ARBITRARY “light” and “dark” piles, trying to make the piles as even as possible:
So I’ll post my progress as I crochet together alternating “light” and “dark” squares to make the blanket!
*(Why so many different versions for the granny squares? Well I was using up miscellaneous yarn I had thrifted over the years)
During my Summer of Travel I’ve been working on my Sunflower Granny Square blanket as crocheting the individual granny squares is a perfect portable project:
Passenger in the car with my crochet project bag on my lap, crocheting through the road miles…
In that January post I reported 39 granny square blocks done. I now have 91 blocks done as of this photo which I took before heading out on another recent road trip (to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico):
PLUS 10 more I finished on the recent New Mexico roadtrip (more in a future post on that roadtrip):
So in total I have 101 blocks done.
Here are a couple close up images of the different yarn combinations I used for the blocks (because I only wanted to use yarn from my stash); the ones with the green yarns represent sunflowers that are not fully open:
And I still need to make some more to make the blanket a little bigger. I might make 20 more, we’ll see. I am going to finish up all the remaining sections I’ve started which I think total 20.
Here’s my basket in the living room where I store my completed blocks (oh my will there be a lot of block ends to weave in someday!):
I’m going to do a different granny square block join than I did on the other three granny square blankets I’ve made. This time I am going to do a Single Crochet Join this time instead of the Join As You Go Method I’ve used in the past.
Single Crochet Join Example:
Image credit: Repeat Crafter Me
Join As You Go Example:
Image credit: Crochet 365 Knit Too
Oh something really cool I discovered – for the outside border of each sunflower granny square I used Lion Brand Wool Ease (an acrylic and wool blend) yarn in Wheat.
Image credit: Michael’s
Well when I was taking photos of the laid out granny squares on the “Design Carpet”, I was barefoot and ended up having to step on the laid out squares. I discovered THEY WERE SO SOFT under my feet and I think it is due to the border yarn I used for each square.
I think it will be a really cozy and snuggly blanket and now I really want to get it completed for the winter season!
Just a quick post and next post I will return to my adventures in South Dakota.
Recently I returned from a trip to Southern Oregon to meet up with longtime Oregon based friends and during the trip my friend MJ surprised me with yarn she had spun!
I know, some of your spin yarn yourself and this might not sounds like a big deal but it was.
MJ told me the story behind the two skeins of spun wool she handed me and here her story paraphrased/summarized:
“Over a year ago I decided that I wanted to do something really special for you as my crafting friend. I wasn’t going to start quilting, and I can knit but I wasn’t going to knit you something. I know you are always working on knitting projects and I wanted to actually spin you some yarn as a gift. So a year ago I found a yarn spinning class with a woman who has a sheep farm and a yarn spinning business. She ended up becoming a friend and I’ve taken many lessons from her and rent a spinning wheel. I even got to know the sheep that the wool fibers came from and how wool from sheep is prepared to be spun into yarn. There will be more yarn from me in your future, be patient, I am slow but getting better with time.“
I asked my friend MJ if she was gifting others her spun yarn and she said “No, this is just for you”.
Wow, I feel unbelievably special – someone learned a new hobby just to gift me an amazing surprise!
Here is the photo I sent her when I got home of me loving on my new yarn.
It might seem like progress is slow but I now have 39 completed blocks on the sunflower themed granny square blanket I work on whenever I am in the car, traveling on a plane or train, or just hanging out somewhere.
Here’s what August 2024 looked like:
And here we are in January 2025:
39 blocks done! I would have more done but there are 4 time consuming rows to each block (which I work on in batches “production style”).
I have a stash of 23 more blocks completed through row 3 to finish up that will bring me to 62 blocks:
Then I will decide when I have 62 blocks done just how big I want to make the blanket.
For now I’ll keep taking my zipper bag with my blocks in progress and yarn around with me!
Here is a quick follow up on this post – Variegated Yarn Surprise – about the random ball of yarn I found in my stash with an unknown variegated color surprise since I am not sure where the ball of yarn came from (and I never saw it as an unwound skein) but I decided to knit a hat with it.
The first color I encountered was a purple or violet and then it did not seem to repeat.
I went through the purple turning into dark blue, medium blue, blue-green, chartreuse, dark lavender, teal, lavender again, chartreuse, blue-green, blue, blue-violet AND finally back to the purple/violet!
I was about to give up and thought that purple was just a one time thing in the color palette – ha!
Now that the purple has shown up again I am going to start decreasing the crown to work on finishing the hat once the purple turns into it’s next color (my guess is it will transition into blue-violet and blue again…well can look at the ball and sort of see it..).
It’s been fun being surprised by this ball of yarn!
I am fascinated by variegated yarn and how colors in the yarn flow into each other in a knitted or crocheted piece.
I needed a smaller project for a recent trip we went on to the Carolinas (Charlotte, NC and Greenville, SC), which I will blog about in a future post, and so I randomly selected a variegated ball of yarn I found in my stash to start a new knit hat.
The yarn was either gifted to me by a friend; or was a ball of yarn I that I thrifted. The yarn was already rolled into a ball so I do not know what the original skein of yarn looked like. I could see some of the different colors on the perimeter of the ball or yarn but the whole set of colors was going to be a surprise to be revealed as I was knitting the hat.
Here is the yarn in the new yarn holder bowl I recently bought:
Here I am starting the hat on the Carolinas roadtrip I went out with our Asheville, NC based friends (who needed a break from their post Hurricane Helene life in Asheville – we nicknamed our vacation “The Clean Shower Vacation” they only recently got running water and the water they have is very murky and gross to shower in):
Here is the variegation in the ball of yarn unfolding as I work on the hat (it’s been a fun surprise):
I am waiting to see when the dark purple which begins the hat will resurface.
Here is a follow up to my post from the end of September about running out of yarn towards the end of knitting a hat and using a variegated yarn to complete the hat – Ran Out of Yarn But the Hat Continues… .
As I mentioned in that post, adding the variegated yarn to the top of the hat makes it sort of look like an Icelandic sweater yoke ‘colorwork’ (well if you squint your eyes, ha!). In addition to the unusual finish of the hat, I added my first pom-pom on top of a hat using the variegated yarn.
First here is the hat at my favorite part of knitting a hat – using the double pointed needles at the crown/end of knitting a hat:
And here is the photo I always take before I finish a hat – me wearing the hat with the double pointed needles:
(I am holding the yarn in my hand, not the pom-pom)
And here is the finished hat with my first pom-pom that I made using a Pom-pom Maker:
Postscript
Speaking of hats, I gave my friend K a hat I knitted when we visited her in California early September for a California roadtrip (I’ll blog about that California roadtrip we took with her and her husband in a future post).
The hat is knitted from a cool rainbow variegated wool yarn.
Yes it’s the one hat pattern I know. Perhaps someday I will try a different pattern!
For the past couple months I’ve slowly been working on knitting a hat with a ball of pretty turquoise yarn I found in my stash. Little did I know it was not enough to finish the hat to the size I wanted.
I got this far before I ran out of yarn to do the decrease to the crown of the hat:
I am on a plane during one my recent travel adventures that I will eventually blog about
I looked through my stash to see if I had any yarn that would work to finish the top of the hat. I found this interesting variegated hand spun yarn someone gave me which had turquoise in it:
And here is my progress on the hat after adding this yarn:
I like it because it sort of looks like I did colorwork, like in the yoke of an Icelandic sweater, though real Icelandic sweater level colorwork would be nearly impossible as my knitting skills are far away from that level of skill!
I am trying decide it I should add a couple rows of the variegated yarn to the brim/bottom of the hat too. I am also thinking about adding a pom-pom/bobble to the top of the hat with the remaining variegated yarn.
Just making it up as I go along (and using up some random yarn in my stash!)
I’ve completed 21 blocks for the sunflower themed crochet blanket I am working on. Here they are on the “design carpet”.
Here is a close up of one of the blocks:
I am using 6 different yarns: a variegated brown for the center of each flower; 3 different yarns for the petals in oranges and yellows; a green for the “partially opened flowers”; and an oatmeal for the background.
It’s been fun coming up with different color combinations (but making sure they still sort of resemble sunflowers) as I work on it. I might add a 4th petal yarn if I find another one in my stash that works.
I think I will make 100 granny squares and I’ve already started 20 more centers to make my next round of 20 or so.
Cool Community Garden
I was killing time before my dentist appointment last week and went for a little walk in the area near the dentist office, and discovered a cool community garden at an apartment complex.
I am not sure how it works and how the apartment community residents split up the harvest but here are some photos from my walk around of the garden (and I was smiling the whole time).
I’ve made some progress on the sunflower inspired granny square blocks (which someday will be a blanket) that I’ve been working on, primarily while riding in the car as a passenger.
Here is what my first one looked like that I shared in the post I linked:
I decided to add some green to represent newly opening sunflowers and with the rust, yellow and green yarn in play here is how the blocks are progressing:
A couple close up of the various blocks in progress:
I am making the centers to the first 20 – 21 blocks and then I will be adding the oatmeal colored border yarn to complete the granny square blocks. I’ll share an update when I get the first 20 – 21 done.
I also thought I would share an “Agriculture Report” (inspired by @quiteayarnblog‘s ongoing series of posts titled “Agriculture Report”) and the tomatoes on my upper deck keep getting taller and taller and will end up taller plants than previous years by the time they fruit:
We were also able to harvest ONE strawberry so far (we shared it and savored each bite) from the first strawberry plant I am growing in Colorado:
So I finished knitting another hat (same pattern as I always make), even though I can’t wear it until it gets cold again.
Yummy purple and blue variegated yarn from who knows where…
I need to be distracted when I am a passenger in the front seat a car (or I get anxious) so I always have some handwork with me:
Riding in the car is better with a project!
If you’ve followed my blog for a while and seen the endless hats I’ve made in this same “Rolled Hat” pattern, then you know I had to take my photo with the double pointed needles in the hat as it nears completion (it’s tradition!) – ha!
Where is Tierney?
SUNFLOWER GS
I’ve been working through random balls of yarn I find in my stash, some of them left over from making other people gift hats.
With the hat complete and the weather getting warmer (into the 70s F and next week into the 80s F) I wasn’t in the mood to start knitting another hat. I have some crochet granny squares to work on using recycled yarn (see post Plastic Yarn?) but wasn’t in the mood for that standard pattern after already making 3 granny square blankets with it.
So I decided to challenge myself and learn a new granny square pattern – Sunburst Square. Here is the YouTub video I used to teach myself:
The YouTuber does a great job teaching you how to make this granny square
Here is my first Sunburst Square in progress:
In the center photo I am in the car as a passenger working on it!
I love Sunflowers and I just had to make my flowers look like Sunflowers! I will share more progress as I work on them while in the car. We have a couple road trips to explore Colorado coming up this summer so I hope to make lots of blocks then!
“AGRICULTURE REPORT”
What is an “Agriculture Report”? Well I was inspired by @quiteayarnblog‘s ongoing series of posts titled “Agriculture Report” (and this title always cracks me up) that are actually updates of what is going on in her garden.I just had to adopt this same title for updates on what is going on in my garden/my “garden report“…
Needle-arts crafters (knitting, crocheting, cross-stitch and other needlework) seem to be good people based on those I’ve met through blogging, so I thought I would try for the first time to join a Knit/Crochet Group instead of a quilting group.
One of the area libraries, Arapahoe Library, had a Knit/Crochet Group that met once a week.
I already belong to three Denver area library systems (have library cards), so why not add one more to my list (they are fairly laid back on who can get a library card and there are a lot of libraries systems in the Denver Metro Area), so I went to visit one of the Arapahoe Library branches for the first time – the Smoky Hill Branch.
I was so surprised on my first visit as this branch had a cafe, an awesome used bookstore, and a free seed library where you could take 3 packets of seeds a day!
Of course I had to browse through a stack of used books (that I didn’t buy) at their bookstore while enjoying a hot chocolate and a danish at the cafe:
Other cool things I discovered while doing a self-tour of this library was kits for book groups which included 10 copies of books, and an awesome Craft book section (where else would I have headed first, ha!):
So for the past three weeks I attended the weekly meetings of the Knit/Crochet Group and I met some nice people. Here I am at the group meeting working on another knitted hat; and checking out a wooden yarn holder bowl another attendee’s woodworker husband made her:
I decided not to continue with the group as the venue was too large (space for 17 people) and I wasn’t getting any work done on my project and I was getting a little overwhelmed by the crowd, all their energy and stories. I appeared to have fully transitions to an Introvert post-pandemic!
I might try another group someday in a smaller venue.
FINALLY in April 2024, Tierney has finish the blanket and has put it on the upstairs guest bed as the warmer weather season covering (though she appears to be confused as it is not officially “warmer weather”, we are just getting warm days here and there):
I know, I know, you were hoping to see me stretched out on this bed relaxing like you did in other posts, however I am boycotting this blanket as I wanted it to only be for ME as she led me to believe while she was making it!
Happier times when the blanket was in a configuration that worked for ME…
Oh Tierney has come in the room and bugged me while I am writing…
Don’t bug me while I am writing! A lot of concentration is required when you don’t have opposable thumbs!
Oh, Tierney stopped by to ask me to tell you she got a cute new radio while thrifting last year during her trip to Florida with her sister (see the post Sisters’ Trip to Englewood, Florida) that she placed next to the bed in this room:
She says it is a “Tivoli Radio” and she got it for only $5 when normally it would retail for over $100 and it has a wonderful sound. This means nothing to me as a dog, but I am passing this along at her request (why doesn’t she just write her own darn posts if she wants to share something??!?).
Okay I have to go find somewhere to nap now after all this typing and I can’t just go lay down on the bed behind me as I am boycotting it…
(Oh and I am not going to even address that weird post Tierney had yesterday – Imagining Mike Playing Sports – I am going to learn how to use that app and write a guest blog post with images of Tierney playing sports!)
I finished the hat made with two leftover balls of yarn (both I think someone gave me as I do not remember using the yarn before) – a ball of blue variegated yarn, and a ball of denim blue yarn.
Here is when I got it to the double pointed needle stage (my favorite as it means it is nearly done!) while riding in the car:
And here is the photo I take as a tradition when I have the hat nearly done with the double pointed needles sticking out of my head:
And here is the completed hat:
I actually finished the hat while we were at dinner the other night with John’s former work colleagues. So I will close this post with gratuitous photos of the Burrata Salad and Meatball Pizza we had while out to dinner 🙂
People at dinner laughed when I threw the completed hat on my head at the end of the get together that I’d been working on all evening.
On to a new hat (one can never have enough hand knitted hats) to work on while passenger-ing in the car!
So it was time to start an easy mindless project – a hat – in the same pattern I always use – ha!
Me in the car, knitting away from my passenger seat…
It’s actually going to be a two yarn hat as I am using up two different smaller leftover balls of yarn. I had enough of the variegated yarn you see in the photo above to get that far and now I am adding in a denim-ish colored yarn that is close to one of the colors in the variegated yarn.
We’ll see how it comes out…it’s for me anyway so as long as it is a functional hat I am good!
Oh a friend sent me this the other day and it gave me a giggle, so I thought I’d share with you all and I hope if you have a dog they do not need to contact this “Pawfirm”! (Mike could contact them as we are guilty of this…)
This is Mike, the Miniature Schnauzer that lives with Tierney and John. If you are new to this blog I guest blog post time to time. I want to update you on the gray granny square blanket (MY BLANKET) that Tierney has been working on as I am a little annoyed.
(Here I am working on the blog post)
(And here I am slightly irritated that Tierney is disturbing me while I write)
Tierney should have finished by now the gray granny square blanket by now – she has joined all the 80 granny squares together by whatever strange human magic she uses to join them.
But now she’s decided she wants to make the blanket large enough to be a summer bedspread in the upstairs guest room so she is doing something called “adding a large border” while requires her to use that weird needle (she calls it a “crochet needle”) and go around and around on my blanket so it will get bigger.
Here is the blanket after she put all those squares together and started doing some weird bordering of the blanket.
The good thing is while she’s been doing her bordering, I’ve been able to get some naps under the blanket even if she occasionally disturbs me when she spins the blanket while bordering.
Yes, I am a “Napping Professional”.
I want her to stop this silliness and just set the blanket down somewhere that I can just private enjoy it.
This post is for my knitting buddies who make extremely more complex and interesting knitted items then I do (but I craft vicariously through your posts, you should see the Icelandic sweater/jumper I am making in my head!).
But you expert knitters: Have you ever knitted a little hat? For a little schnauzer?
My late husband Terry and I were schnauzer aficionados since we were in our twenties; and for 30 of the 33 years we were together before he passed in 2018, we adopted rescued miniature schnauzers.
Mike who you know from many previous posts, was the last miniature schnauzer we rescued together.
In addition to real schnauzers, we were obsessed with schnauzer art, figurines and stuffed animals. We had an extensive collection.
Since his passing in 2018 I’ve let go through donation or gifting to family/friends quite a bit of the schnauzer-obsession collection; but I’ve kept a few special pieces.
One of the stuffed animals I kept is a very realistic 5 inch (12.7 cm) schnauzer that I keep on my desk in the upstairs guest bedroom:
Recently I rediscovered stashed amount pens in my studio, this little 3 inch (7.6 cm) knitted hat (include the pom-pom) I picked up from the gift shop at the Cliffs of Moher (see my post The Cliffs of Moher) while visiting Ireland in 2022. It was a key chain but removed the key chain hardware to make it into just a little hat!
Can you guess what happened next? Yes I decided this little schnauzer and this little hat should be together!
Little Schnauzer in a Little Hat!
So now they sit on the bookshelf above my desk area and the schnauzer’s ears won’t get cold if a sudden wintry wind pops into the guest room!
This was so wonderful about the healing properties of knitting (and crafting in general) I had to reblog. Thank you Wild Daffodil for posting this and warming my heart (and moistening my eyes) on a cold and snowy day in Denver.
This is Mike, the Miniature Schnauzer that lives with Tierney and John. If you are new to this blog I guest blog post time to time.
Tierney has been doing something weird the past month or so and only posting to this blog once a week. I am trying to work with her to increase her frequency. She went from torturing you all to daily posts in the month of October, this blog’s 10th anniversary, to BOOM once a week posts.
So I had to step in and blog about the progress on “my blanket”.
Look at all the progress I’ve encouraged her to make!
In case you are wondering why I refer to it as “my blanket” – isn’t it obvious she is making it for me when it coordinates with my fur so wonderfully?
Try not to become overwhelmed with my cuteness
She has 5 more rows of 8 blocks to join to it to make it an 8 by 10, 80 block blanket. But at this point it is sufficient enough for me to snuggle under. For some reason she wants to keep working on it.
I’ve caught her cuddling under it while working on it and she even wrangled it into the car when John is driving to work on.
Here she is working on it while in the back seat when we had a holiday visitor; and I am trying to snuggle in it too:
It should be covering me but she said that won’t work while she is crocheting
Well hopefully it will be done soon.
That’s the end of my guest post and I am going to return to guarding the house from my sunny guard post on the upstairs guest bed surrounded by my natural habitats: blankets (fleece!) and quilts.
tierneycreates 