The ~63~ Club

[JulieKay]

Hey gang -

Just a quick update. Sorry I havent been in much today. I woke up with a tiny little idea which turned into more of a huge one .

Hope you don't mind me rambling here a little .

 

 

I wanted to do something nice for my Dr for taking such good care of me ,but didn't want to do the ordinary flowers or candy or something .... SO .

 

You know ME .

 

I gotta think of an ODDBALL thing to do ,which leads me on a scavenger hunt, which has left me sitting here tonite like a melted ice cube. I am BEAT .

 

Anyhow, I wrote her a poem, then will tell you the "GIFTS" I got her to go with it :

 

Dear Dr . ********* ,

 

A special thank you for all that you do

 

You are the best Dr. that I ever knew .

 

You take care of me with kindness and class .

 

Even when I can be a Royal Pain in the ***

 

So for putting up with my moans and groans,aches and pains

 

And always taking time to listen to me complain ,

 

I'm giving you some small symbols as a thanks from me to you .

 

Because YOU, my dear doctor ,are the BEST at what you do .

 

So..... I got her :

For the RED BADGE OF COURAGE :

REDMAN CHEW TOBACCO

 

For the PURPLE HEART :

A really UGLY GIANT PURPLE HEART NECKLACE .

 

For the GOLD MEDAL:

A Sack of Gold Medal Flour .

 

For the BLUE RIBBON :

A Case of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer

 

Then I went to the bank and got a new gold dollar for a gold medal, an old silver dollar for a silver medal,and they had a game token someone tried to pawn off as money ( we live in hilljack -land )that they gave me for my bronze .

I found a gift box to put them in . Sam is going to drill holes in them and we are going to put red white and blue ribbon through them like olympic medals .

 

So,I never do things the EASY way. I could have called the flower shop and had flowers delivered .

 

But then would I have gotten to see the proper-looking lady behind me in line looking at me like I was a zoo animal when I asked for RED MAN CHEW ??????

 

Would I have gotten to see the lady at the Drive Thru make 7 different faces before answering me when I asked if I needed to be CARDED before buying BEER ?

 

NO .

 

SO . Did I wear myself out today ?

 

Yes I did .

 

Worth it ?

 

You bet .

[Gardener]

Take a look at my blog now

The blanket is DONE!

 

WOW!! Very nice edging. That is a B-I-G blanket!

[Gardener]

Julie....You've got such an imagination! You must have been great fun as a child! You'rre a lot of fun as an adult, that's for sure!

[QueenOfCrochet]

Tab -

 

Didnt know you were getting a new couch. What color will it be,do you know yet ?

 

Your yarn colors sound very pretty !! Hope you can find them all today .

 

Yes, we bought our very FIRST ever new couch. Well it is a futon, but it is beautiful. It cost us almost a months rent, but it has a cherry wood frame, spring loaded mattress and is so comfy. I also got this set to cover it, it is nice and thick just like a real couch cover. The cover came with matching bolster pillows and normal pillows, so nice. My Hubby and I sleep in the livingroom and have been suffering for about 6 years now. I slept on the old couch and he slept on the hard floor. Now we get to sleep on something comfy and together.

 

 

I have decided I will probably just order my yarn because I will never get to the yarn shop. The kids are home and he hates sitting in the car with them for long periods. Me + Yarn=A LONG TIME!!

[QueenOfCrochet]

Julie~That was a very creative and thoughtful gift you put together for your Dr.

[QueenOfCrochet]

Take a look at my blog now

The blanket is DONE!

 

Awesome job, that is huge!

[Shaylen]

Grrrrrrr ....I can get gauge width wise but not height....I have ripped it out 4 times now and im starting to get really mad.....should i go up in hook size or down to get the right height??Im at my wits end here .This was the problem i was having before and why i stick to afghans.

[judianne]

Jules...I always did admire your imagination! It's a real gift...and the reason why people never forget you;)

 

Shay...I don't know which square you're making, but you can do one of 2 things:

1.Leave it at that size, esp if it's your first square...and bring the others up to that size,

2.Or use a different stitch to end it. For example, if I'm making something that uses a DC and I don't need wuite that much to get to size, I'll just use an HDC or sc..

[judianne]

Erica, that's a gorgeous blanket!:cheer

...and you've given me an idea for my current squares project. I want my patchwork ghan to cover at least 2/3rds of my king size bed. If I make a border of a couple of rows of black on the squares it'll make the squares bigger and won't matter where I place the random colors since they won't be touching each other.

 

Thanks for the inspiration!

[JulieKay]

How are you all doing today ?

 

Well, I am up and at 'em and ready to try it again today .

 

I had Cam here for a short while yesterday. We decided not to try the whole weekend this weekend, I was just too tired to give him the attention he deserves, but he did spend the afternoon with us and we watched a TERRIFIC movie,called Saving Shiloh .

 

I am not a movie person ...but this was SO good .

I would highly recommend it to anyone , any age . It'd be great for school classes, etc. It sure teaches a lot about LIFE . I asked Cam on a scale of 1-10,how much did he like it ?

 

He said 1000 .

 

So, if you are looking for a good movie ( no graphic scenes, violence, bad words, nekkid stuff ) ,get it .

 

Now, on to crochet :

 

May I first say :

!@#$%^&*())(*&^%$#@

I worked on that FG thing last night til I fell asleep in my chair . Just putting the last row of border on it now .

Needless to say, I made a fatal error in judgement and made one strip in the wrong order of squares, so I have one ODDBALL strip that does not match the rest of the pattern .

At this point, after adding a strip on wrong and tearing it back out to re-attach it, then making this one the wrong way, finding out too late that it was wrong , not having enough pink to make another, and not having the gumption to buy more OR make another strip , not having the gumption to TEAR out those double-yarn things because they make such a tangled disaster . I am on the last round of my FG .

Yep, it will be done .

Done right ?

Nope .

Do I care ?

Nope .

I have a square to get done for this group before Friday,so that is next on my list.

I think i'll do that today . :yarn

My FG is going to live on the Island of Misfit Afghans with others like him, where he won't feel lonely .

He's still big and thick and warm, just DIFFERENT . :lol

[JulieKay]

Shay

Yea,

I have no doubt you guys will be able to do these squares. The one issue we will have though is gonna be guage . That happened a lot in the first 63 group.

Making so many different patterns, it's very hard to get guage exact on them all,so this will take patience .

It may also take some fiddling with different hooks. I think I used 3 different ones for mine .

Jude gave you some good advice -- you may need to go up or down in hooks or adjust the border edgings ... there are lots of things you can do to make the squares all fairly uniform in size .

 

I think if I were you, I'd go ahead and complete the 1st square and see what measurements you get .

 

We all crochet at different tensions, so you may get a 7 inch square, someone else, using same size yarn and hook may get an 8 inch, another may get 7 1/2 ... etc .

 

So, I KNOW you can do this. Please don't get frustrated just yet .

 

Just complete the first one and see what it measures, then try the 2nd . We'll see where we go from there .

 

We'll help you .

[judianne]

I had Cam here for a short while yesterday. We decided not to try the whole weekend this weekend, I was just too tired to give him the attention he deserves, but he did spend the afternoon with us and we watched a TERRIFIC movie,called Saving Shiloh .

 

I am not a movie person ...but this was SO good .

I would highly recommend it to anyone , any age . It'd be great for school classes, etc. It sure teaches a lot about LIFE . I asked Cam on a scale of 1-10,how much did he like it ?

 

He said 1000 .

 

So, if you are looking for a good movie ( no graphic scenes, violence, bad words, nekkid stuff ) ,get it .

 

 

My FG is going to live on the Island of Misfit Afghans with others like him, where he won't feel lonely .

He's still big and thick and warm, just DIFFERENT . :lol

Cam is a gem! I'm so glad you had a nice time with him.

 

ANd DIFFERENT is good! That's how my knitted ghan is going to be (when I finally finish it in the year 2012)

[JulieKay]

Jude

That's the good thing about knitting and crochet . We can play around with colors and ideas and each interpret things the way we see them.

Some people might use colors together that SOUND really awful, but when you see the finished item, it is beautiful .

Some may be better at making things than others, but it's not what matters, it's the EFFORT they put into it .

They may have spent just as long or longer on it, but it might not look that good.

That doesn't mean it isn't special to them .

 

So, we have to learn to be very accepting in this hobby . Everyone has their own ideas of how they want things to be and look . You have to look BEYOND the finished product,and into the number of stitches and hours it took to make it , THEN re-evaluate it .

[Gardener]

Good morning everyone. I'm feeling a little livelier today.

 

Julie, I wouldn't a worry a bit about that oddball strip. In the finished afghan it will just add character.

 

Glad you got to have some fun with Cam this weekend.

 

The "63 squares" that I have done so far have come out all different sizes. I did a little fudging with stitch and row counts, but ultimately I decided it was easiest to mess around with the borders. My first square actually turned into a 9 inch square after the borders were added. I decided to just go with that size. Of course I assumed that since my gauge wouldn't change much from square to square, I wouldn't have any problems with gauge, but that didn't turn out to be the case at all. Leisure Arts must have hired 63 different testers for these squares and not one of them achieved the same gauge!

 

I read somewhere that the sampler afghan on the cover of the booklet was made with Bernat Satin, which is a thinner, softer yarn that the Redheart Super Saver I am using, so I decided it was okay for the square to be bigger. I don't want the afghan to be stiff.

[Gardener]

Here is square 1 from the "63 more" book. It is called "lattice stitch". The yarn is RH Super Saver in Aran.

[renegade]

I only have 2 of the books, but I use them all the time. I made an afghan using squares from the two books, mixing them up (but each square is different), and oh, about a year ago, I had finished all the squares and decided to sew them together. And I got a few strips sewn, but then I put it aside. I really need to get that thing finished. It was meant to be for Project Linus, so at some point, I'd like to donate it (and by getting it out of my house, that'll give me more room for more yarn and other projects).

[judianne]

Renee, good to see you!

 

Here is square 1 from the "63 more" book. It is called "lattice stitch". The yarn is RH Super Saver in Aran.

Very pretty...

[Shaylen]

Sorry i was missing...my kids showed up out of the blue from WV Friday because"he missed his mommy"so i didn't get anything done...it was a great visit though.

 

Judy...I will try what you said and see if that works,this may be one of those things that i just have to let the"not perfect"go and flub a few things.Its just really irritating to me when things dont come out right.

 

Ok off to try the frist square again!!Thanks for the tips everyone

[Cheeria]

Afternoon everyone I started my square and was wondering, the book states in order to finish the square to sc around the square for a total of 120 sc. I was wondering will I be able to stitch the squares together without the sc bordering the square. I figure since the guage of each square is different it will be very difficult to have 25 sc across and on the sides of the square with 3 sc in the corner for a total of 120sc. How is that done please???? I never did these type of squares before where they have to have a border around them and to tell you the truth I really don't know how to corchet around the squares to make it equal around for all the squares. So what I may do is just concentrate on crocheting the squares. Any which way I need advise please. The square I'm working on is coming out beautiful and I am really enjoying myself.

 

Cindy love your square.

[Gardener]

Thanks Cheeria and Judy.

 

I agree with you, since each square has different starting chains, its pretty hard to get the edging with exactly the same number of sc on each one. So far I have just concentrated on getting each square to be nicely square, by using the same number of sc on each side of that particular square. I figure I will pin them together before sewing so that my corners meet.

 

I suppose it would be possible to just sew squares together without edging, but I think the different patterns might show up better if they were separated by the edging.

[JulieKay]

Cindy- that square is very pretty ! Nice work,and you, little missie are the 2nd winner for the card ,plus the free sneek peek for week 2 in the fish bowl.

If you'd like it, send me your mailing address and I'll send you week 2's clue so you can start it .

[JulieKay]

Hey Renee !!

 

Long time no see ! It' s wonderful to see you again . I'm glad you decided to join up with us,and continue your project. I hope you can complete it with us !

 

Shay -- Good girl, don't give up, you'll get it, like I said the Guage will be our one issue , but we will work around that problem,so no worries. Do the best you can to get your squares to "about" the same sizes of each other . You really can play with the edgings to make them fit ,then once you sew them together, they can all come together and look fine .

 

 

Cheeria- You could possibly try making your squares without the borders ,then sewing them together that way, but I think the border probably is there for 2 reasons -

1- it does, like cindy said, actually show the divisions between each of the stitch designs .

2- if you have the evenly numbered sc's around on each side, then when you sew them together, it will be a much nicer-looking sewing job, because you will be able to line up sc1 on the first square ,with sc 1 on the second,and so on,so they will look very neat and even when sewn together .

 

Not saying you can't try it your own way, that is totally fine with me, and it may turn out really nice ,but from the one I did, it did seem to help to know where to sew each stitch onto the next square so corners, etc match .

 

Oh ... and as for EVENLY spacing the sc's ... that also takes a little practice. You may need to pull out some a restart a few times ......it just takes some time to get the hang of this whole thing, but it's really not that hard once you get going .

 

I know in the beginning all this sounds a little daunting , but you just have to dive in and practice ,and it'll get easier . You'll see .

[judianne]

Cheeria...what Jules said:hook:yes

 

Shay, fudging is my friend...I do it alot!

[Shaylen]

Cheeria....When i tried to put the number they called for it was to many on the side so im doing 24 on each side and 3 in the corners....it came out perfect that way.

 

Ok first square is done and i did it with a H hook and had to skip one row in the center to get it the right size...which came out to 8x8...i measured as i went and adjusted to fit...so if i can keep them all to about that size i think it will work....I didn't follow your numbers Julie because im going corner to corner and i just have the one book.

 

What do you think??This is square number 57.

[JulieKay]

Beautiful, Shay !!!

 

It looks just fine, whatever you had to do to get it to size it is lovely .

 

If you'd like to receive a card for completing your first square, please pm me with your address and I'll shoot one your way !!

 

You are also allowed to hear week 2's secret clue if you want it, if not ,it's ok !!

 

Good work