Beginning my CAL Mandala

Back to work next Monday, trying to get things around the house to an in-progress point so I can keep things flowing smoothly once school starts and my at-home hours dwindle drastically. I'm failing epically.

But today, in honor of my last day of summer break, I started my mandala and my foray into overlay crochet. The main reason I can give for my delay after all my excitement is color. I am insecure about my ability to choose colors that accent each other well. This project, while exciting for me, also requires me to stick my neck out and post pics of my color choices in an open forum on someone else's page. I can do this!!!

(Update...) Ha! Here's how long it's been since I started this - I've already BEEN at work a week! Ugh. Time flies when you're busy, busy, busy!

Sadly, I haven't gotten any farther with this since I took these pictures. *sigh* The beginning of the school year is always hectic, but we also have foundation issues we need to fix - thank you Drought of 2012. Needless to say (but that never stopped me) I've been too busy for yarn working this week. But I'm looking forward to doing plenty of knitting and crocheting this weekend - camping with Robin and lots of yarn!

I love the way colors are working in this pattern. the first 4 rounds are in one color (I chose pink), but then I've had to change every round or two since. The first picture is through round 5, adding purple. Even though it's only one round of the new color, it completely changes the feel of the piece already.

Round 6 and the character has changed again.

Round 7 and the drama is beginning. This is a dark blue I found in my cotton bin.

The purple comes back, grabs the first round of purple and pulls it back to the foreground. Ahhhh. The design is starting to take shape! So exciting!!!

...aaaaaaaand life takes over and this is where it's been for a little over a week. *sigh* But I'm still part of the CAL and it's still not too late to join! The flickr group page has all the gorgeous variations the other crocheters are posting. I was excited this morning to see that mine already auto-updated to Marinke's blog!

Until next time, I'll be preparing my basement for massive mess work, knitting another baby blanket (I guess I need to blog THAT story ;), working on my mandala (the colors are about to REALLY get dramatic!) and...oh, yeah! Teaching. Gotta remember to go to work, eh? Helps pay for my yarn...

Stupid Excited!

Okay, I'm so excited this morning I've gone stupid. I saw a gorgeous pattern on Etsy, then I learned that another blogger got together with the pattern creator to offer the pattern at a discount for a Crochet Along. I'm not the most techno-savvy person around but lots of people seem to think I am (ask for my help, think I know what I'm doing...which I usually do...) and I try to stay as functional as possible. This morning I made myself feel like a rank amateur - totally confused myself doing the most basic thing: buying a PDF and getting it to download.

First, I thought I'd be paying through PayPal but putting it on my credit card. Nope. I managed to empty my little PayPal account and they'll pull about a dollar out of my checking to make up the difference. No biggie but annoying.

Next I viewed my Etsy receipt and it said it would ship to my home address. Well, you can't send a PDF file to a snail mail address...and I'm excited about this pattern so I don't want to wait a few days or a week to get it... So I sent semi-panicked emails to the poor woman, Carola, who designed and sells the pattern (and English is not her first language, so I confused her, too) and after I managed to get a good stir going - BANG - there it was in my inbox.

*sheepish grin*

So here are my goals:

1.  Calm down (Easier said than done. If you know me, you understand.)
2.  Finish the baby blanket I've spent over a month working on. (Okay, it's not the only thing I've been doing for the past month+...again, if you know me...)
3.  Get my other in-progress projects organized better and closer to finished.
4.  Learn how to do a Crochet Along.
5.  Blog my progress and learn more about blogging and CAL in the process.

Now let's see if I can figure out how to post the banner on my blog...(probably not, if this morning's stupidity is any indicator...)

Okay, 6. Figure out how to put the banner on my blog...*sheepish grin #2* 

If the banner doesn't take you there, maybe this will...