Not so much stashdown happened last week. I found myself busy working on taxes, and update and a bunch of household/family stuff.

I don’t know if this week will be much different. Still I got 12 ounces of singles done:

The last 4 ounces of BFL singles in Juniper.
4 ounces of BFL that will plied, it was a failed Nova Scotia but I really liked it so I kept it. I have a pound of it.
2 more bobbins of the linen wool

I did manage to squeak in some knitting and crochet time.
Another potholder (Flower Hot Pad):

An Anne Crochet scarf and I finished a sweater for publication. It’s the second one in the pattern and it will be self published.

Details and new pattern coming soon.

Yesterday I started a couple more projects:

Another Anne Scarf and some mitts for a friend.

Some of you probably knew that. Some of you are probably thinking the wrong thing. Some of you still may be right.

Several things have gotten me hooked back into crochet lately. Bridget’s lovely crocheting, Adrian’s, and Stacie’s potholders…ok, the Potholder swap in general, and 9goingon20 jumping into it full force.

This is her first scarf that she finished the following morning and already has another half done.

When we got her that gawdawful pink fuzzy stuff, I bought a bucket of Cotton and started in….

One potholder down. It has a solid back, I just love the granny squares so much I had to. But it is ugly so no more granny square potholders in fat yarns.

It wouldn’t be bad if it had stopped there. Truth be known, the reason I had to buy a bucket of Peaches and Cream cotton was that my order of Sonata wasn’t in yet. It is now:

And there may be another order coming for a sweater I have dreamed up to do in fingering weight yarn. We’ll see if my current crochet “phase” passes before I finish. I’ve downloaded a ton of crochet patterns and we’ll be going at it til I get sick of it or am drowning in potholders, which ever comes first.

My mop and I have had a hate like relationship. I hate to clean, I hate my mop, but I like a clean floor. Every few months I’ve been getting a new mop in the hopes that I’ll end up with a clean floor. Yes, I know I need to use the mop…

The mops have all been woefully inadequate. They don’t work well, they seem to just be vehicles to sludge dirty water around on the floor. Then covered in dog hair so fast and it doesn’t want to come off. My dog must have some kind of magical hair, it sticks in and stays. Then I have to try to find a new replacement head but in that time, the manufacturers have decided to discontinue the mop or I have to special order the head because stores are only carrying the full mop assembly.

I don’t enjoy cleaning enough to put up with this. Ok, I don’t enjoy cleaning at all!

Then I read This post at Bron’s Blog. She has a Wet Jet and made a pad for it. It was one of those slapping the forehead kind of moments for me. I never wanted to buy a wet jet. You buy all those pads and throw them away, mother nature weeps… The bottles of cleaner I can refill, that wasn’t a problem, it was the pads. Really, how well can a little paper pad do anyway?

Thanks to Bron, I ran out, bought a wet jet and that night crocheted a little pad for it.

It was incredibly fast to crochet with some cheap kitchen cotton. It works like a dream! Bron is a genius!

If you want to make one too, I just crocheted til it was big enough and then I made a pocket on one side so it went over the end. There are little velcro bits on the bottom that hold it, but it felt like it needed a little pocket. I have some serious scrubbing to do and the pocket makes me feel secure. The side without it stays well too but I’ll probably make a pocket on that side. It was just more awkward because it has that giant “scrubber” thing.

I’ll be making a few more for me and for my Mom. Hopefully this will be the last mop thing I’ll need to own.

I don’t actually get to work on crochet much since I usually have a ton of other projects going. Lately those projects have been giving me no love and making me feel scattered. I’ve turned to crochet to give me something different to do. I have a long suffering project from Happy Hooker. It’s the project “Short and Sweet”.

Unfortunately I think I’ll need to frog it. The way the sizing is, I fit somewhere in between. I can’t really fake it because the motifs are huge. I’m going to frog this and find a different yarn with a different gauge so I can make the top fit better.

With that project out, I picked up all my crochet books and finally my IK Crochet from this past fall. I found just the project that I needed to do. The Mesh Peplum Cardi Blouse. I went to the stash for the right yarn. I think what I like about crochet the most is that I’m happy using cotton in crochet where I’m not in knitting. I can have a good spring cardi if I crochet it in cotton.

I didn’t let the Peplum bother me on this sweater. I guarantee it won’t have one unless I miraculously become a stick like the model. Right, so this sweater will have no peplum. I think crochet is even easier to modify than knitting. But not doing a peplum is really easy, I just keep crocheting straight. Right now I’m only through 1/3rd of the collar. My hands started to hurt with the hook I was using. I used this as an excuse to get some nice hand made ones from Etsy.

The hooks came in and as a test, I crocheted a little square the other night for Elisa’s Dad.

You can see one of the new hooks too. They really do help keep me from having hand aches. I plan to buy more. If any of you crocheters out there have another good source for hooks, let me know.