Faith, Hope, Love Pillows

I recently rearranged furniture and started working on making the color schemes of someone else's furniture more palatable to my tastes. (We're currently filling in at a church with a fully-furnished parsonage, so the color schemes came a bit pre-programmed, at least with the upholstered furniture.)

I had seen pillows with words knit into them and really liked them. Most of the patterns weren't free, so I decided to design my own. They aren't difficult to design, if you've done much colorwork at all.



After I finished them, my husband commented on how perfect they would be for his older sister, who is like a second mom to him. They are the names of her daughters, except she didn't get the third daughter. ;)

Well, they were easy enough to make, so these went to his sister. Fortunately, the color scheme works with her living room, too.

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God provides a bat bag.

I enjoy blogging about these things. I hope you enjoy them, too!

My son went to church youth camp for the first time this year. He loved it! When he came back, he had a list of things that he'd like to have for next year. (He knows I like advance warning so I can look for good deals.)

One of the things he wanted was a bat bag. I'm not a sports type, so I took him to our local sports store so I knew what we were looking for. I know I'm out of touch with regular prices because we shop so much at thrift stores, but I was still shocked at the $40 price tag. I told him we'd look at thrift stores, and our community yard sales were coming up, too.

Well, a week later we were shopping at the community yard sales mid-afternoon when he found a bat bag (the exact brand and style he wanted) in excellent condition. There wasn't a price on it. When we asked, the lady said we could have it for FREE!



We took it home and cleaned it up just a bit, and now that's one less thing to find for youth camp next year.

God is good!

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The beginnings of my bullet journal

I was recently introduced to the concept of bullet journaling. As someone who hasn't found her "perfect planner" since leaving the workforce to marry and have children, I was pretty excited at the thought of customizing one to perfectly fit my lifestyle.

I *wasn't* so sure about how decorative some of the journals are getting these days. I enjoy creating, but I'm not an artist. That's the beauty of bullet journaling, though. You can do it how you want to.

So, in typical "me" fashion, I researched tons of layouts, page ideas, and even a few doodles. In the process, I managed to spam my Facebook friends with over 80 pins to a new Pinterest board dedicated to bullet journaling. (Lesson learned: Figure out what those icons mean before pinning 80+ ideas. I think it came pre-programmed to post everything on Facebook, which is really annoying.)

But after a day's research, I knew what I wanted and had a general idea of what layout would work best for me.

For starters, I broke the cardinal rule of bullet journaling: I went loose-leaf. I just can't bear to have reference pages in anything but alphabetical order, and I certainly couldn't bear to have them interspersed with weekly and monthly pages. I put my list-style pages in the back and only use one side of the page (unless the ideas spill over onto the back). This way, I can rearrange them as I get new pages/lists that I want to keep track of.

My second deviation came in the form of pencil - for the moment. Until I know what works well for me, I like to have the freedom to erase what isnt working and redesign it. (I'll probably design the next set of pages in pen, since this layout seems to be a good fit. That's when I'll probably add in more color, too.)

So, here is my monthly page for July:



I took pictures before I added too much personal information. I have added quite a bit already.

I have more room for habits, but I don't want to focus on too many at once. These are the main habits.I want to track for now, and I'll add more as I feel comfortable with it.

I realized that I am a slightly visual person, so I really needed to see the days like a traditional calendar (top left). However, I'm a list-maker at heart, so adding appointments/details in list format (across the bottom) works best for me. Now I have the best of both worlds.

I was surprised at how easy it was to fancy it up a bit with the lettering and a few artistic touches. As I told my daughter, I can copy almost anything. I'm not so good with doodling or drawing straight out of my head.

The next page is a combination gratitude journal/memory log. I plan to write something for each day. I need to catch up on scrapbooks at some point, and this may help jog my memory.



My last page (for now) is my weekly page:



I am trying to drink more water instead of tea, so that's what the numbered boxes are about in the daily section.

I plan to write a few details or thoughts about each day in the log section. This is more in-depth than the gratitude log.

So, that's about it for now. I may share more as I go along.

If I've piqued your interest, I recommend searching Pinterest for "bullet journal" and/or "bujo" (the shortened version people seem to use on Instagram and such). There is also a website dedicated to the original, very plain and basic concept at www.bulletjournal.com. I found a combination of the two to be most helpful for me.

Do you bullet journal? If so, I'd love a link to yours in the comments!

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Pineapple Doily #2

So far I've only made 2 pineapple dollies from this ball of thread. I love them both. (And I have enough thread left to do at least one more.)



This one is hanging out on top my dresser now.

The funny thing is that it used to take me at least a week to finish one of these. I finished both of these in one day (each). Either I've learned to crochet faster, or I can keep at it for longer stretches. Maybe it's a combination of both.

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Pineapple Lace Crochet Doily #1

It's been about 20 years since I've done thread crochet. I recently bought a ball to make some small doilies for the church platform where we currently pastor. I had TONS of it leftover, so I decided to make some pineapple doilies with the remainder.



My all-time favorite lace crochet design is the pineapple. I had forgotten just how much I like it!

This one has taken up residence in our travel trailer.

P.S. I think I may have finally figured out a way to post here from my phone. Hopefully this will allow me to post on a regular basis again.

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Lacey Raglan Sweater: My Experiment with Reverse-Engineering

I saw a sweater pattern that was pretty, but I couldn't justify buying it at the moment. It was a pretty basic pattern, and they were charging a good bit for a basic pattern. So I decided to try my hand at reverse-engineering it. It was a basic raglan sweater with a lace design that starts at the center front and increases diagonally until it meets in the back.



I found the lace pattern that they used in the original pattern, but I found an even prettier one, too. It's very similar, but I liked the looks of it better. It's called Openwork Diamonds and can be found at www.knittingstitchpatterns.com.



It was pretty easy, once I figured out how to diagonally increase the lace design. (I was under a lot of stress at the time from a non-knitting-related incident, so it took me a lot longer than it should have to figure that out. I think it was several days.)



I like how I can add a colored tank top under the sweater to add a bit of color to my outfit.

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Falling Leaves Cardigan

I've been getting braver with my knitting lately. I've begun to look at sweater patterns and think of how I'd like to change them to make them perfect for my tastes. Usually a pattern has at least one feature that I'd like to change.

For this particular sweater (Falling Leaves pattern, available free on Ravelry), the yoke was knit in garter stitch. I HATE garter stitch. I have no idea why, except maybe because it looks like the sweater is inside-out. At any rate, I loved the lace detail but I knew I'd never wear it if I did the top in garter stitch. So I decided to change it to stockinette stitch, add ribbing at the top and bottom, add button bands afterward, and lengthen the sleeves. Maybe I came up with a completely new sweater, now that I look at all of those changes ...



The trouble is that garter stitch and stockinette stitch have completely different gauges. I got 8 rows to an inch instead of the 11 that the pattern called for. I did some math and adjusted it accordingly ... and it worked! Really, math is your best friend as a knitter. It's how I can get a perfectly-fitted sweater, instead of an ill-fitted one (like storebought ones usually are on me).



This one is done now, once I find buttons ...

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