Wow, I have totally neglected my forum of release for far too long!

Things have been rather crazy around here these last few months. I hit a personal road block with my crafting until recently, and life just completely took over while I wasn't looking.

In July, my husband was offered and accepted a job 900 miles away from where we were living. He had 3 weeks to pack up his belongings and hit the road. We managed to find him a great room for rent close to his new job, and he lived there for a month and a half until we rented a  house. I stayed behind, working at my job to keep the bills paid and worked on gettign the house ready for sale. We managed to get super lucky and had an accepted offer in just 6 weeks! We didn't get as much as we hoped, but I think we'll be able to cover pretty much all of our costs without having to find some extra funds. We close on the house on September 25 and have to be out by the 27th!

My husband will be returnng to town for the first time on the 25th to handle getting the giganti-U-Haul packed, sign  his name for the closing, and then drive the truck, my car and myself to our new home where hopefully our friends in the area will be willing to drive the hour and a half to help us unload!

As of yet, I haven't found employment in the area, but things are starting to pick up. I've had several promising phone interviews, I've gotten a call back about a part-time opportunity close to home, and I have more phone interviews scheduled. There's still even an opportunity to work part-time for a small period doing my current position. I'm beginning to worry less about the funding issues of our new life.

In an attempt to avoid packing, I've started crocheting again. I've made a few baby items for a new friend who is expecting, and then I started working on some hats and leukemia awareness ribbons to help raise money for the Light the Night walk in my town to support the Leukemia and Lymhoma Society. Some friends and I are trying to raise $500 as our group goal, and our captain already has close to $300! I'm lagging behind with only $25! If you're interested in donating, visit my page at http://pages.lightthenight.org/msc/Memphis09/JTate or find out more about Light the Night on their website, http://lightthenight.org/. The page may load slowly due to a lot of traffic on the servers, but the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society will appreciate your patience!

I'm considering making some changes to the site, so bare with me if things disappear. I'll be back at some point, I promise!

I grabbed a few quick pics of the rug I'm working on for my mom. It's about 27 inches from fringe to fringe and currently about 9 inches wide. I was unable to bring home the yarn I bought in Chicago because it wouldn't fit in my suitcase, but it's basic yarn so for less than $10 I picked up another skein of each color so that I could continue working on it while waiting for the previous purchased yarn to arrive in the mail. It's quite impressive what yarn can do!!

Of course, it would have to be the day that I complain about not getting anything that I check my mail to find information from the Craft Yarn Council about the crochet training program. It's not a whole lot of information, but it's got a little bit about what all you have to do for the first two levels. It's not that much different than what you can find elsewhere by way of info, but it's enough.

My parents had given me some money for my birthday last month, and I was going to use part of that to sign up for this. Instead, I used it all to surprise my mom in Chicago for Mother's Day. Totall worth it, but I'm going to have to wait until at least Friday to determine if I'm ready yet. I really should convince myself to take a shot at the TKGA Master Knitter program hat again, though, before starting another correspondance course. Someone make me, please!!

It's been two weeks since I sent in my request for info to the Craft Yarn Councel on teaching crochet. I'm getting annoyed. I'm wondering if I should send it in again without trying to put my TKGA member number on a crochet info request! Haha!

I went to visit my mom for Mother's Day, a big surprise for her. We spent most of the weekend running around shopping for clothes and other random things. She was looking for fabric to recover her outdoor furniture, and while she was busy, I meandered over to the yarn in one of the stores. I wound up flipping through a book on crocheting rugs. We didn't get anything at that store cause it was kind of a dump, but later in the day I started thinking I really wanted to try to make a rug! I had my mom run me by a different store on the way home and picked up things to make her a crochet rug. My stepfather thought it would be stupid until he saw it starting to come together. The most unfortunate part is that it requires 3 strands of yarn to crochet with which means 3 balls of each color. We picked 3 colors. Even with the small balls of yarn, there was no way I could fit any of it in my suitcase! I had to have some new clothes shipped back anyway, but that means the yarn won't be here for a week! I'm buying more, but only one skein each, and I'll make lengths for it so I can still work on it while I wait.

I finally got things figured out with the lace bottom for the crochet tank top, thanks to writing it out here, and things finished up pretty easily. I put a bright turquoise shirt on the dress dummy I have since it's pink and the top was pink. It looks rather...bizarre. I was going to try to take better pictures, but it's been a week and I haven't.

For reference, here's a link to the pattern: DROPS Crochet top with stripes in Paris (although I didn't do stripes or use Paris!)

Last night, I started a tank top in pink for a friend. It's a DROPS patter than I found on Ravelry. I've been avoiding DROPS like the black plague, mostly because so much of their stuff looks like it was stolen from the 80s, but I thought this one was actually cute. The bust was quite easy, but I struggled with getting more than two rows in to the belly area. I see pictures of people who completed it, so maybe I'm just missing something.

The pattern is converted from scandinavian to british english style. Now that I'm looking at a comparison, I think it's saying that when a british pattern calls for a double crochet, it really wants you to single crochet. I thin kI'm slithly less confused and even more confused at the same time! I was doing treble crochets as called for on the bust, but it looked too loose so I undid it all and used double crochets. Now, I think this is telling me that that was what I really was supposed to do!

The body of the top, though, just one part (so far) has me really confused. It says to "3 ch, 1 tr in the first of the 3 ch just crochet, skip 2 sts, 1 dc in next st." In american crochet, that is "3 ch, 1 dc in the first of the 3 ch just crochet, skip 2 sts, 1 sc in next st" but that still doesn't help me get the "into the first of the 3 ch just crochet" bit. I know at least part of what I was doing wrong, mostly with the wrong stitches. It might be a little easier with the proper stitches, emphasis on MIGHT. My interpretation of this is tha tI need to chain 3, double crochet into the chain at some point and then single crochet into the previous row after skipping two spaces. Then, I guess on the next row, I would be working in the loop of the double crochet and the chain when it says to work in the top of the loop.

I guess trying to write things down can help you make sense of them all, not that I can check any of that without having my crochet here with me!

Now, last night, I double crocheted into the previous row, made a chain three, trible crocheted into the chain and double crocheted it back to the previous row. Then, on my next row, I couldn't figure out where in the chain/treble/loop I was spposed to actually work. Trying to work inthe little triangle that was created by the treble crochet cause things to puff strangely or twist upside down, but my guess now is that a lot of that was related to using the wrong stitches becasue I wasn't paying attention.

I was going to attempt to use a different lace pattern for the body. I'd already started a fairly solid row around and attached the body in the round instead of working back and forth to leave a slit for buttons. I don't suppose that will really make much of a difference in the end, though.

I guess this means I'll have pictures tonight. Yay pictures!