Years since I crocheted

It's pouring outside today, our first really steady rain of the spring. It's supposed to rain for the rest of the week and our temperatures are dopping from our early summer back into mid spring. I actually love rain, the feel, smell, and look of everything shiny and wet, my only complaint is the wet dog smell that inhabits the house when the hording four come running in. This beautiful tulip was part of a bulb garden my parents sent us for Easter. I am hoping to plant the bulbs in mid May and with luck should have daffodils, tulips and hyachinths blooming next spring.

The supplies I mailed to Arizona on Monday for the orphanage in Mozambique. I was amazed how much I could actually get in a quart size ziploc bag. Two wash cloths, soap, stickers, lip balm toothbrush, dental floss, bandaids, pencils, eraser and sharpener, crayons, kleenex, stickers and gum.

For the last week I have been working on this very sweet crocheted baby blanket. The pattern is created by Alicia Paulson and is kindly offered for free on her blog http://www.rosylittlethings.typepad.com/. I had the organic cotton in my stash, and it really was fun to crochet again after so many years. I think the last time I crocheted was twenty years ago when James was a baby. I had to reteach myself how to read a crochet pattern and did a quick tutorial on the various stitches.

My edging is not the one from the pattern, I tried but I couldn't get it to look quite right, so I changed it and went for a ruffle.

I had the brown silk ribbon in the ribbon chest, I think it's just a little wide and am going to change it for something thinner but I was happen to know that five yards should do the trick.

While I did enjoy crocheting it will never take the place of knitting in my heart. The post man brought the next installment in the Rocking Sock Club, I thought I enjoyed the yarn in the first installment but this one has surpassed that joy. I have really become an avid sock knitter, I never thought I would be, there is just something about the process that I really enjoy, the sum of the parts that make up the whole never seems to get old.

I am off to Boulder next week to see James, my first visit to his new home, I am really looking forward to spending time with him. I am only going for four days, but have plans on seeing as much as possible. Bill is staying home in charge of the wild beasts that allow us to inhabit their world. We are both planning on going out for Thanksgiving in November, Bill is already planning on making that one a skiing holiday.