Wool on Sunday...

I thought I'd write about a particular blanket that I made recently out of donated squares. My part in the story of this knee rug starts quite a few months ago when a friend messaged me from an Op Shop that she was visiting. There was a bag of small crocheted squares for sale and she wondered if they could be useful for K4BN.

The squares were about 5 inches square and were probably 8 ply yarn (wool) crocheted with a 3 or 3.5 hook.

M bought the bag of squares and we organised to meet up; I would give her some brightly coloured bed sheets which had been 'victims' in my latest linen cupboard 'purge' and she would give me the bag of squares. ( M uses the fabric to line children's play capes which she makes for a charity)

Some of the squares had been joined so I decided not to try crocheting around each square to make it bigger. Instead I joined most of them into a 6x6 square. I don't have much in the browns/oranges in my yarn stash but I found enough to sew the rest of the squares up. Then I crocheted around that big square; the first few rounds, getting the tension right, ready for the rest of the rounds. 

The deep cream band is actually a big ball of lemon baby yarn mixed with a few balls of white 3 ply baby yarn. The outer border is a few balls of a fluffy yarn I bought on EBay ages ago. When I first opened that parcel of yarn, the yellow looked different to the EBay photos...to me in 'real life' it looked like what you might see in a baby's nappy! But I tried it out on this knee rug and it actually looked alright! 

And then...while I was recuperating, I found sorting through cupboards and storage boxes rather therapeutic, And the bonus was, finding 'stuff'. One thing I came across was a big ball of orange wool. So....

Another border! And this was the final version that got handed over to K4BN last week. I'm chuffed, because no money was spent...everything came from oddments in the stash. ( and of course the $10 that my friend spent on the squares put money into a local op shop charity)
I'm linking with Janine's Wool on Sunday once again. This week, Janine writes about those 'ends' as she finishes off her beautiful blanket.

A bit more of Huntington Beach...including some shopping.

DH's cousin took us to some of her favourite places along the beachfront at Huntington Beach.

Here we are standing on a rock wall where A often takes photos of surfers and people fishing from the rocks...

Looking out to sea, the oil wells in the distance. Huntington Beach is now a classy neighbourhood but its origins were as an oil town.

We walked along the beach; that's a lifeguard lookout tower behind us.

I noticed these large cement bowl-shaped structures on the beach...

With their warning that they may be hot...

These structures stretched in a line up the beachfront. They were, of course, fire pits. So it must occasionally get cold in California.

On another day we went shopping. Through the power of Google, DH had discovered that there was a sporting goods shop called Dick's at HB. (It's a chain of stores which we had noticed on the east coast on our 2011 US holiday) So one morning A took us out to find the store that DH really wanted to look through... 

Well! You wouldn't believe it, but in the same shopping precinct there was a Michaels store! So A and I went looking through that store while DH checked out Dick's. 

The first thing I noticed was the displays for Autumn/Fall decorations. 

Then A decided we should have some fun...it's legendary in the family, a story about another one of DH's cousins who was visiting Cousin A from Australia. This cousin convinced A that they should be at the door of the Michaels store by 5.30am to be first in line grab the bargains at a big sale. And when the store opened, this cousin bought up big and posted a number of parcels of the sale items back to Brisbane!

So A took these staged photos of me for the purpose of posting the pics on Facebook and tagging the other cousin...

Only staged...I didn't buy any of these items! lol

Then I checked out the yarns in Michaels...

There was row after row, shelf after shelf, just filled with yarns!!

And there even 'Ginormous' balls of yarn!!

I 'posed' this one to give an idea of how big it was! lol

And no! I didn't buy a Ginormous ball; I bought a much smaller ball of variegated yarn and some scrapbooking flowers that I will use to make gift tags. But I certainly had lots of fun looking!
In the meantime, DH bought a polo shirt at Dick's.
After that, on the way home, A took us to a suburban street in HB to show us a 'celebrity' house. (DH and I had chosen not to do a 'celebrity homes' tour in Hollywood)

Apparently this house is owned by former porn star Jenna Jameson. Some sources suggest she paid $2 million for the house. So a local 'celeb' apparently!

A blog that I love to read...

I discovered Sue Niven's blog, I Purr-Furr to Craft, last year when she and I had commented on a blog post of a fellow blogger. I started following Sue's blog via email and soon realised that I had found another person who loves to make things for charity.
Sue supports a number of charity groups and has quite a phenomenal output of sewing, quilting and general craft projects. The sidebar of Sue's blog shows 3 of the charities which she supports by sewing items, Aussie Hero Quilts, Angels for the Forgotten, Dress a Girl Around the World; Australia.

Sue's blog is also the most amazing resource for fellow craft bloggers...Sue shares links to some great sites, especially ones which offer free patterns. I've bookmarked so many useful sites that Sue has suggested.
In the latter part of last year Sue wrote some posts showing the progress as she sewed some Softies' toys for charity. I had quite a bit of polar fleece type fabric which was just sitting in plastic crates, doing absolutely nothing. I asked Sue if she could use it for her toys and she said yes! So I packaged up a selection and posted it to her...
One post pak box 'stuffed' with fleecy...

Sue took a photo of the contents...

 The first 'softie' off the 'assembly line :-) Love it! It's so cute!

Here are some more cats; 3 cut out ready to sew and one who is just waiting for the stuffing!

Quite a little gang of those cute cats!

Then late last week that same post pak box arrived on my veranda. It was from Sue and look what was inside it that 'recycled' box!
All these beautiful coloured yarns...what a lovely surprise and how generous a gesture.

I took out the first layer and there are still heaps underneath...

I am going to be able to share the yarn with ladies from K4BN and before long there will be beanies, fingerless gloves, children's jumpers and lots of  blankets all knitted/crocheted up ready to hand out to the needy.
If you haven't visited Sue's blog before, it's well worth a visit! And if you like/love cats, there are some lovely photos of Sue's cats too!

What if ?...

If I didn't enjoy crafting with fabrics and yarns (and have enormous fabric and yarn stashes)

would my spare bedrooms look like this do you think???

This was the second bedroom in the unit we rented last week...

 No clutter...

Remember how I tidied up bedroom#2 for DsD1 and Dan's visit in the recent school holidays???

Floor visible, and only the doona on top of the bed....

 On one wall are the shelves, but you can see a glimpse of the big striped bags filled with yarns on top of the shelves too unfortunately! lol

Yesterday my friend came over with 3 HUGE bags of fabrics and 1 filled with yarns that one of her scrapbooking friends had given her, for me to hand on. Today (Monday) I started sorting out the fabrics. One pile of mainly quilting cottons and children's designs for Sunshine Linus, another pile for Morag at Sisters of Stitch who collects fabrics for a Refugee Ladies' sewing group that she helps with, another pile for some ladies at the Zillmere Knit and Natter who make children's clothing and quilts for K4BN and one more pile for some ladies at the Scarborough Knit and Natter who also make children's clothes for K4BN. So I guess my messy second bedroom can be viewed as a 'Distribution centre' at the moment.

Dreadful mess isn't it? Oh dear...such a shame! lol (I still haven't removed the traces of the stickers that were put on the shelves by the girls when they were a lot younger) 

The bag of yarn will naturally go to K4BN as well, so theoretically all of this should be moved out in the near future.