Time to Think Christmas

If you're at all a knitter and crocheter like me (read: slooooooow) then you have to start prepping very early for all your Christmas gift knitting and crocheting.  This year, I've added to my knit list a Christmas ornament because I've entered in the New Zealand Handmade Christmas Ornament Swap!  It's open to anyone in the world, and you just have to hand make a Christmassy decoration.  Join in, and you may end up with an original by me!

101 Blog Posts!

I missed the milestone of the previous post being my 100th!  Oh well, 101 is just a cool to commemorate.

I'll do it in style, with a new finished item.  Before I left the States almost 2 years ago, I bought a few crochet books to bring with me, as I was just getting into it, and I wasn't sure what the selection would be like when I got her.  I needn't have worried, as there's plenty to choose from at the local library.  But I'm still glad I got them.  Once of my purchases was Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution.  It's got lots of cute patterns.  I've been wanting to make those fishnet thigh highs on the cover for awhile, but first I had to go for something a bit less fussy.  I decided on the Circle Motif Rug.

Once I had decided I must make myself this run, I needed yarn.  Wool yarn here in New Zealand is plentiful, but almost none of the brands available in the States are sold here.  So I'd have to find a close match.  No problem, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually used the yarn called for in the pattern.  But I came across the problem that I couldn't find any bulky or chunky weight yarn.  At all.  I checked every yarn store in Napier and Hastings.  I even asked at all of them, and none of them were aware of any heavy weight yarns.  There are only 4 stores, so it wasn't too big a quest, but it did end in failure at first.  So I gave up.  I started other projects.  I forgot about the rug.

Then one day I was at JJ's Crafts in Greenmeadows looking for buttons for one of the baby sweaters I knit.  And out front in a basket was a HUGE skein of really thick yarn with the sign "Rug Wool - $10".  It wasn't the colour I wanted, but I thought it would have to do, as the chances of finding similar wool again was slight.

The skein was a bit of a big tangled mess, but I managed to get it into a ball.  A big ball.

Here it is next to my puppy for scale.  Okay, yes.  He's a small dog.  But that's still a big ball.

Well, here's the boy sitting on the finished rug!  I think he may end up adopting it for himself, despite the fact that I made it for the back door step.