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Good Bye to NatCroMo 2017

March 31, 2017Celebrating, Latest News, NatCroMo3 Comments

Wow! What a month. I had some grand plans for NatCroMo and some came together, others…not so much. 2017 seems determined to keep me on my toes with surprises around every corner. Thanks to all my wonderful friends and family I think I’ll continue to meet the challenges, I definitely couldn’t do it alone. I am so grateful for all the kind messages and the folks that took a bit of my burden from my shoulders.

I had wanted to post on the blog every day of this month. Despite all the madness, I got pretty darn close to success. The purple stars above are the days I posted. I only missed 3. I would be interested to know what you all thought of it.

Experiencing it from my side of the computer it was really a challenge. The more time I spend working on the blog the less time I have to develop crochet designs, work on exciting art/craft projects or create new classes. So I think I am going to stick to my 2 times a week schedule. That is usually challenge enough. I still may do a solid month of blogging here and there, but I’ll hopefully plan it out ahead of time better.

I thought I would end NatCroMo with a re-vamped Stitch Chart of my Crochet Love heart. You can find the original pattern for the first 2 rounds on my blog post here, and the border round is in my blog post from this February here.

How did everyone’s crochet month go? Did you learn something new about your yarn art? Maybe this was the year that you learned to crochet, if so, a big welcome to you. I hope whatever your crochet status you had a month that gave you a bit of time to celebrate playing with hook and yarn.

We are driving again today, so I’ll be putting in some serious crochet time. Road trips are a great time for me to crochet. At least while I have daylight.

Today I was clever and also packed a booklight for crocheting after dark. We’ll see if that works out for me. Either way, it seems an appropriate way to end NatCroMo. Be sure to stop by regularly and see what new crochet and crafting fun I have for you.

Pet the yarn and hug your loved ones.

Oh my Goodness!!!

March 30, 2017August 8, 2021Latest News, Needle FeltingLeave a Comment

Life is still being crazy. Yesterday got away from me without a chance to do a blog post at all. It’s been a near thing for today.

Yesterday, the little bit of working time was actually spent writing class proposals for the Scotts Bluff Valley Fiber Arts Festival. I’ll be teaching there again this coming September. Still in the process of figuring out which classes I’ll be teaching.

Some of the classes I’m offering to the education committee are crochet, but I am also developing some needle-felting classes. In aid of that I was needle-felting pieces to photograph yesterday.

Today I got quite a bit of crochet time in while we visited with family. This morning was Baba’s funeral service. It was very nice and my kids each lit a candle for their Baba as part of the service.

Nana and my sister-in-law had created a wonderful collage of Baba for the service as well. The large central photo was this one you’ve seen already.

It was good to be with all the family and friends who loved Baba, and to share stories and our memories of our time with a very dear and special man. There were tears, laughter and lots of hugs. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our mortality to recall how special all our loved ones are to us.

Tomorrow we will be back on the road, I’ll be crocheting in the car again. I’m hoping to have a least one of my projects I brought along finished before I make it back to the mountain. Looks like we will be headed back to some real winter weather again.

My house-sitter says we had about a foot of snow the other day and that the plow blocked the end of our driveway when they cleared the roads. Of course the weather took a snowy turn, I didn’t pack my big coat or my snow boots for this trip.

Time out to Color

March 21, 2017March 21, 2017Creativity, Humor, Latest News6 Comments

Today was a very busy day. Sadly there was not much crochet in it. There was yarn, the sorting of and moving of, but no yarn with hook action. Sometimes in the life of a crochet designer and busy mom, the background grunt-work has to take over a day. Even if that day is during National Crochet Month.

I took a little time to relax this evening though and play. Instead of hook and yarn I decided to play with color pencils and my lovely Franklin Habit book “I Dream of Yarn”. This was my first time actually coloring in it. I’ve sat down with it numerous times since acquiring it, just looking at all the lovely drawings has been happy making for me.

But to be honest I have been a bit afraid to put color to them because then they would be done. Or, gasp, I might “ruin” them. Yup, even I have that nasty little voice sometimes that beats me up and tells me I’ll do it “wrong”. Today I told the little voice to pack her bags and go on a long trip. With everything that has been going on for me and my family the past month I needed some soothing coloring time with my buddy Franklin.

I decided to start with this wonderful drawing of lots of people knitting and crocheting. It reminded me a bit of crochet motifs with just the shaping of it, and the wonderful support I have from other yarnie friends from all around the world.

I think this picture will end up being extremely colorful, I want to make each of the little people have different color garments and projects.

If you haven’t gotten into the whole adult coloring book scene I understand. I haven’t been doing a lot of it, I usually want to draw my own pictures to color. But there is something very relaxing about taking a half hour to color a picture that is already there. I enjoy making color choices and playing with how I will texture and shade my colors.

Of course, when the drawings are fun fantastical versions of Franklin’s dreams of yarn (that really could be mine as well, though mine would have loads more crochet hooks) it is even more fun. Afterall, yarn is our common thread.

Meet Collette

March 18, 2017Creativity, Latest News1 Comment

This is Collette. I actually purchased her awhile back, but our weather had been so cold and snowy I couldn’t get outside to photograph her. After the past weeks 60-70F temperatures I finally got outside and did a photo shoot with her. She is going to be my model for a number of my M2H Designs patterns, so you will be seeing her a lot.

This is just a quick post today. But I wanted to remind you that you have until 8 p.m. Mountain Time (Denver, Colorado) to enter the drawing to win an E-book version of Karen Whooley’s new shawl book, “A Garden of Shawls”. Hop on over to my review of the book and comment to get your name in the drawing, I’ll be announcing the winner on my Monday March 20th post.

Goodbye Baba, We Love You.

March 16, 2017February 4, 2020In Memory, Latest News3 Comments

A warm thank you to all my friends and readers that have sent my family and I well wishes and prayers. It has been a hard week, but today Baba passed peacefully from life. My husband, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law were all with him.

Baba as Best Man with Linc and his Groomsmen

I have spent a little time each day this week looking at photos from over the years and remembering what a blessing Baba was to my life and that of my children. I thought I would share a few of them with you. The photo above was taken at Linc and I’s wedding in June 1998. Baba was Linc’s Best Man, though I was still calling him “Bob” at that time.

Bob loved being a grandfather. I’m so happy I caught some of the funny and sweet moments of him with the kids when they were tiny. They don’t remember these moments, but they love the photos too.

This was a photo of Bob with his dog, Cindy. She was a stray that went thru quite a tough time before she found Bob and my mother-in-law.

This photo was taken the same day as the one with Cindy. We were all in our backyard building a play-set for the kids. This was the day that Bob became Baba. My oldest named him Baba that day and Bob liked it so much that from that day onward he was Baba for his grandkids.

Funny thing is, many months later, we found out that “Baba” is the word for father or grandfather in Turkey. My mother-in-law was Nana from the moment the first baby arrived, but Bob had just been “grandpa” until then. From that point onward they were Nana & Baba and the 2 of the most important people in my children’s lives.

Thank you Baba for all the wonderful memories and all your love. We love you and will miss you.

Life keeps Rolling Along

March 11, 2017February 4, 2020Latest News4 Comments

I had hoped to share photos of my finished latest PWT shawlette. Unfortunately it isn’t finished. I have quite a bit of work done on it and I’ll share about that tomorrow.

The Playing with Triangles class went great today, but about an hour into it I got a text from my husband. My father-in-law, Bob aka Baba, has not been doing well the last few months. He has been battling cancer and some other major health issues for the past couple of years. About 2 weeks ago he was released from the hospital and the doctors told us there wasn’t anything further they could do to help him. So he was set up with in-home hospice care.

Today was the call that we were not looking forward to. The text from my husband was that he was heading to the airport to fly back to Ohio to be with his mom and dad. I just got another text from my husband a few minutes ago and he is with his dad. I’m really glad they will get to say good-bye and that my dear father-in-law is surrounded by people who love him. Both my husband and my sister-in-law are there with him.

My kids and I talked this evening about how much we love Baba and remembered all the great times we have spent with him. I’m going to take a beat to breathe and be with my family. I may not have a post for you all tomorrow, but I’ll be back with a new post on Monday.

Remember to tell your loved ones how dear they are to you, you never know when the chance will be gone.

Notice Something New?

March 7, 2017Crochet, Latest News2 Comments

After a lot of thinking about it and talking with some friends I decided it was time to change the name at the top of the page for my blog. “Two Hands Healing and Creative Arts” is rather long and diffuse. Instead my blog will simply be “Mamas2Hands” from now on. It is in keeping with my URL, which is mamas2hands.com. “Two Hands Healing and Creative Arts” will remain my primary company name.

I’ll be making some other changes over the next 3 months as I re-align my business with my goals for 2017 and onward. We will talk more about that next month. For now, it’s time to continue enjoy crocheting and NatCroMo.

Today I spent my morning with my good friend Val crocheting. She is making a bunch of hats, some for little kids and some for American Girl Dolls. I was working on a new hat design. It’s still in the early stages, but I’ll share more about it once I have it all worked out.

I chose to work this preliminary hat in some Premier Yarns Deborah Norville Collection “Everyday Worsted”. It’s a nice anti-pill yarn so holds up to the repeated frogging that is often part of working out a design. Of course, having prepared for lots of frogging, I ended up getting the stitches right the first time. I think that might be a corollary to the rule about “Carry an umbrella and it doesn’t rain”.

Another Hat for Thing 2

March 3, 2017Creativity, Crochet, Latest News, NatCroMoLeave a Comment

One of my crochet traditions is making hats for my family. A couple of years ago I realized that my husband and sons all considered hats for Christmas part of our holiday traditions. This year I made a hat for my husband for Christmas using a cake of Premier Yarns’ “Sweet Roll”. But I didn’t make hats for the boys. I had made a hat for Thing 1 at the start of the school year that he was still happy with and Thing 2 had his hat from the previous Christmas that he liked.

The other day Thing 2 asked me if I had seen his hat. We looked all over the house and even checked in the cars, but it was nowhere to be found. He checked in the Lost & Found at school that day, still no hat. We had to accept that his hat was gone.

I decided to start a new hat for him as part of my NatCroMo celebration since making something for someone else is an important part of crocheting love for me. The original hat had been worked in some discontinued yarn “Lion Wool” that I had in blues, teals and navy. I didn’t have more of that color, but I did have this colorway that I thought he would like. I took the photo above while waiting for an appointment today. The lighting was indirect natural sunlight and the colors on my monitor are showing a bit warmer than the actual colors of the yarn.

By this evening I had finished 10 rounds and will be starting the sides of the hat tomorrow. I took this photo using my daylight fluorescent lamps and played with the Pro settings on my smart phone camera to adjust the white balance and the exposure. The color and detail are good, but now they are a bit cooler than the actual colors.

I’ll experiment more tomorrow to see if I can get a better color match. At least the hat is coming along nicely and Thing 2 has approved the colors.

New Camera – New Problems

March 2, 2017Creativity, Latest News3 Comments

My poor little YouTube Channel is feeling quite neglected lately. Between the Christmas trips and then the death of my old Samsung Note 2 smartphone my productive time has been seriously compromised.

I was working on a project this last weekend uploading the video footage I had shot with my new Smartphone. Unfortunately, though the footage was oriented correctly on my computer screen to review, the clips were upside down when I imported them into my video editing software. That software is a bit older and doesn’t allow for rotating the clips so I may be investing in a software update. That or re-filming the footage to see if I can correct the orientation problem.

The good news is, once I get all this new-to-me technology figured out and working properly, I will be producing more and better quality videos for all my wonderful followers.

This is my new camera that I purchased in February. In a way this camera was partially a Christmas gift. My in-laws knew I was needing a better camera for my work, so they and my aunt gave me monetary gifts to help pay for it. As a micro-business I have to really watch every penny, and I had been saving up to purchase a good camera for the past year. Having my Note 2 bite the dust in January made things a bit of a stretch, but with the help of the Christmas gifts I managed to get this camera and it’s kit.

Some of the accessories that came in the kit are a mystery to me, but fortunately there is lots of information on the internet to help me figure them out. I was happy to find a “For Dummies” E-book that is about my exact model of camera, since the information in the booklet that came with the camera read like a foreign language to me. I’ve been working my way thru the “dummies’ book to understand all the bells and whistles on the camera. Seriously, you would almost expect this thing to wash the dishes, do the laundry and weave in ends.

One of the best ways to learn all this technology is just to use it. Which means I am hoping for some nicer weather to get out and take lots of photos. The great thing about using a digital camera is that I can take loads of photos without all the expensive of having film developed. Hopefully I’ll have some crochet and yarn related photos to show you on the blog before this month is out.

NatCroMo is here Again!

March 1, 2017Celebrating, Crochet, Latest News, NatCroMoLeave a Comment

Today is the first day of March, or as I like to think of it…National Crochet Month.

March sort of snuck up on me, my whole family has been dealing with a nasty cold/flu bug for the last couple of weeks. I’m still attempting to recover while taking care of my boys. Have had a kiddo home from school almost everyday.

I’m taking a different approach to blogging this NatCroMo. I’m going to be attempting to have a post up everyday, some days it will just be a quickie like this one, other days I’ll have something more substantial and I may even try to “serialize” some of my posts. So buckle up friends and let’s celebrate some crochet fun this month.

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