beck's blog

Monday, October 26, 2009

No Libra Sun........No Halloween.....

I am working on a Zodiac afghan made up of "squares" each representing one sign of the Zodiac.

I thought I'd start with the current sign I was in when I started, (Libra), but I took longer than I thought I would and time has now crept into the next sign of the Zodiac, (Scorpio), so I have to start on that one right away next and catch up.

Anyway, I'm using this sweater knitting pattern book from Paton's called "Zodiac Knits" which I bought on ebay. It has graphs of each sign. Please click on the photos to enlarge them.


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Here's a photo of the pattern book and a photo of a page inside showing the Libra and Scorpio designs once knitted.
Of course I only know how to crochet and so the pattern graphs will not be to scale, (as the afghan, (tunisian), stitch is a different size than the intarsia knitting stitches).


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So, here's my Libra "square" which is more like a rectangle. I chose pink and blue as the colors because I googled "colors of the zodiac signs" and most sites seemed to agree that pinks and blues were for Libra. (Although they did say pastel colors). But I went with hot pink and a medium blue.

Now that I know what the size of each "square" will be, (18" wide by 24" high), I can now figure out how to arrange the squares of the afghan.
I'm going to make it three "squares" high by 4 "squares" wide. I think it should be 72" x 72" when all the squares are put together, (not counting the joining in between.) But anyway, it should be square-shaped when I finish. Should be. LOL!

While making the Libra square I kept having Stevie Wonder's song - I Just Called To Say I Love You - stuck in my head. LOL!
Especially the part that goes ...... No Libra Sun .....No Halloween ..... No giving thanks to all the Christmas joy you bring....
I'll have to end this post with a link to that song so I can get it out of my head!!!!

Let's see....what else?
Oh yes! I ordered two 2-dimentional Lego pumpkin kits a while back and put them together to create this awesome 3-dimentional Lego pumpkin following these instructions I found online. 3-D Lego pumpkin instructions


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Here's a photo of my finished Lego pumpkin, an attempt at a photo of the pumpkin in the dark after I bought a 3-colored light thingie to put underneath, and a photo of the light thingie itself.


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Happy Halloween!!!


No New Year's Day to celebrate
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of spring
No song to sing
In fact here's just another ordinary day

No April rain
No flowers bloom
No wedding Saturday within the month of June
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you

I just called to say I love you
I just called to say how much I care
I just called to say I love you
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

No summer's high
No warm July
No harvest moon to light one tender August night
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for birds to fly to southern skies

No Libra sun
No Halloween
No giving thanks to all the Christmas joy you bring
But what it is, though old so new
To fill your heart like no three words could ever do

I just called to say I love you
I just called to say how much I care, I do
I just called to say I love you
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

I just called to say I love you
I just called to say how much I care, I do
I just called to say I love you
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart, of my heart,
of my heart

I just called to say I love you
I just called to say how much I care, I do
I just called to say I love you
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart, of my heart,
baby of my heart

I Just Called To Say I Love You

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

We're Out Of Pop-Tarts

I've received an e-mail from Karen in Singapore confirming she received the patronus for her Snape!
Here's the letter... (as always, click on the photos to enlarge them)...

Dear Becky: Snape and I received the package on Friday, and we’re both delighted with it. Thanks so much! However, Snape claims that everything in the package was intended for him: he says the black and white bag is a sleeping bag, and the mug is actually a custom made single-handled potions cauldron, which is intended to be used to brew a certain kind of warm, fragrant pepper-up potion. (By which I think he means coffee.)

I couldn’t open the mokeskin bag, so I let Snape try. You should have heard the wonder and longing in his voice when he pulled out the bear. “Radar!” he said as he hugged it tightly. I laughed, “Radar? Isn’t that the name of Big Bird’s teddy bear?” The he shouted “You wouldn’t understand!” and fired a stinging hex at me. (I am SO tired of stinging hexes.) He’s right though, I don’t understand what’s going on with him and that bear. Though every once in a while I catch him cuddling it like he’s doing in the picture.



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Awwwwwww. Look at how sweet that is! Kind of reminds me of this cute little avatar I found a few years ago... Well, Montgomery Burns had his Bobo didn't he?
I'm sure Singapore Snape feels much more secure and safe now with his Radar. (I would just like to point out here that bats, too, have radar.)


The patronus is working like a charm though (ah ha ha, nice pun!). As you can see, Dingo is quite fascinated with it,

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so Snape can use it to distract Dingo while he makes a quick getaway.

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Those are great photos! Dingo sure does seem to want to grab that patronus badly!!! No wonder Snape sent word he needed help!!!!


Snape also enjoys using it to send messages to me when I’m at work. (He’s tried to use the ‘fellytone’ but he always ends up shouting at phone operators, and he’s ruined two perfectly good cell phones by trying to use a quill and ink to write text messages. And the less we can say about the mess left by the owls the better!) As you can see, he uses the patronus to send only the most important messages.



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OMG!!!!!! I can't believe he's using his patronus to send you such trivial messages! I can just picture him lounging around on your sofa in his bunny slippers eating all your Pop-Tarts and getting crumbs all over the place!!!!


Hope you’re well. I’ve also got pictures from our vacation, which I’ll send tomorrow. Thanks again, Karen


Well, there you have it! Singapore Snape certainly looks a lot more confident and safer now with his patronus at his side. (Or on some silly errand to remind Karen at her office how low they are on groceries!!!!) I'm really looking forward to seeing their photos of Snape's snorkeling trip these past couple of weeks!!!


I also have another update from Lee Mac on her "Brady Bunch"-like Hogwarts Hoard afghan. She's finished Dumbledore and it's really fantastic! He looks just exactly like ol' Dumby. See for yourselves.....


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Monday, October 05, 2009

Count Dracula - Bela Lugosi afghan

Halloween is coming soon and I have finished my latest monster afghan.


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It's Count Dracula as portrayed by Bela Lugosi.


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I used a this photo to make the graph by messing with the tint, colors, and all those other fun buttonsmy computer lets me use to adjust photos. Then I graphed what I had at the Knitpro website.

It's crocheted using a size J cabled afghan hook again. I used all "I Love This Yarn" from Hobby Lobby so it's really nice and soft.

As you can tell by the actual photo I changed a few things. I definitely wanted to show his fangs as that was the most recognizable thing about this "monster" so I made sure his showed. Also, I made his eyes red. I looked all around to different websites and saw that most drawings and things had his eyes as red. There's even a contact lens called "Dracula's eyes" which is red so I figured this was acurate. And I made his ribbon medal thingy up as well. Most sites and costumes of draculas do show him with some sort of red ribbon "baron-looking" medal around his neck so I put one on him.


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Here's photos of the front and back side by side so you can compare.

He will look right at home along with my Frankenstein's Monster and Bride of Frankenstein afghans!


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Next year, who knows. Maybe the Wolfman or Mummy or Creature from the Black Lagoon.