Baby Afghan Animals Filet Crochet Number Three

YAY! I finished at last!

This is a filet crocheted afghan using an Elizabeth Hiddleson pattern.

I got the 1979 pattern book online and I also found a pattern in an e-bay offer which was taken from a magazine.

(I got that one, too, in the hopes that there were more animals to the set but there wasn't. In fact, the magazine one didn't even have the nice border and wasn't even attributed to Elizabeth Hiddleson. It says "by Gloria Hodges" in the magazine. I think she just took the Hiddleson animal graphs and put her name on it. (Unless they are the same person with an alias? Or maybe a relative/daughter/whatever with her own copyright?)

ANYWAY, I've seen the animals in another pattern too floating around so - whoever created the patterns - there you go.

Here's the back. You can see the seems where I joined the squares and the center panel pieces.

The hardest part was making those two middle panels. In order to have the crochet stitches go the same way as the squares, it had to be worked up width-wise instead of the longer length, (which would have been SO MUCH easier!) In fact, for the sides of the afghan, I just went ahead and did those along the length of the afghan to save my sanity!) LOL

I altered a couple of the animals that I thought looked a little weird on the graphs. The rabbit's head I made come to a pointed nose. (The graph was so icky! It kinda had a double cheek thingy going on.) I also made the cat's nose come to a point. (The graph looked like one of those flat-faced cats, (like Crookshanks!),  which didn't seem to look right in profile like this.) And also the elephant was too small for it's square. So I added a mound and some clouds to fill in the square.

I liked these squares because each one was finished with only one ball of Cebelia thread. Not having to buy two. YAY!!

The border is done with Coats and Clark Old Fashioned thread in ecru. Both threads are size 10. The crochet hook I used was a 7 (1.65 mm) steel Boye.

Happy Easter everyone! 

edit: Monica Foster from Ravelry sent me a note explaining that Glendora Hodges is Elizabeth Hiddleson’s niece. That solves the mystery of who 'Gloria Hodges' is from that Magazine pattern with these animals in it. Thanks, Monica!

The Great Lincoln Face-Off

I challenged my sister to a Super 70's, nostalgic, Great Lincoln Face-Off earlier this year. (Wow, I think it was a month and a half ago now!)

I named it the Bohemian Sister Challenge. (Now known as the B. S. Club).(We are both part Bohemian on my Dad's side of the family).

 I ordered two old rug hooking kits from two different etsy sellers. One was sent to her and one to me. It contained the printed fabric of our most-loved president Abe Lincoln in a really mod-looking, pop-art design just waiting for us to adorn/embellish/create his face however which way we choose. 

(Originally it was made for those old rug punch crafts but I see a new use in them as felt rugs or transferred to a needlepoint canvas, or even graphed and crocheted into an afghan. Who knows. It's however you want to tackle it. 

(I thought immediately of my sister when I saw that there were two available on etsy since she had just seen that new Lincoln movie with Daniel Day-Lewis.)









These are the pictures from the etsy sales. The first two are of mine. It's still in the package so I can't tell the condition of it. But it has the color key and the picture on the front to use as a guide. The third and forth photos were of hers. It looks great. The last one is just a cropped close up I made.

My sister had told her friend Mary about the B.S. Challenge. (Mary is quilter with mad sewing skills). 

 So I told my sister, absolutely Mary could join. The beauty of the title Bohemian Sister Club is that Bohemian is also a word to describe crafty, creative people; sister can mean sisterhood and not just a true sister; and their initials are B S so we can call it the B. S. Club and sound really cool. (Or "hip" as us B. S. Club members will say). Snap snap snap lol!!

So this was the beginning of a project that I have only now finally finished myself. This project had some bumps along the way. 

When I went to get the mail and in my mailbox was the package with a big "Postage Due" note written in black sharpie pen across the top and a small envelope from the post office signed by my carrier, (Barb - AHHHHH!), with the words "Please pay 80 cents. Thanks" written on it. So I had taken two photos of this to prove to you all that I'm not just making this up...



Yep that's right. It's not my etsy sellers fault. She took it to her post office and mailed it. Surely they weighed it all out and calculated the proper postage, right? Well, in the time it took for this package to get from Ohio to Indiana, I guess the postage rates went up. So, what do you think happened? My guess is that my cheap, Carmel post office went ahead and weighed all their packages that were still en route to where ever and added on the extra postage due.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??!!!!?!?!?!?!?!? 
 So, then I had scrounged around all through my couch cushions and cruddy car seat floors and laundry room lint areas and have came up with 40 tarnished, moldy-looking, linty, Lincoln cents to put into their little envelope.

 

Take THAT Barb the Mail Lady! Snap, snap, snap! LOL!

Well, to shorten this already humongous blog post, here's my finished Lincoln.
(Please click on the photos. Some of them can be enlarged, some not.)

I cross-stitched it on monk's cloth.

It has initials RK in each corner for my initials; Rebecca Kelly.

Here's the back. It's a kitchen tea towel with the entire Gettysberg address on it. I found this on e-bay.

That's another strange tale for you.

The tea towel ebay listing didn't match the photo. So I ordered it from the description only, (after I contacted the seller and made sure it was for the Lincoln Gettysberg towel!)

Anyway, so that's what I've been busy doing for the past two months.

I am currently working on yet another filet crocheted baby animal afghan.

This one isn't as awesome as the first two, but it does have a few adorable animals on it.

Sorry I have been so lacking of by blog. Sometimes I get too focused on one thing and forget to 'come up for air' until I realize I'm drowning and about to die!

Thanks for hanging in there to any of the regular blog readers I might still have left out there!