Tangled Yarn!

Today I'm MAD!

Seeing RED...

I just spent almost three ((3)) hours untangling this eyelash yarn from Bernat!

OK...I've never had any luck pulling yarn from the inside of a skein without having serious tangled yarn at some point.  So usually I pull from the outside end.  That's not full proof either but I've had better success with less tangles when unrolling the skein from the outside end.  

But I couldn't find the outside end on this eyelash yarn and it seemed to pull OK from the inside end so I went with the inside end.  

Bad mistake!

Everything worked well until I was almost half way around the ripple when the yarn refused to come out from the inside.

What a mess of tangled yarn!

Three hours...

...three ((((3))) hours of my time to untangle this very thin crappy yarn into a ball.  

Believe it or not, my sweetie pie offered to help me untangle it.  What a great guy!  I couldn't put him through it though.  He would have had to listen to me cursing the whole time.  

Calling all yarn manufacturers!!!!

Why is it that I can buy regular string rolled into a ball (i.e., not a skein) that is nicely packaged and even wrapped in cellophane to protect it and never, that is NEVER, have any problems with the balled string... but I can not say the same for yarn spun into skeins?

Why can't yarn manufacturers spin all of their yarn into balls instead of skeins?  

Every tangled skein I've had has never had any problems unrolling after I have had to manually untangle it and roll the yarn into a ball.  

I should have taken a photo of the tangled yarn before I rolled it into the nice ball you see here.

It was a nightmare!

I almost threw the darn yarn away. 

I was very tempted.

Are there any other crocheters out in blogland that are just as tired of tangled yarn skeins as I am?

Bare with me...it's my day to rant.  

I appreciate your listening to me.

I'll take a deep breath..calm down and admit that I do like the look of this eyelash yarn on my ripple.

And before I forget many thanks to all the nice ladies who offered such great name suggestions for my Christmas Round Ripple.  

I like them all and will make a decision soon.    

Pastry & Ripple

Good Afternoon!

I just ate this piece of homemade Pumpkin Pie along with a cup of delicious Keurig coffee...life is good.

Oh, I knew it would happen one of these days...I forgot to put my cup under the machine when I hit brewing.  But I quickly caught it.  Luckily there's a neat drip pan that catches liquid if you forget - so it doesn't spill all over the countertop.

I accomplished two of my three goals this weekend.  

I tried out The Pioneer's Woman's recipe for pastry (here) and made Pap's Chip Dip.  

I did NOT get the Christmas tree put away.  

I'm not perfect....ha!  

Hubby doesn't care if I leave it up.  

However, I would like to get it down before the Merry Maids come on Thursday.  

I thought Ree's no fail pie crust recipe seemed familiar.   

I found a recipe I cut out of the newspaper probably back in the 1980s that was very similar to hers.  

Now I've tried both and both are excellent.

My Never-Fail Pie Crust recipe

I've been crocheting in the evenings the past few days and have a couple more rounds done on my Christmas Round Ripple.  

I wasn't sure about it at first but now I'm really loving it.  Maybe it's the colors but I'm liking the design too...finally. 

I started out with a pattern (here) and couldn't figure it out after the first couple rounds so I started to do my own thing.  

And, no, I'm not writing it down because I didn't know if it would work out.  

I wing things a lot. 

I never would have believed that I could "wing" anything at crochet when I started this hobby several years ago.

It's not perfect but who cares.  

It's handmade and one of a kind!

I working on the green, red and green band now.  

I may add another variegated red, green and white yarn I have on hand between two reds.  

Check out the Flickr group where we are posting our round ripples.

Do you have a hobby you love? 

Christmas Round Ripple

Remember this?  

I've added another two rounds of red to my Christmas Round Ripple.  

It's growing very slowly.

Next I'm going to crochet:  white, then dark green followed by another round of white.

Or I may change my mind cause I do that quite often!

This is my first try at a round ripple.  

I couldn't follow either pattern I tried so I'm doing my own thing now.  

The challenge is to keep it flat.  

And it is a challenge - believe me.

I guess I'll join sweetie pie Pammy Sue's (Scotty's Place) round ripple party she started over on Flickr.

Pammy Sue says you can use any round ripple pattern or try the free one she has posted (here).

OK so grab your hook and yarn and come on over and join Pammy Sue's party.

Jingle Bells!

I know I'm crazy but I keep thinking about Christmas!

There is so much going on during the Christmas season with all the detailed planning, gift buying and wrapping, writing our annual Christmas letter and preparing our Christmas cards, baking & frosting our sugar cookies and, of course, decorating everywhere that I decided to start working on my Christmas crochet projects now.

As you all know, I just finished crocheting "Candy Cane", my red and white ripple crocheted throw, (read about it here) and I could barely wait to start my next one.  

I've named this ripple throw "Jingle Bells" and it's in Christmas color bands of white, red and lime green.  

Pretty simple color pattern... but I really like it.

Yarn used is Caron's Simply Soft 100% acrylic in yarn colors of red, white and limelight with an H hook size.

I knew right away which ripple stitch I wanted to use for this one.  

I picked the "Granny Chevrons" ripple stitch... another great ripple stitch from Jan Eaton's book "200 Ripple Stitch Patterns".   

It's so easy to crochet and I'm loving the look of this stitch.  

This stitch pattern is multiples of 23 plus 2.  My foundation chain is 230 chains plus 2.

It took me awhile to understand what these "multiples" meant.  If you sew it's like a piece of fabric that has a motif design on it (called a "repeat") and you want to make sure your motif ("repeat") looks right when you are done cutting and sewing your project.  In crocheting you want to make sure that your stitch pattern will "repeat" correctly and end nicely.     

I learned from my previous ripple throw that you need to make your foundation chain longer than it's chain length because the ripple effect with its hills and valleys will take up some of your chain length.   

This one came out just right.   

Here you can see the "repeats" between the hills and valleys.

I still have a long way to go to finish "Jingle Bells" but you can get a sense of its pattern and colors from this section.

Stacking the "repeats"!

Oh, how I love these Christmasy colors!

How do you like my Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus Creamer and Sugar Set?

I bought this set from Avon in 1983!

Avon sells beauty products, jewelry and cute little things like this.  You can visit their website (here).  And, no, they didn't pay me to say this.  

Please join me for:

Cindy at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday

                                Courtney at French Country Cottage for Feathered Nest Friday

Wendy at The Shabby Nest for Frugal Friday
 Donna at Funky Junk Interiors for Saturday Nite Special

Cielo at The House in the Roses for Show Off Your Cottage Monday

By the way I hit a milestone yesterday....300 followers!

That was exciting and what a thrill for my little blog!

Hugs to all my followers!