Practice makes perfect... and what's up with my cat?

My cat keeps squeezing next to the refridgerator. I can't figure out if she thinks it's cooler back there, there's something living back there, or if she's just totally nuts. It's probably the last. :P

Anyways... I am still crocheting. My last post shared how I had started my first project. I was making steady progress, but now that it's warmer out I'm having a hard time working on it at all. The unfinished blanket draped over my lap while I'm working makes me all roasty toasty. In the mean time I've been practicing reading patterns and attempting to actually make different stitches look good together (switching from hdc to dc to sc and tc all in the same row without adding or dropping stitches). I'd say it's been slow going, but as I've really put my mind to it, I've steadily increased in my success. A week ago I couldn't get ANYTHING to come out right. But over the last three days I've gone from being semi-successful to actually mastering one particular pattern. Yeah, it's a simple pattern, but it's really fun and cute.

ONWARD TO PICTURES!

This is the current state of the blanket:

From the other angle:

I don't know why the color came out so dark on those photos, so here's a close up of the stitching and colors:

It's still not as big as it looks in the picture, although Val did say it would be a perfect lap blanket as of right now. I am going to keep at it though, so it's at LEAST a perfect square before I call it quits. I made it too narrow to make it a perfect twin blanket, but I still want to add some length so the excess blanket can be bunched up around the feet.

I'm going to give this to my mom as a much belated mother's day present. I showed it to her Mother's day weekend and she LOVED the colors, even though blue is more of my thing.

That particular pattern is nothing more than a repeated sc. Kinda boring, but the colors make up for it. The "special" thing about that pattern is the fact you hold two pieces of yarn together while you work. My mom made a blanket exactly the same way, but instead of using two different shades of the same color (or even two different colors) she used straight black. While monochrome (heh) the blanket is very very warm. :)

Now the pattern I mastered yesterday/today is called Slip Stitch Texture. It's from a leisure arts book (cheap at Walmart's LMAO). It's nothing more than 5 slip st alternated with 5 hdc. The "trick" to this particular pattern is to only work with the back loops instead of both.

This is the effect (sorry for the blurriness... lots of coffee today ^_^).

I liked how that was coming out so much I decided to make a project of it. Ms. Moontear loves her purple and black, so I am making her a scarf using that pattern.

This is it so far (and it's lighter and easier to work on than the blanket in these warmer days):

The colors came out all weird in the picture again, so to clarify... The purple is a very RICH, but BRIGHT, purple and the black is well... black.

I should be at a public Stitch and Bitch tomorrow, so I'll probably bring the scarf with me. As much as I want to continue working on the blanket, the thing is really too large to be toting around.

Now that I've procrastinated for almost two hours, I really need to go to bed. Sweet dreams!