Birthdays - Scarf and Afghan.

So, this post is a birthday post - I'm combining a scarf I made for Kendra's birthday in February, an afghan I finished for my grandmother's birthday in March, and some slippers I just finished for Angela's birthday in early June.

The scarf was a nice, simple knitting project with super soft yarn I found at In The Making - a yarn store in Cahaba Heights. The pattern was free with the purchase of yarn - they had a great scarf display in the winter with many different yarns knitted up and labeled with yarn and pattern - many of the patterns were free which is how I found this one. I love this yarn - so sorry I'm so disorganized, but I did actually get up and look for the yarn tag so I could post the info - can't find it. I promise to be better about this in the future - keeping track of yarn and fabric stats with every project so I can post details. The yarn is bulky, super soft, and hand-dyed - very rich, warm colors. It was such a quick project that I actually delivered on time for the birthday and just in time for her to take it on her birthday NYC trip. :)

The afghan squares are from the PBS show Knit and Crochet Now. The link is to their website where they provide all patterns from the show for free. They have either a knitted or crochet square every week to eventually make up an entire afghan. I printed the pattern for the whole afghan (last year's), then picked four or five of the squares I really liked and repeated them with the colorways mixed up some. I wasn't crazy about every square in the blanket, so that was my solution. I really liked the fancy edging from this pattern, but I ended up shorting it a round, since I was out of time. I would apologize for this blurry and not-so-flattering photo of my grandmother with her new afghan, but she's still so cute blurry and un-smiling that I'm sure noone will mind. ;) I didn't get a photo before taking it to her for her big birthday bash, so this pic is from my sister's fancy phone. I cut it so close with time that I was embroidering and sewing in a fabric tag on the plane. Ha!

I LOVE these slippers. Saw them on the PurlBee blog (from Purl Soho) and knew I wanted to make them for Ang's birthday. I'll eventually make some for myself. They didn't take too long to make - it was fun to finish each of the granny square sets then seam them all together. The arrangement was a bit tricky and I ended up having to make a little sketch for myself to clear up my confusion, but not sure if my doodling would help anyone else. The instructions on the blog were very good, but I still had trouble visualizing. Wahoo! I actually have these yarn tags - three colorways from Manos del Uruguay (Wool Clasica), colors: Q (blue), 68, goldish-green, and 57 (fuchsia).