Category: Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts

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Creature Comforts – Day 31, the Eye-Blinding Poncho of DOOOOOOM!!!

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Eye-blinding poncho of DOOOOOOM!!!

Wow is this thing bright!

 
I had hoped to finish this incredibly cushy poncho today, but I spent all day doing Girl Scouts volunteering, including running a recruiting table at the school open house and coordinating and attending Scout Sunday. So, I didn’t get quite as far as I wanted to.

However, I did get a lot of crochet done, and I only have 5 rows left to do. I may do them tomorrow morning, just to finish off this piece before diving headlong into the next theme.

I’ve decided that February theme will be “CATS,” which may not seem all that this month’s theme, since we all know cats are creatures of comfort, but I have a few specific cat-themed projects I want to get done, and since one of them is for Princess’ birthday, this will be the best time to do them.

I’ll talk more about it tomorrow. Right now, I’m beat. Good night.

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Creature Comforts – Day 30, Easy Patterns and Chunky Yarn

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Ripple poncho!

Hurray for quick and easy projects!

I realize the colors on this crochet project look a bit jarring, but trust me, they work together beautifully. I know this because I once dyed my hair these two colors, and I looked FAB!

Anyway, I think I'm over whatever bug I had earlier in the week, but now I am in the midst of a very busy weekend. This morning was 2 hours of black belt class at the dojo, followed by an intensive house cleaning. That was followed by an evening working with Princess and a group of her school friends. The girls were working on a painting for the school auction coming up in a few weeks. Things went well, but there's nothing like a gang of hyper pre-teens eating pizza and slinging around acrylic paint in my freshly cleaned living room to set my teeth on edge.

To soothe my frazzled nerves, I picked up my biggest crochet hook and set to work on a simple project. This poncho I'm working on only has 15 rows, and it's made with very chunky yarn. I'm already through the first third of it, and I expect if I get up early tomorrow, I can get through the rest of it before I have to pack up and head out for the rest of my busy weekend at the kids' school and church. The school is holding an open house and wants Girl Scouts represented there, and then we are celebrating Scout Sunday at the evening Mass, followed by a reception with CAKE and LEMONADE. (And I just now realized I forgot to buy the lemonade mix. Yay, one more thing to deal with tomorrow.)

So I'm thinking maybe I can get this poncho done by Mass tomorrow evening, or at least keep it with me to calm me down between stints of being a responsible Girl Scout volunteer. I plan to spend Monday avoiding anything that looks like responsible activity, but for tomorrow, I must be good. Blech.

Good night for now. I'll let you know how this all goes tomorrow.

 

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Creature Comforts – Day 26, Survival Mode

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Glorious Granny Squares!

Granny squares ready to be added to the blanket.

 
Ladies and gentlemen, I have officialy entered “survival mode.”

I know I’ve already mentioned that this is the time of the year that is hardest on me. I have 3 volunteer jobs in Girl Scouts – troop leader, troop cookie coordinator, and school representative. This is the time of year when all 3 of those jobs collide. This weekend we’ll be celebrating Scout Sunday at the church associated with our sponsoring school. As school representative for Girl Scouts, I’m one of the volunteers responsible for coordinating this event and the reception afterwards (as well as being one of the volunteers who helps set up the training sessions for girls who want to earn their religioius badges and emblems). I’ve already had 2 meetings this week for Girl Scout volunteers, for a total of 5 hours spent in meetings in the last two nights. Initial orders for Girl Scout cookies have to be submitted this week, so I’m working on that. Cookie booth site selection was this evening, so I’ve now got 6 cookie booths coming up between end of February and mid-March. And the school is having an open house the same day we’re doing Scout Sunday, so I have to man a table for Girl Scouts at that event, then get the school cafeteria ready for the Scout Sunday reception, then sit through Mass (yes, it’s “Drag Your Buddhist to Church” day again!), then help run the reception all on the same day.

And so naturally, today I broke out in hives and had a flare up of joint pain.

This is the time I hunker down and look at all the things I have to do, and I start to pick and choose my battles. I felt great yesterday, and I did ALL THE THINGS that I had on my to-do list. I felt lousy today and did only those things I absolutely had to do, to-do list be damned. The only crafting I got done today was to weave in the ends on some granny squares for the blanket. And that was it. There was no time or energy for anything else.

I hate days like this. But they are a fact of my life, especially at this time of year. Fortunately, I decided to be conservative in my booth selections, so we’re only doing one booth on any given day. But I still have two weekends in a row where we’re going to have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all tied up with Girl Scout stuff. Somehow, I will survive.

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Creature Comforts – Day 08 & 09, Slouchy Hat of Doooooom!

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Slouchy Hat of Doooooom!

I obviously have a lot of purple yarn in my stash…

 
Sorry about not posting yesterday. Last night was the Girl Scout cookie rally, and I spent all day yesterday getting ready for it. I put together games and activities for three stations, which is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. Fortunately, I had a new Creature Comforts project already in progress – this lovely hat! I had already started this earlier in the week, and I managed to squeeze in just one round of crochet yesterday in between Girl Scout activities. Then I got a lot of work done on it tonight. It’s almost done. I just need to finish up the ribbed band, and I’m hoping I can get that done tomorrow.

This purple yarn is the same yarn I used in the Krampus Cowl. I bought a pound’s worth of it a few years ago, and now I’m determined to use it all up. I bought TWO pounds of the same yarn in black, and I’m really going to have to work to use all that up. But I have a few ideas of what I could do with it.

This isn’t the prettiest yarn – it’s got a lot of lumps and small snags in it – but it is very sturdy and perfect for a big slouchy hat like this one. I’ll see if I decide to add any decoration to it. I’m thinking it needs a skull and cross bones appliqued on the back, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a pattern for that somewhere. Anyhoo, I’ve got a troop meeting tomorrow, so I’m going to bed now! Good night!

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Creature Comforts – Day 05, Preparing for Something Fleecy

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Fleece bean bags

Are you blind yet?

 
So, I made some bean bags today…

No, they’re not for the Creature Comforts theme. They’re for the local Girl Scout cookie rally coming up on Friday. My troop is running a couple stations, and one will have a bean bag game, so I made these. And what does any of that have to do with the Creature Comforts project?

First, Girl Scout cookie season pretty much eats up my life for three months every year. I’m trying to avoid letting that happen this year by being a little more organized and by making my personal work (as opposed to my volunteer work) more of a priority.

Second, I needed to practice sewing with fleece for the next Creature Comforts project. Hancock Fabrics had fleece on sale last week, and I bought a bunch of remnants, along with some heavy duty sewing needlesand other items, to make something I desperately want but haven’t had time to work on. Something that’s just for me, and that I know will be nice and cozy during the frigid months of Girl Scout cookie season.

Third, I did spend today doing a supply run to get all that I needed for making the next project, and I think that counts as work on the Creature Comforts theme.

Fourth, I have been told by at least three people today that these are the nicest, comfiest bean bags they’ve ever seen.  So I made not have made them for the Creature Comforst theme exactly, but they do fit in. Sort of.

I’ll be cutting fabric and sewing tomorrow and should have a shot of the project in progress soon. For now, sweet tight and dream of bean bags.

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Krampus Challenge – Day 02, Is it a hexagon? A frying pan?

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I did a little more work on the Krampus challenge piece I started yesterday.

 

Frying pan of doooooom!

Frying pan? Is that you?

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to, I’m afriad. Today just ended up being one of those days where I had a lot of OTHER things to do, like some volunteer work for the school and training for the upcoming Girl Scout cookie season. I’m actually excited about cookie season this year. We have a fantastic cookie team at the service unit level (that’s the level above troop level), and the program for this winter looks like it will run more smoothly than previous years. There’s been some nice changes the website for the online database, and a few other things have come up that I’m really looking forward to trying this year 🙂

But back to the Krampus challenge! I have nowhere I have to be tomorrow, so I intend to spend the morning finishing off this piece so I can hang it on my Krampus tree! And then I’m going to take pictures of the ornaments I made last year as well as the one I’m working on now, so you can get an idea of what I want to accomplish this month.

For now though, it’s late and I’m headed to bed. See you tomorrow!

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November Drawing – Day 15, Inking the Bottle

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Creepy wine!

This is one creepy bottle of wine.

 
Tired again today. We had our monthly Girl Scout troop meeting today. That’s five hours of working with girls on writing scripts, recording audio, adding sound effects, then planning the menu for next month’s cooking badge. Oh, and we made these…

 

Book charms!

What charming little charms!

 
We’ve spent the past couple months learning about media for the “It’s You Story – Tell It!” journey in Girl Scouts. The charms were our way of celebrating finishing that project.

But now I’m dead so I’m going to bed. More drawing tomorrow, I promise!

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October Crochet – Post-Mortem

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So this is what I did last month…

 

Look what I made!

October Crochet, in total.

 
That’s a lotta crochet. At the time, it didn’t seem like I was doing much, but there’s a lot of work in that one picture. This image doesn’t included everything – there’s still one ghost I need to finish. And a few of these projects aren’t quite done. The ghost and the one candy corn need mouths, and I need to finish off the spider web and the Nautilus shawls, weaving in the ends and doing a bit of sewing here and there to polish things off. But otherwise, I did a LOT last month.

You’ll notice, of course, that there are two tiny figures in there that weren’t done this month…

 

Tom and Enid!

Meet Tom and Enid!

 
The little pumpkin guy and the little skully girl were made a couple years ago when I first started crocheting. I call them Tom and Enid. They’re probably the first amigurumi I made without  a specific pattern to work from. I borrowed a bit here and there from a couple patterns, and then made up a few things on my own. That was the point when I fell head over heels in love with crochet.

One other thing I’m supposed to mention – the missing day from October Crochet. What happened that one day that I couldn’t do even a few stitches? Well, this happened…

Rita Wright

This is NOT crochet!

These are props from the Murder Mystery Party we held for our Girl Sout troop. I was very, very, veeeeeeeeeerrrrryyyyyy busy that day, finishing up props, cleaning the house, printing out scripts, and then pretending to be the director of the Rita Wright Museum for Girl Scouts.  We had a lot of fun. And then I passed out.

But that’s what kept me so busy I couldn’t get any crochet done that day. So now you know. And honestly, I did crochet 30 out of 31 days last month, so I think I did pretty good! 

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October Crochet – Day 24, What the %$*! Happened to Day 23?!

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Two ghosts!

“Hey lady! Ya skipped a day!”

 
Don’t ask me what happened to Day 23 of this month-long crochet challenge. I won’t explain it today. I will explain it tomorrow, after I’ve had another couple glasses of wine and had some time to recover my house. What happened to Day 23 is simply… too horrifying to discuss at the moment. There were just SO MANY GIRL SCOUTS!!!

I need more wine.

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October Crochet – Day 17, Caught in a Silver Web!

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Silver web crochet!

“Come into my parlour, my pretty little… cat.”

 
MWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! As my web grows, I ensnare more and more prey!! 

(Which is actually not so hard when you realize that Marmie only ever sits in one place in the evenings. My lap.)

I spent most of today taking the Girl Scout troop to an archery range. EVERYONE CAME BACK WITH THE SAME AMOUNT OF HOLES IN THEIR BODIES THAT THEY HAD WHEN THEY ARRIVED!! I consider this to be a great accomplishment. Now I just have to survive tomorrow’s troop meeting. And the troop murder mystery party next weekend. And the Halloween slumber party the weekend after that…

Oh GLOB, I wished they’d just shot me at the archery range!!!