Another Secret Revealed....

"Ah!" Mario sighed. "What a beautiful sight! The refreshing sound of the water as it falls into the fountain. The cool mist that lightly sprays me as I stand next to it. I could stand here all day and enjoy the beauty of this moment. I know! I will toss coins into this fountain and make many wishes to come back here again someday."

OK, clearly, I am not a great novelist! But this was still a lot of fun. This crocheted water fountain was inspired after being named the Chair of the Water Subcommittee for our NATCROMO (National Crochet Month, in case you didn't already know) Party on Ravelry. And yes, I've been working on it for a while.....but really only off and on so it didn't actually take me a month to finish, it just seems like it! :D Even the little "coins" are crocheted!

This was really my first foray into making it up as you go crocheting! And believe it or not, this was my first time doing spirals! I've done many more since then and now know the correct way to do them. But I think I didn't do to badly on this. I had originally wanted to put some kind of statue on top, you know the kind....they either spit or pee the water into the fountain. Unfortunately, I couldn't decide what to do, or how to do it properly, and I really wanted to get this done. So after a trip to a beautiful garden this weekend, I decided on just a plain "stone" conical pipe. I think it actually suits it quite well. In fact, I'm not sure that a statue would have been better suited for it. I may have to play with that idea more and try one later anyway. I just think it would be funny! :D

Oh and to update on the last post....I did not win the CLF Book Competition. Although I do thank those of you who voted for me! :D It was enough to convince me to submit the patch to the book anyway! So we'll have to all wait and see if I will actually make it in or not.

And here are updated pictures of the Freeform CAL....

The yellow "fin" looking thing was really fun. It was made of really impractical super tall stitches. I would never have thought of trying to make stitches so tall! I got up to 15 wraps before I ran out of room on the throat of the hook and decided to stop. The only thing I would have done differently would be to space them out farther. Someone else did that and it made a really beautiful graceful flowing "fin" rather than my rather angular "shark" like fin. (That was for you Mike! :D)

Anyway....Happy Crafting!

One Secret Revealed!

OK, now that I have officially entered it into the CLF Design Competition, I can now reveal one of the secret projects I've been working on. The competition is to design something, in crochet, that is related to the Crochet Liberation Front and somehow includes the logo in the design. Someone had mentioned something about a beret and that got me thinking about military insignia. So I had a couple of ideas (some of which I may do anyway for submission to this book or later ones or just for fun), but the one that really jumped out at me was a patch, like on the sleeve of a bomber jacket. So this is what I came up with.....

I had a few issues with it, as I mentioned in a previous post, I thought the deadline was March 1st, so I busted butt to get it done by then and then stacked my schedule with all the things I had to put off that last week of February for the weeks following March 1st. So when I had a few bumps, I didn't have time to re-do, even with the extra time. And the weather hasn't been on my side for getting photos, but I finally found a day that was relatively sunny and my dear sweet husband agreed to be my model (and loan me his jacket!). Overall I'm happy with the design, there are a few minor things I would change doing it again.....including maybe switching the black and white around. And definitely, set the red before using!!!!!! I should have known better, but for some reason I took the labels word for it being colorfast. UGH! Still I'm pleased.....wish me luck! And if you're on Ravelry and a member of the CLF, you can vote for me! :D

And of course, in honor of National Crochet Month, I've been a busy beaver working on projects. I finished another bath puff and started a matching back scrubber (sorry no pic of that yet). Filled an acrylic tumbler with ice water and continued working on the NATCROMO Freeform CAL and two other secret projects that I will hopefully be able to finish and reveal soon.

And if you are on Ravelry, definitely, stop by the NATCROMO party group! We're having lots of fun in there and we've even gone so far as to make it International Crochet Month! And if you've never tried freeform before (like me), check out the freeform CAL. It's a LOT of fun! And great even if you have done freeform before.

Happy NATCROMO! And Happy Crafting! :D