go me

My year of Ashley began last Saturday with a house project. This past summer, Clyde and I scraped the popcorn off the ceilings in the downstairs of our house. Man was that a messy, messy job. Well, there was one nasty patch in our kitchen that would not be scraped. We decided to add a beam to cover it up. One of Penny's speech therapist's husband is a woodworker and built us a beam. This was a big job. It is such a heavy beam. It took three of us holding it up, so that we could secure it to the stud above. No joke that thing is like 150 lbs! It took longer than what we expected and it still isn't finished, but it looks great in our kitchen. It makes it feel so much bigger. Nice!

I have been intimidated by yarn patterns, especially crocheted yarn patterns. Not understanding all the lingo yet has stopped me from a few projects. I know what a single, half double, double, treble crochet are and what they look like, but reading them in a pattern is a bit trickier for me. Anyway, I decided that since this was the year of Ashley, I was going to throw caution to the wind and experiment on a crochet granny squared pattern. I mean really, it is only yarn. If it doesn't work out, then uncrochet it and wind that yarn back up into a ball, right?! Well, I carefully read and reread the pattern and on the first go, this pattern is a huge success. I wanted it to be a scrappy blanket, (using all my left overs) but the pink, purple and green combo is turning out great. I am using the pink and purple that Ed and Becki gave me for Christmas with the green left over from a baby hat that I made my friend Ashley, the photographer. I did buy another skein of green and I may end up trying to find more pink. Right now it is a good baby sized afghan. Go me.