Painting Your World with Colorful Yarn

I used to be such a naturalist with the colors in my life.  When I crocheted and knit things often it was in browns, beiges and black.  Then my sister Denise told me she'd found a blog I should check out.  What is a blog?  I mean I had heard of them but had never visited one.  I went to Attic24 - Lucy's blog and was instantly smitten with her colorful crocheted items, her lovely manner of writing.  I began checking out other blogs.. Denise also found Alicia Paulson's blog and I was wowed by her writing style and special and unique photography.  I also joined Ravelry, the "We Love Lucy" group and was further inspired by all of the other people who loved Lucy's colorful style.  Then I thought.. I might like to try blogging.  And I did.  Just a little background on how I got to the point of filling my life with colorful crochet.  Below is my Diagonal crochet piece that I've been working on.  I must tell you, there were a LOT of ends to weave in! :-) 

When I first started this project, it was in honor of a fallen comrade, Vanessa Cabban, an inspirational blogger that died very recently.  I'd corresponded with her about diagonal crochet a few years ago.  I was using colorful cotton yarn and decided I would make a square, then fold in the points to make a doubled hot pad.  This will be the back and I will sew it up this afternoon.

This will be the pretty side.  Now that we have a family of 6 people living here we eat at the dining table a lot and need hot pads for hot dishes.  What is funny about how I'm doing this, is when you fold in the corners, the diagonal design becomes horizontal!  

I have this project that has been waiting in the wings while I started and completed many others... It's Drops Alpaca and will be a shawl.. someday.  The flower pattern is done in just 3 rounds.. and you join them with a JAYG - Join as you Go technique.  I got the inspiration from Lucy, but she uses a slightly different technique.  You can use any flower design for this, a google search should turn up something.  :-)  Try searching for "Japanese Flower Shawl".  I just did and found several patterns.

Here is my palette of yarn.. it's rather like an artist with oil colors squirted upon a palette, only this is soft and dry.  :-)  It "lives" in my "Lucy Bag" which was another inspiration of Lucy.  All her patterns are on the sidebar of her blog.  Free.  She's very generous with her time.  She has a "Donate" button on the sidebar which I've used a few times to repay her for her wonderful patterns and inspiration.

After I sew my hot pad together I vow to add a few flowers to this.  I'm not even sure which size hook I used for this.  Oh dear!

Here is my well-loved and well-traveled Lucy Bag.  I used some cotton yarn to make this and it traveled 5,125 miles with us when we pulled our trailer to Oklahoma for a family reunion and back through MANY states while I worked on my rainbow granny stripe blanket.

The sky is grey here and there is a slight drizzle of rain.  We're relaxing by the fire and Dayle is watching "Elektra" on TV.. it's an odd little martial arts comic book movie.  Well, I better finish up my project.  What are you up to?

Are you bringing color into your life?  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)