Falls, Lupine and Shell Pattern Testing

Dayle and I volunteered at Multnomah Falls yesterday.  It was warm and sunny and there were lots of visitors.  We enjoyed helping people make the most of their visit to the Columbia River Gorge.  Dayle hiked up to snap a few photos for me while I held continued to help people with questions.  He got some great shots.

The shot above is from the right side of the upper viewing plaza and the one below is from the left side.. which do you like better?  Two nice young ladies turned in a wallet to us that they'd found in the restroom.  I opened it to see if there was contact information and it was stuffed with hundreds of dollars and 2 credit cards.  I called the bank to ask if they'd call the owner and tell her we had her wallet.  They could not do that.  But later in the day she called and we were able to tell her we had it and she came later to pick it up.  I was so happy she got it back, with all the contents!

On our way home we stopped at the place where the Camas patch is and they were gone but the Lupine were in full bloom.. Dayle snapped this shot from the passenger window.. the Columbia River in the background and on the left is Phoca Rock and beyond is Washington State.

I pulled ahead and there was a massive patch of Lupine with sun dappling on them with trees behind.. so pretty.

Is there anything prettier than wildflowers in full bloom on a sunny day?

When we arrived at home I noticed that my Clematis was blooming out.. lovely!  It's planted on the corner of our garden shed.  Only then did I note that Kristi has planted the little pots in the window boxes!  What a neat surprise!

The other trellis has my old white Clematis and it's not very happy this year, but this one is happy!

So lovely!

I loved how the flowers made shadows on the shed.

The windmill was spinning like crazy so I snapped a shot of it.  This was Kristi's father's windmill which she brought home to us after he passed away.

I've meant to write up the pattern that I devised for making a nice blanket.  I've named it "Shells on the Half Shell".  I will post the pattern at the bottom.  I'm looking for pattern testers to try this out and see if I've written the pattern clearly.  Any volunteers?  

I made the first one for my nephew Josh's baby girl.

I used Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable yarn.

I'm working on a 2nd blanket, this one for my grandson Gabriel who now lives in California.  

“Shells on the Half Shell” –  Blanket Pattern by Teresa Kasner

I am sure someone else has written a pattern similar somewhere – but I made this up as I went along and I love how it looks like rows of shells.

I used worsted weight yarn and a size G hook.  You could use finer yarn and smaller hooks or heavier yarn and a bigger hook if you’d like.

I chain as long a chain as I want my blanket to be wide – I don’t count and it always works out.  But if you want, you can chain in 3s until the width you want.  For a baby blanket you could do 90 chains.

Once you have the chain as wide as you want – then chain 2 more – turn and do 3 double crochets into the 2^rd chain from the hook, skip one chain, do one single crochet in the next chain, skip one chain and do 3 double crochets – and on across.

When you do the last 3 dc shell and the last sc – chain 3 and turn, do 1 dc in the base of the first chain, sk 1 ch, sc, sk 1 ch, do 3 dc in sc of last row, or the “ditch” between the shells on the first row.  Continue on until the end where you’ll do 2 dc in the last stitch of the shell below. 

On that 2^nd row, the 2 double crochets on the beginning and the end are what I call a “half shell”.  Each row is either all shells or one that starts and ends with a “half shell”.

3rd row, chain one, turn, do 3 double crochet in sc or "ditch" of last row between shells.

Just keep going until the blanket is the size you want.  You can do a square or a rectangle depending on it’s use.  Baby blankets are nice in squares while lap blankets are nice in rectangles.

You can leave it as is or you can do shells around the whole blanket when done to make it look a little prettier.

Copyright by Teresa Kasner, May 24, 2017

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Have a great Memorial Day weekend!  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)