Double Crochet

Today has been interesting, and it's only 1'o'clock. Good or bad sign?

First thing this morning I took my H sized crochet hook and one skein of Sugar & Cream yarn off to QuiltWorks. I was the only person who turned out in the cold to attend the Tuesday morning crochet lesson offered there by Terri. It WAS cold! But I've been trying to teach myself with only minimal success. It was time to get some help, so I did.

Terry got me started on a project, and showed me mostly how to connect the double crochet stitches to the slipknot & chain stitches (which is really as far as I'd managed to get by myself). The project I'm currently working on is a granny square which will become a dishcloth. It consists of mostly double crochet done in the round, which is traditionally considered easier than straight stitching. This is as far as I've gotten so far (in about an hour & a half):

I would have gotten further, except every time one of my double crochets didn't look quite right, I'd take it out and do it again ... and again ... and again ... and again. I really want to get this right! And the double crochet stitches are becoming second nature - phew! The hardest part for me right now is following along with the pattern and keeping track of each stitch & turn. Terri says that gets easier with practice too. I'll take her word for it, because there's nothing easy about it right now.



The finished product will be about 8 times that big. Now that I'm moving much faster it shouldn't take me more than another couple of days. I'm proud of myself for trying something new!

When I left QuiltWorks I decided to drive up to the house, thinking it may be the worker's lunch/siesta time and I'd get a chance to really look around. Unfortunately, on my way there, I was scared senseless by a very, very far-to-close call. I was on Highway 249, going slightly under the speed limit of 50 mph (because of all the lights), when I was about to cross the intersection at North Point Green (I think). As I was maybe 20 yards away, a car on the cross street decided to ignore their red light and come on into the intersection, slam on the brakes and PARK mostly in the lane that I was driving 50 mph on. Panicked and seeing a disaster about to happen, I slammed on my brakes, trying NOT to t-bone the car that stopped in the middle of the intersection, which caused my car to screech, rock to the side on 2 tires, and skid sideways into the intersection very narrowly missing the parked car by .... maybe a foot. So now we're both facing sideways in the middle of the intersection.
Well, what about all the other cars driving on that road you ask? Well they were in the same slam-on-the-brakes situation I was in, with just slightly more time to react. They slid all around next to us, so that in a few seconds there were 4 cards stopped at weird angles in the intersection and several others barely out of the intersection. It felt like a too-real-life version of tetris. That's the most scared I've been in a very long time. A couple of cars bumped each other, but it was only small dents & scratches. It could have very very easily have been so much worse. We slowly got our cars untangled and out of the intersection. Several of the cars that had bumped each other pulled over to the side of the road.
I just drove to the next parking lot, pulled in and just sat trying to calm myself down. One of the other people in the near-accident pulled over next to me and got out of his van. He came by and knocked on my door to get my attention. When I saw what car it was/who it was, I went ahead and opened my door. He was just checking to make sure I was okay ... which is when I just started crying. I felt so foolish, but I was just so shaken up.
After I'd calmed down, he left, and I called Bryan. It seemed like a good time to talk to him. He told me he managed to lock himself accidentally into his office which made me laugh. He had to put in a work order saying he was "trapped in his office" and felt pretty foolish. Thankful for some humor, I went ahead to the house to look around. My back, neck and shoulders are STILL cramping and sore from the tension and the shock. When I get back from D.I. later I may take a hot bath or use a heating pad or something to loosen them up. Scary stuff.

At the house, this is what I saw:

First, the fireplace again because it's incredible (notice the tile next to it):

Then I went upstairs because I couldn't really get to the master bathroom to see what they'd done, and I noticed something large, metal & ugly was missing!
They removed that big railing from the half-wall upstairs:



Next is the upstairs bathroom that I couldn't see yesterday because there were men working in it. Notice that the tile on the floor AND the tile at the shower are up! Plus you can see the cabinets under the sink & the "head knocker" above the toilet:

And the laundry room is laid out:

They were in the process of finishing up the full bath downstairs & finishing the master bathroom. Once all of the tile is laid out, then they'll go back through and add the grout. It's looking very nice though! I didn't think the cement looked all that bad ... but this looks much better :)

I realized after the near accident, however, how much driving to our new house is starting to feel like "driving home." I was sincerely wishing that I was driving up to our garage and could get out and go sit down in our living room and get a glass of water, just like I will when we're really living there. It's coming up pretty soon though, I just need to be patient a little longer.

I'm back at the apartment for now, going to try to put a few more rounds on my dishcloth, and then I'll go back to Nitsch Elementary for our Thursday afternoon D.I. time. Only one more week to go of that, which I'm kind of grateful for. Stay safe on the roads & stay warm!!