The Progress

What a week! What a month! What a life! Crazy - that's all I can say! Having three tests a week in addition to numerous hours in clinic and not enough time of exhausting studying is plane insane. It is not over,  but I am over that hill and it feels great! So finally  today is the day I get to enjoy myself (more or less, considering the fact that my back and my lower abdomen are constantly throbbing...)
So today's agenda includes having a peaceful cup of coffee and catching up on my blog reads (already on it!), cleaning up messes that accumulated throughout the house, making a dinner (I am thinking baked deer meat and potatoes with cheese, cream, and spices), working on my projects while watching a movie, and maybe in the evening we could go and see Frankenweenie in an outdoor movie theater (if I can make my husband take me, that is).
About my projects... I am currently working on two and both of them are somewhat big, especially considering the fact that I don't have a lot of time, or even when I do get some free time, I feel like my bed is the only thing I want to see at that point. One of them is the baby blanket I started way back in the summer, then changed my mind and went a different direction with it. Well now it is finally out of "scarf" stage (which means I don't have to explain to anyone that it is not a scarf anymore, no it is too wide to assume that). I gave up on making the little "bubbles" on entire blanket, it was too time consuming and it required unending amount of yarn, and I already had my mom-in-law send me additional yarn since I purchased it in Russia, when we went there over the summer. So now the "bubbly" part is on the bottom quarter of the blanket and the rest is just stripes. It is soft and heavy, just like I wanted it!

Now another one of my projects, I don't think I talked about before. I am crocheting my mom a round tablecloth with an elaborate pattern. Three years ago, my grandma let me take whatever magazines I wanted from her amazing collection. She has many Burda magazines about clothes, but a couple of them are on crocheting and knitting, or cross-stitching - and you bet I took those! They are the pearls of my collection of craft books and magazines! Some of them date back to 1960! I know that back in the days of soviet union it was very hard to find them, but she always did. As a kid I looked through them all the time, I found it very interesting and always dreamed of making one of those beautiful pieces. So when my mom said she wanted a crochet tablecloth I immediately made myself a hot cup of tea and dug into those magazines and this is what I found...

This one was just challenging enough for me to make it fun (I love reading crocheting patterns, it's like knowing a secret code), and my mom fell in love with it immediately. I am done with the middle part, which means about a quarter of the job is done...

Here is the pattern, in case if anyone wants to try it - it is very fun! There are eight identical pieces to it, so once you figure one out you just keep going until you complete the circle.

This particular magazine is from 2002 and has many lovely and tempting projects in it. My next one, after I finish this one, will be to make a little table runner or maybe a round tablecloth in pumpkin orange for the season.
And that is all I've got for now. I can't wait to be done with one of these so I can start a new project - it is unending at so so fun!