Masculine afghan [Customer Crochet]

What started as an random ripple project placed on Etsy last fall, ended up leading to a sale for the largest afghan I've made to date.

A customer contacted me to create an afghan to fit a queen size bed in similar fashion of one I currently have listed on Etsy.

The project required about 70 hours of time, utilizing almost every non-teaching moment I had over the past 6 weeks :D

After a shipping fiasco that involved a breakdown of a large sorting machine in Salt Lake City, UT, the afghan arrived safely (albeit, a week late) to the customer.  With the backdrop of his house and dessert landscape, the afghan seems to fit in quite nicely.

The customer is awaiting a custom-made bed the afghan is meant for; until then, it rests on a spare bed.

Etsy sale for smaller version

Red Heart Prairie Star progress [Crochet]

I've been continuing to put more time into crocheting lately than quilting.  After spending some time perusing Ravelry Tuesday AM, I was compelled to jump into a new project despite having a few WIPs going.  I swear, my crochet world is slowly starting to look like my quilting world!   But when a project screams and pleads to you to be made, what'cha gonna do?!??!?  

Red Heart's Prairie Star [Red Heart link | Ravelry link | YouTube series] caught my eye.  It reminds me so much of a Lonestar quilt.  One feature I love about Ravelry is the ability to look through projects others had made.  Color combination after color combination, but the original color grouping still pleased me most.  I love greens.

So, I dug through the small stash that I've accumulated so far since my crocheting addiction began last summer...

And I jumped in, full steam ahead.

This is a join-as-you-go project; definitely have grown to like this method if it involved motifs/units that need to be attached.  The joining method took me a bit of stitching and frogging (crocheters slang for removing stitches);  the directions were a bit wordy.  Eventually, the lightbulb went on--duh!  Easy peasy.  I had found the YouTube video series and tuned into the clip that explained the joining method. The footage is a bit dark, but it did verify I had figured out the join correctly.

The motifs have become second nature now, 54 diamonds into the project.  Each diamond takes about 9 minutes to stitch, join, and sew in the ends.  So....54 motifs x 9 minutes = ~8-9 hours of time already invested.

I know there are ladies who set timers for 10 minutes in order to get some quilting/sewing time in.  I figure if I can get at least a couple motifs in everyday, this'll eventually see a finish. :)