The All-New Bunrab

fadethecat, here's a preview of your afghan - this is a little less than a quarter of it, which is as much as I've gotten sewn together so far.
( granny squares )

This red scarf is pretty small, but the "keyhole" in it means you can fasten it by looping the other end through the hole, which means you don't need to tie a knot. The yarn is an alpaca blend. The stitch is a slightly textured stitch mainly alternating sc and dc. Fade, you're getting stuck with this one. (This is the second try at a keyhole; the first, in tan alpaca, I'm using myself.)
( The image looks purple; it's really redder than that )

And a purple scarf, now, which really is purple. This is a perfectly ordinary double-crochet scarf, remarkable only for the speed at which it was made: except for weaving in the ends, the entire scarf was made during the trip home from Philadelphia yesterday, in the car, in the dark. I started out trying some smaller patterns and using one strand and a small hook, and after about 30 miles/30 minutes got fed up with the way none of the things I was attempting were cooperating with me, so I ripped it out, and thus the final version was done during the last 100 miles/hour and a half of the trip. It's two strands held together, and I'll include the scraps of yarn that are left so you can see them separately. It's really soft 100% wool sock yarn.
( This purple scarf really is purple )

Tra la, projects are getting finished at an amazing rate.

( finished object )
The buffalo plaid baby blanket is done! Now, I will never do one this way again, because I don't think anybody but me and maybe 2 other people in the world who happen to both weave and crochet, and care about what I do, will appreciate the sheer cleverness of this; the same effect, to everyone else, can be achieved by crocheting individual columns and then sewing them together. Nobody else will care that I did this as though I were weaving, holding the "warp threads" of red, yellow, red, yellow, red in columns and carrying a weft thread across (or woof, if you prefer) in alternating stripes of red, then yellow, then red... so that there are no seams, the blanket is fully reversible, and, well, it's just very clever is all. But who cares? That doesn't make it any warmer or more useful to the baby or its parents, and they would not understand the details nor remember them 10 minutes later if I told them. So why bother? However, for those two of you out there who will appreciate how this was done, here's a couple of slightly closer looks.
( finished object closer )
( finished object closest )
I think the touch of color on the inner border keeps it from being too severe - because otherwise true red and gold are not what you'd think of as baby colors. But there's that color, and it's slightly fluffy, too. The red and the gold are good old Wool-Ease. The fluffy stuff is one of JoAnn's house brand yarns.
And while I'm at it, a project I finished for a christmas present; the photos are of it slightly before it's finished. The first one shows the L-shape I make them in; this one happens to be knitted rather than crocheted. The second one shows how the stripes will line up when I sew the one seam required when one makes this L-shape, to turn it into a poncho with a hole for the head in the middle.
( almost finished object )
( almost finished object close-up )
Incidentally, this poncho is an object lesson in: check your gauge. I did not, and wound up with an adult-size poncho when I meant to make a poncho for a 5-year-old. So the poncho is being shared between my sister S and her oldest daughter H, who is nearly a teenager, and who knits, and who will use the poncho as a guide to making one herself - complete with my explanation of how the size went wrong.
I did make and complete a poncho for 5-year-old E, but forgot to take a picture of it before it went winging on its way. As soon as my brother J takes a picture of E wearing it, I will post it here.

Let's see. Halloween - nonexistent; we had a Bel Air band rehearsal that night, and have no idea whether there were any trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood. I doubt it; I don't think there are many kids on this street; at least, I haven't seen any playing in yards, don't see any bicycles in driveways, or basketball hoops, or other giveaways of school-age kids. And we're a dead-end street branching off a non-residential street, so we're not on the "around the block" route of trick-or-treating families from the other side of the block (there is an Other Side; it just doesn't easily connect to this side, except through one neighbor's yard which extends all the way through, so although his house is half an acre away and facing a different street, his driveway comes out next to ours.)

Tuesday night, we went down to Fort Myer, in VA, for a free Army Band concert. For those of my readers in Texas, to give you an idea of scale here, you should realize that Baltimore and Washington DC are closer together than Dallas is to Fort Worth, and Baltimore to most of the cities in northern VA is still closer than Austin is to San Antonio. So it takes about an hour's drive to get to Fort Myer, which is in the same general area as the Pentagon. In getting lost on the way home, we wound up circling the Pentagon a couple of times, in fact. We heard the Army Band Brass Dectet which has 11 people at a time playing, out of a pool of 12, but let's face it, the word for 11-tet would be what?). They did some really cool stuff, including pieces with 3 piccolo trumpets, and several pieces where the trumpet section at times included piccolo trumpet, trumpet, some size in between those two that I don't know whether has a special name, and pflugelhorn. Speaking of exotic trumpets, the Bel Air Community Band has a bass trumpet playing in the baritone/euphonium section!

Wednesday night - Montgomery Village band rehearsal, dress rehearsal for a concert we're playing on Sunday the 6th (that would be later today, at least right now in this time zone).

Thursday: got a bunch of unpacking and a bit more shoving around of boxes and stuff to organize things. Enough of the kitchen counters are now cleared of stuff that we finally figured out where to put, that we can actually cook supper at home.

Friday we went to a Baltimore Symphony concert, an all-Grieg program. Very nice work; S liked the guest conductor better than I did. I thought he was a little too expressive - fat middle aged men should not wiggle their butts like belly dancers while conducting "Anitra's Dance" from Peer Gynt.

Today was a crafts show in Columbia, where I had a booth to sell hats. Only sold a dozen, due to the fact that while LAST weekend it was 50 degrees and rainy, THIS weekend it was 75 degrees and brilliantly sunny, so (A) very few people were thinking about coming to an indoor crafts fair, and (B) almost no one was thinking of hats. We told the fair organizers that next year, we want 45 degrees and a light drizzle, please! So I covered the cost of the booth space and the materials for constructing my hat racks, but not quite the costs of all the yarn I bought. Oh well, a learning experience. Main thing I learned: I might just as well have made only kitty-ear hats; that's really what everyone wants. Met some very nice people, both customers and other crafters. I may have lined up a few students for crochet lessons. Came home and slept for 4 hours after that.

So, tomorrow/later today we (the Montgomery Village Community Band) are playing a concert at the National Lutheran Home nursing home. One of the pieces we're doing is "Concord" which has several bassoon solos; since we have no bassoons, they are default bari sax solos, which is to say, me. And "Concord" is a piece I know really well, athough the first eleven concerts I played it, back when it was published in 1989, I was playing tenor. Nonetheless, I can do the 7/8 version of "Yankee Doodle" without thinking hard, so it's fun.