Week 8 | Cat's Claw + Love-In-A-Mist

Week 8 | Cat's Claw + Love-In-A-Mist

Annetta | I am not fond of the name for this week's square. Cat's are not my favorite. The crochet square was very simple and easy to complete. I managed to crochet it in just 2 days. I am thankful for an easy square this week because the week wasn't easy. It also gave me a chance to get a head start on next weeks square as my family and I will be going on a ski trip. The thing I liked most about this weeks square was the color combinations.

Favorite moment from the week: I would have to say having some of our church members over on Friday for Game Night was the highlight this week. We eat pizza, had snacks and played Phase 10. There was a lot of smack talk along with laughs. It was a big reason why we decided to relocate to the capital city of Bratislava. I wish there were more games nights!

Stephanie | This block looked so cute, I just wanted to do this. I had a hard time choosing the final color combo, but after consulting my girl Shea, she picked out the perfect coordinating color to go with the blues. I didn't account for the white corners on each red diamond block, this one required a lot of cutting in preparation for sewing, but in the end it was worth it. I love the variety in this finished block. I had never done the diamond square before, but it was pretty simple, I feel like the book over complicated it and refereed back to other techniques, when it didn't really need to. I liked how the finish block looks and feel this would be a great full size quilt. The diamonds add just a little something extra.

Favorite moment from the week: My favorite thing about this week is that its finally go-time on the garden. We had a huge truck load of compost delivered and we planted 30+ trees in the orchard, we built boxes for and planted asparagus, we started some seeds and have them in the greenhouse, and we planted some citrus trees. We are finally working on our dream and have taken the first steps towards our family farm. We also have a few chicken eggs in the incubator that should be hatching in a few days. Exciting!

 

 

 

 

Week 7 | Tulip Ladyfingers + Fantastic

Week 7 | Tulip Ladyfingers + Fantastic

 

 

 

 

 

Stephanie | I thought this Tulip Ladyfingers was a cute pattern, I like the purple colors in the sample. I don't have any purple to chose from, so I picked a collection of pink, it was fitting for Valentine's Day this week. This pattern made me laugh because my friend Amber made a cat quilt using the same blocks as the corners of this one, and all I could see was tulips, where she saw cats. This block was easy to put together, my seems got a little off, but oh well.

Favorite moment from the week: This was a crazy week, we got lots of rain - it was expected to drop 4-7 inches of rain. I don't know how much actually came down but the area around us flooded like crazy. Plus the rainfall melted the snow in the mountains, so we had all the runoff as well. Roads leaving our home were closed, the creek on our property massively overflowed and widened. Luckily our house is positioned on a slope, so the creek is still at a good distance from the house. We did however see a truck and trailer that had been washed off the road with the flood waters and remains stranded in a ditch well off the road. Some fun news this week, we picked up about 25 fruit trees for the orchard and some citrus and avocado trees. YUM! Now we start the work on the garden and orchard.

Annetta | The name of the square is fantastic... I must stay that crocheting it was interesting for sure. It had quite the pattern to it. for about 3 rows there were two parts, which made the pattern a bit longer to work through. It was another busy week for me and I couldn't just work through the pattern throughout the week, I had to do most of it on Saturday (that was yesterday). I am really enjoying how you can start out with a circle, but at the end of the pattern you end up with a square. I also made a few adjustments to my last few rows because it was going to end up being on the smaller side. I knew this before I started the pattern, but decided not to go up a size and instead adjust in the rows itself. I'm now looking forward to starting to join all the squares I've crocheted so far.

Favorite moment from the week: This week was a good one and a hard one on so many levels. The favorite moment was spending the whole Valentines day with my husband. We had to go to the Foreign Police for somethings I needed to take care of and then afterwards we went out for lunch. We ended our day with dessert after Tin's school and played games before bed. Good day!

Week 6 | Bavarian Beauty + Hidden Star

Week 6 | Bavarian Beauty + Hidden Star

Annetta | This week was crazy busy! We had Dr appointments,  extracurricular activities, meetings and so on this week. I kind thought it would be like last week and I would end up with an unfinished square, but luckily I made it! Most of my Saturday was spent working on the project as 'you gotta do whatcha gotta do'. I loved this weeks square. The design of the granny square is very unique, but I did find it so time-consuming. There were so many of those stars that required many trebles and I don't like those one bit. I made two adjustments in my project. For the last two rows, I did double crochets instead of the single crochets the patterns calls for. I noticed my square was going to be on the smaller side so making the adjustment was a really good call.

Favorite moment from the week:  It's been a while since my husband had gotten me 'just because' flowers. I'm a flower lover and need them in my life. So I decided to gently tell my husband that it's been a while and I would like some now. Well, he listened! He brought me the prettiest colored roses ever. I would say that was a favorite moment for sure.

Stephanie | So this Hidden Star pattern had this new block piece called the house square. This is where the block resembles a house because it has contrasting corners on a rectangle block. I was a little intimidated, but after a closer look, its basically the Flying Geese block from last week but on a larger contrasting main block. So it was simple to figure out once I put my anxiety away. Once the pattern comes together, there is a Hidden Star that emerges from those contrasting corners of the house blocks. I was ready to put this creamy tan print in a block and I felt this was a good one to let it shine. The red ties into the flowers from the main print, but gives a more striking star versus a hidden one.

Favorite moment from the week: This was a pretty lousy week for me. Ive been dealing with a lot of issues lately and they really took hold of me this week leaving me pretty grouchy and blah. The weather hasn't helped much either, its been cold and wet. I attempted to cheer myself up with a good podcast the other day, and I didn't want to just stare at my phone, so I pulled out some watercolors to attempt some painting. My two girls noticed and took over, creating quite the mess, but many-MANY painting, they had a blast.....and I let it happen.We also painted and assembled little bedside book shelves from the IKEA Spice Rack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5 | Sunburst + Rachel

Week 5 | Sunburst + Rachel

Stephanie | I liked this pattern, but man I had some issues with it. First I was going to do a different pattern, and use all solids. But Since I have so many print fabrics, I chose not to use all my solids on 1 block and instead use them sparingly with high print blocks. So then I chose this Sunburst block, which the pattern used yellow prints (hence the name Sunburst). I don't have any yellow prints, but this teal floral one popped out at me, so I made a contrasting teal block instead. This pattern called for HST-easy peasy, but also the Flying Geese block I haven't done before, so I was a bit intimidated. But luckily they are simple to assemble. I did, however, struggle with cutting my fabrics to the correct size and made several errors there, I also cut my finger on my rotary cutter AND cut some of my squares out in the wrong fabric! But in the end, I like how this block looks and the colors I ended up using.

Favorite moment from the week: My favorite moment of this week was having a really good phone conversation with Annetta. We talked about some exciting things, and she inspired me to take more photos. I haven't had a desire for a while to photograph anything, I have been very discouraged with how my photos turn out and I basically gave up on it for a while. After our talk, I saw a beautiful sunset and wanted to capture it, this led to a little photo session around the property and the kids played and hubby dug holes for some blueberry plants. 

Annetta | If off, how cute and gorgeous is Stephanie's block and her pictures?! Back to our regular programming. This has been a saga of sorts. I started my crochet square super late this week. I didn't get to it until Wednesday and knocked out 8 rows in one session. I usually like to start on Monday and have the square done by Friday the latest. When I first read the instructions they advised to get a size larger hook which I didn't own. That meant I needed to buy a new hook on Tuesday just to start the project. Luckily I managed to get those 8 rows in because the saga continues. On Friday, my son had a school break so we took that time to visit family across the country for the weekend. I packed my yarn, hook and all the tools I needed to get the square done on the train ride. On the train ride, I discovered that I took everything BUT the project itself. Like really?! Sigh... What are you gonna do? To top off the great trip my son had a fever the whole time and recovered just in time to take the long train ride back home. Now I play catchup. On the bright side, I really enjoyed this square. It has been a pleasure to crochet and I love the pattern too. I think that helps the whole drama because if the square wasn't a favorite well... I'm just happy it was. Our Year to Inspire journey is never easy, we come across too many challenges along the way, but it is always worth it. Plus, I get to do this with my favorite person, Stephanie (worth it)!

Favorite moment from the week: I have so many! This week my time with my friends really stood out to me. My chat on the phone with Stephanie and then this weekend I got to spend with a dear friend of mine in her own city Kosice, Slovakia. We went out for brunch and did something I don't get to do, go shopping on Saturday! We also took the train to Kosice together and had some nice time to chat in the dining car. I don't have too many friends here in Slovakia so I am very thankful to have her.