New beginnings for Spring!

Well, that step back did me a world of good. I restarted the Cozy Striped Kerchief, and I have never before been so glad to have frogged a project and restarted it. What an improvement! I'm close to being finished, but here's a peek:

I just love the alternating bands of color and the brown garter ridge piping all along the way. It will make for a less formal accessory in the end, but lovely still. Best of all, I'll have plenty of the ladder yarn to finish it to the correct size, and will have used up more of the silk/bamboo and brown silk/cotton to clear out my stash. And after all, that my goal here. :)

A great deal of the stash has yet to be documented, and much of that is in cotton crochet thread. A bin under my bed holds the major part of it, mostly in white or ecru in various weights. Remnants of different colors have been wound into balls and tucked here and there throughout my storage spots. Here are a few of the pastel colors:

With Easter quickly approaching, I remembered making some sweet little ornaments several years back. Our family was in the process of packing for a move, and we had delayed in taking down a small Christmas tree in a corner. When it became mid-January, the kids suggested we keep it up for a "holiday" tree and decorate it throughout the year for the respective holidays and seasons.

That was such fun, and the ideas started coming like gangbusters! We immediately removed all the "Christmasy" ornaments and left only the white and silver ones, including the crocheted snowflakes, giving it a wintery theme.

Then I started planning for Valentine's Day. Sarah and I began crocheting red and pink and white hearts of all sizes, and when February 1st arrived, down came winter and up went hearts. We filled in gaps with artificial red and white flowers.

Towards the end of the month, I began thinking about spring and Easter and went searching online for something to create. I ran across a site which offered Victorian Egg Covers. These enchanting little sacks have a drawstring top to allow for the egg to be inserted and then drawn closed. They also have a loop worked into the top by which to hang them like ornaments. I printed out the patterns (there are seven) and got to work. I filled them with plastic eggs of different colors, added some spring flowers, and the tree loooked beautiful.

Fast forward to last week, and I couldn't find my Easter ornaments. Anywhere. I can't imagine I got rid of them, but they may be tucked away in boxes that we've never brought into the new house since the move. So I pulled out the patterns, rounded up my threads, and started crocheting. Here's what I have so far:

Aren't they sweet? I'll be making more and bringing them to the yarn shop today to see if Judy would like to use them as decorations for the next couple of weeks.

As for the pattern, it has disappeared from the internet...sort of. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I was able to see the snapshot of the original site. If anyone would like to find these patterns, go to the Wayback Machine and enter in http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/jacobean/141/eggcovers.html. Then click on 2009 on the timeline along the top of the page and choose the February date circled. That's where I found most of the photos still intact.

Buona Pasqua!