Lastest FO: Crocheted Pickup Truck for Grandson

June 29, 2010| Lindy| 0 Comments | 5:16 pm

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Yesterday I finished a crocheted pickup truck for my grandson. He is 5 months old and almost to the point where he will be playing with soft toys, rattles and items that he can chew on.

This little truck measures about 7 inches long by 3 inches wide and is about 3 inches tall. At the request of my son, I did NOT put a little bell inside of it — but I thought about it! It was an easy pattern to crochet and it went together very quickly.

Details: I purchased the pattern from Stacey Trock’s Fresh Stitches website and downloaded it directly from there. I used Knit Picks Shine Worsted for the truck body and Peaches and Cream in black for the tires and the pickup bed. You crochet the truck body and cab in one piece, the front is crocheted separately as are the lights — which are sewn in place before you stuff the front and attach it to the truck body. The tires and the pickup bed are separate pieces and you stuff the body as you go. It’s soft and squishy, but you can actually put something in the pickup bed as it has depth.

I think my grandson will enjoy his first red pickup truck. 🙂

1 thought on “Lastest FO: Crocheted Pickup Truck for Grandson”

Amanda says:

July 1, 2010 at 8:48 am

Oh that is cute! You’ll have to make him a car now to go with it!

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Lack of New PostsLack of New Posts

I apologize to those who read my little blog — I have not posted for some time due to computer issues.

About a month ago, my DH and I both got new HP Desktops with Windows 7 as the operating system. After making all the necessary file transfers, I got up and running and thought things were just dandy. The new desktop was much faster and I loved my much larger monitor (great for these old eyes!). Then, about two weeks ago, funky random things started happening as I was using my new PC. Things like the screen just freezing up — which caused me to go to Task Manager and force the “not responding” program to close. Over the next several days, this went to happening at weird random and unpredictable intervals to happening almost every time I went on to the Internet. And then, it also started happening when I was in other programs — including the game Solitare and even Word. And — it was getting so that Task Manager couldn’t shut down the “not responding” program — now, when it happened the entire PC locked up — and I do mean LOCKED UP! The only way out was to hold down the Power Button until the machine shut down….yep, a hard shut down.

So, last weekend I started researching this little problem. I had to use my iPad — ’cause my HP certainly wasn’t going to let me do any surfing on it. And I discovered that this is a KNOWN problem with Windows 7. I found lots of threads about this little issue — one of which had been going on in a forum for over two years. From this research, I gleaned a few helpful suggestions that I thought I might try. Now this surfing took me most of Saturday afternoon over the Memorial Day holiday. So Sunday, I decided to check out HP Technical Support and see if there was anything new or helpful about this problem. And you know what? HP had a technical article on this problem — along with a whole series of steps to follow to determine how best to fix this little issue.

Now — before anybody goes there — the first thing I did when this little problem popped up was to run my virus scanning software — I did a full scan of my hard drive. As we all know, a virus is the most likely cause of problems with your computer. My computer scan came up clean. No viruses.

So, what was the cause? It was most likely either a program I had recently installed or an update to Windows that had been automatically installed. The solution? Well, HP has a utility called “System Restore” that allows you to go back and “restore” your system to a point before that update — i.e. a time before the problem started happening. Full instructions for how to do this were given in the article. BUT — before I went forward with this, I decided to back up my files — and this took me most of Sunday afternoon. Then Monday I was able to go ahead and do the System Restore. I discovered that there had been an update to Windows just before I started experiencing my issue. So I took my system back to the point just before that update. Viola! No more freezing or locking up! Whew! problem solved.

Not sure what conclusion to draw from all of this. Clearly it is a known issue that can randomly occur with Windows 7 — but it doesn’t appear to be something that Microsoft has addressed at this point — even though it apparently has been happening to Windows 7 users since 2009. I find it interesting that HP has a solution for the problem in the form of a utility that allows you to restore the system back to a point before the problem started to happen.

Anyway — that’s my tale of woe. Now that I have a working PC, I can get to work and actually write a new post about my new vintage crochet pattern. Stop back in a couple of days — I should have the pattern ready and available.

Progress on Re-creating the Vintage Crochet EdgingProgress on Re-creating the Vintage Crochet Edging

CrochetEdging1_Rd1
I have made progress on re-creating the Vintage Crochet Edging from my mother’s dresser scarf. I have determined that the edging is made using double crochet stitches in a filet crochet type pattern. It is only three rounds.

For this project, I am using muslin fabric that I have cut into a rectangle that is approximately 20 inches by 15 inches. I have done the hemstitching around the edge and made a single crochet foundation around the fabric by single crocheting through each hole in the hemstitching. The foundation was crocheted using white crochet thread, size 10.

CrochetEdging_Rd1_2
The first round of the crochet edging consists of a mix of 2 double crochet, chain 5 and 3 double crochet stitches around the edge. For this edging I am using an aqua size 10 crochet thread. It is progressing nicely as you can see from the photos

Pattern: Re-created Vintage Crochet Motif — “Mom’s Motif”Pattern: Re-created Vintage Crochet Motif — “Mom’s Motif”

In my previous blog post, “Vintage Crochet: A Motif from My Mother”, I described how I had found this motif tucked inside a ball of crochet thread from my Mom’s stash and how I had re-created it.

I have finished writing up the pattern and it is available here: Mom’s Motif. I have checked this pattern for accuracy several times. However, if you download it and use it, please let me know if you have any questions or find anything amiss.

There’s a little more to the story of this motif. After studying on it for a time, I decided to check and see if this was the motif my Mom used to crochet me a tablecloth. And sure enough, it was. Here’s a picture of the tablecloth:

It’s lovely, isn’t it? Here’s a close-up of the tablecloth:

I am planning on taking the added step of recreating the patterning used to join the motifs into a single piece. This may take awhile. But I promise I will post it when I’m done.