Mother's Day Gift Idea

Today I was thinking of Mother's Day and what I might give my mom this year.  She lives across the country from us so it's usually flowers or some other kind of delivery.  This year I thought I would make something for her but she's not one to become cold so no sweater or scarf for her.  I did a quick internet search and took some ideas from others and thought about using crochet to frame a family picture and send it to her.  Interesting right?  As I continued my internet search I came across several ideas: 

 

I love the quirkiness of the top frame that Emilie of http://borisdestroismoulins.com/ created.  Wouldn't it be cool to create this frame as a border inside a standard frame?

Interweave Crochet Spring 2010

Then there is this second image from Interweave Crochet.  They are using filet crochet border to create a mat on top of a mat inside a picture frame.  I thought this would be a great idea and started to look in Ravelry for different patterns. 

 

After some time I just couldn't find anything that I was really looking for.  I went back to the larger internet again and started looking at other crochet sites like Annie's Attic and  Crochet Pattern Central.  Nothing was tickling my fancy.  



 

So I began thinking "You have a books, go look there, dummy!"  Sure enough in my crochet "libray" I found exactly what I wanted.  Et voila!

 

I forget how much I love this book!  I bought it apparently sometime around 1994 or 1995 when my daughter was little because I have a great little time capsule in the back pages:

 

This book is fabulous and I've looked at newer versions and they just do NOT compete.  Every single stitch or pattern is both written and in graph form!  I learned to read crochet graphs from this book and still think that motif work and complicated patterns are much easier to "see" than read.  But when they are both available, Wow!, I learn so much more quickly!    Some of the patterns even have a couple of examples with color changes (see the Petal Pattern I, II and III)! 

 

So I'm not going to share with you what I've decided to create for my mom because she just might read the blog post.  But I will share photos later on when I'm done.  After opening this book and browsing it for awhile I've got so many ideas I may even change my mind.  :)

 

Hope you all are doing well and would love to hear what you are creating.