For the love of baggies!

So, I've been avoiding blogging for about a week now.  I know, I know, it shows how weak I truly am.  I can't do 12 things at once, and i'm ashamed!  I tried to do that headband thingy I mentioned in my last blog, but its too blasted complicated for me in this time of high stress.  So instead I am making little bags out of the left over skeins.  I think it would make a fab dice bag for those of us geeky sorts.  It holds a solid 2.3 sets of D20 dice.  I have 2 full sets plus a couple extras bought singly, and it holds them fine.  My husband is requesting i make a larger one for him LOL!  Man I love him.  Also had a request from a coworker for a larger one too!  I think i'm on to something!


Here are the empty photos:

The one taken right after I finished threading the chord

I wish I had a set of dice handy to show how it looks full!


So now, my new project is a sparkly bag (one with beads on it), and a hat!  Two projects at once! Who's the crazy person here? I am!  But we all knew that.


Also on the new front: I set up my store on Etsy, I just haven't listed anything, and I need some graphic design help!  I am utterly helpless at making anything neat on the computer, especially banners or the like for a page.  Anyone know a person willing to barter for hand knit items? LOL!


My husband's 31st birthday is this Friday, and I bought him a flat panel monitor for his computer.  But I was way too excited to wait for Friday to give it to him, so he got a week early.  I must say its nice to type up my blog and surf the net without a psychedelic monitor that blinks, changes color, and fritzes out every few minutes.  We were long over due for a new one, and I think I made a good choice!  Much crisper and, well, not so seizure inducing as the last one...  Off to go knit the rest of my beady bag! And maybe a little bit of the hat as well!

Completion is nice...

Finally!  The hat is done!  Its a pretty red color.  In artificial light it looks to be a rust-red color, but in sunlight, its this nice dark color.  Pictures!

Lacey Fans

Look at the neat pattern!

This is out in the sunlight, mind you, its late August hot sunlight, but it shows the differences in color nicely.

Star on top of the hat!

Now, I just wish I had a mannequin head for display purposes LOL!  I will NOT under any circumstances put one on someone else's head for photo purposes, not even for trying because of health issues, especially if I want to sell them!  I had to take a picture of the top of the hat because of the neat star pattern it created when I weaved the seam together. 

What is my next project you ask? I have about half a skein left of the yarn from the hat, so I think I will do a headband out of what is left.  I do have another skein of this color, so should I run out, I have enough.  But what to do after the headband? Oh, the choices are too much!  Also, tomorrow is payday, and the urge to buy more yarn is sooooo great.  Must resist... Must be strong...  I think a Saturday trip to JoAnn's fabric is in order!  Also, the patience of waiting for my package from Knitpicks is tough.  My double-pointed needles are in there!  My wishlist on Knitpicks has grown exponentially!  It went from being only about $200, now its at almost 800!  Some day, I will have all that... LOL!

Anyways, off to knit a bit!  Maybe even run down to walmart to get the handwashing soap to wash up my scarf and hat.  Etsy, here I come!

How the time flies!

I meant to write a blog last night, but fell asleep before I could.  The kids and I watched a movie while I knitted, it was good mommy-kid time.  We watched "How to Train Your Dragon" and I must say, that is one of my favorite kids movies.  


My hat is now about 3 or 4 inches long, it is NOT twisted (yes I am proud about that).  The last photo of it i have was from 2 nights ago.   It looks something like this:

It is paired with the book for a visual reference LOL!  That picture was after completing one entire pattern set.  You repeat it 2 more times and then you're (almost) done!  Well revolution #2 is complete, just need to do revolution #3 and then I can start working on the crown decreases.  Then hat is DONE!  Oh so exciting!  What to make next hmmm....


On a side note, I am happy to announce that hubby and I cut our extra expenses by about 60%.  This is amazing!  But now instead of buying books, I am buying yarn.  I must say my new favorite shopping site is knitpicks.com. It has some amazing yarn and accessories.  Maybe some day I can find myself a spinning wheel and spin my own yarn... eventually.  My mother used to spin too.  Man, I miss that spinning wheel.


Ok, off to clean for a bit this morning, then I bet you can guess what I'll be doing.... Knitting!

Try and try again...

So if there is anything you have ever learned with knitting, it is try and try again.  I was a happy knitter, just sitting at work today on lunch knitting away when *BAM* it hit me... my knitting was twisted.  Its like the planets aligned, and my friggen new cable needle untweaked to show me the horror of all horrors, a twisted hat that I've been working on for however long.  And then the memory happened to follow close after that.

The memory of sitting in my 4-H teacher's living room knitting away on a hat when she told me it was twisted, that I need to pull it all out and start again.   Theresa Frank was my guide and my mentor, my friend and supporter.  She did everything I longed to do.  Knit, crochet, quilt, sew, had her own sheep she gathered wool from.  Dyed and spun the wool to make more yarn to create with.  She taught me things I wish I would have written down to keep, especially to keep my flustered spirits up when I keep making my own glitches *as in said project*.  I miss her greatly and wish I could see her one more time, make one more connection again.  

Anyhow, I tore out my twisted hat, and cast on one more time.  Determined to work it again, until the cows come home and I have a friggen hat out of the deal!  I will do it better this time, if just for my own sake rather than anyone elses.  I will remember Theresa's chiding, scolding, and helping.  I will remember forever the presentations she had me make to her neighbor when I needed to teach someone something for the Knitting II class.  That she told me to never be nervous, because they were people too, and they understand how hard it is to make a presentation in front of strangers, but most of all, be myself. We lost a good person last year, and I miss her now more than ever.  Gosh, I made myself all emotional.  I think its time for bed.  

New tricks!

Yay! My scarf is finally done!  The ends are all run in, I "grafted" them together (could have done better I think).  Now it is waiting for me to run to the store to get some soap to hand wash it with.  On to more projects!

Speaking of, I wanted to start a hat today with a new book I got a few weeks ago.  It is knit in the round, and i haven't done something like that for about 10 years, so I figured "why not google it? I'm sure there's instructions somewhere."  And viola! There they were!  A video on youtube!  She even has her own website, knittingtipsbyjudy.com.   From her i learned a fun new way to cast on... Ok, maybe not new, but new to me!  By "knitting" them onto the needle! Like this:  

 Its neat, less time consuming, and less yarn consuming than my classical way of casting on!  With the thumb and forefinger.... Like this:

What a pain in the hand... Literally.  Anyhow, so I have learned a few things with this lady's help and I must say... this is AWESOME!  Her videos are quite helpful too.   But you have to go to youtube for the videos, they are not on her website.  Oh well!  Wish I would have watched her video last night on the Kitchner stitch.  Would have been very helpful i'm sure.  What I've learned today: your brain doesn't keep unused information for more than 10 years (gee whiz, wonder why!), and it's okay to have to go to youtube and watch a video on how to do it again.  Darn it, why can't I be that smart!   Anyhow, just wanted to say that whoever this Judy is, she's awesome... She's very helpful indeed!  Since I had to wait at the DMV today, I thought getting started on said hat would be helpful.  Sure, once I got the yarn all situated and cast on, I forgot how to connect the 2 sides... (thus my trip to youtube).  But once I got that all figured out and squared away, the knitting took no time at all.  Well, until I decided to not knit the pattern as it was supposed to be and had to rip it all out again.  This  happens every time I start a project, get so excited to only rip it out because I made a major snafu...  Oh well!  Learning experience!  I think I have talked myself out, I'm yawning as I type.  Tomorrow I have a day off, so maybe I can get more creativity time... Maybe.

Goodnight everyone!

Crafty spaces

Our power went out for about an hour and a half today while they redirected the power at the corner power station thingy mabobber... They just finished rebuilding the power station thingy so all our area was out of power today.   I woke up when our fan shut off, and couldn't fall back to sleep.  So I decided to clear out our Master Bedroom Closet because my "sewing" table and stuff fits in there, so its my own mini craft room!

So I rearranged, moved, dusted, sneezed, and have a little room to myself... ok, very tiny room for my stuff.  It looks kinda like this...

So this is what it looks like... I have to find something to do with the few hanging clothes that are in there, but so far, so good.  I also have to use it at some point LOL.  But now Derek can't whine about the big table in the corner of the room.  Well now he can whine about not having a closet to stuff random crap into.

This is for Shelly.  She wanted to see a closer of the design of the quilt other than my thumbnail of my profile:

Finished block centers

So there is what I've done so far on my quilt, multiplied by 6... I have finished 12 of those patterns in the squares.  This will take me a while, there are about 150 squares.  Then i want to put little doodly-dads on the square corner blocks.  Mind you I'm hand quilting, and only enjoy it once in a while.  My last quilt waited in my closet for over a year before really getting enough drive to finish it.

Holy Brainstorm Batman!

Today a massive brainstorm hit me right around lunch time at work.  It was so loud it shook me!  Ok, so metaphorically speaking it rattled me, but I think I have something here.

Eventually I would like to sell my craftiness places, be it craft fairs, online, etc.  Covered that in Post 1 or 2 I believe.  Well, I was thinking about how I can make each transaction unique in some way, shape, or form.  When it hit me, as I was coming back from lunch.  I over heard a couple talking about gift cards at work, about how they are good through September, whenever we close for good.  We have a HUGE box of empty/unused gift cards and rewards cards behind the front counter.  One of our former employees wanted to do something crafty with it to give each of us a "gift" made from said gift cards.  Well, she got a new job almost right away with one of our competitors... and left the huge box just laying there.

What I am thinking of doing is either A) using the said gift/rewards cards as a kind of price tag (especially the generic red ones that were 5, 10, 20, 25, 50 denominations) or B) using them as a "thank you" tag, "happy birthday", "congrats", or "for mom/dad/teacher" tags.  Possibly scrape off the type on back and hand sharpie a note?

Of course that requires punching a hole in the card, but of course its useless now anyhow.  I got the go ahead to load up a bag of cards and bring them home.  But i want more!  I am so greedy!  Especially when now I can have the pieces of useless plastic for free, and everyone can remember Borders that used to be with a former gift card of book spines or a zebra (my personal fav).  Anyone else get so excited over such a silly thing that they cant sit still?  Its 1 am, and I'm itching to go out to my garage with a razor blade to start scraping the backs!

Yes, I am a nerd and I admit it!  I am proud so I'll say it loud!

A few days late...

I just love the auto-fill feature.  Every time I click onto the blog title bar, it comes up with all these great things i have searched for in the past.  However, that is not a search bar, stupid computer.  I haven't posted in a few days... But not because of lack of trying.  Its more along the lines of really busy the last few days between back-to-school haircuts, shopping, cleaning, knitting, working, etc. There just wasn't a whole lot of time to just.... sit.  Sit and type.


But here I am, relaxing after work and saying to myself "Oh snap! I've forgotten about my blog!"  Shame on me.  After all the progress I have made the last few days.  Progress and plotting... Oh the plots running around in my brain.  What to make next? What would sell better?  What colors would look awesome?  As well as the ever shopping online to see the pretty yarns that exist out there.  The resisting temptation is very hard at the moment.  Not a whole lot of money to spend on yarn right now.  But oh the dreams!


Anyhow, I got fairly far on my scarf...  I get to "graft" the two "live" pieces together!  This is how it looks so far:





Pretty neat!  Can't wait for it to be finished so i can see how it looks then.  Crazy!


I have a list going of books I'd like to add to my collection to make things out of.  So far that list is: Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle , Wrapped in lace by Margaret Stove, and Teach yourself Visually Handspinning by Judith Macke Mccuin.  Yes, I am very interested in spinning as well.  My mother had a spinning wheel and carding machine when I was growing up, but when they had to move on short notice she sold them in a garage sale.  None of us kids was too pleased with that, especially when we all had interests in crafting.


Maybe someday I can own one... We'll see how things work out.

Oh the horror!

Today was my day off, how I enjoyed it!  I didn't do as much house work as was needed, but oh well!  The kids and I watched movies all day long, and i knitted until i finished my neck warmer! Then I knitted some more.  Once I figured out what my issues were, and how to fix them, it took no time at all to knit up the neck warmer to match my glovettes.  Here is the finished product: 




Not too bad for a few days of knitting.  So now that this project is complete, i can start on everything else that is flying around my head for ideas on sellable items.  This is the start of my new project, just a simple scarf: 





With just a few hours of watching Indiana Jones I was able to get about 6 inches made!


Also to add to my accomplishments, i made some stuffed zucchini for dinner because I've got zucchini coming out of my ears from my garden!  I used some ground turkey in the recipe, however I think mine was freezer burned, because it tasted horrible!  I am so using regular hamburger next time, which will be in a week or so lol!  Anyone need some zucchini?

The Forces are against me today...

Ever have a day where you feel like the forces of the universe are against you? Oh, this is my day.... My body is still hanging onto a cough that will not let me sleep.  Yes, it is better during the day, but I am still waking up at least 2xs a night coughing.  Didn't think that was all that bad really, until I noticed that i HURT everywhere.  Shoulders and back especially, which will make work fun as I will be slinging bargain books around all day.


Then comes when we are actually up and running for the day, and Kayla begins playing with toys and explains the plot to me "This girl is pregnant and she doesn't know how..." which leads into the birds and the bees conversation, which is awkward to say the least.  Her reaction? "No, never going to happen."  Wish it were that simple kiddo, thats how you came to be even when I had the same attitude.  Of course, the dropped jaw look she gave me was priceless.


So, I worked on my neck warmer for a few rows this morning before having to head out, and while trying to put in "one last row," fate laughed cruelly as I kept dropping stitches and just generally stupid things happened.  Goes to show I shouldn't press fate when time is ticking down for me.  Oh well, lesson learned.  Off I go to work to tease fate a little more? I sure hope not!  Hope everyone has a great day!

Slow Saturday...

So for girl's day out, my daughter and I went to the Farmers market to hang out with my brother and my mom.   Was not feeling so well since I am still coughing during the night and thus, get little sleep.  But other than that, it was a gorgeous day out and I got to see lots of greens and crafty stuff there.  There is even a woman who sells her home spun, hand dyed wool there with lots of nifty colors and textured yarn!  If I were functioning properly I would have had some great ideas formulating, but as it was, I was content to just take a preliminary tour.  My brother Mike sells jewelery at the F.M. during the summer, and more towards the winter he breaks out the crocheted hats and scarves.  We used to sell produce as well during the markets, but my mother no longer gardens.  Mike and I have taken that up (Yay dirt!).

So, the sun was shining, it was warm, and I was not feeling very well.  All i wanted to do was go home and sleep.  But did I? Of course not!  It was too pretty out!  So, we went to the garden to pick goodies.  My daughter held the bag open while I essentially clear chopped the swiss chard from around my brother's pepper plants... well only one plant.  What we chopped filled up an entire grocery bag, and maybe cleared 1 square foot of area. But while we were there I showed Kayla how yummy peas eaten right off the plant were.  And the difference between peas and beans, my different squashes, etc.

Then we washed the dog because he was stinky, and OMG it was icky.  Thank goodness for the "Dirty Car and Dog Wash" right down the street.  He is now not stinky for a little while.  Tonight was geek out night as well, so I only really knitted 2 rows of my neck warmer.  But the bright side is my neck warmer is now 1.5 inches longer than it has ever been! Yay!  And my stitch markers are working out wonderfully!  Some times I like being creative and thrifty at the same time!  Now it is time for sleepy sleep cuz I have to be up "early" for work tomorrow.  Boy, I noticed when I'm tired, I tend to let grammar and sentence structure go out the window.  So if you notice the incomplete sentences and horrible grammatical errors, I'm sorry.

Adjustments are needed...

Today I decided to restart a project I've been trying to do for the last year or so.  Last fall, I knitted some adorable fingerless gloves out of a gorgeous purple yarn while vacationing at my brother's house for a week.  Last fall after returning from said vacation with a new set of pretty glovettes, I thought that I should also make the matching neck warmer too.  However putting the neck warmer into reality has taken me a bit more time than I had hoped for.  My main issues into making it a reality... 1) it jumps into cable work in the first row!  and 2) I always seem to mess the pattern up right off the bat, and that drives me crazy (can you say perfectionism?).

I've done cable work before, but right after the cast on row?... I tend to cast on pretty tightly, so jumping directly into cables has given me cause for pause.  I would drop stitches, mix up my pattern, get really confused, and rip it all out.  I have ripped out the beginnings of said neck warmer about 4 times now.  But today I had an epiphany!  Do I really have to jump into cables right away?  Is there some universal law that says "You must follow the directions without question?"  And I realized, there is always room for adjustments!  Soooo... I made the executive decision to do a beginning row of pattern BEFORE doing any cable work.  Well, the world hasn't ended, nothing has exploded, however the US dropped in its credit rating.... But i doubt that was caused by my adjusting a pattern to fit my needs.

Now to solve problemo number two, I had to get creative and put a bit more thought into the solution.  I had to ask myself, why oh why did I keep fudging on the pattern?  This didn't happen to me on the glovettes!  And yet again, the solution was staring me in the face.  I need stitch markers... Where one pattern ends and another begins.  For this one though, I had to be unique, creative, thrifty.  We are broke, and with impending unemployment, I can't just run down to the store and get some.  After a few minutes of pondering, the light flashed on (must have been an environmentally friendly bulb, it took a bit to warm up), and I thought "Safety Pins! Those would fit on the knitting needle!"  But, a roadblock appeared when I went up into the master bedroom (Corner of it is for my crafty side) and discovered they are all in use on the quilt that is waiting to be hand quilted... But while I was at work, I brought my project with me to work on during my lunch break.  And another thought occurred to me.  We have billions and billions of paperclips laying around work.  Like confetti, they are everywhere and hard to get out of the carpet.  And viola!  They work fabulously!  Issue 2: Resolved. Hopefully I will have a neck warmer for the chilly weather that is around the corner.

So this lesson has taught me a couple of things:  1) There is no set rules for life, you have to make adjustments where needed.  And 2) any pattern can be adjusted to fit your body and/or your life.   And so my friends, I bid you Good Night, off to work another row, and maybe come up with another post tomorrow.

The Beginning....

In the beginning there was coffee... Lots of it... Mostly because I'm not an early morning person anymore.

So this is my first time doing a public blog.  Everyone I know has one for some sort of purpose.  Doing movie reviews, all about work, and especially about cooking.  I love cooking, my brother is a chef and has his own blog about cooking even.  But... I'm not a confident enough cook to post what I make for the public to try.  However, I LOVE crafting.  Needle crafts specifically.  Knitting, crochet, sewing, quilting, cross stitch.  You name it, I've tried it.  I inherited this love of crafting with my hands from my mother, much like my brother credits her with the love of cooking.  He took after her in the kitchen, I took after her in the crafting room!  Some of my earliest memories happened to be when I was about 6, and my dad (!) was knitting me a scarf because my mother had injured her hand (my fault), and had to finish it for Christmas.  Shortly there after I remember picking up a set of needles and being shown how to cast on and do the stockinette stitch.

When we moved into the new house, my mother had her very own craft room, more like a large closet stuffed with cloth, yarn, desk with a sewing machine, and all sorts of odds and ends for crafting.  Even acrylic paint, and fabric paint.  One Christmas was all hand made gifts because we didn't have much money that year.  I helped my mother piece together quilt blocks and we made quilted pillows out of them.  My best friend got a hand painted shirt made by moi!  Then comes 4-H which really solidified my love of hand crafting.  I was in both knitting and sewing, and even made my own prom dress when i was 17.  My son also has a sweater I knitted for that year of 4-H (long before i thought about kids), which won the 3rd over all ribbon.  Man was I super excited for that!

So what brings me to the blogging world you ask?  Well, circumstances have changed very rapidly in my life, to where I am unwillingly going to be unemployed in the next month or so.  My beloved work and book store (yet another passion of mine), Borders, is being liquidated because our CEOs made some very poor business decisions.  My husband actually came up with the idea of having me craft while I look for another job, and possibly see if I can earn any money on the side with farmers/flea markets and craft fairs.  I thought that was an awesome idea, and thus, my blog was born.  So welcome!  I shall post my break throughs, struggles, and generally boring things that happen while i craft.