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.