Good Day!

Today was a good day.  I sold some of my handmade jewelry, Woohoo!  Thanks Alyson!  I would really like to set up a trunk show soon for some of my friends and would also like to start selling at some craft fairs.  I need to get moving on building more inventory first though.

Anyway, I'm exhausted now because she came to the house to view it and it was an unholy wreck.  Piles upon piles of kid toys and school papers were everywhere, and dish mountain had grown huge.  So I scrambled to make the house presentable and set out my inventory (which I am going to try and photograph tonight to get the rest up on my etsy page) before she came over. 

Speaking of etsy, anybody got any good tips on getting more traffic to my shop?  I've had the shop open for a couple of months now and haven't sold one single thing there.  I must be doing something wrong.  Any ideas? You can see some of my wares and a link to my shop if you scroll down and look on the right hand side of my blog.  Ideas and comments would be much appreciated.  Sales also of course!  :)

Exhausted or not, it was well worth it.  Considering our financial straights right now, a little extra cash goes a long way towards keeping a roof over our heads!

Have a great weekend everybody!

Doesn't Everyone Sleep With Their Knitting?

Doesn't Everyone Sleep With Their Knitting?

Tahki Yarns Classic Pullover Complete!

As promised, I have a pic of the completed sweater:

Project:  Tahki Yarns Cotton Classic Pullover
 Size: Small
Needles:  Size 6
Yarn:  worsted weight, Hobby Lobby  I Love This Wool!  Solids - Seal Brown


Mods:

1. Did the body of the sweater in the round, but the sleeves flat. Keeping the sleeves flat helped immensely when it came time to piece it together. It turned out looking very well finished.
2. At the neckline, Idid an additional round of decreases to keep the sweater from sliding off my shoulders and then 6 rows of st. st. so that the curl at the top matched that of the bottom.
3. Used wool instead of cotton.

I was really worried that this sweater had serious problems.  Before blocking I tried it on and both the sleeves and bottom of the sweater were too short and that the waist shaping looked horrible.  The sleeves were about an inch too short, which was odd since according to the specs in the pattern, I had made them an inch longer than I was supposed to.

But with the magic of blocking, the sweater fits me perfectly.  I love the details of the cables on the shoulders matching the cables at the bottom of the sweater and also the curl matching at both the top and the bottom.   I also a love boat neck top, it's so flattering on.

My Frugal Deal Of The Day

The Youngest has this "little" hangup about Super Hero shirts.  We have had the worst knock down drag out fights and temper tantrums over them.  Mainly the fights occur when the shirts are dirty and he can't wear them.  He would wear them dirty daily if he could get away with it.  Which he can't.  Thus the huge, very loud fights.

So I went out today with the goal of finishing up all my shopping for the boys.  One of those gifts was going to be a super hero shirt.  This is a must-have gift that will hopefully save my sanity when another superhero shirt is dirty.  Well, I found one that is perfect.  It has Spiderman, Ironman, Wolverine and some other hero that I can't remember now.  I wrapped it already so I can't go and check.  Darn.  Senility comes earlier and earlier I tell ya.

Anyway, on to the frugality!  I had a JCPenny's coupon good for $10 off of a $10 or more purchase.  The shirt was normally $24.99, but was on sale for $11.99.  It came with a toy car too.  I spent a total of $2.11 for that shirt and toy!  How cool is that?   Two items for $2.11.  You can't get much better than that.

Pretty Thing

I finished my sweater project this past weekend.  It's heading to be blocked now, so I'll have to show you a pic later.  However, I did have one problem with the sweater.  The sleeves.  Too short.  I'm not sure if the designer has short arms or if mine are abnormally long, but they're about an inch too short.  What's funny, is that each sleeve was an inch longer than the pattern specs called for before being set in.  I can assure you that there are not two inches bunched up in the seams.  I have no clue what happened.  I'm going to block it first and then see if I need to pick up stitches on the cuff and add more length.  We'll see what happens.

After finishing the sweater, I picked up a small lace project:

This is the Yarn Harlot's Pretty Thing Cowl, or at least what I've gotten done so far.

For full disclosure, let me state that this is the third cast on of the cowl and it is not the yarn that I originally began it with.

1.  First Cast On:  The first time I cast on for this project, I royally screwed up.  I read the charts like the project was flat and to be turned.  Big Note To Self:  When working with a lace chart in the round, always read the chart from right to left exclusively.  There.  Maybe I won't forget next time.  So I frogged what I had created.

2.  Second Cast On:  The first yarn was some gorgeous silk that I spun into laceweight singles.  However, the yarn wasn't quite bulky enough and just didn't look right.    I could have gone down a needle size (I'm using a US4) and continued to use the silk, but I decided that the silk would be put away and used in a future project.

3. Third Cast On:  This time, my reading of the chart was dead on, my counting of all stitches was correct and the yarn is working up beautifully.  Whew!

The yarn is some recycled yarn from an old sweater of mine that a moth got hold of.  There were only two small holes, but the sweater was out of style anyway so I frogged it.  The yarn is a lovely dove gray and is so incredibly soft.  Let me read you what's in it:  30% cotton, 22% nylon, 20% rayon, 13% lambswool, 10% angora rabbit and 5% cashmere.  What a mix!