The Honest Scrap Award

I got a blog award, Woohoo!

Angie, over at Home Grown, honored me with the Honest Scrap award.



This is how it works:

The Honest Scrap” award is not one to hold all to your self but it must be shared!

First, the recipient has to tell 10 true things about themselves in their blog that no one else knows.

Second, the recipient has to pass along this prestigious award to 10 more bloggers.

Third, Those 10 bloggers all have to be notified they have been given with this award.

Those 10 bloggers that receive this award should link back to the blog that awarded them “The Honest Scrap’ award.

So here goes:

1. I learned how to shear my dogs, one of which could put a sheep to shame with it's fur. Saved $75 on one dog and $45 on another. The shears have already paid for themselves.

2. I am a night owl, not a morning person. My brain doesn't begin fully functioning until around 6pm.

3. I've jumped on the Dave Ramsey debt reduction program. It will be a while 'til we are debt free.

4. I never paint my fingernails, just my toenails. It's too much trouble and I'm too rough on my hands for it to last anyway.

5. I like to blame mistakes on being blonde. It's very convenient.

6. I have aspirations to be an alpaca farmer one day.

7. We originally got the idea to raise alpaca way before I got into spinning and knitting which is kinda funny. We saw them on a late night infomercial and thought they were so cute. It started out as a joke between us and now it's gotten serious. Funny how that kind of thing works huh?

8. We own some rental homes. Our renters think we're rich, boy are they mistaken. We got the rentals when the mortgage companies were practically throwing mortgages at people. All the money has gone right back into the business, we haven't seen a penny yet. We consider it a very long term investment.

9. I dance! Tap, Jazz, Clogging - Just started following Belly Dance lessons off of Youtube, but there's no way I'll let anyone see me doing those lessons (the three year old doesn't count.)

10. Like Angie, I wish I got more comments on the blog, but doesn't everyone who has one? Except maybe the Yarn Harlot. She get's plenty. :) Does anyone ever tag her with these kind of awards?

Whew! Now to honor others with the Honest Scrap Award. Here are ten blogs that I enjoy immensely and I hope you'll enjoy them as well:

Bitten by Knittin'
Knitting on Impulse
Jeanne Knits
Jobo Designs
Knit Witch
Redshirt Knitting
Dabbled
Build/Make/Craft/Bake
Samurai Knitter
Dollar Store Crafts

You may consider yourselves tagged!

Museum Day

Today was fun! Me, my Sis-In-Law and the boys took a trip to the Fernbank Museum in downtown Atlanta today to see the Dinosaur exhibit. The Youngest was particularly impressed. He's in to all things dinosaur or dragon, take your pick. They seem to be interchangeable. According to him they all say "Yaw!"

I got some cute pics: (click to enlarge for extra cuteness)



This one really cracks me up. There was a science room in the museum that had a weather forecasting station. The kids could stand in front of a green screen just like a tv weatherman and see themselves on tv. The problem was, The Youngest was almost too short to be seen:

Look! A half-headed Weatherboy.

The kids are all worn out now. Funny thing is, today is their Dad's Bday. Lucky Dad gets to come home and deal with a three year old that missed his nap today!

Knitting Stuff:

I'm having a bit of a packing dilemma. Well, more knitting than packing really. Do I take the log cabin project since it's incredibly mindless, or do I pick something else that's not quite as mindless. If I picked the other, whatever it may be, will I really be able to concentrate while I'm on vacation? I can't decide. I don't want to take two projects since I won't have room, so I have to choose. :sigh:

Beach Countdown

The Countdown to the "Official Summer Beach Vacation" has begun.

Every single morning I am informed by the Youngest that "we're going to the beach today." Time means nothing to a three year old, he's been told over and over that we leave Saturday.

The boys and I went shopping for supplies today to get a head start on packing. My idea of supplies was sunscreen, bug repellant, nonperishable food items, you get the drift. Gee, I'm so glad that I took my personal beach consultants with me. You wouldn't believe how things have changed over the years. Evidently you now need so many new things for a trip to the beach - waterguns (Ironman and Spiderman of course), pool toys, swords (not sure why we need swords, that one escapes me), legos, movies, etc. Ahem. I might have given in over the water guns, but I spent the rest of the trip to the store saying,

"No."
"No."
"What did I just say? NO!"

Ah, the joys of motherhood and vacation planning. Why can't children see what's really important for a vacation trip? Like: yarn, needles, liquor, (repeat as necessary.)

Tutorial: Make Cloth Napkins from Fat Quarters

I've been working on reducing our budget lately and thought that reusable napkins would be a way to help me do this, not to mention that it is eco-friendly as well. I needed something that would be kid friendly, hide stains well and would be suitable for everyday use.

I found a tutorial online, but the only thing that I took away from it was the word reversible and the measurement 13" x 16". Here are some of the completed napkins. The widest part of each seen below is the front and the small sliver that can be seen next to it is the coordinating back of the napkin:

click to enlarge

I have a ton of fat quarters hidden away under all of our beds that are left over from my quilting days. Many of these are really cute and child friendly, so that's what I decided to use. The problem, is that these are only about 8 or 9 inches wide. Here's my solution/tutorial:

To Make Cloth Napkins from Fat Quarters:
1. Choose two coordinating/contrasting fat quarter fabrics.
2. Cut each of them into two equal pieces.

Cutting!

3. With right sides facing, sew the two pieces together on one side only. Do this again for the coordinating fabric.
( I used a quarter of an inch seam allowance for everything except step number 9.)

It's a quarter inch from the right edge of my presser foot to the needle in the center.

Once done, it should look like this:

Opened and pressed with an iron

4. Cut the fabric into a 13" x 16" piece. Do this for both fabrics. If it's not perfectly square, don't sweat it. It's napkins, not clothing. Close is okay. If it really bugs you, you can use a see through quilter's square and a rotary cutter to get it perfectly squared up.

13" x 16"

Once this is done, iron the seam to one side:

Seam ironed and laying to one side.

5. With right sides facing, sew your two 13" x 16" fabrics together, leaving about two inches on one side open.

Left open to turn the fabric rightside out again.

6. Cut the corners off of the napkin so that when you turn the piece inside out, you don't have a lot of unnecessary bulk in each of the corners.

Clip your corners!

7. Turn the napkin inside out. Make sure to push the corners as far out as you can get them for a nice, crisp corner.

8. Iron your napkin. At the two inch opening, turn both sides in and iron this closed as well.

Ironed and ready for top stitching

9. Top stitch around all four sides of the napkin, including the two inches that were originally left open. I top stitched approximately an eighth of an inch from each edge.

10. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

Front and Back of the Cloth Napkin

TIP!

To make turning corners easier, Using the wheel on the right side of your machine (if yours has this), make sure your needle is inserted into the cloth and leave it there for a moment.

Needle Inserted

Then, raise the foot: I picked it up even more to show you that the needle is still inserted into the cloth (please excuse the thumbnail - It's paint, not dirt, I promise!)

Foot lifted

Once this is done, rotate your fabric into the direction that you want to go. Lower your presser foot and you are ready to continue sewing.

Fabric Rotated

Enjoy your new napkins!

Sewing Skirts!

For the past two days I've been bitten by the sewing bug. I don't know why it bit me, but it bit me hard.

It started with the 20 minute skirt tutorial. I loved the fabrics she used. Normally I shy away from elastic waist skirts, but these were too cute to pass up. I took off to the store and found both of these skirts' fabric at Hobby Lobby. They had so much cute fabric, it was difficult to choose just two. When I made my skirts I deviated from the pattern by machine sewing some hems into the skirts. That was the only change that I made to the pattern.

This is the easiest skirt I've ever made. The tutorial is simple, quick and very easy to follow. For the record though, it took me longer than 20 minutes to make the skirts. The first took two hours due to a comedy of errors that are too numerous to mention, but they range from sewing machine problems to stupidity on my part. The second took me about 40 minutes. I figure that if I made another one I'd probably be right on the money at 20 minutes.

Here's how the skirts turned out. I've paired them with a black sleeveless top to show you how it will look on and so that you can't see the ugly elastic waists:





I'll show you the other sewing project tomorrow!

Fishing

We had a milestone in our family over the past weekend: The Youngest caught his first fish!

Granted, it's tiny and you need a magnifying glass to see it in the pic, but it was still a fish. With his PawPaw pretty much controlling the pole, the Youngest got a total of 8 fish on his first outing. The Eldest wracked up a stunning 14 in the same outing. The fishies were mighty hungry for worms that day.


It still thrills me to see the boys out fishing with their PawPaw. What a memory they'll have of him later in life!

The Pain in Frogging

I am still working on the log cabin blanket. As a matter of fact, I might have gone cross-eyed from looking at this damn thing. It's not really the blanket's fault, it's not the miles and miles and miles of boring garter stitch either. I'm putting all the blame on the yarn.

The Debbie Mumm Traditions yarn is a deliciously soft and gloriously colored corespun yarn. It's 70% acrylic and 30% wool. There. Now I've told you the good stuff, now for the bad. It's a corespun yarn. It's 70% acrylic and 30% wool. There, that was also the bad stuff.

It's splitty as hell and bunches up viciously. That's not so bad while you're knitting it up if you hold it loosely. The problem comes when, not if, you need to frog it. The soft yarn grips to itself like there's no tomorrow.

Remember these? These were a tank that for some God forsaken reason I thought this yarn would be good for:


I am in the process of frogging them. The bottom one took me four hours to frog. Yes, that's right, four friggin' hours of fighting with grabby yarn mixed with short rows. It wasn't fun. Needful, but not fun.

So after the frogging I have a bazillion small balls of yarn. Look how many ends have to be woven when you use a lot of these small balls of yarn in just a couple of squares:


Yeah. More not fun.

But, look how beautiful these are from the front:


I don't know how much more yarn I'll need and have no clue how much I'll get from frogging the other piece. I may need to try and order more since my JoAnn's didn't have any of this color left. They had two other colorways that could be fun to mix with this one, but I'm not sure if I'll do that or not.

All I know is that I just have to make triple sure any of the squares don't need frogging again, cause if it comes to that, I'll be putting the whole kit and caboodle in the trash.

Panic at the Escalator

Obviously the summer months are not the optimum time for me to be blogging. I do apologize for going incommunicado for a whole week, but I am back now. There were many things that happened last week, such as a lake trip, trying not to kill my children now that they are not in school and are at each other's throats, etc.

But there was one especially amusing incident last week that I want to share with you. It started out innocently enough as a trip to Dick's Sporting Goods. My father and husband have birthdays a week apart, so the kids and I hopped into the Mom van and went shopping for campy kind of stuff.

We grabbed a firestarter for my Dad and then found a cool tent thing that we could use on our family beach vacation trip in two weeks. It's not a camping tent, more like a tailgating tent that pops up in one fell swoop. Perfect, but it weighed a ton. But that was cool too since it has rollers on it and could easily be drug wherever you need it.

Great. Now, I got everybody sorted out: Eldest in front with the little items, me in the middle dragging the tent that ways a ton and the Youngest was bringing up the rear. We headed down the escalator (can you see where this is going yet?) in the same order: Eldest first with small items, me dragging tent that weighs a ton, and the Youn- oh wait a minute - guess what? He panicked at the last minute (the child that is afraid of nothing) and pulled away from me and stayed at the top of the damn escalator!

I threw the tent that weighs a ton to the eighty pound weakling and said, "Here, you're on your own" and turned around. My brain took one hundredth of a second to gauge how fast the escalator was moving and tried to figure out how fast my legs were going to have to move so that I would not be jogging in place. I was now about 8 or 9 steps down and I took off, blazing fast, looking hopelessly hokey as I started hoofing it up the moving steps. Meanwhile, the Youngest was at the top screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" and at this time four really cute college age guys show up behind him, grinning from ear to ear. Jeez, wouldn't you just know it?

I got to the top step, grabbed a little arm and dragged him to the stairs and proceeded to rendezvous with the Eldest at the bottom who had somehow managed to grab the one ton tent and drag it to safety. Phew! What a workout. I wasn't even huffing and puffing at the end either, with much thanks to Ye Olde Adrenaline.

What a hoot. I laughed so hard I could hardly breathe. Oh, and yeah, the cute college guys did too. I'm sure they were laughing with me and not at me. Yeah, right.

I was out and about today and came across the latest issue of Simply Knitting. I absolutely adore this magazine. It's a Brit magazine, so it's not cheap here since it's an import, but worth it just for the Alan Dart Toy patterns alone. This month they have Medieval Mice! I seriously want to make a medieval mouse now.


They also included a purse pattern that can be done four different ways and the handles to make one. This is on my to do list for sure.

The squares are coming along. I thought I would get completely finished with the fourth square last night, but it wasn't meant to be. It didn't get done today either since my Mom and I went thrift store hopping - got a load of books too, but they were mostly children's books.


I did go looking for more yarn and tried to scout out a good black yarn to have running in between the squares and for the border, but I'm going to have to take a square in with me to find a black yarn that matches the texture of the Debbie Mumm yarn. The yarn that I'm working with is a wool/acrylic blend and it would be nice to find that kind of blend, but if not I'll probably go with acrylic. Of course they were out of the colorway that I'm using here.

Anyway, I'm heading off to choir in a bit and need to find something to feed the hungry menfolk now - see ya tomorrow!

Is It Wrong...

Perhaps it would be wrong to laugh at a kid while he's throwing a tantrum to watch a movie. But when the movie is Peter Pan and he's screaming "I Wanna Watch Pizza Pan!" ?

Lemme tell ya, It's hard to keep a straight face when that happens.

I'll have some knitting stuff for ya tomorrow, I hope.

Beware the Fog...

I've been reduced to moving thru life in a cold medication induced fog.

I had no idea that Musinex could affect me the way it did. I knew I had a sinus infection and was very aware that I was miserable, so before leaving to take the kid to his gym class, I took one of the pills. By the time that we left the class, my brain was fogged. I even ran a red light - by turning left on a red! I've never done anything like that in my life. Scared the Bejeezus out of me. My brain unfogged for a few seconds toward the end of the left turn and I totally freaked out. My best friend was behind me in her car - I freaked her out too. For the record, I am now boycotting the Musinex during day time.

Nuthin' to see here folks, way too foggy, move along!

Knitting and Books

I'm not dead yet, but the cold has turned into a sinus infection. That hasn't stopped the knitting though!

I'm still working on my log cabin squares. Those little things are quite addictive. I didn't think that I would enjoy working on them quite as much as I have. Here's how they look as of a few minutes ago:

I love how the yarn is working up on these squares. They're actually a little brighter in real life. I'm not sure why the camera is dulling the colors so much. They won't all have red in them unfortunately (I like lots of red), but that might not be a bad thing. Hints of red will actually stand out more in the finished product.

Also, I've been stalking my mailman again. This is some of the goodies that he brought me:

Not real impressed with the Speed Knitting book, but it would be good for beginners. I'll but that back on my list to swap out. I can't recommend the Knitter's Book of finishing Techniques enough though. It is a fantastic book that I'm excited about adding to my library. It's got tons of tips/techniques in it that makes your knitting look less "homemade" and more "handmade".

I'm still waiting on a pair of shoes, but I don't know whether to stalk the mailman or the UPS man for those. Right now stalking around my front door is all I'm good for. I just don't have the energy to do much else.

I hab a code

I've been sidelined by a cold. I feel like my head is going to explode. The worst part about it is that it's messing with my equilibrium. It's gotten into my inner ear and I'm so dizzy because of it.

This past weekend was so relaxing. Two of the three guys in the house went camping. One at a time is so much easier to cope with, even if it is the most difficult of the three. He was a dream to be around though and my blood pressure was kept to a minimum. I managed to finish one square and got two thirds of the way finished with another for my log cabin blanket. I also got a little spinning in as well.

Everything was fine until this cold sank in. Now everything has come to a screeching halt. There's been little crafty stuff going on today. It's all I can do to just break up the fights between the kids as they happen.

People aren't supposed to get colds in the summer are they? It's just not fair that you should feel miserable on nice warm days. Someone should declare it illegal for cold germs to be out and about during the sunny months. I'd do it, but I think I'm going to go lay back down now.

Some Old, Some New

My computer is working against me today. I've tried posting to the blog three different times and something has gone wrong every damn time. So, fourth time's a charm, right?

Okay, before I get to the new, let's talk old stuff:

1. I did a massive dyeing project a couple of weeks/months ago and realized that I never showed you my color wheel that I made from the project. So, without further ado, here ya go:

I also found two colors that I missed while dyeing the roving. The purple and the green are not true and broke easily, so the colors that they gave are really odd sometimes. But that's okay and that is why this testing was conducted, so that I would have a better grasp on what the dyes would do straight out of the box. The center three are not primaries, they are secondary colors. Please don't think that I haven't a clue as to how it is supposed to look. I just got lazy about putting the three in the center when I already have them placed in the circle.

I am now very thankful to have all of the big pile of roving off of my table in my dining room/office/craft room. I'm sure it won't be long until some other crap moves in to take it's place on the table.

2. I'm still working on my first log cabin square. This would have been finished by now except that I noticed that I had picked up stitches on the wrong side of two different parts. :sigh: By the way, the Debbie Mumm Traditions yarn does not like to be ripped out. It's not fun.

On to something new:

I got the urge to dye some roving again. As a matter of fact, I wanted to play with 4 ounces of Falkland and I wanted to do some natural dyeing with tea. I have dyed fabrics with tea and yarn, but I wanted to try for a deeper color this time.

So I soaked the Falkland in water with some Alum and Cream of Tartar for a couple of hours while I took the Eldest to a gym class.


While that was going on, I got out my huge enamel pot and filled it with water and about a bajillion tea bags that I had lying around from an old tea party that I gave a few years ago. Yes, I said years. While I drink tea, I don't usually drink it caffeinated and at this point it would be too stale to drink anyway. I also added some ammonia to the mix (smells godawful now) in order to try and get a deeper richer color out of the tea.


The wool is now soaking and I'll probably let it soak overnight. I can't wait to see what color brown that I get out of it.

If it works out, it'll be one of the first few items that I will list in my new Etsy store. I'll throw out a link to it when it goes up. See ya tomorrow!

New Project on the Needles

In an effort not to kill my children yesterday (Dear God, Please let school start again soon!), I picked up a new knitting project. It had to be one where there was minimal counting, thus minimal thought. As I began knitting it, I had to force my fingers not to clutch the project. I think they were dreaming of wringing two little necks.

The problem is that I have one kid who is a tattler (The Eldest who always follows the rules) and one (The Youngest who never follows rules) that likes to just irritate the other. Well, yesterday it all irritated me. When I was done with them, they thought the Hammer of God had fallen on them. I was so incredibly steamed. They tried to start again this morning and then thought better of it when I lit into them again. There was no way I was going to go grocery shopping and listen to that the entire time.

So. A new project came into being. I chose The Log Cabin Afghan. Super easy project that is good for beginners and for using up scraps. Except I don't have scraps, but I do have some yarn that I bought initially for a top and hated it. It's not a great yarn, but it is pretty and soft and will be good for an afghan. It's Debbie Mumm Traditions that I purchased from JoAnn's. It's an acrylic/wool blend that is corespun and difficult to work with because of it. The stuff on the outside likes to slide up the core of the yarn and bunch up. You have to hold it very loosely to keep it from bunching.

This is what the square looks like so far:


I have no idea how big I want this to be or what who it is going to be for. I just knew that it had to be simple and you don't get anymore simple than garter stitch. I have made one change in the pattern so far. I did squares one and two together continuously since I am working from only one skein at a time. I'm not changing colors, the yarn does that just fine on it's own. The color changes in this yarn remind me a great deal of Noro Kureyon. This square is about two thirds finished. It looks like I might get 2 to 3 squares (approx. 9" square) per skein.

This will be a long term project. It'll be great for the beach vacation we have planned in July, something to do in the cottage when it gets too hot to be outside.

Rampant Stupidity

Flax Gel Report - Wonderful stuff! Love how it makes my curls look. Next time I will make a larger batch since I need to use quite a bit of it for my hair. But since it only takes 10 minutes, it won't be a problem. The only problem I have with the whole thing is it needing to be kept in the fridge. I know some people add vitamin E oil to help as a preservative, but I'm wondering if a pinch of citric acid would work as well. Just a thought.

Obviously last night was "Mad Scientist" night in my kitchen. I made a face spritz (I called it a spritz because of the container it's in. It could also be called a toner.) too that I like. I boiled some water (measured by how large the container was that I was going to be putting it in) and added one aspirin, some yarrow from my garden and some lavender from there as well. We'll see how well it works in the long run. Anything to help with adult acne will be very welcome.

But there were issues in making this. Evidently stupidity was running rampant on the part of the person cooking up all this stuff. I won't say who it was, you'll just have to use your imagination for that, but she poured some really hot water into a plastic bottle that imploded on the counter. Made a big mess, but it smelled nice. So I had to do the whole face spritz making thing twice! I might add a few drops of essential oil in there just for fun next time.

But I'm tellin' ya: Rampant stupidity was plaguing the kitchen last night.

Flax

I've been experimenting with flax seeds lately. Flax is filled with omega-3 fatty acids and is very high in fiber. Basically, it's good for you so go eat it, right? Yes (and I'll have a yummy recipe for you in a sec), but did you also know that you can make a hair gel with it that is fantastic for curly hair?

I didn't either. So today I decided to experiment, cuz I'm crazy that way and have mega naturally curly hair.

The basic recipe for the gel is as follows:

1 cup boiling water
2 Tbsp. flax seeds

Boil together for 10 minutes or until gel forms and then strain out seeds (difficult). Store in fridge and use as needed.

What I did:

1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp ground flax seeds
1 small tea bag - purchased online years ago, can't remember where exactly. You can get them at health food stores to make your own teas. Very handy to have.

Put the ground flax in the tea bag and ironed closed. Boiled it in the water for 10 minutes and allowed to cool in fridge. May need to boil a little longer in order to get it to gel.

I haven't tried it in my hair yet. Tomorrow when I wash my hair and get the current product out of it, I'll give you a report. If it works the way I've been told, it will be way cheaper than buying hair gel.



Now for the really good stuff:

Let me preface this recipe by saying that I hate healthy cookie recipes. I can't stand them. Yuck, Yuckitty, Yuck. But...

I found one that I absolutely adore. Guess what? Has flax in it. Even better? I call these my skinny cookies. I can eat one or two of these and make my sweet tooth happy and it fills me up so that I don't eat about forty in one sitting. Yay!

The recipe comes from the book "Beauty Secrets of the Bible". If you are into making your own natural beauty products, this book has some neat stuff in it as well as this recipe.

(Adapted by me)BSB Chocolate Chip Flaxseed Cookies:

1/2 cup butter or margarine (original recipe called for butter substitute. I used what I had which was margarine)
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
3/4 brown sugar - I used dark since that is what I had on hand
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 12oz pkg dark chocolate chips (Semi-sweet works too, just not quite as healthy)

Cream butter, sugar and flaxseeds together. Add egg and vanilla. I then slowly added the salt, soda and flour. Then add the chocolate chips. Drop Tbsp size portions onto cookie sheet. These do not spread while baking so you can put a lot onto one sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

These are fantastic. I can't say enough about how wonderful this recipe is. I think I need to go make more, right now.

FYI

Just a quick FYI - I'm off at the lake for the week. See ya on Monday!

You know it's a good day...

When...

1. You get to sleep a little late because not only is school out, but the hubby has the day off because it's a holiday and can keep the kids away long enough for you to get some much needed beauty rest.

2. You finally finish a knitting project:

Clever Little Shawl
Yarn: my handspun
Needles: 10.5 US
Began: 4/25/09
Completed: 5/25/98
Super easy and exceedingly clever construction. Doesn't need a shawl pin to stay on and leaves your hands free. Love it!

3. And best of all, I found a swim suit that I like. Hides what needs hiding and adds what needs adding to. Goes for $77 online. I paid $19.99 at Ross.

Little Nuthin Links

Another day of little "nuthins" since I have nuthin of real value to show you or report.

I was messing around on Digg this morning (I adore this site) and found a few amusing links for ya:

1. And you just thought those nursery rhymes were safe to tell your children. History is a wonderful thing.

2. I've been to a couple of these (Edinburgh Castle - been there twice, and the Tower of London) and I cheated that I didn't see any ghosts.

3. Just for the sweet tooth. From smitten kitchen, a fantastic food blog.

4. You know you feel like this when that one certain child pushes your very last button.

Speaking of that child, we attended an honors day ceremony for his older brother and while I was sitting around wasting time I pointed the camera at the Youngest trying to get a cute pic of him. First I got this:

and then he immediately made this face: