Proof for the Cynics

I've spoken about Swagbucks before, but for all you cynics out there, here's my proof that it's free, it works, it's legit.

Look what came in the mail yesterday:

Yep, a brand new Wii console with Wii Sports included!  I paid not one penny for it.  I'm so excited, this will be the big Christmas present at our house this year.  There's no way I'm letting Santa take credit for this one, oh no.  It'll be wrapped up and under the tree just waiting.  The hubby is excited about it too and wanting to give it to them now, but I'm not letting him ruin the Christmas surprise.  I've been planning this one for way too long.

So, how does the whole "Swagbucks thing" work?

Here's what works for me:  The prize I shoot for on the site is the $5 Amazon gift cards (you can buy just about anything on Amazon.)  They are worth 450 swagbucks each (If you are in Canada, make sure you get the Amazon.ca gift certificates.)  Twice a month they will give out the gift card codes that you ordered and you enter the card into your Amazon account.  Easy!  You can order 5 of these cards a month.  I'm getting $25 in Amazon gift cards a month.

1.  Search and win - use their search engine.  You can't just keep entering stuff in to win though, you have to search "naturally", basically using it like you would any search engine.   Just make sure you don't over search. You will be awarded Swagbucks randomly and it can range from 5 swagbucks at a time to sixty some odd swagbucks.

2.  Daily Freebies - If you install their toolbar, you get one point a day for this.  Then go to the Daily polls section on their site and take the simple poll (takes maybe 2 seconds), that gets you one more.  Next, the Special offers page - Click on the little box in the upper right hand corner that says view our no special obligation offers.  Scroll down and click skip.  Do this several times and you get another point.  Last is the trusted surveys section.  Just click on the page and you automatically get another one.  Doing these adds up!  You get 120 points total for the month just doing this.

3,  Swagcodes - The Swag Guy (TSG) hides or gives out random codes.  If you download the swidget and check it regularly, it will tell you when and where the codes can be found.  Alternately, and this is what I do, is to go to the Swagbucks Facebook page (accessed from the main swagbucks page) and if you see lots of Thanks TSG!'s on there, you know there is a code out.  Yes, there are some idiots that crop up from time to time on the facebook page, just disregard those and don't click on any links that you see come up on the page.  Be sure and to read the blog there a couple of times a day as well.  TSG posts a lot of clues there on where to find the Swagcodes.

4.  Trusted Surveys - You can take surveys to earn extra bucks as well.  Make sure that you go to your profile section on the trusted survey page and fill out each of the surveys there.  You'll make a gracious amount of bucks that way.  You better hurry though, they've already stated that they will be lowering the amount of bucks awarded for those real soon.

5.  Tasks - On the Special offers section, scroll down until you see Wall (or tab) one and click it.  Next click on the tasks tab.  You can do some of these tasks to earn extra bucks as well.

6.  Spread the word - If you get people to sign up under you, and you can do that here by the way,  you can earn up to 1,000 bucks per person.  As they win from doing searches, so do you!  (Thanks to my readers who have already done this!)

I do all of these in my free time and try not to get obsessed by how much fun this can be earning free money.  It's free because Swagbucks get paid from their advertisers.  They just pass along the goodies to you.

Are other people doing this?   Yes, check out the number of fans that the facebook page alone has.


I forgot to mention that I am in no way associated with Swagbucks.  I don't work for them, I just play on their site to earn my petty cash.  :)

Blog Back Ups

I've been looking for a while for a decent way to back up my blog, which is housed at Blogger.  I've finally found two that I'm completely happy with.  One of them backs up your blog online and the other creates a pdf of it. 

BlogBackupr - An online service that grabs your feeds and pulls your blog data for you.  Everything is handled online automatically and lets you restore it via RSS, Text or Html.

BlogBooker - I'm really impressed with this one.  This one backs up your blog to a pdf for you.  I tried several of these programs that supposedly do this, but they only backed up a few pages.  I've got over four years worth to be backed up!  I needed something that could really do the job and BlogBooker is it.  I'd like to eventually print out my blog into a book form and this cool little service is just the ticket to being able to do that.  It used my exported blog xml file from Blogger so it was able to grab all of my blog, not just the last few days.

Hopefully my research will help someone else looking to do the same thing.  BTW, both of these services also support Wordpress blogs.  Good Luck!

Working Through Knitter's Guilt

Do you ever get to the point where the projects that you have sitting around suddenly do nothing for you?  Sorta like a relationship that's gone sour, the project no longer sings to you, no more loving coos are exchanged and you stare at the project and think "What the hell did I ever see in you anyway?" 

I think that's the state I"m in now.  The Noro stole is still okay, not exciting to the point where I have to work on it every minute of the day though.  I've lost total interest in the Mantilla blanket and may frog it soon.  The pink wool socks that I've had lying around? That's soon to be gone as well.  Several other wips are generating the same sentiments in me too.

So what's a knitter to do?  Go on and keep the relationship going even though it's a drain on the psyche?  Or frog them and find something else?  Why do we let ourselves get in these predicaments anyway? 

And another question, why the heck am I feeling guilty about letting them go?  Don't I have a right to be happy?  I've always been a strong proponent of the adage "If it's not fun, then quit doing it and find something else you love to do."  Yet when applied to knitting, which, when the day is done, is just playing with two sticks and a bit of string after all, I get sweaty hands and butterflies in the stomach at the thought of just "giving up".   It's not like the knitting police are going to show up at my doorstep and cart me off to jail because I set a project free to live a better life out in the wild. 

Maybe, I need to tell the knitter's guilt to take a hike and free myself from the feeling of imminent doom.  Am I going to paint myself a failure just because of giving up on a project?   I think not.  I've already proven myself as a successful knitter.  These projects in themselves may be not be what I envisioned at first, but that's okay.   There's plenty of other projects where those came from and I'll be more than successful at those.  Right? 

I"m still keeping the Noro stole though, darnit, even if it does feel like I'm just plodding along.   So, Knitter's Guilt - banished.  Knitter's Stubbornness - quite happy, thanks.

Procrastinator Extraordinaire

I have decided that both of my offspring are freaks of nature.  I bought a wonderful seedless watermelon today for us all to eat.   One refused to try it, swearing the whole time, "I don't like that" and the other took a bite and then made faces like he was going to throw up.  Who doesn't like watermelon?  It's the perfect hot weather fruit!  I just don't get it.


I finally made it through all of the sewing that I began working on Friday.    Like these six fabric baskets:

The green ones are for my bff's birthday and the other three are for my Mom's bday which is tomorrow.  She got them this weekend since I won't be seeing her on her actual birthday.  I fell in love with all of these fabrics, but especially the fabric that looks like 50's paper dolls.  It's so cute!

I also made a swath through some shirts and shorts that my cousin had given me.  She purchased them at a Russell brand's sample sale.  The each had a small slit cut into them.  They are made in another country and each one that is brought over the border to be samples has to have the cut in them.  I'm not sure why, but that's okay.  I sewed up the slits and now have some great shirts and shorts to sleep in.  Yay!

Last, but not least in the sewing pile were some pillow covers that I had promised to make my Sister In Law.   Unfortunately, I promised to sew these for her about 2 or 3 YEARS ago.  Can we say "Procrastinator Extraordinaire?  Hmm? 

The one on the right was made from a quilted panel that I had made her about five years ago when I was hot and heavy into quilting.  The batik that you see is real batik fabric that she made in high school and has kept for the past twenty odd years.  I added the dark blue edging to the batik one since it wasn't quite large enough for the pillow.  I still feel guilty for waiting so long to do what amounted to about a one hour project. 

Here's a closer view of my quilting:

So, I'm so thankful to have all those sewing projects out of the way!  It freed up so much space where all those projects had piled up.  Let's hear it for decluttering (at least a small section of the house anyway)!

Father's Day Gifts

I have to get real crafty in June.  There are three Father's Day gifts to do, two family birthdays and one best friend birthday, so June can get kind of pricey.  Therefore, the boys and I started working on their Father's Day Gifts yesterday. 

This is such an easy (if the kids feel like cooperating - which mine didn't quite do) project.  All three of the Dads in question spend tons of time wearing what we around here refer to as lounge(y) pants.  None of them spend tons of time wearing t-shirts.  So purchased three pairs of plain gray pants ($8 a piece from Wallyworld) and some fabric paints.

We laid them flat on a giant drop cloth.  Then I had the boys dip their feet in fabric paint and place them on the pants.  I used some stencils and fabric markers to spell out "My kids walk all over me" for their Dad and "My grandkids walk all over me" for the granddads. 

What's funny is that when you live with the kids, their growth always takes you by surprise.  When I envisioned this project, for some reason my mind expected their feet to be much smaller.  Hah!  The Eldest's foot size is the same as mine!  I really knew this, but I didn't "Know This" in a crafty sense.  The Youngest took me by surprise in this as well. 

I ended up with huge gaping holes to fill in between their foot prints.  So off to JoAnn to look at little foot stamps to fill in the blanks.  I don't stamp that often and had some major sticker shock when I saw the prices.  Nope, I wasn't going to pay that.  I decided to look in the stencils section.  No deal, they didn't have a stencil for that.

What I ended up doing (it was my Mom's idea) was to ball up my fist.  Then I dipped the side of my fist (pinky side) into the fabric print and place that on the cloth.  I then dipped my index finger and made finger print toes over the little foot imprint that I made with the side of my fist.  It worked perfectly!

Here's how they turned out:

Cute huh?  I didn't do the back of the pants, I started way too late to even think about those.   And honestly?  I came close to sending my kids to Siberia over this project.  I don't think I want to tackle another side.  Their listening skills are sub-par and there was one pair of little jean shorts ruined in the making of these.  I should have had them strip all nekkid for this project.  As it was, it was probably quite amusing for the neighbors to see us walking all around our house to get to the outside hose.  We had rainbow feet, hands and legs before it was all over.

Have a Great Father's Day Weekend!

I Saved A Sweater

I'm tackling about twenty projects today and getting very little done.  My multi-tasking-fu is just not keeping up with everything that needs to get done.  I'm sewing more fabric baskets for birthday gifts, pillow covers for my sister-in-law, cleaning the house for company that's coming over this weekend and working with the kids on their Father's Day gifts to Dad and Grandfathers.  Whew!

One project that I did manage to complete today was an alteration to a sleeveless sweater.  This is one of my favorite summer tops.  It's made of silk, nylon and viscose.  It's also very thin and so incredibly soft.

Why does it need altering?  Well, let me show you:

A hole!

If you look in the first pic, that hole is in the right hand side of the sweater piece that hangs down and drapes from the shoulder.  I was so upset and disgusted when I found the hole that I threw the whole sweater under my bed in disgust and left it there.  I figured that sooner or later I could make it into something new or throw it in the trash. 


So, about eight months and lots of cat hair later, I got it out again.  I intended to get the seam ripper out and just remove the whole drape-y piece and just have a simple tank top.  But when I looked at the hole again, I had an epiphany.  There was enough fabric that I could fold it over carefully and hand stitch it down to cover the hole.  Guess what?  It worked:

 Look Mom!  No hole! Yay me, I save it from the landfill!  I'm feeling so green and recycley!  (You like my new made up word?)  Now to get all that cat hair off of this sweater.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Theater

While the Eldest is in Cub Scout Day Camp this week, the Youngest and I decided to head out to the Regal Cinemas Free Movies this morning.  While driving, we began playing the "I love you more than" game.  It's simple and keeps a four year old very entertained while stuck in the car seat.  It began years ago with the Eldest and the tradition has carried onto his younger sibling. 

Here's how you play:

1.  You begin every sentence with "I love you more than..." and then fill in the blank.  You can start out all sweet and sappy if you want with something like "I love you more than strawberries."  That's always a good one. Then you wait and let the child say one of his own sentences. 
2.  You continue number one for a while, swapping back and forth, and then change your fill in the blank answer into something a little weird such as "I love you more than chocolate covered corn on the cob."  (We typically stick with food items, you'll see why in a sec.) By this time the kid's getting the giggles.
3.  Continue number two for a while and then the fun starts.  Now you get to get all four year old yourself and come up with some really disgusting stuff.  Here's a few examples of what was said today:

"I love you more than worm pie." 
"I love you more than dirty sock soup."
"I love you more than snail souffle." 

You get the idea.  I really thought I was winning this one today and coming up with some great gross stuff until the Youngest ended the whole thing with:

"I love you more than poop waffles."   At that point it became time to change both the game and the subject. He won that round, but you just wait until next time!



Oh, and the stole?  It's still growing:

Aren't the colors pretty?

I'm Dyeing Again

At Christmas my parents gave me a set of four leather parsons chairs.  I went out shortly thereafter and purchased some chair covers for them from Bed Bath and Beyond.  They only had a couple of colors and most of those (to me) were hideous, except for the white ones that came home with me.  I bought them on sale for $1.99 a piece, which was an excellent bargain.

Such a good bargain, in fact, that I decided that I could dye them and if the color turned out to be horrid, I wouldn't feel guilty about tossing them.  With that thought, I promptly put them away and forgot about them until this past weekend.

When the Eldest had his birthday party in September, we used some RIT dye to make some camouflage shirts.  I had one container of Tan dye leftover and that's the color that I threw in the wash with my chair covers.  The covers are cotton, so I knew they wouldn't take the dye as readily as some other fibers would.  I ran the water in the washing machine then added the dye and covers and let them sit for a few hours.  Then finished the wash cycle and then re-washed with detergent after that. 

So how did they turn out?  Lovely!  I got the most beautiful champagne color and it was exactly what I wanted.

It's difficult to see any color in the above pic at all, so I added a white piece of paper:

Look closely at the bottom right of the pic and you'll see how pretty the gold/champagne color really is.  I'm very pleased with these!  Now to get a good table cloth that will compliment them...


By the way, My neighbors must think I'm an absolute nut.  I drag the weirdest things to take pictures of out onto my back porch all the time.  One chair, with cover, one piece of paper with a knitting pattern on it.  yep, weird.

The Noro Stole

So far I'm loving the One Skein - A Stole! project.  The Noro sock yarn is giving this a real bohemian feel that I"m craving right now.  I'm needing the bright colors after the black of the last failed project.

I'm also enjoying this because it's my first dropped stitch project that I've done.  It's really neat to watch the stole grow as those stitches get pushed off of the needle.  I had to really concentrate at first on doing the extra wraps on the needle to accomplish this, but it really is turning out to be fun.  If I ever get more than 10 minutes at a time to work on it, it's going to go amazingly fast.

Shawl Mishaps

In all the teeth and bunk bed excitement I forgot to tell you what happened with the Prayer Shawl that I was making.  I had finished the length of it and was oh so glad because I had lost all excitement over it.  I laid it out to examine it really close and wished that I had done that a lot sooner.  I found two unforgivable errors.  There's supposed to be a straight lattice look to it and in two places it looked like a spider had gotten in to the lattice and set up house.  There was no way I could gift it looking like that.  I also decided that there was no way I was going to be making it again.  I'm going to hope the prayers made it my Aunt's way, since the shawl won't be.  I frogged it.

Then I had started digging in the Ravelry database and found another shawl that I wanted to try.  It's the One Skein, A Stole shawl (Ravelry link) that uses one skein of Noro sock yarn.  After all the black from the previous project, the Noro project is very welcome.  I don't particularly like the way the yarn feels, but the colors are awesome.  Here's the yarn that I'm using:

As far as my teeth go, its' going amazingly well.  Little to no pain, I'm only taking Ibuprofen for any that pops up.  I've been painting walls today and feeling fine.  I even ate fried chicken last night!  Yippee!  I'm kinda shocked that everything has gone so well to tell you the truth. 

So now I'm going to go back to painting.  The walls would like to be painted sometime before the century is over.

My Teeth Have Left The Building

Just a quick post today to tell you I had two wisdom teeth pulled today.  I went into the office for a routine cleaning and possibly a filling and left with both my wallet and my mouth emptier.   Thank goodness my parents have my kids today! 

For the past two days I have started the day out intending to get lots of things done.  My house looks like a tornado has come through it thanks to lots of displaced stuff from the laundry room renovation.  It's affected almost every room.  The upstairs is topsy turvy from the boys' room being changed around and everything else has just suffered from neglect.

But have a I done a freakin' thing today?  Not unless you count changing gauze pads every half hour or so.  Yuck.   So, there ya go.  I'm basically useless today.  again.

The new addition to the household

Today was such a good day for me!  I've been looking for a bunk bed set for the boys that has a twin bed on top and a full on the bottom.  I've been haunting Craigslist several times a day, just waiting and watching.  The best price that I've seen has been around $100 and so that's what I was prepared to pay. 

Well, I found an ad for a yard sale that mentioned a bunk bed.  I figured, what the heck, I'll send an email and see if she will sell it early.  After all, all she could say was no, right?  She didn't.  When I opened my email and found out the price I was practically tripping all over myself to get there and put cash in her hand even though I didn't have a truck to move it at the time.  You know what she was asking for it?  $25 bucks!  Woohoo!  What a steal.

My folks drove two hours to bring a trailer to load everything up for me (and put it together too.)  My parents are the best!!!

The bed is styled like this one but the color is all red:




Now, to make things even better, let me tell you what happened yesterday.  We (my Mom and I) went thrift store shopping with the kids.  The Youngest saw a comforter set and began absolutely begging for it.  I've never in my life heard a child beg for linens.  It was the funniest sight.  It looked brand new and had super heroes on it.  The Youngest is obsessed with super heroes, but especially these: Batman & Robin and it had all the bad guys too.  The bad guys were particularly important since he prefers those to Batman & Robin.  He's very strange that way.  So I bought them, knowing that in the not too far future we would be getting a bunk bed. 

And now today, I have one.  For $25 bucks.   How cool is that?

Friday DIY Continued

My Laundry Room diy project carried on through the weekend and it looks like it will take me the rest of the week to complete it.  I live my life on a start/stop, start/stop basis thanks to my kids.  So no project is ever completed in a short time span.  Ever. 

There was a rush to get at least one corner of the room finished and that's where my washer and dryer go.  Laundry mountain is about to have an avalanche, so it's critical we get those hooked back up. 

Remember the awful blue and hideous wallpaper?  Here's where it stands now:

You can barely see the wall paper under the primer on the right and on the left is one coat of the paint color that's going up.  It's the same color as in my kitchen since the two rooms are right next to each other.  The wall paper is covering up nicely.  I was worried that it would show through the paint, but it's not.  Yay!

Here's another shot of a different wall.  The paint is a little darker here due to it being dry and the lighting:

The wall to the right is the same one as in the first picture.  The top pic was taken after this one. 

The paint color is sort of a very warm butternut squash kind of color.  It looks better in person than in the pics.  It's a little intense if you are used to white walls, but never let it be said that we are afraid of a little color around here!  It'll come together better when I get the rest of the trim color in and some pics up on the wall. 

You have no idea how much I loathed the wall paper.  Honestly, I was so sick of looking at what was in this room before that I would have slapped up an electric purple and called it a good day. 


I did do some knitting this weekend and there's bad news/good news, but I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Friday DIY

I really need to stop watching home improvement style shows.  It makes me itchy for paint brushes and paint rollers.  I found that I needed to scratch that itch this afternoon and ended up with primer on walls, trim and my hands.

The room that is much in need of restoration is my laundry room and it attaches directly to my kitchen.  It's been clashing with the updated kitchen (well, almost updated - I still need to do one more countertop) and it's been driving me nuts to look at it.  With the freezer dying crisis of last week and our subsequent purchase of one a little smaller, I found myself able to see much more of the wall and the pressure to paint began to build up.  It came to a head while I was at the folks' house this past weekend and was watching diy channels.  I was doomed from that point on. 

This, of course, will naturally send the spouse's blood pressure skyrocketing as it always does whenever I get near paint or power tools.  He'll get over it.  I'm following the rule of thumb that says "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission."  I never told him I was going to start painting.  He'll find out when he gets home tonight.  :)

Here's the before pic (check out the hideous wallpaper):

After Priming part of the walls:

And another shot above the door that goes into the kitchen:

You can see the color of my kitchen walls in the last pic.  It really doesn't go well with dark blue and hideous wallpaper does it?  The primer may be spotty right now, but I already love it better than what was in there.

This is the point where I stopped for the day.  I'm going to have to rearrange the laundry room to get to the rest of the walls and that will require some help to move the appliances.  Everything will need at least two coats of primer and then two coats of the paint.  I'm priming the trim as I go along now to save some time later.  There's a lot of prep work to be done to the walls before the paint can be applied.  The primer has really highlighted a lot of stuff that I missed before. 

The idiots that lived here before us left some real problems for me to deal with.  One of those being the wallpaper.  They didn't prime the walls before applying it.   So, in order to save an incredible amount of trouble, I'm painting over it and hoping for the best.  They also bolted some stuff into the walls and then tore them off when they left, leaving the anchors in the walls.  So I get to patch those holes as well.  Sometimes I really wish I had those people in rock throwing distance, I really do.

Have a great weekend!

Thunderstorms and Outages

Thunderstorms and power outages are not very conducive to blogging are they?  Yesterday a series of storms swept through our area.  Lightening, thunder and rain appeared off and on all day.  In the late afternoon/evening though we got a doozy that took out our power for quite a while.   Just as I was about to sit down at the pc and start writing, everything went down.  But I'm here today and writing quickly before the afternoon storms are scheduled to blow through again.

In my baking excitement on Tuesday, I forgot to mention the prayer shawl progress.  I did not get it finished over the holiday, but it wasn't for lack of trying.  I knit on that sucker until my elbow started hurting and had to quit.  My wrists had already been aching from it, but the elbow pain was the deal breaker.  I have about four more inches to knit and the fringe to add.  It should go fairly quick once I start on it again.  I have a new deadline and that's Monday.  My Mom will be coming to town then and can pick it up for me so I don't have to deal with mailing it.

I tried to get some new pictures of it, but I'm having a heck of a time photographing this shawl in a way that shows it off.  I'll keep playing around with it until I get something acceptable to put up here and on Ravelry.  This was the best of the last lot of pics and it's not much to write home about:

I need some photography for knitters classes.  Do they even have those?

Baking Day!

Today was baking day at the House O' Shea!

Here's the totals of everything made: 20 tortillas, 24 Chocolate-Chocolate Chip muffins, Pizza Dough for two pizzas,  6 "Cheesy-illas" (that's 4 year old speak for quesadillas), 1lb. Venison sausage cooked up, and one large Vidalia onion.   The onion and sausage were cooked up at the same time; some to go on pizza and some to go in the freezer for a later date. 

PHEW!

This was the first time that I had made tortillas.  I always thought that this would be difficult, but it was so easy.  Here's the recipe that I used:

Flour Tortillas:

3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 shortening
Pinch of Salt
1 cup warm water

Combine all ingredients, kneading until dough forms.  Divided it all into 20 golf ball size balls.  Gave a light coating to all of them and then let them rest for about 20 minutes covered.  Then, roll out dough on a floured surface.  I was really surprised how thin these could roll out.  The dough was really easy to work with.  Stack all with wax paper between each until ready to cook.  Preheat a large griddle or frying pan.  Cook each until it begins to puff up like this:

Then flip and press firmly on the tortilla to remove the bubbles. Cook another minute and remove from pan. Here's the finished results:

I stacked these (again) as they finished cooking with the same waxed paper between each. 

Oh, and I should mention some pancakes that got made a few days ago.  You haven't lived until you've eaten tye-dyed pancakes!

The kids loved them.

Tye Dyed Pancakes:

2 cups self rising flour
2 eggs
2 to 2.5 cups buttermilk (you don't want the batter too thick so add more if necessary)
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla (optional)
Various Wilton food coloring pastes

Combine first 5 ingredients in bowl.  Then, if you are going to have several different colored pancakes, separate the batter into a few other bowls.  *Take a toothpick and dip it into the first color.  It takes only a drop!  Swirl the color into the batter and then discard the toothpick.*  Repeat that step for as many colors as you choose to have.  My boys chose three colors each, your mileage may vary.  Make sure that you don't blend the batter so much that you no longer have swirls.  You are better off swirling less than more.  Next, carefully ladle the batter into a very hot griddle sprayed lightly with cooking spray.  I use an electric griddle that I dearly love that was set to 400 degrees.  Cooking the pancakes until you see big holes form, then flip with spatula and cook until done.    These turned out so pretty it was almost a shame to cut them up!

Not Quite Halfway

When last we spoke about my Aunt's Prayer Shawl, I was knitting it up with some Patons SWS.  However I got about this far:

and decided that I wasn't going to have near enough yarn to continue on.  So, I ditched it and headed to Michael's.  There was a time when I went to Joann's or Michael's and every other skein was a ribbon yarn.  Remember that?  It wasn't that long ago.  That's what I was looking for to replace the SWS.  I finally find a project that would be perfect for it and there's not one skein to be found!  None.  It was time for plan B.

I searched a bit more and found something very pretty.  Acrylic, but really pretty even so.  It was a ball of Vanna's Glamour in black.  There are gorgeous black shiny threads running throughout the yarn.  This shawl is going to be very elegant with that yarn.  I'm actually surprised at this yarn.  It's pretty, doesn't feel squeaky on the needles and it's easy to work with. 

Here's a closeup of the project so that you can see the sparkle:

I'm not quite halfway finished with the shawl, but I'm almost there.  Say, about 45% complete.  It's turning out lovely, I think.  I just hope my Aunt thinks so.  My arm and wrist are already starting to ache, but I've several more hours of knitting to do tonight and tomorrow before it gets close to being done.  Just think how much further along I would be if I hadn't wasted my time with the first version of this shawl.  Time!  I need more time!

Here's how it looks full length:

Murphy Loves Me

Today's post was supposed to be about progress on my Aunt's Prayer Shawl.  However, Murphy has reared his ugly head and interrupted all my well laid plans.

I went to my giant chest freezer to put some loaves of bread into it and water came gushing out.  Yikes!  It's quickly defrosting and it's 5:45 pm.  Any repairman that does make it here tonight is going to charge megabucks.  But that's nothing compared to the hundreds of dollars that is now defrosting.  I may be cooking deer meat and other vittles all night just to try and salvage what I can.

Had I told you that we had finally paid off our credit cards?  We may be adding a new freezer back onto those cards.  noooooooooo!

Anyway, I gotta go and so some fast salvage work.  I'll update you on this and the shawl tomorrow.

Knitting a Prayer Shawl

My Aunt Sherry (an Aunt by marriage) lost her Eldest sister today.   Her sister was 80 and had a long list of ailments that combined with Pneumonia, was just too much for her.  It was expected and long in the coming, but hard nevertheless.

So, in honor of her sister's memory, I decided to make my Aunt a prayer shawl.  Since I have to have this finished my this coming Saturday (yes, I'm nuts to think it can be finished by then) I decided  to use some honkin' big needles and this pattern:  Purl Shawl by Allison Blevins from Tangle.  It's a free pattern and it's super easy.  Although, if you hate doing purls, you probably won't enjoy it.  There are no knit stitches in this pattern!

It's supposed to be knit with ribbon yarn.  I don't happen to have any ribbon yarn in the stash, so I've decided to make do with two skeins of leftover Patons SWS in Natural Earth.  I'm hoping that the two skeins will be enough, we'll see.  After I get a few more inches on the needles I'll be able to tell a little better.  If the Patons doesn't turn out to be a good match, I'll get some sock yarn out and start over.   With the huge needles, it will go quickly either way.  I hope.

For those that don't know, a Prayer Shawl is for comfort in loss, dealing with sickness or for those in just general need and is begun with prayers for the recipient and the prayers continue with each and every stitch that is knit.  It's not necessarily a certain type of shawl. Any pattern can be used with any needles and the knitter's choice of yarn.  It let's the recipient know that the shawl was knit with love and with them specifically in mind.  As they wrap themselves in the Prayer Shawl, they also are wrapping themselves in the prayers said for them.  Everyone needs a Prayer Shawl at some point in their life, don't they?  

I'll have a progress report for you tomorrow.  I'm going to go knit my little fingers off!

The Mary Poppins Closet

I'd love to be able to say that I was incredibly crafty today, but it's just not going to happen.  You see, I got a wild hair today to empty my walk in closet.  It's been a disaster area for quite a long time.  If I didn't know what to do with something, that's where it got piled. 

This has taken almost all day to complete.  I completely emptied it and trashed by bedroom with it's contents.  It look like a hurricane had hit.  I wish I had taken before and after pics of everything, but I probably would have been too embarrassed to show you.



There were two pieces of furniture in the closet; a small chest of drawers that holds sweaters and a standing jewelry box.  If you tried to open one, the other was in the way.   I tried six ways to Sunday to get the chest of drawers to go up under the hanging shelves.  I wasn't smart enough to use a tape measure to find out if it would fit into several spots.  I'm blond, obviously.  Eventually, I got lucky and found just the right spot.  I took the jewelry box out of the closet completely.  I'll worry about what to do with it later.

Shoes.  Who knew I had so many that I didn't wear?  One bag of shoes went into the donate pile.  I filled three garbage bags full of clothes that was added to the donate pile as well.

Four, I repeat, four boxes of books (the kind of box that holds copy paper) full of books left my closet and headed to the attic.  Egads, that sounds like a lot of books.  But in reality, it doesn't hold a candle to the number of boxes that I could fill with all the books that I own. 

One large box was filled with books that is going to be donated to the library.  Did you know that, unlike clothing, when books are donated they keep most of their value?  If you donate a lot of books to your local library, that adds up quickly to be a fantastic write-off on your taxes!

The attic is going to be filled to the rafters.  Besides the boxes of books, I added a large storage bin of purses/bags to go up into it.  Also, some baskets and one box of knick knacks. 

My closet reminded me of Mary Poppins' carpet bag.  I kept taking stuff out and then more stuff and then even more.  I'm amazed that I ever got all that crap in there in the first place.   It's embarrassing. 


In between all the closet cleaning I had to make lunch, referee a fight between the boys, give the Eldest a piano lesson, referee another fight, make dinner, referee another fight, you get the drift.  I think back on when I had no children and how much time I had on my hands.  I reflect, quite often, on how I could complete a task without having to stop a hundred times in the middle of it.

My older self really started to envy my younger self when I came down stairs, trash bags in tow, and saw that a hurricane had plowed a huge path through the downstairs of my house.  That would be "Hurricane the Youngest", officially named after this little rascal:

I'm sure that as soon as I get the lower half of the house straightened up again, "Hurricane the Youngest" will go up and demolish my nice, clean and semi-organized closet.  :sigh:

Knitting Books!

The Mail man and I have become really tight.  Actually, he probably just thinks I'm a stalking nut that has cute kids that like to meet him at his truck to collect the mail (he brings them candy, he's really a nice guy and the children adore him.)

I have, despite being a mailman stalking nut raising mailman stalking children, at least kept him busy lately:

Sweater design has been very much on my mind lately.  I have several designs that I want to implement, but have run into some problems.  I can easily make a sweater to fit me, but I want to get into the design side that makes patterns for others and I've run into a few brick walls lately.  Therefore, the two design books in the lower part of the photo. 

There are numerous books and how-to's for designing your own sweater, but there is nothing for the aspiring designer.  Here's an issue that I'm having:  Grading a pattern.  That's where you have a pattern written out and you want it to be expanded to fit multiple sizes.   Some magazines cough: Vogue :cough tend to want to just add two inches to every number in the pattern.  But, just because someone is six sizes larger than me, doesn't necessarily mean that their arm length is 12 inches longer than mine!

So where do I find out how to properly grade a pattern?  When I queried designer Melissa Leapman on how to learn to do this, her answer was to read tons of patterns and reverse engineer them to find out how the professionals do it.  I'm currently doing that, but wouldn't it be cool if someone wrote a book on how to do this?  There's a large void in that part of the market.  Someone could make a mint writing a book like that.  Bonus points for them if they put in some info about the business side of creating knitting designs. 

Any designers out there listening?  anyone?

Fabric Baskets

I took a stab at making some fabric baskets today.  I used Jesse's pattern from over at her JezzePrints blog. 

Here's how my first one turned out:

This is a really nice pattern.  It didn't make near as much sense while I was reading through it as it did once I started making it.  My next few will hopefully look a lot better with neater, straighter edges.  This was my first time making one of the baskets, but I plan on making  a lot more. 

I used basic card stock inside the folded edges and it was plenty stiff enough to hold the edges straight.  As a matter of fact, if you look very closely, you can see it trying to pop out of the bottom just a bit. 

As usual, this took me way longer that it should have due to dumb sewing mistakes.  Sewing is not my forte.  However, if sewing is not my forte, then seam ripping must be.  I'm getting really good at that.  I'm hoping that one day when I'm all grown up that I'll be able to follow directions.   The fabric used was leftover from one of these skirts that I made last summer.

Here it is in action in a cubby above my desk:

It just fits which was totally not planned.  What you can't see in the pic is all the crap that I took out of the cubbies to make it look like I"m a minimalist neat freak.  In fact, I'm the exact opposite, less minimalist, more   Clutter 'R Us.

I'm off to make more baskets now.  I've got a lot more cubbies to fill if I"m ever going to hide all my sins.

Mantilla Blanket Progress

The Mantilla Blanket is coming along.  Slowly, but it's coming along.  I've slowed down a bit on all of my crafting over the past couple of weeks.  I think the kids have infected me with their school burn out. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)  Nobody around here wants to do much of anything.  I think everyone's brain has gone into melt down.  I'm hoping to get fired up again once summer officially starts on Monday.

Here's how the Mantilla Doily Blanket looks now:

I'm really hoping it will stretch out a bunch more when it's blocked.  I'm still thinking that I'm going to have to add a bunch of rows to get it to the size that I want.  I'm on row 21ish and there are only 29 rows to the whole pattern.  I just have to decide where I want the repeat(s) to go.

On a completely different topic:
For those of you who are or were skeptical about the whole Swagbucks thing.  Here's how much I've earned and already posted to my Amazon account since starting Swagbucks in January:

Screen shot of my Amazon account:

Yep, 100 big ones.  That new Wii game system will definitely be making it's grand appearance on Christmas morning!  I've been earning the bucks and then using them to purchase $5 dollar Amazon gift cards.  Free money!  Now are you interested?  If so, you can join Swagbucks here and searching and earning. 

And no, I do not work for them or have anything else to do with them.  I just enjoy earning free cash.  :)

Edited To Add:  Here's a link to an Atlanta TV station (11 alive) that did a small piece on Swagbucks.

Seen Any Good Movies Lately?

Have you guys seen any good movies lately?  I took the Eldest to see Iron Man 2 yesterday.  It was such a fun movie.  I've seen reviews all over the internet saying that it wasn't as good as the first movie.  Wrong.  These people are so over-analyzing this flick.  It's exactly what I and many others were hoping for; a fun, exciting, blow things to kingdom come popcorn flick. And how could you ever go wrong with Robert Downey Jr?

Such great eye candy!


So what flick should I go see next?  Any suggestions?

Garage Sales, How Do I Love Thee?

It's officially Garage Sale Season!  Just to let you know, garage sale season occurs sometime between the end of Spring and the beginning of Fall, at least in my neck of the woods.

I've been scouring Craigslist looking for a trampoline for the boys and for an exercise bike for me.  I've become a blob and need to work it off.  I don't have the cash for a gym membership (which in all honesty I probably wouldn't use anyway) and I hate walking the neighborhood.  The cheapest that I have seen any bike going for is $40, so that was the price that I was going to pay.  Until today.  I got an air resistance bike for $5 bucks.  The only way you could beat that price would be if it was for free.  Sweet.

A side bonus of today's garage sale-ing was a big box of sheet music and lesson books for another $5 bucks.

All in all, it was a great day for garage sales.

Oh and to show that I have been creative over the past couple of days, check out what I've been doing with the boys:

A new Star Wars Cantina and Starship:

And a very cool castle:

Last September, as part of the Eldest's birthday gift, I bought 11 pounds of Legos off of Ebay.  It was a huge misc. assortment.  We had no idea what we would be getting.   I built everything in the above two pics with what we got in the box.  Not bad for a bunch of misc. pieces, huh?  The mini-figures were from some of the Eldest's other Star Wars sets.  But they worked perfect with my futuristic cantina.  As far as the boys are concerned, I'm the coolest Mom in Town.  Oh yeah.


Who said only Dads can build with legos?

Candlestick Refurbishment

Remember the candlesticks that were purchased at a thrift store to be used as a prop for a paper that the Eldest gave at school?  No?  Here they are as they were:

And now?  After a few coats of Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint and they've been given a new lease on life. 

I am seriously beginning to love this spray paint.  I've been walking around the house looking for things to paint.  The Eldest has been laughing his behind off following me around while I scout for things that need a little bit of paint love. 

Blob or Fish?

We went to the GA Aquarium (also known as the world's largest fish tank), but this time it was to attend Aquatech.  The Eldest's school, in conjunction with Lockheed Martin and a local college, had a show to exhibit some of the work that the students in the magnet program had done.  The Eldest had one computer project and one art project on display.  It was really cool (both projects and the show as a whole.)

It was held in the ball room.  One wall of the room was a giant window that looked into the Beluga whale tank and on another wall was a giant window that looked into the tank that held the whale sharks.  What a cool place to have this exhibition at.

The Youngest enjoyed it immensely:

Check out the bubble window that he was in.  It looks like he's in there with the sharks.

There was also a giant orange blob that I suppose was supposed to be a fish.  You decide.  Blob or Fish?

Mantilla Blanket Project Has Begun

I've been wanting to do a crochet project, but I've been kind of put off by the patterns that I've found out there.  One of the things that drove me to knitting was the practicality of it.  I could make and use more of my knitting projects than I could my crochet projects.   


Now I'm not saying that I don't like or enjoy crochet.  I crochet much faster than I knit.  I've been crocheting for um, way to many years to mention.  Let's just say since I was 8, okay?  Obviously I enjoy it or I would have given it up years ago (got loads of other crafts that just didn't make the cut like crochet and knitting.)   I don't like sweaters made of it, it doesn't stretch or  drape well.  I don't need toys, got enough toys around here already, thanks.  Doilies.  Nope, just dust catchers in my opinion.  Or are they?

Remember the Hemlock Ring Blanket that Jared Flood got everybody hooked on a few years ago?  Here was my take on it:

While it was knit, it was still a doily.  But a pretty doily. 

By the way, do you realize how odd the word doily looks after you've typed it several times?  Doily, doily, doily.  Yup.  Looks really weird.  I had to get my spell check up and running to make sure I wasn't losing my mind while typing it.

Anyway, this weekend, I decided to crochet me a doily.  On a size H hook.  With some gorgeous, gray, two ply alpaca from Lima, Peru.  I'm up to round 14 and there are 29 rounds in the pattern.  I will probably have to go back and repeat some rounds to get it the size that I want. 

It's approximately 12 inches in diameter at this point, but it will stretch like crazy once it's blocked. You'll be able to see more details then.  Right now it's just a furry blob.

The yarn is indecently soft.  Makes you want to get all neckid and roll in it.  I swear it does.  Sorry, you don't get pics of that.  :)

This is the Mantilla Doily by Coats and Clark.  Not terribly difficult, although I did have trouble with interpreting a few rounds.  It's been a while since I've looked at a crochet pattern.  It all looks like Greek if you haven't looked at it in a few years.  It's looking good so far and it promises to be a luxurious blanket that the whole family will be arguing over. 

Mother's Day Gifts

 We've been busy creating gifts for the Grandmothers around here.  The boys were very busy all week playing mad scientist with Melt & Pour glycerin soaps (with various teas, cocoa butter and vitamin E oil added in) and with Epsom Salt Bath Bars.  They loved every second. 

I, however, have not loved every second, but only because I started stressing out that we hadn't done enough for the Grandmothers.  So this afternoon I knit the face cloths to go with the bath stuff.  My hands are aching now, but it was worth it.

Face Cloths - I began with the Double Bump Dishcloth, but I modified it.  I cast on 23 and then followed the directions as written.


Have a great Mother's Day!

Crafty Links

Anybody who knows me well knows that I'm a research-aholic.  I will research a topic to absolute death to learn about it.  For the past week I've been researching two topics: Mother's Day Gift Ideas and Online Free Piano Lessons.  Money is a huge issue for both of these.  I have little to none, so everything has to be thrifty-fied.  Like that word?  Just made it up, but you can research it if you want too.

I thought I'd share some of the stuff I found out there in the Interwebs with you:  (most of these are from Instructables.com)

For Mother's Day:

Crochet Beaded Bracelets
Bath Salt Bars
Multi Strand Finger Loop Braiding
Wood Pendant Necklace 
Faux Tea Bags with Tea-Scented Soap 

I'm not telling what the kids are making for their Grandmothers (not that they probably can't figure it out from the pic), but here they are playing mad scientist:

General Crafting:
How to make lipstick with crayons (I am so going to order some molds for this.  I mean, do you know how many crayon pieces I have lying around this house?)

Cooking:
Fire-Breathing Dragon Cake!!
Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup from Scratch
Cough Drops - Viewing Comments 1-50

Free Piano Lessons:
Learn How to Play Piano, Free Online Piano Lesson, A Friendly Place to learn piano.   This is so cool.  A young guy who was fed up with all the fake play by ear stuff and wanted to have real lessons for people who didn't have money to go take their own lessons (that would be me at this time.)  He could do with a real camera guy, but otherwise, I'm really impressed.  His hair's kind of wild too, I guess it ups the fun factor a little.

I'm currently looking into piano curriculum for the boys.  I can teach them both up to a point, then I'll have to get someone else for them.  Anybody have any suggestions for what books I should get?  The boys are ages 9 and 4 respectively.

Stitches South 2010

Let's talk Stitches South 2010 shall we?

There was yarn galore at the Cobb Galleria last weekend, but I carefully avoided it.  I'm trying to be good and not blow the yarn diet.  Plus the prices there still felt too high.  But then, I tend to look for the "workhorse" yarns that give you more bang for the buck yardage wise (sweaterly speaking.)  I did drool over some amazing lace weight yarns though. 

I didn't quite avoid making a couple of other purchases though.  My one impulse buy was these silk caps that I walked by and made the mistake of touching.  Heavenly soft!  And such glorious color! 

The person running the booth gave a demonstration in how to knit directly from the caps which was really cool, but I will probably spin these up instead.

My next purchase was not on impulse.  I took a class while I was there with Melissa Leapman.  The class was basic pattern drafting 101.  The first half of the class concerned stuff that I was already familiar with, but the second half was really good.   She  had us learn how to design a drop shoulder sweater, which I had never done.  But she really blew me away when she put algebra into the mix.  I knew how to do the math the hard way, but had not even considered using algebra to get the same answer in half the time.  doh!

I want basic pattern drafting 102 now.  Like yesterday.  It was so much fun and I hope that I can retain at least a quarter of the info. that she threw at us.

But back to the non-impulse buy.  It was Melissa's book:  Cables Untangled: An Exploration of Cable
 Knitting:















Her cables are just gorgeous and I can't wait to use them.

There was more fiber on the whole than there was last year, which I was really glad to see.  That was my one big complaint from last year's Stitches South.  There were also more vendors here this year.  Oh, if I had just had some more pocket change!  I could have done some real damage to the wallet there.

Afternoon Fun

In lieu of having my pc, I've been knitting, reading and spending time with the Youngest.  Today he told me he wanted to build a robot.  I asked him what we were going to make it out of and he said, "metal.  Oh and we'll need oil..."  I did manage to convince him that he could make a robot that didn't need oil and this is what he/we came up with:

It's not very fancy, I'll grant you that, but you should have seen his face light up.  He hasn't put it down since.  Pringles can, aluminum foil, pipe cleaners, pompoms, tape, glue and sharpie markers.  All you need for an afternoon of fun.

Wanna see how happy he was?

Have a great weekend!

Yet More Computer Issues

Once again I seem to have technology working against me.  Besides the trials and tribulations of the blog kind that happened last week and is still not completely resolved, yesterday afternoon my computer decided to up and die on me.  This pc is about 6 months old!   It's hardware related, that's all I know at this point.  I'm blaming Dell.

I'm currently using my husband's dinosaur of a laptop to reach the outside world with.  So if you don't hear from me, I'm trapped behind ancient technology!  Of course, I'm lucky to have that.

I'll have a Stitches South report for you in a couple of days.  For now, I'm going to go harass the Tech Guy.

On a More Positive Note

Last night I made this Crochet Flower Hot Pad:

This was made using this free pattern. 

It was completed in just a couple of hours.  It's are really easy project that looks more complicated than it actually is.    It's a great way to use up extra cotton yarn from past projects.

Mods:
Did an extra round of sc to make it flatten out a little bit more.

Next time I make this, I will figure out a predetermined chain from the center point to connect the petals at. I didn’t do that on this one and it’s very noticeable.

Where did my comments go?

Dang it.  My comments section has disappeared.  The code seems to be missing from the new template that I put up on the blog.   I'm working on it now.  Keep you fingers crossed that I can get it back.

ETA:   It spontaneously showed back up for this post, but now all comments from every post I've ever made has disappeared.  I'm very upset about this and don't know how to fix it. Can anyone help?

Edited again to add:  Yikes!  Somehow, Blogger changed every post that I've ever written to not show the posts.  In order to get all the comments back up and running properly, I'm going to have to go back in and edit each and every one.  Why doesn't Blogger have a batch edit option?!!!!! 

Anyway, I'll ask you again and now you can actually respond.  :)   What do you think of the new look for the blog?