Great idea....

Every now & then the hubby comes up with a really good idea. LOL
He told me tonight that my markers would make cute ornaments for a mini-Christmas tree. Well.... I just happened to have one mini-tree in the attic.... I dug it out, put some white lights on it & hung my little markers on there. And dang if he wasn't right! It is cute. :)

And in honor of his brilliant idea, I've made a Mix & Match or Single Marker listing in my store. For anyone who wants to buy just one marker for a gift, or make their own custom mix.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Christmas Pickle

I joined in an ornament swap that one of my Ravelry groups put together this year.... I got my package today! And what a great package Hope sent! Christmas came early that's for sure.
I opened my little, but hefty box to find this lovely little bag....

And here is what I found inside! A cute little note card telling me about my gifties, some beautiful blue handspun by Hope yarn, gummy bears, 2 great smelling soaps with hand-knit sweaters (that are wool & will felt with use, & knit in my colors of pink & purple), mango hand cream..... and a Christmas Pickle!

I love everything Hope! You really put together a lovely & very personalized "just for me" package.

Isn't the little Christmas Pickle ornament great?! And she knit it with more of her handspun yarn. That makes it extra special. :)

Of course it went right on the tree where I can see it from my spot on the sofa. He he, I just love it! It's the perfect ornament for my quirky sense of humor.

Of course this sent me on a search of just where the tradition of the Christmas Pickle came from. Most people think it originates from Germany, but that isn't confirmed. It is a pickle-shaped ornament that is the last one hung on the tree on Christmas Eve. The first child to find the Christmas pickle gets an extra gift from Saint Nicholas. Or so the so-called legend goes. It is also believed that it's a tradition of Christmas born of a total fabrication. There are a couple more versions of the story that I found. I think it makes it even more funny that the whole thing is nonsense.

I do know one thing, this pickle will be on my tree every year till it just falls apart! LOL

In other news... I have another finished project! It started out with this lovely wool fiber that Chan gave me.

I spun it into this yarn...

And now I've knitted this hat with it...

My coat is looking a little too blue in these photos but trust me, it's eggplant purple. My hat looks great with the eggplant color. The hat pattern is the Afternoon Pink Hat by Connie Peng. I love this hat pattern! It's fun & quick & makes a cute hat. :)

I have enough of this yarn left to make some fingerless gloves, I cast on for those last night. At least I hope I have enough yarn.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I plan on staying home with Jazzy, knitting, spinning & decorating my Chritstmas tree.... after all, while the pickle is cute & tickles me, I think the tree needs more than one ornament on it!

Fiber Stash enhancement

Check out these beauties. I picked them up the other day at Spinning The Web on etsy. She has some lovely yarn & fiber. Super fast shipping & the fiber is just gorgeous.

This one is called "Fruit Fondue", 100% falkland wool.

This one is called "Tidepool Reflections", 100% falkland wool. I'm looking forward to trying the falkland, it's nice & squishy soft in fiber form. :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!! I'm off to make potato salad....

Lesson learned

I definately learned something.... I don't like spinning 100% bamboo! It is very slippery, therefore you have to pinch it off fairly hard to keep it from getting away from you, made my fingers hurt. And it got away from me quite often, which meant a lot of wheel rethreading. I finally got the 4 oz of singles spun up last night. I thought about Navajo plying it, then decided to try a center pull ball again. I knew I shouldn't do it when I did, but live & learn... I ended up with a huge tangled mess, frustrated & mad. My beautiful bamboo ended up in the trash. All I have to show for a week's worth of spinning effort is this one lonly little ball of yarn.....

It was a painful lesson, but I won't forget it any time soon. And I won't be purchasing any more 100% bamboo any time soon either.

Poor Jazzy had to make her yearly trip to the vet's office on Friday. There was no way I could get her in the carrier & take photos at the same time. It was quite the fur flying fight. And to add insult to injury I snapped this photo of her pittiful pouty face in the carrier after it was all over.

After much pittiful crying in the car we arrived at the vet office, where she behaved so sweetly. Making the frazzled, fur covered woman who brought her in look like a total nut case. The vet gave her a clean bill of health & said that if he hadn't looked at her chart first he would have never guessed that she was 9.5 years old. We saw a new vet working in our vet's office now, I really liked him. I don't think Jazzy was real impressed though. LOL

When we got home she had to inspect every inch of the house to make sure nothing had changed. And she fussed at me the whole time. I guess she was telling me that she wasn't happy about our little trip. :)

She is back to her normal self now & doesn't seem to be holding a grudge against me for the whole episode.

In other news.... with Thanksgiving coming up, I treated myself to a little Thanksgiving present. We are having a big sale at work where we use the points we accumulated through the year to get 50% off gift items, I got this:

Those of you who know me, know how much I love to cook. NOT! So, I thought maybe, just maybe wearing this cute apron would make it more fun when I do have to cook. And since I'll be cooking quite a bit on Wednesday & Thursday it made sense to buy my little treat now. I got the last one of the "Queen of Fabulousness" aprons, because hey - I am Fabulous right? LOL, but we have more HERE if you are interested in checking them out.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

Progress?

I feel as if I've made no progress on anything here lately. Just spinning my wheels & running from this project to that one & nothing is getting completed. Frustrating isn't it when you feel that way?

I have completed a few things... My Cherry Sorbet merino handspun yarn for one. Love this yarn, it's soft & squishy. WPI suggest fingering weight but I would say it's more Sport weight. I did get 490 yards out of 4 oz. of fiber as a 2-ply. I'm really pleased about that!

It started as this yummy fiber.

I also completed a few ornaments for my Ornament Swap on Ravelry. And my partner has no idea who I am so they will have no idea that these are for them... I think it's fairly safe to post photos. LOL

I chose to do some Seashell Angel ornaments. I've made these before & I've always loved having them on my tree. Not to worry, I bought extra seashells so I could make myself some too. :)

And I have decided not to put any pressure on myself to do any holiday knitting. I waited way too long to get started on that & I'm not even gonna try now. Oh well...
Sooooo, I decided to cast on for another hat for me. This one I am knitting out of some of my handspun, I'm hoping to get a hat & maybe some mittens out of it. the ball of yarn doesn't look so big in this photo, but it is huge! Plenty of yardage. And it has enough purple in it to match my eggplant "winter" coat. I say "winter" cause for me a winter coat is really lightweight. Not what most of you consider a winter garment.

That's about it for now. I'm currently spinning some bamboo fiber, not real crazy about that. It's super slippery & gets away from me too easily. I might try some bamboo blend fiber but I don't think I'll be buying anymore 100% bamboo.... And I'm working on some custom marker orders.... and my day job.... and my house needs cleaning REALLY bad.... I have plenty to keep me busy.

I hope everyone has a good week!

Ellen with her Hawaii Chair

I don't care who you are, this is just dang funny!

Veteran's Day

I hope everyone had a good Veteran's Day. I'm a little late posting.... this veteran had to work today. Oh well, same ole thing right? Anyhoo, I snagged this photo from G's blog, I thought her post was really nice.

While I am a veteran myself, most of my time served was in peace time. A few months before I got out is when Desert Storm had started up. Even so, serving a little over 4 years  in the United States Coast Guard is one of the things I've done in my life that I'm most proud of. One of the other things I'm most proud of is having a hand in rasing one of the most wonderful & brave young men that I know. :) Our Marine might be fairly new at being a Marine, but I can tell you that I have a much better understanding of what families feel when their loved ones go away to serve now. Things I didn't realize when I was young & enlisted myself. What courage these young men & women must have to volunteer in these days....

May God bless all of our Service members, past & present. We owe our freedom & way of life to them. Thank you for all you have done & still do to protect me & mine.

Mmmm.... Tasty

I have one small finished project.... That's it.... I feel as if I should have 10 finished projects but I only have one lonley little cloth. Oh well, it's something. And it came out pretty I think. This is the Mint Leaves cloth by Sue Schaefer at Harvest Moon Designs.

I have some tasty new items in my Etsy Shop. Check out these cute little apples.

I even made some little Apple Earrings!

It has been a while since I messed with my beads, so I added these pretty colbalt blue markers to the shop too. It was fun to wire wrap some beads & not have to go through all the molding & baking & glazing process. LOL

Now I'm off to fix tacos for dinner & hopefully get some spinning time before bed. Hope everyone has a great week!

Decisions, decisions....

Goodness, I got so many lovely goodies the past couple of days I don't know which one to do first!

Here are two lovelies that I picked up at Kathy's Shop. This first one is Golden Harvest BFL, it's not as bright as the photo, it's getting darker by the time I get home now & is not conductive to good photo taking.... so flash it is.

This is Holly-Daze BFL....

And sweet Kathy included a couple of BFL samples in my package too. :)

Then Chan & Kathy went to the Shenandoah Fiber Fest & got me a surprise since I was pouting about not being able to attend...

(Couldn't resist posting the stolen from Chan photo... I know how much Kathy loves seeing her face on our blogs, ROFLMBO!!!!)

When I got home today I had this yummy stuff waiting on me. It's the most beautiful lavender Angora fiber! Not sure if it's mixed with anything, surely it is, but it's incredibly soft! I think Jazzy was jealous of me petting & snuggling the fiber. LOL

So now the decision is.... which one to spin first?! I told Kathy & Chan that I need about 20 extra bobbins for my wheel so I can start on all of my fiber at once! :)

The weekend is almost here, hope everyone has a great one!

SNAKES!

Sorry, didn't mean to scare you! Just letting you know that I now have Snake Stitch Markers in my shop. And don't worry, these little cuties won't bite. :)

And I got my Dish Rag Tag dishcloth today. Emily sent it to me since I was a team captain, but it actually came from Stephanie who pulled the last leg in our team. Although we didn't get a medal Team Peaches & Speed came in a respectable 4th place. Thanks again Emily for a fun DRT!

I also had another surprise in the mailbox today... Chan sent me this great little book!

It has some great little projects in there & a lot of great information. There is always something new to learn about your crafts. :)  Thanks Chan! I see tiny apples in your future!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend!

What they look like finished...

I finally have a finished project, or should I say some finished yarn to show you. And a few other projects that you've seen before that I have new photos of...

This eggplant wool combined with the pink variegated wool looks like this...

I wasn't sure how this was going to come out using the two different colors, but I like it. :) And it came out to approx. 390 yards, so I'm pleased with the yardage too.

For those of you who wanted to see what the Afternoon Hat looked like on, here you go...

And I finally got a photo of me wearing the Lace Cardigan. I love this sweater! And I even impressed myself knitting this. Thank you to elann.com for giving me the chance to knit this sweater, without them I might not have finished it. I have a little bit of ADD going on where my knitting is concerned, I tend to start a lot of projects that never get finished. So having to complete this for someone in a scheduled time frame helped a bunch.

Sorry, I had a goofy look on my face so I just cut my head off in the photo! LOL

Hope everyone has a great week!

Covered!

Just a quick post here to share my new hat.... I lourves my new hat! You can find my Ravelry project page HERE. And you can find the pattern by clicking on the name here, Afternoon Pink Hat by Connie Peng. I finished it in 5 days, while I was sick & not knitting or spinning or anything for 2 days.... so you know it's a super fast knit. It was super easy to follow & turned out really cute! The yarn I used was Delhi by Queensland Collection, Ravelry & Yarndex calls it a Bulky yarn, I have to disagree with them & call it Aran at the most. I did like the yarn though so no worries.
I think it looks great on, but I'll have to wait & see if someone can help me take photos this weekend. Until then I leave you with these....

How cool is that?!

Yesterday I made the trip to visit my new favorite almost local yarn shop, A Row of Purls Too. Take a look at her newly wrapped car! It looks like it's wrapped with yarn & knitting. LOL
I love it!

I also picked up some sweet yarns for a couple of hats for a little girl. Some Aster in a strawberry or watermelon color....

Some Berroco Comfort in purples...

Some Zitron Evita in pretty pastels...

And this Cascade Pearls is for me, just because I thought it was pretty. It's destined to be another washcloth I'm sure....

I also got a couple of balls of Delhi by Queensland (it was on sale!) to make a hat & neckwarmer for myself. But somehow I forgot to take a photo of that, and I'm just too pooped to get up & do that right now. Feeling a little puny today, afraid I might be coming down with a cold....

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Darcy is having a contest!

Darcy is having a great contest & giving away a copy of Kate Jacobs latest Novel the third in The Friday Night Knitting Club Series, Knit the Season.

Head on over to Darcy's Blog & enter to have a chance at winning this great book. :)

And I went to my new favorite LYS yesterday & came away with some sweet yarn & a photo of Barbara's awesome car! Stay tuned....

Whiskers on Wednesday

Woohoo! Jazzy & I finally made it for another Whiskers on Wednesday!

We moved some furniture around the other week & her condo got moved to the window.... an awesome spot as far as she is concerned. She has been practically living in the thing. :)  She can watch the birds & us at the same time... or nap....

And we've had a little problem with the treat bag.... she decided to help herself to some the other day. LOL

Now we have to keep them up where she can't reach them. But she knows where they are & keeps going there & begging, she's so funny. :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday!