Yarn Mafia!

Just wanted to let everyone know that my friend Angie and I are creating a co-blog. It's called Yarn Mafia, and it's going to be so much fun! I'm still going to blog here, but I think I'm going to shift the focus of this blog to more personal things, while posting knitting things at the yarn mafia page. So anyone who likes to read my blog, please visit us! Thanks for your understanding guys! Ok, now go, go see the blog. I already posted today!

Ugh, it snowed

I hate snow. Really hate it. Like... it's cold, and wet, and I just... ugh. The ONLY time I like snow is Christmas day lol. Maybe I'm a little weird, but that's how it is... Seriously though, it's DECEMBER and here in Ohio we don't get snow until at least January. We hardly ever have a White Christmas. Look at this.

That's not normal. Seriously. But the puppies love it.

They were attacking it. Storm loves to chase snowballs and eat them. And Mattie just enjoys diving into the snow as fast as possible.

So Branching out is officially blocked and ready to be gifted. See?

Oh man... ok well it was ready to be gifted. Now it needs to dry some... duh Krystal, lay something in the snow, it will get wet... Would you like a close up?

Pretty... I love it. I hope the person I made it for likes it as much as I do. If she doesn't, I might just take it back... Anyway, lately I've been working on socks. Garden Path...

Still getting there. I'm about halfway to the heel. I may in fact be the slowest sock knitter in the world. Maybe I could be in guiness book... Anyway, and today I started my mom's second sock. So there, second sock syndrome be damned! Ha!

Ahem. Ok, back to your regularly scheduled blogging. I bet if we pray real hard and keep our fingers crossed, Angie will blog. She has some cute baby pictures I know she's dieing to share with the class.... what about it Angie?

Fun times, pictures, and knitting content! Whoo!

Ok, I know I know, I'm a bad bad blogger. But you'll get over it. I have PICTURES. Isn't that exciting? First, last week, Emmy was over, like usually, and we had lunch at Burger King.. and I have to document it because it was likely the most fun ever had by two adults at Burger King. We took a couple of pictures when we got home.

I'm not exactly sure WHAT was so funny but... great fun was had by all. Even the guy sitting at the table next to us...

I love the crown. I'm keeping it forever. LOL anyway... Then, Thursday, as you all know, I went here.

And as you also know, it was the most amazing special thing ever. Here's photographic evidence that Zac actually talked to me.

The most HORRIBLE picture of me but... that's ok. He was actually like, a foot away but when I started talking to him he moved closer. It was awesome. He's so cute... anyway, here's an action picture of the finished Icarus.

That's the last one for a while, I promise. It's just... so... pretty! I want to share it's prettiness with the world. Today, this evening in fact, I finally got around to blocking the Branching out I did.

There's a close up. It's a weird angle... you can't really see the leaves. Weird. It blocked out to 63.5 inches, which is about perfect, so... that's all the news for now.

Hey, go see Crafty Andy and wish him well, his dog Buster recently passed away. Go on. You're excused. :)

P.S. Man I'm an idiot, send you to see Andy and don't send you a link... there, go. :)

Not much of an update

But it's still a blog post, right? I haven't posted in a couple of days because... well... I don't have much news. I'm knitting some but not a lot, I'm a little out of my grove. The concert was ABSOLUTELY amazing, so many good things happened. So so so many good things. I can't begin to describe it on here. Let's just say I talked to Zac Hanson, I held hands for a minute with Taylor, and... it was just amazing. The sound quality wasn't very good, but it wasn't their fault. The place was TINY and it's hard to get such a big sound into such a small room. Anyway, I'm thinking about either knitting something for a charity related event or coming up with a pattern to try to sell. I'm thinking maybe something that isn't over done... like... handwarmers or... hell, I don't know what. PLEASE let me know if you have any ideas, ok? Thanks guys!

My good news!

So everyone, you'll all be happy to hear this. Or maybe you'll be like "who cares, seriously..."But guess what I'm doing on Thursday? I'm going to Bloomington, Indiana, with Emmy's not boyfriend Richard. Would you like to know why?

That's why! We're going to see Hanson! I'm sooooo excited! I know I know, I just saw them, but... I don't care! Do you know how happy I am to see them again? Extremely. Soooo happy I feel like screaming! :)

Anyway, Saturday night Emmy and I babysat my nephews. We also got to spend lots of time playing with these two munchkins...

Their names are Punky (on the left) and Bella... but, unfortunately for Bella, she's a boy lol. They're thinking about calling him Jazz, or Jazzy, like from Transformers, but they're not sure. They're both so sweet... my sister's mil had them living under their trailer, and my sister was trying to find homes for them... and she found one lol! With her! Look at the cuteness...

They LOVE to be held and cuddled... except by the kids, but can you blame them? When Emmy went in the basement, she found the two kittens underneath of a toy shopping cart, trapped like they were in a cage...

So then I was tracking down Bella, or as she's now known, Jazzy, for a picture, and I finally found her here, hiding out. And, just for size comparison... this is my sister's cat, Tia, who is HUGE, next to Punky.

Isn't that funny? Anyway, here's a picture of my sister's dog, Coty. He's blind. He's only been completely blind for, I think, a couple of weeks.. isn't he so sweet looking? They have another pekingese named Tana, but she was mia while I was taking pictures lol, I'm not sure where she was...

On Sunday, Emmy and Dave and I cleaned, rearranged the living room, and started to put up Christmas decorations. Here's my puny little tree before decorations...

While I was taking that picture, Emmy and Dave were doing this.

Trying to find a way to rig our candy cane, since the suction cup thingy broke. And then, when it was all hung up (thanks to Emmy and I, not Dave... lol) I got a nicer pic of Emmy.

Anyway, Emmy and I tried the ribbon thing.

It looked dumb. (I especially like, though, the puppy under the tree...) So we undid it, and put the rest of the decorations up. Now, I don't do garland, I think it's sloppy looking, and I don't do tinsel because of the dogs, so keep that in mind...

It's so cute though, I like it. While we were doing all that, this is what Mattie was doing.

Working hard, I'll tell you... Anyway, over the weekend, some knitting did get done. Rocketober sock number 1 is finished...

Here's the ribbing, which is actually almost too big... next time I make socks, I may decrease some before the ribbing.

Strangely enough, the striping pattern changed when I got to the ribbing... proving, once and for all, that my gauge is SUPREMELY different in knit and purl stitches... and, you all remember the garden path sock, which I was actually almost done with the first pattern repeat of, right? This is what it looks like now.

Yeah, I wasn't liking the way it was working out. So it's getting restarted.

Anyway, I know you haven't seen NEARLY enough pictures yet, right? Ha ha.... but that's all for now. Hopefully I'll get the garden path sock and the rocktober socks really going in the 4 hour car ride to the concert. I'll let ya know!

Update and blog fodder

Good news! I'm almost finished with my mom's first sock! I have about 2 more rows of ribbing and then I'm binding off.

Isn't it pretty? I like the medium-weight. It's warm. This picture is the ribbon we're thinking about using for the Christmas tree. (Read: we were going to but didn't... lol). If not we can use it for Christmas presents or something.

I also bought some more of this.

For a fake isle hat, for myself, when I finish Christmas presents. I also bought this yarn...

For, I'm thinking, mittens for my sil Linda. I'm not sure though, it might not want to be mittens. Or maybe I don't want to do mittens. It might want to join another skein like it and be a scarf. Hmm...

I also started that up there, which is Garden Path sock # 2.This next picture, my friends, is a definite keeper.

It's my nephew, Zach, in his preschool picture. If you look closely, you can see the puffy eyes, and the look of pure hatred in his little tear filled eyes, and the snot on his shirt... he was NOT happy to be taking that picture. My sister said it's ok though, because that's exactly how he feels every day when he goes to preschool. Anyway, after Thanksgiving dinner, I went to my friend Emmy's house, and we were going to play her N64, but she couldn't figure out how to hook it, or the dvd player, up.

I was going for confused in that picture, but she caught me and laughed. Anyway, on black Friday, when I bought the yarn pictured above, I also went to payless shoes and got these.

I LOVE the way these shoes look but.. I'm not sure how much I like the fit. They kinda hurt my big toe. So we may be taking them back, I don't know yet. If I do I'll just exchange them for these other ones I liked that were the same price. Anyway, they always have bogo, so I bought these

Slippers! I love them, they're all pink and brown and warm... they're perfect. Anyway, that about sums those two days up. Stay tuned for scenes from this weekend!

Happy Late Thanksgiving

I wanted to write a post talking about how thankful I am for everything, all the good stuff in my life... but instead, my late Thanksgiving post is going to be about other people. Here's the deal. Lately I've been extremely burdened with the thought of all the kids in Africa and other places. I just wish there was something I can do but... well you have to be able to help yourself before you can help others, ya know? So I feel completely helpless and sad all the time for them. I want, badly, to adopt a baby from Africa but... do you know how much it costs? It's so unfair that it would be more than adopting from the US, because there are so many homeless kids there now. I know that there are people in our country, kids in our country, that need help too, but there are countless charities for those kids, and there just isn't much for those kids in Africa. Also, in our country, there are homeless shelters and things like goodwill where kids and adults alike can get things if they can't afford to buy them, but in Africa, they're lucky if they can scrounge together enough clothes to protect them from the elements. They need help worse than the kids in our country, because there just isn't any out there for them.

So... if you read this blog, I want to start SOME kind of knitting related charity... maybe make up a hat or scarf pattern, and sell it and all procedes go to them? Or SOMETHING. So if anyone, and I know you're out there, LURKING, has ANY idea, even if you think it's stupid, please let me know, ok? PLEASE. I'm begging you, because these kids need help.

If you want to help, and want to do something, anything, go to itunes and buy the song "Great Divide" by Hanson, it's only a dollar and one dollar buys like, 6 days worth of medication for a mother and her child, to help stop the transfer of the aids virus. It's .17 cents a day for that. That's ALL. And all proceeds from the purchase of that song go to help those mothers and children. Or go to www.tomsshoes.com and buy a pair of shoes. For every pair of shoes that you buy, they donate a pair to a child in need. Go to www.hanson.net for more information.

So, what am I thankful for? Anyone who gives their time or their money to help someone who can't help themself. Thank you just for reading this, it means a lot. Remember, every cent counts.