Weekends

I'm going to count the weekends as one day, since I know most readership is done at work.

These are the long over due shots of the Hew Shrug.

I'm not sure where to start about this shrug, but don't make it. I'm all for it hurts so good knitting. Hell I drive a stick shift and like it, but this shrug was just stupid. Cast on some 200+ stitches for the ties WTF? It doesn't have a good picture nor anyway to know what this baby is going to look like. The directions kinda suck. I'll wear it but don't make it. I think I'm getting old and cranky in my knitting. I want projects that are well thought out and test knit, I want good directions and looks of maps and measurements. It could be the cabinet makers daughter in me, but I want to know what things should be.

That said, I've been working on my Thanksgiving crafts and am quickly understanding that x-mas is getting ever closer and thus need to start making those gifts. Eeeek!

Photo-Friday

Keeping Track

Still no word on the MT volunteer gig so I figured I'd make the best of the 70 degree day and sit on the back porch with a blanket and the giant house spider. So far so good. In order to feel like I'm actually doing something with myself and to keep me from getting distracted by the internet or the like three hours of the New Detectives on the ID channel, I keep a calendar. You know for all my super important meetings, and power lunches that I have with those other ladies who lunch. Please try not to laugh so hard that anything comes out your nose, it really hurts. No really I do have all sorts of silly things written on the calendar, like, "dishes" and "post to etsy" and "spin" so that when I do these things I can cross them off and feel good. I've worked this way since childhood. I made my own homework sheet in middle school, with boxes for each class (algebra, lit, religion, what do you want I went to a catholic school and yes we had religion homework) it was very popular, I made copies for people. Sometimes a try using oh say one of the two electronics that I have on me at all times, my crackberry or my iTouch. Alas nothing is a satisfying as paper. I can flip back to last week or two weeks ahead. You don't get that from your crackberry. This also means I've taken to carrying a very large purse too. Its damn handy

Speaking of purses, I love purses, bags, pouches, whatever you want to call it. On this fine day I got around to taking some pictures of the super carry all I made some time back from the fantastic learn to sew book, SEW.

I ordered the fabric some time back, like when I lived in TN, from Sew, Mama, Sew. They have some of the cutest fabric plus they have a great blog. I've got some good size scraps leftover too which I think will find themselves as more drawstring bags.

Any way, the wind is starting to pick up out here and I've gotten all the vitamin D that I need.

Having a Punny Good Time

We like jokes in this family, we also like really silly puns. An attack with rolled up socks is normal and then the claim of being "socked". So while making dinner the other night it happened, there was at good ol'fashion

BEET DOWN!

I'm not sorry for that.

But other than silly food jokes, I'm still crafting away. Granted I did go to post to get my volunteering straightened out. Turns out no one called the lab director yesterday (when I talked to the volunteer coordinator about starting today) so I had to wait on her to call us back, and it was a busy (okay they thought busy) morning in volunteer land. Well long stupid, you people have got to get this ironed out or your going to keep loosing every volunteer you get through here, story short..... I'm going to be working in the lab as a volunteer MT. I know that sounds really strange, and the more I say it the stranger it sounds, since ummmm I made lots of money per hour as an MT and now I'm giving myself away. Since we've reached our employment event horizon so to speak (just about 4 and half months left here and thanksgiving and x-mas in there) I'm really not going to get to do anything unless I just give it away. So hopefully I can start soooooooooooooooooooooooon, I'm so board I'm making root vegetable jokes.
After fighting and fighting with the printer to get it to print in reverse so I could make some neato little tags for my stuff....
I also got some yarn cakes ready for use. I'm almost done with the first arm of the Lady February Sweater (soft green), I plan on making a shawl with the dark green, and a second ball of silk bamboo for some fingerless gloves to take the chill off the mini coopers chrome gear shift. Let me tell you that bugger gets red hot in the summer!

Craftig

So I was puttering around my strange collection of blogs I read, and I came across this, Craftig !
It's a rather nifty world of crafts of all kinds and a way for everyone to find your "story". A Story is anything, a funny story about how your dog ate all the yarn you bought for the wrap or the pattern for the wrap. I've already posted my original Mint Chip Purse Pattern (don't worry I'll put a link on the side bar). Thanks to Carina and her super craftblog, since she was the one who interviewed the founder of Craftig, Kristen. I can't wait to check it out more.
Remember it is also the third year of HandMade Holidays over at Sew, Mama, Sew! with a daily installment of great gifts to make, buy and NOM!
So other than my wasting time on the soul-sucker that is the internet, I've been trying to line up a reason to get out of bed. I haven't had any sales from the etsy site so I haven't been making much of anything. Instead I've had my blood drawn, spent an hour of death by powerpoint, and then went up and down back and forth to become an American Red Cross Volunteer. As neat as a paycheck is, working at the JC Penny's in the mall is just not going to cut it on my already sad resume so to the LAB. Okay so not the real lab, and not any test, or any real responsibility. I'm back to the world of blood letting. Not leaches, just normal phlebotomy. But mark my words the first smart mouth who calls me a "vampire" is getting an 18 gauge to that little vein that runs your pinkie and ring finger.

November Challenge

So for the month of November, I plan on blogging daily. Yes once a day. I just can't seem to get in a groove with the world of blogging. I'll work on updating my blog, getting more current pictures up, getting those finished project on the left up. Showing you all sorts of not so great lawton stuff. Well, I'll be seeing you!

Happy Halloween

Pumpkin Pile (Vertorama), originally uploaded by Panorama Paul.

Medicine Park on Sunday

Unlike the Falls of my youth in the great Northwest, with large mountains covered in huge ancient Fir trees and the foothills full of bright fall colors, fall here is painfully short and lacking the color. We tried for a little fall foliage and headed out to Medicine Park, a strange little community just north of Lawton.
First of all Medicine Park is tucked away between the two Lakes collectively know as LETRA. It's a funny little art community which is best compared to a very small Vashon Island. Its less artsy than totally nut-jobby.

We headed out to checkout the Bath Lake area, which is about downtown, after a piece in the local paper caught my eye.
We couldn't have asked for a better day, cool wind, bright sun, very few people.

We even ran across a bale of turtles warming in the sun (look it up, a group of turtles is called a bale, that's what wiki is for)

Not much Going on

These days it seems like nothing is going on, and yet not a lot is getting done either. No pets that need walking or have funny attachment to thing, thought the parakeet loves the remote control. Other than trying to track down where in the world the part to my dishwasher is since it hasn't work in the two months I've lived in this house and have had to wash EVERY single plate, dish, cup, soup etc by hand. The finally agreed that the 10 year old contraption had to go and I got a brand spanking new one. Granted its about the size of a suitcase rather than the newer larger types but it's a working dishwasher none the less. BUT! It leaks, from the back, into the carpet. :( Wet socks are really gross. I needed to go to the grocery today, get things to eat, to make dinners with but now I get to call the rental people and wait for someone to check on my wet carpet. GOODIE! But its not all bad, I can get some more spinning in and work on my sewing project.

So far the spinning is going well, I do predraft and all that, but I think my very first try at making yarn was a good one. It had some really thick spots but that seemed to get better, and the twist is a little tight so that the yarn will do something a little funny when I knit it, I'm sure, but I'm okay with that. Only problem now is that I have to get some more fiber. If I was back in TN I could go to the up coming fiber fair but alas I'm here. I should just get on it and order more of the same since it was well priced and only faintly itchy. I do have about 4oz of undyed silver alpaca. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

COOKIE!

Since I've been home during my stay-cation (aka unemployment) I've been releasing my inner Martha Stewart. This includes crafting, cooking and more importantly COOKIES. See the Hub loves cookies and power through a bag of chips-a-whatevers in like 3 days. I started out with those just add an egg and stick a butter type cookies but recently moved up to see what the COOKIE of the day was at Martha Stewart.com.
Now you can go back through the past few days and see the other cookies. Lots of those too may ingredient kinds of cookies, even more of those too complicated for cookies which will be consumed in one bite kind of cookies. But every now and again, you get a good one.
When I was a weee little Claire my gram and I would go to the bookstore on friday (after lunch-bunch but that's another story) and then go two stores up the hill to the deli and I'd get a snickerdoodle and milk. Never failed for years. Mmmmm they were those big snickerdoodles, that are a little crisp on the bottom up soft too.
I just had to make them, and when the Hub asked "whatsa snickerdoodle" I was sure if I'd have 3 dozen cookies to myself or if he's eat them too.
The dough even tasted like right, just like the cookie but unbaked. These are quite possibly the tastiest cookie I've cranked out in a long time.
I highly recommend this particular recipe, You'll find it here! They are best served with Milk or tea, and are not half bad with coffee, water, soda, or just after dinner.

Welcome home

So after I went to the grocery store on Friday, I made it home just in time to see the UPS man in the back of our housing development. OOoooooo, could it be! It was he was there with my wheel just as I unpacked the groceries.
Hub packed it into the house for me while I spent a little time with a friendly puppy who had a bit of a jail break. Groceries, lunch and then my spinning lesson from Woven-Spun. She showed me some of the little ins and outs of spinning. After that I went home to attach the treadles and get started.
I've been spinning a few hours everyday just to get the timing right and the magic pinch, release, give pattern. We're working on it. Right now it's more predrafting then spinning but that's okay with me.
Still no name for the wheel it's self or the ladybug.

It has been done

Hub gave me a lovely gift, the chance to buy my Wheel. I had said that I really never wanted to learn to spin, that I didn't need another hobby that needed me to sit on my butt. I was never thrilled with the way most wheels looked, the darn Alpaca looking at me on some, the total lack of anything on others. I knew if I ever spun I wanted a double treadle, and something slightly portable since we move every two years (either state or house) like clockwork. While at the Dickson Fiber Fair I saw it, THE WHEEL (insert angels and lights here), but then I fell on my face when I saw the price. $925! Ugh. But a Schacht Wheel, with all it's lovely wood work, and art deco appeal, the way the wood aged and the the way the treadles worked! I was smitten. I couldn't even use a drop spindle, how would I have get a Matchless. Not long after I went head over heels for the Matchless Schacht introduced the LadyBug, and my heart leapt again! *SQUEEEEEE* It was affordable, for any wheel, painfully cute, and well just want I wanted. Thing was I was working full time, and drive roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes round trip daily. Which left me NO time to spin, and barely enough knitting time. Fast forward a year or two, new town, no job until January (adjunct at the college to teach lab) and some new friends who spin and weave. What's a girl to do? After an evening breakdown that focused on "I didn't get to BS's to wash dishes and make house" Hub looked at me and said "well do something you've always wanted to do but didn't have the time, so get your wheel." After a wee bit of hemmming and haaaaaaing, and me trying to make excuses in my head for why I didn't REALLY need it I broke down and ordered the thing.
No idea when she'll be here but Friday is my first spin lesson!

Wrap

PATTERN: Strangling Vine
YARN: Fiber Denn Sport Weight 1 large-ass Skein
NEEDLES: Knit Picks Options US6
SIZE: about 63", so me sized
Before being Blocked
I loved this yarn and this pattern, which was super easy to remember and the pattern was easy to modify, I added a few repeats to make it more wrap than scarf. It was a lot of yarn.
I bought this yarn some time ago, when I can't quite remember. I do remember that I was going to split the yarn and share with a friend who purchases the more purple of the two. It would have made a great chevron scarf. Well it never happened and I needed to knit some lace!

Every Thing Off the Needles

I've been using my excess of time to get things, everything, off the needles. My rule about only three things on the needles was blown out of the water sometime along the time when I started knitting some gifts and teaching toe up socks to the lunch bunch at the BVC. Soooooo, I've frogged the dish cloth because I couldn't remember what row I was on, I finished the Strangling Vine Scarf and blocked it (pictures to follow), the black shrug is super close to being done, the Hew shrug is giving me fits and killing my arm, pink socks need binding off, teal socks need a toe sewn up. I still have a stormy sea sock to make and most of the Potato chip scarf to finish. I'm kinda running on empty though. I REALLY WANT TO CAST ON FOR A NEW PROJECT. But what? The Lady February Sweater just in time for winter, the Chevron Scarf with two beautiful skeins of alpaca bought last year at the Dickson Fiber Fair. I just can't do it, I MUST FINISH!!!!! I must finish what I have on the needles before I can start anything new.
I'll post pictures soon!

Just What I Don't Need

I don't need another bag, I have tons and tons of them. It doesn't stop me from making more of them though...
Once again another project from the Sew Everything Workshop, which is a great step by step book to learn from.





Don't forget to check out the new earrings at The Good Bird

Round and Round

Sooooo a long while back Tracie and I from my old job back in my old city, back in my old life (I do miss it but only because I was comfortable and happish there, but this, this new start in a sorta new place is a means to an end. That end is Seattle) started the Circle Shrug from the lovely Glampyre knits which Lion Brand featured for free. We love free, and we love shrugs. While I'm not thrilled with the way the pattern is written and it's lack of measurements in important places (ehhhh TATAs) I will wear it and it is soft and comfy.

Side effects

So one of the side effects of chronic unemployment is that I have lots time. Loads and loads of time. I've been getting stuff done, lots and lots of stuff done. Besides lots of earrings for Etsy
I finally got around to finishing some projects that have been floating around my knitting bag. For starters I picked up the stitches for the button band on the basic black cardi, not as hard has I had thought it would be.
I'm going to block the whole thing again because it's a little dumpy, I made the sweater to fit the tatas but forgot that I have to arms and shoulders of someone much smaller.

I've also been working away on my strangling vine wrap. I want to use up all the yarn but it just seems to keep going and going.

Eye Candy Friday

Helper Bird

Frankie has always been know as "an up in your stuff" budgie, and he's always helping people out....


I caught him doing Hub's CFA homework, I knew he had a head for numbers but too bad he's only got seed for investing.