LOL Cats

Go look at this:

OH HI I FIXED UR BLINDS

So Ravelry strikes again. I am becoming addicted to lolcats thanks to the Forum. I saw this one and was hysterical. Why?

This is the aftermath of my cats fixing the blinds in my bedroom. You see the string for the header broke so that I could no longer pull the blinds up in the morning. No problem. The cats strated climbing through the slats. Who knew that plastic slats could crack and break? Not I, LOL! I'll get around to replacing them some time soon.

I'm Spoiled!

Thank you Jennifer! She sent me this amazing package for the Yarn in a Tea Cup swap by Zoe. Take a gander.A quick trip to the post office yielded this package. I hadn't expected it to be this big! I was soon to find out why. Gotta love opening a package to find Animal staring back at you! First up was the tea cup...
I'm thinking Jennifer read that I am a teacher. LOL The mug is so cute. Can you make out the single flower on the inside rim? Love that detail. Unfortunately, I also found the source of the slight rattle I had noticed when picking up the box.The good news is this was the ONLY casualty of shipping. See?
So starting from the bottom left corner going clockwise we have:
A luscious skein of 100% fingering weight merino wool in the Parrot colorway from Over the Rainbow Yarns. (close up below). Zen tea from Tazo. It is a mix of green tea and herbs. Yum! Speaking of yum, next to it is Hershey's Sticks. Mmmmmm, Caramel filled Milk Chocolate...sooooo good. A delightfully silly princess hand mirror and notions bag. Scroll down for a close up of the sock monkeys mugging for the camera. =-D Jennifer got it from Piddleloop. They have great sets of matching bags, some classic and some whimsical. Worth a peek. Next up? Green Tea soap from Bisous Provence which is triple milled vegetable oil and shea butter. It smells wonderful and a bit like some green tea perfume I once owned! Lastly, a skein of Cascade 220 in a soft natural grey. I see more felting in my future.


Thank you, thank you Jennifer for your generosity and delightfully light hearted approach to this swap. You truly spoiled me and made me laugh!

2:40 AM

I survived the release.

Bed now... Night. (Oops, morning.)

UPDATE!

Things I learned:

1) Harry Potter fans LOVE to play dress up.

2) Harry Potter fans are hungry and thirsty - the candy cart I was running averaged between $150-$200 PER HOUR while folks waited for the book to be released.

3) Harry Potter fans are polite. Everyone was patient and kind to one another. That whole "we are in it together" mentality.

4) The first printing of 12 million or so books is not going to last long. I'm thinking it will run out sooner than the publishers realize!

5) My friends for whom I purchased a copy of the book last night are not reading it fast enough. (Impatient, who me? I get to borrow it when they are done! Insert foot tapping here. lol)

It has been nice following your life Harry...The books may be done, but the movies will give us our fix for a while to come. Hmmm, maybe I'll go see the movie while I wait for my chance to read the book.

TKGA/CGOA - The Aftermath

Bzzzzz. Huh? Who's at the door. Should I answer it? I rarely answer a buzz at my door unless I know someone is coming over. Why? The kids in the neighborhood and sometimes visitors will hit random buttons. I don't know these people and don't feel comfortable letting them into my building. If the buzzer goes off twice, I walk down and check the door (it is glass so I can see who it is).

So, today when the Bzzzz reverberated through my apartment I hesitated. Then answered the intercom because I remembered I was expecting a package! I ordered a book from the "The Leisure Boutique.com" booth at the TKGA/CGOA conference on Friday. If you used the online option it was a 20% discount and free shipping. Nice, no? So, it is Monday and the post man was buzzing to let me know it arrived! What a nice surprise. This book is so cool. It takes a complete set for baby (two hats, booties, blanket, sleeper, sweater, cardigan, and pants) and presents it in a variety of stitch pattern variations. I'm hoping to learn how to compensate for a different stitch pattern's size/behavior by working some of these!

Let's see...what else? Here are the results of the classes I took! Entrelac in crochet! On the left was the first class of Entrelac in the round. This cute bowl is awaiting felting. This is why it looks somewhat sad now. I, as readers know, have only done one felted project before so am praying that the serious looseness and gaps in this really WILL felt to a nice fabric!

I thought teaching working in the round before teaching entrelac work flat was strange, but I trusted Darla Fanton, the instructor. Boy was working flat much easier to understand after working in the round! Many of the techniques are the same, however, there are many more variations to be the shapes. This square uses full blocks, starting blocks, corner blocks, half blocks, and quarter blocks! This was my sampler in non-feltable yarn. However, I have plans to use the left overs from making the purse pattern I got from the in-the-round class to make these as felted coasters! Can't you imagine how cute these would be?

Crochet Illusions is a crochet version of shadow knitting. The first picture is straight on and the second taken at an angle which makes the heart jump off the background. This technique is fascinating, but I don't think I'll use it. I loke how quickly crochet works up and I found this tried my patience!

Last, but not least. The stash enhancement forced me to gather up and reorganize my yarn. I haven't been working much from the stash lately and it is painfully clear I need to change this habit. So, I started with another snuggle. I figured I have four skeins of bulky that can go to this cause. Two down and two to go!

(Yes, I know it is not particularly attractive, but it is thick and soft!)

Randoms

Stash Enhancement!
These six skeins were in the welcome bag for the CGOA/TKGA Conference in Manchester, NH. Quite a variety of yarns. Then the purple, black, and blue hued skein is from the marketplace. I succumbed after I found this one with a mismarked price. The booth honored the price. I took it as a sign!

I had a class yesterday and spent a few hours at the marketplace today once I realized that I would not likely have enough time on Saturday with the classes I will be taking. I also bought a few skeins of Cascade 220 at 1/2 price for tomorrow's class. It is crocheted Entrelac. The project can be felted or not. Hence, the feltable wool! I've been dying to learn this technique ever since Lora got hooked last November on the knitted version.

FO!
This little blanky is a snuggle using the same squares as the lapghan of last post. Look closely and you will see that it has a different type of join. Ever since making the first blanket I have been wondering about different ways to join motifs. And lo the universe provided this book. From it I got a back loop single crochet join which makes these nice lines to define the squares with flat stitches between.

Here is the back of the join. Nice and neat. =-D This one is a keeper. As time allows I will be trying more types of join to see what they look like. The Snuggles Project is going to end up getting quite a stack by the time I am done!


Warm childhood memories...

No, you are not crazy, these cups make me smile. Why? When I was a child we had a set of Japanese tea cups which my father brought back from overseas. We used them for pudding. They were small enough so that a single serving could be poured into each. These cups, which I got for $2 at the consignment shop (SCORE!) are perfect for this same purpose. In one way they are even better. They nest! Imagine a stack of pudding cups with only the top one needing a layer of plastic because the cup above protects the one below! Too perfect. They don't look anything like the cups from my childhood, but the idea and function really do it for me.

Happy Independence Day!

Can I keep it mom?

Happy 4th of July! It is fitting that I finished the Patriotic Throw this morning...sort of. Why sort of? Well, I decided that it was not going to work as a lapghan for a few reasons:

1. It needs to be more rectangular. I should have been brave and made the starting chain longer. (Adventures, right?)
2. The throw was getting HEAVY and it wasn't full size yet.
3. Although it has softened as I worked, the blanket is still somewhat stiff. This one is my fault. I wanted smaller openings so used only a single chain between groups. This decreased the flexibility. I won't do that again.
4. I ran out of white yarn, and given the above decided, not to go get another skein. Instead I added a few rounds of the blue.

So, taken all together, my course of action became clear. I wasn't making a lapghan as I had thought. I was making a snuggle for the Snuggles Project! If I needed any proof of this the photo shoot did it. I couldn't keep Peneenah away from the snuggle once I'd laid it out on the floor! She just wouldn't leave it alone. Cat stamp of approval.

Enjoy your holiday everyone!

Pattern notes: Red Heart Super Saver in Royal, White, and Hot Red. Based on this pattern. Last white section only four rounds. Two rounds of border in Royal. Starting chain of 8, single chain between groups, two chains in corners.