Doodlefactory Blog Candy

Starvingartiststamps is releasing a new set of Easter stamps. They are too cute. Check them out:


And make sure you leave a comment on their blog for a chance to win!

Good luck everyone!!

Here are the promised pictures!!

I promise not to overload my blog with pictures today - but expect lots of posts from me this week!

I have mostly been working on socks the past 2 months. I hand washed three pairs yesterday, and here they are drying on my kitchen counter:

Left to right: Basic socks using some recycled 100% wool from a thrift store sweater (over dyed with kool-aide)
Charade socks using Tree house Melody 100% wool
Spring Forward using Knit Picks Imagination in Looking Glass

I'm now reaching the point where I need to start working on some projects for other people.......my nephew Nate's birthday hat, mittens for my mom for her birthday, shawl/scarf for my MIL for Mothers day, etc.

I've started the hat for Nate. I'm making the Swell hat. According to lots of people on Ravelry, this hat needs some modifications to get gauge so it will fit an adult. Since I knew I would have to go up a few needle sizes, I decided to hold the yarn two stranded. It will make a warmer hat too - always a good thing! I'm using some Paton's wool from my stash - the main color is black and the waves will be cream. Perfect for a 14 year old, right? (And I think the size will be pretty good since my 6 year old is able to wear it with it still on the needle!)

And I cleaned my scrapping/stamping area. You'll start seeing a lot more of my paper crafting things. But as a mini-look. Here are a few of the Target mailboxes I decorated for the kids teachers for Valentines Day. I was very pleased with how they turned out and the teachers seemed to like them as well! (And I used up a TON of scraps from my Scrap Room kits!)

Ahhhhh.....it feels good to be able to load pictures onto my blog again!!

Til later, knit on!

Pictures may be back...

...soon!! My beloved hubby updated our computer last night. I just need to find my camera cord....D'oh!! "Prepare to be amazed!!" (Said in my best Meet the Robinsons voice!)

.....back soon!!

Not craft related.....

but I read this on Jill's blog and wanted to play along! I find it a bit ironic that a few of my favorite books listed on my sidebar are on this list! (A few of the bolded italicized books are hold overs from Jills list. Apparently Blogger just couldn't handle the copy/paste.)

Key
1) Bold the books you have already read
2) Italicize the books you intend to read
3) Notes in parentheses next to note-worthy titles.

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (And I loved The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - a fabulous book!!)

4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (didn't everyone have to read this in eigth grade??)

6) The Bible (lets not go there.)

7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - I just don't get the appeal of this one. I didn't like it much.

8 ) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell

9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (nope - and no plans to start!!)

15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

18 ) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

19) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

20) Middlemarch by George Eliot - I've read about 1/2 of this one. I just could never manage to get through it!!

21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens

24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 ) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

34) Emma by Jane Austen

35) Persuasion by Jane Austen

36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis

37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

38 ) Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres

39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne

41) Animal Farm by George Orwell

42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (just finished this one and LOVED it.)

44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving (Hands down one of the BEST BOOKS EVER)

45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (another one I've started several times but have never finished.)

46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

48 ) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors!!

49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding

50) Atonement by Ian McEwan (read this for my book club, but didn't love it.)

51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel

52) Dune by Frank Herbert (nope - and I'm not going to.....ever.)

53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

58 ) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt

64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac

67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

68 ) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

69) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville

71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

72) Dracula by Bram Stoker

73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson - not this on in particular since I've not read it, but Bill bryson is a brilliant writer!

75) Ulysses by James Joyce

76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

78 ) Germinal by Emile Zola

79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

80) Possession by AS Byatt

81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker

84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

87) Charlotte's Web by EB White

88 ) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton

91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (had to read this in college.)

92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

94) Watership Down by Richard Adams

95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Loved this - and all Dumas books.)

98 ) Hamlet by William Shakespeare

99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (Seriously - a great read. Dahl books are much more appreciated by an adult audience. I recommend Matilda!)

100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

And just as an explaination - I worked downtown Minneapolis for about 5 years in the 90's and rode the bus to work. I had about an hour each day to read during this trip. I had a period when I determined that I should read all the books that people are "supposed to read." Many of those books are on this list - and a bunch that should be!

Sorry....

....I've been busy! Not doing anything of note, just busy! My parents went to Mexico this past week and we've been watching their two dogs. Add in our rather rambuncious dog and you've got a full house. They come home today, so my house will return to some sort of normalcy soon.

And my parents little dog (a lhasa apso) has been on a rather distructive bent - and apparently he has it in for all of my crafts. If we leave him (and the other dogs) alone for more than an hour - he needs to destroy something.

First it was a sippy cup - he completely shredded the lid and upper half. No big deal - the kids are mostly done with sippy cups. Then he went after some of my rubber stamps - specifically a large Stampin Up wheel. The wheel was called "Rough Texture" so a few extra bite marks hasn't really impaired it's ability to be used. Then yesterday he chewed up one of my size 4 DPN's. I have two sets - but now each set is down to 4 needles (usually you have 5). That was the last straw. I have two projects on the needles using size 4 DPN's. Grump! And last time he was staying with us, he destroyed a size 7 DPN!

So what have I been working on you ask? Let me give you the run down:

• A pair of gloves for DH. I found a fabulous cashmere sweater at the thrift store a few weeks ago. It's light fingering weight. I got about 2300 yards out of the sweater, but to make anything, I'm holding the yarn double. These gloves are a pattern of my own making - not complicated if you've ever knit gloves before. (And yes - I made him a pair of flip top mittens for Christmas - but this cashmere is fabulous!!)
• A quickie scarf for DD's pre-school teacher. She made a comment about wanting a purple scarf the other day - so I made a quick one using stash yarn. Here is the pattern I used.
• More mittens for my friend Amy (that is until the dog ate one of the needles....grrr.)
• A Honeycomb vest for myself. I'm also using the recycled cashmere for this one. It's a lovely grayish camel color and so soft. I actually completed a test swatch last night. I *know* - I knit a swatch - I never do that!!
• A pair of Charade socks in a yarn that Kate gave me. This pattern is really getting me down - it's taking FOREVER!! Usually I can knit up socks fairly quickly, but this pattern is just taking forever. The yarn is from Treehouse - Melody. I like it OK, but it's a touch rough on the hands. Add to that the size 1 needles and you have a frustrated sock knitter. But I promised myself that I can only have one pair of scoks on the needles at a time. So I either have to frog what I have knit so far, or just forge ahead and keep going. I'm not committed either way yet.
• I finished my Clapotis. It's OK - but I really need to block it. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it seemed like the "in" thing to knit. (Apparently I'm a lemming.)

And tonight I'm going to Archivers for Scrapmania. I'm hoping to work on a few layouts and alter some mini mail boxes from Target (ala these). I want to give the mailboxes to DD's and DS's teachers for Valentines day.

Monday we leave for a quick 2-night mini-vacation at Wisconsin Dells. The kids are so excited they can hardly stand it. We opted for a room with a full kitchen so I can bring all of our meals. I figure the extra $50 we spent for the room will be easily saved by cooking our own meals. Not to mention MUCH healthier. But it does make the planning much more difficult.

That's all for now......hopefully I will have a computer that talks to my camera next week. Then I'll start haring more pictures. And I apologize in advance for all my spelling errors. Spell check doesn't want to work on Blogger this morning!

Knit on!

Update on 2009 Goals

I've decided that I needed to post a quick update on my 2009 goals. I may just add something to my sidebar to keep track of things.

First - I gave blood on Dec 31. While doing so, I asked if they kept a "list" of donors for specific blood types if they were in need of a specific one. I was told that they need EVERYTHING right now. But, since I'm a more rare blood type, there are different ways that I can donate so they can make better use of my blood. I've decided to do a "Double Red" donation next time (Feb 25th for those keeping track!) A Double Red donation is similar to a regular whole blood donation, but they only take the red blood cells. They return the plasma and saline to you so you leave with the same blood volume that you came in with. However, with this method, they take out double the amount of red blood cells. Thus the name Double Red!! This will affect my future donations, because you can only do a double red donation every 16 weeks. But it's similar to making a double donation - so I should still be able to donate 6 times in the year - thus meeting my goal!


Second - I knit up my first hat/mitten set for Amy. She was thrilled with them. The hat was a basic hat pattern that I just kind of made up, but here is the mitten pattern I used. After discussing it with Amy, I decided to concentrate on mittens - she has a greater need for those. And since this pattern does not have a left/right mitten, I can just knit a bunch of them in the same yarn. That way, if one gets lost, there is another to take it's place!

And for a quick picture! These are the crochet trimmed bobby socks I made for the little girls for Christmas (aged 2-4). They were a hit!!



Knit on!

Cute, Cute, Cute

Starving Artistamps are releasing some fun new stamps for Valentines Day. How cute are these? Make sure you head over to their blog to enter for a chance to win!!



And in other news.......a new pair of socks are on the needles! I got a set of the KnitPicks sock DPN's from my mom for Christmas. Since they are $35 and you get free shipping if you spend $50, I gave her a few ideas of "other" things to get me. She got me ALL of my suggestions!! Included in the list is the wonderful Imagination sock yarn. These socks are using the "Looking Glass" colorway. They are so pretty I can hardly knit - I just keep staring at them in amazement!

I'm using the Spring Forward pattern from Knitty. And I'm actually using size 1 needles. Blech. I probably should have used a size 1 1/2, but since the lace pattern has quite a bit of stretch, they will fit fine.

I have another set of Imagination yarn in Frog Prince, and 2 kinds of Essential yarn, Meadow Multi and Lily Pad multi. I'll have warm feet all winter!

Knit on!