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!

Blessings...

My buddy Chan is having a contest, head on over & check out the rules, there is gonna be lots of great prizes! So for my part here I'm listing a few things that make me feel blessed....

• A wonderful husband, who is sweet & totally "gets" me, even if it is frustrating to him sometimes. :)
• A wonderful & selfless Step-son (who I consider my own). And who is now heading to his job school with the US Marines a long way from us! We miss him...
• My furbaby, Jasmine
• Awesome friends
• And I do feel blessed to have our home & a job with the economy like it is. While it has been hard on us there are people out there who have it far worse.

I could go on & on but those are the most important ones to me.

And I have a few finished projects to show you! First up is my Vine Stitch Wrap. This pattern is in the book Vogue Knitting on the Go. This has been on the needles for quite a long time. One of those UFO's floating around the house forever. I finally picked it up last week & got it done. I was tired of it constantly taunting me, LOL.  I did like the pattern despite the time it took me to complete it, I just get bored easily. :)

And I also finished up my Colonnade. This was a fairly quick knit & I like the finished result. It's a Free Pattern on Ravelry. I used smaller yarn & needles than what the pattern called for so it's more of a scarf version. That suits me just fine. Now if we could just get some cooler weather around here so I can put these to use.... supposed to be 85 tomorrow! UGH

Hope everyone is having a good week!

FREE Pattern!

It's ready! The FREE pattern for my Mermaid Scarf. Click on the name there & it will take you to the pattern page on Ravelry where you can download it. If any of you aren't on Ravelry (what?!) & want the pattern, just shoot me an email & I'll send you the pdf.

This pattern hasn't been test knit by anyone but me, so if you find any errors please let me know.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Better Late Than Never...

Guess What?!

I got to meet Rudy!

Of course I got to see Robin too. :) They were here at the beach last week.... And they are coming back next month for another visit & we are planning a day of yarn shopping & activities.

I have also been a real slacker! Kathy sent me a wonderful birthday package that I totally forgot to post about! In my defense (and I might be contacting Mr. B's attorney about this if I get in trouble, SNOL) that was one busy week, the week of my birthday. That was the week that our Marine graduated from bootcamp, summer crazy season was still in full force at work, blah blah blah.... That's my story & I'm sticking to it!

So without further adoo....

Kathy sent me some gorgeous spinning fiber, some swiffer sweaters (for some reason the woman got the crazy idea that I actually clean this house! LOL), a totally cute birthday cupcake bag, & a sweet kitty birthday card.

Aren't they sweet? Awwwww.....

The cupcake bag is now living with my spinning wheel. It's perfect! It clips right on there & holds the current fiber that I'm spinning. You should advertise your sockit bags for spinning too Kathy! :)

If you don't have one of Kathy's Sock it Bags yet, you really NEED one! Click on the linky there & get yourself one. You won't be disappointed.

And here is a closeup of the pretty fiber she sent.

Then when I got home today I had another box waiting on me!! Late Birthday prezzies!!! Gotta love those, spreads the love out a little more instead of using it all up on one day. LOL

Jessi sent me an awesome late Birthday box! Here is what was inside...

A cute kitty birthday card, a purple Ravelry project bag, some yummy Sock Yarnista yarn in the Peweter Amethyst colorway, and a sticker that says "Friends pick you up when you fall. Best friends laugh cuz they're the ones who tripped you", ha ha ha!

Here is a closeup of the cute bag, I hope you can see it.

And here is a closeup of the yummy yarn. The photo is a little more brown than it really is, it was starting to get dark by the time I got home...

Thank you so much Kathy & Jessi! You gals are the BEST! I just don't know what I'd do without my bloggy friends.... I'd be very lonely. :)

Stash Enhancement

I've had a good weekend, even though it has seemed way too short. I'm getting ready to make some stitch markers... the hubby is rearranging the kitchen cabinets, I don't know if that is a good thing or not. LOL

Yesterday I visited a new to me yarn shop, A Row of Purls Too. She has another shop that is called A Row of Purls.... I now have a new almost local favorite yarn shop! It took me about 35-40 min to get there from my house. But it was a lot of back country roads so it's a nice drive. And that is no further than traveling down to south Myrtle Beach to get to the AC Moore & Michaels.  It was a nice little shop with a good selection of yarn. She also sells some local fiber batts that a few of her customers make & Ashford spinning wheels. Imagine that! She sells THE ELIZABETH wheel that I want! :)

Of course I couldn't go to visit a yarn shop without purchasing something... so I came away with 2 small purchases, one ball of Super Soft cotton & one ball of  Yarn Cloud bamboo. I had no idea that I could throw bamboo in the washer/dryer! Soooo, we're gonna try some for washcloths & see what happens!

And here is a photo of the great fiber that I got last weekend from Stony Mountain Fibers with Chan. These are all Merino Wool.

And I got one 4 oz. braid of Merino/Silk blend. She had awesome prices so I stocked up! LOL

And finally, this is what I'm spinning at the moment... Cherry Sorbet merino that I purchased from The Lakehouse Loft a while back.

Okay, I'm off to the stitch marker factory! Hope everyone is having a good weekend!