Memorial Day update

Memorial Day has become about shopping, but for me it was all about cleaning and knitting. I made major inroads into my bedroom. I just need to get my dresser cleaned off and I'm done. I'll do that tomorrow. Ran out of steam today.

Did manage to finish this...

Bremen Muster
in Oldfield Creek Sock, hand dyed

I love how the bubbles worked up with this yarn. It fits wonderfully and I've even cast on for the second sock. I'm going to have to make another pair. My DF Selena saw them the other night at the baseball game when I was working on them and expressed an interest in obtaining a pair for herself. I bought the last skein of this colorway at KnitWitz for her and I'll make them since she doesn't knit. Of course, I'm trying to get her to come learn to knit. I think it would be good for her to help her relax. I'll have to try again.

Also worked some on my cropped cardigan. Almost have that last sleeve done. No pictures, since it's almost impossible to take a picture of yourself in a garment.

That's it for today. I hope everyone here in the U.S. took time out to remember those who have served our country in the Armed Forces, and those who continue to serve. Living in a "Navy town", and having a brother who served in the Navy and now a nephew who is active duty, tends to make you more aware of the sacrifices made by the people who serve and by their families. We owe them our thanks and appreciation for all they do. If you know someone who has ever served in the military, take time this week to thank them.

Tag I'm it!

Thanks to both Jill & Kim I've been tagged. So here goes.

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about them self. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 0r 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blog and leaves a comment letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was working for Prudential as a Quality Analyst for their corporate tax system. Since it was May, the busy time was over. As far as my personal life goes things haven't changed too much. I wasn't dating anyone at the time. I'm pretty certain that's the year I flew down to Miami to spend my birthday with my very dear friend Patrick and he treated me to a concert, probably Garth Brooks. I'm sure I spent my time away from work about the same way I do now: reading, stitching, going to FSU football games, things like that.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?
* go teach class
* find my shoes for DF Maria's wedding (stupid shops need to be open!)
* call DF Selena about getting together for one of the baseball tournament games
* call insurance agent about homeowners insurance policy
* go see the new Indiana Jones movie with Kim & Kathe

3. Snacks I enjoy...

• Taco dip (a.k.a. tailgating dip!)
• dark chocolate M&M's, or really dark chocolate anything
• ice cream!
• popcorn

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire....

• become the top level booster at FSU
• buy an RV or bus so that...
• we could have a great party place at all the games & I mean ALL the games
• DF Jean & I could travel the NASCAR circuit (Jean, you could bring Richard if he'd be our driver!)
• buy a house in western VA near Abingdon
• buy my mom a condo at the beach
• travel, travel, travel! I'd go to all the places in Europe I went as a child, plus I'd love to go to some I've never been to. Actually there aren't many places I wouldn't like to go and visit. Have passport, will travel!
• pay off the mortgage our church currently has
• oh and do all that other financial stuff that you'd normally want to do if you had billions, like fix it so I wouldn't have to pay loads of taxes on it
  

5. Places I've lived

• Hackensack, NJ
• Dublin, VA
• Melbourne, FL
• England, we actually lived in 3 different towns, but I can only remember Lichfield (Staffordshire), and South Nutfield (Surrey). (Although we didn't officially live in these places, my dad was sent there for work and we stayed for at least a month at a time: Barcelona (Spain), Italy - I think we stayed in Rimini but traveled to San Marino as well which is really a whole other country, Amsterdam.)
  
• Jacksonville, FL
• Middleburg, FL
• High Point, NC (3 years for college)
• Tallahassee, FL (3 years for college)

6. Jobs I've had. Really, you want to know them? Well then in no particular order...

• legal secretary
• accounts receivable & payable trainee (this is when I realized I didn't want to be a CPA)
  
• I worked in the admissions office at HPC when I attended school there
• I also worked the Furniture Market most years. Mainly that was handing out stuff to buyers from all over the world, not glamorous but the pay was great
• retail sales clerk: JoAnn's Fabric (when it was a fabric store), a men's store in the OP mall that for the life of me I can't remember the name of
• "girl Friday" for a Title Ins. company
  
• Computer lab assistant at a Jr. college
  
• temp. at an insurance co.
• accounts receivable for a lawn care business
• then there was AT&T UCS: Sr. Customer Service Rep., Executive Visits Manager, Application Testing Specialist, Sr. Technical Analyst/Testing Project Lead
• Sr. Quality Assurance Analyst - The Pru.
• Quality Assurance Analyst - Consultant
• Operations Manager for HVAC co. (ok technically I was shown as VP, but really it wasn't that exciting)
• oh and if you count getting paid as it being a job I've been known to teach beading & crochet
• if you count jobs you don't get paid for then add web master for my church and the stuff I do with the worship team that is too boring to mention
  

7. Peeps I want to know more about...
Ok, this is getting hard since many of my friends have already tagged some of the people I'd tag, but here goes...

• I could steal a line from Kathe and say both Carl Edwards & Tony Stewart since they are single and all, but I wouldn't do that. It would be unoriginal. True perhaps, but decidedly unoriginal.
• Tikabelle
• Grant
• Karoline
• Heidi
• Gryffinitter

Ok, folks, have fun and no tagging me back. This was hard enough the first time!

Wednesday stuff

Wednesday already! I had such a great weekend, and the week has been good so far. Here's a little of what I've managed to accomplish.

1. I started working on finishing one of my ornaments. I've almost got it done. Hopefully tomorrow I can get it finished and then take a picture. There's more to this story, but I'll share that when I have a picture.

2. With some encouragement from a few of my friends, I designed this for my next Beginning Crochet class at KnitWitz.

Materials:
Pisgah Yarn & Dyeing Co., Inc Peaches & Creme Solids (Teal Blue)

My goal was to design a small round bag that used only chain, single & double crochet along with slip stitch. Oh, and to only use a 2.5 ounce skein of Peaches & Creme. I managed to succeed, and there's about 1-2 yrds. of yarn left! It's called The Tulip Bag, since the stitch on the body is called Tulip stitch. Since I took this picture I made a chain stitch drawstring for the closure.

3. I finished the knitting on my small Universal Mitered Bag. I'm still working on the strap. Then I can felt it all and attach the strap.

Materials:
Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted (black)

Rio De La Plata Twist (black/green/coral)
Rio De La Plata Wool (Autumn Leaf)

It's only large enough to hold a cell phone, ID and keys. I took this class back in Dec. from Annie Modesitt. I like how she taught us to use a formula so we could come up with the perfect sized bag for us. I can see using this for another bag, or 2. And for those who know me fairly well you're no doubt wondering about the choice of colors. Yes, they aren't my normal choice, but I really like the way it's turned out. The smattering of the green in the one yarn really does it for me.

4. I did some felting today. It was all small stuff, so I had to do it in the sink and on my hands. No pictures. Sorry.

5. FSU won their first game of the ACC baseball tournament this evening. Thanks to DF Jill, who was watching from her home in Atlanta, and DF Selena, who was sitting in the stands at the game, I was able to receive score updates while also running a meeting and then singing at band practice. They rock!

So, that's about it for today. If I do get to any of the baseball games this weekend I'm planning on working on my FSU socks. Especially if I'm watching them play!

New socks coming

Oldfield Creek Sock & Yarn
Originally uploaded by bookgrump

I've had this problem.
I have this beautiful sock yarn in great garnet & gold colors. If you are an FSU alumni/fan like myself these colors come in hand during the year. They also happen to be the colors of Gryffindor, so that's wonderful too. This yarn is beautiful and so nice to work with and I really want to make socks out of it.

First I tried this


The pattern is called Reversi and when completed should be completely reversible. Love the pattern, just not in this yarn.

Yesterday I went to my favorite LYS and sat around knitting with a few others. One of the things on my list was to rip this sock out and reball the yarn. Surprisingly I actually remembered and did it. That left me with what to do with the yarn. What sock did I want to make?

One of my friends had made a suggestion, which I liked, but then after looking at the pattern, and a few others in my very large queue in Ravelry I thought maybe, just maybe the Bremen sock by Wolkistchens Musterseite would work. (Yeah, if you clicked through the link you might notice that the site is written in German. However, Brenda has .pdf files of her patterns in English for those of us who are not German speakers.) After a brief online consultation with my favorite LYS owner I decided to go ahead and cast on for them and see if it would work. Something to do while watching the shows I'd taped earlier in the night.

This is what I've got so far.
I think we have a winner! Love the way the yarn is pooling with this pattern. I'm hoping to get to go to a couple of ACC Baseball Tournament games next weekend. I have a feeling these will be going with me if I do. Knitting socks at baseball games looks mighty fun!

I did have a small finish last night, but it needs a strap so I'm waiting for a picture.

A bit of catching up

I don't want to take a whole lot of time, so this may be kind of short. I do want to show you a few things that I've actually finished!

First, I actually finished the knitting of this bag at least a year ago, maybe more. Then it took me awhile to get it felted. Then it's sat for months waiting to have the straps sewn on. Today I sat down and did them. I'm calling it "Brown Goes to Market". The pattern was free when I bought some yarn at the Knitting Emporium in Kennesaw, GA. It's a mixture of Cascade wools and some specialty fibers. It was a fairly simple project. I even made some other things to go with it, but they haven't been felted. Maybe this weekend I'll get that done. I love these colors and it's meant to be a project bag.

The next picture is of my completed "I Dreamed of Africa" socks. Aren't they lovely? They are much prettier in person. They are made with Shaeffer Anne, and I have no idea what the color name is. I have almost a half a skein of the Anne left, at least that's what I think. I've got to weigh it and see. I might have enough to make some other socks with, or do something fun with.

They really do make me think of Africa, with all the reds, browns and tans and then the blue of the sky peeping through. The only part of Africa I've seen in Egypt, yes, part is actually in Africa, but I would like to go to more of the continent. Until then I can wear my socks and dream.

I'm taking a few days to relax and hopefully get some things done that I've been putting off. Mostly some cleaning and some finishing of projects. If I do manage to do more finishing, I'll be sure to post some pictures.

Happy Mother's Day!

Sometimes it's nice to have a big brother. Especially if they do things like this...That's the lovely bouquet of flowers my brother Doug sent mom today. She was very coy about it this morning. I apparently slept through the delivery. So, when I woke up and came through to the kitchen she kept talking about "little round boys that love her". Ok, I hadn't had coffee yet and we were also talking about the Nationwide NASCAR race from last night were Tony Stewart, her driver of choice, won. I was a little confused. Then I walked out onto the sun porch and saw these.
The boy did good! (Just in case he happens to read this, yes, you did very good and she loves you very much.) (For those who know me and are now slightly confused, Doug is actually my half-brother, we share a father. He and I are the closest in age, but there's still a significant difference in our ages. Neither of my half-brothers lived with us while I was growing up, for any significant amount of time. Doug would be happy to tell you about me slamming the door in his face when he showed up one time when I was about 6 or 7. It is kind of a funny story.)

So, to all the mom's out there, have a great day. To those, like me who are the perpetual Aunt, have a great day too!

Contest Alert!

If you're like me you like a good contest and if you're like me you love to read, so here's something that will marry the two together. It's a contest at One Scheme of Happiness for suggestions for a summer reading list. But hurry, you only have until noon tomorrow to enter. Oh, and don't forget to let her know you found out about it right here!

Little Green Acorns

Just a quick picture of what I've been working on the last couple of days. I really do like this sampler and I enjoy working on it. It's called "Little Green Acorns" by Eileen Bennett. Since this was our class piece from last year it works for this month's stitching theme. I'm almost half-way, which is really something.

Off to watch some cars race around the track at Darlington, SC.

Count them!

Two Happy Dances to talk about today. Seems only fitting since I've not blogged in ages. Sorry about that. Things have been a bit hectic around here with a few other things going on. You know, life just getting in the way of all the fun stuff.

However, in the middle of all that nonsense I managed to finish this..

Be U Strong
Shepherd's Bush

I used the called for threads and I think even the same fabric they suggested. I plan on making it a hanger for one of the doors here in the house. I've seen a few other people do this with some projects and I really like it so I think I'll give it a try.

The second finish is a bit of test knitting I did for the lovely Corrina.
The pattern is named Surrey Hat, so on Ravelry (you are on Ravelry if you're a knitter/crocheter/spinner aren't you??) I called it Dreaming of Surrey, since when I was little we did actually live in Surrey Co., England and I dream of going back at some point. Isn't it lovely?
I adore this pattern and will have to say that the lovely Corinna did an excellent job writing it up. It should be available for download soon and I highly recommend it if you a) love hats, b) need a quick present, or c) want to support a budding knitting designer. She's going to have more patterns coming soon as well and I'm sure they'll be just as amazing!

There's some more boring stuff I could tell you about, but I'll refrain. Look at the pretty finishes and don't forget to have a great day!!!