No more snow!

Last week we were snowed in, and this week it's—literally—in the 70s. Yee haw for Oklahoma weather!

I didn't get a whole lot done during Snowmageddon 2011, unfortunately. You'd think being home for two weeks that I would've, but I got almost nothing accomplished. The kids got recharged, which is a good thing.

The one project I managed to do start-to-finish was a pair of chokers. I've been wanting to make this pattern for a while, and finally I just sat down and did it:

The top one is my handspun and the bottom one is some Koigu. I love that I used all stuff from my stash on these. The pattern is from a semi-local fiber friend, Dawn, and can be found here.


I finally managed to finish a pair of socks that I started back in September:


I got smart and measured the socks before I wore them so that I won't have to constantly try them on when I get close to the toe shaping. Yay for me! (You'd think I'd have figured that out a long time ago, but I've always been so stoked to wear them that I've never taken the time to do that.)

They're my standard 64-stitch sock with a Catherine Misegade's heel. I love that method!

Speaking of feet...
My MIL sent me some fun shoes! (She sent shoes for the whole family, actually, but this is MY blog so I'm showing MY shoes. LOL!)



It was actually warm enough to wear them on Thursday to pick up the kids. :-)
Isn't that a gorgeous color on my toes? That's Isla from Zoya, and I'm in LOVE with their nail polish. Not only does it *not* stink, but the colors are fabulous! It's probably a good thing that they don't sell it within a five-mile radius of my house. LOL! (Please ignore the pasty-white legs and bathrobe.)


My awesome hubby bought me some rings for a belated Christmas present, and they arrived today!!!

(I'm modeling them on my left hand since I'm right handed and I have a HORRIBLE time taking pictures using my left hand—the camera is definitely made to be held with the right hand and NOT the left.)


That top one has a lot of neat sparkle. It's definitely more flashy that the next one:

I think they're so cool! They came from this Etsy shop, and he was very patient with me when I asked him a really stupid question. (I was so excited about getting these rings that I forgot how to read. ROFL!)


Greg has been trying some new things in bowling and they're really helping his game. My game continues to plod along in the 130s-140s, but I'm pretty happy about that. One of these days I'll get a 500 series and they'll be able to hear me squee-ing from the moon. :-)

Greg's project for the weekend is building some cabinets in the garage to replace the plastic cabinet we've been storing paint in, as well as creating some lumber storage. He's got a pile of gorgeous wood from his Dad and we need to have a better way to store lumber so that it's usable! Here's the start of the project:


He's going to get a planer and then look out, because I'm expecting some beautiful wooden things. :-)

Tulsa State Fair stuff

I dragged the whole family up to the fair grounds and we turned in our fair entries.

I, of course, had tons of last-minute stuff to finish, the most-recent item being this bag:

I put a lining in it (deliberately long, because I'm anticipating that the outside will stretch a little as I use it). It's got a pocket on each side and in the side seam there are two lanyards with hooks for keys and my wallet, so that I can dig them out quickly.

I also (finally) finished my Hey Teach sweater, which is unfortunately too big (but not huge on me) so it's still wearable.

I'm calling this my Ridiculous Doily, for two reasons: 1.) it's done out of size 30 crochet thread; and 2.) it's done out of size 30 thread because the Tulsa State Fair category for "Lace" specified that said "lace" must be done out of size 20 thread or smaller.

Seriously.

It's pretty darn obvious that whoever came up with that ridiculous rule didn't pay attention to the nine entries in the "Knitting: Adult Accessories" category that were lace, and not ONE used "thread."

Thus, this is my Ridiculous Doily, made expressly to enter a knit item into that category:

I think it's around 14" across, although I didn't measure it before I turned it in.


The other last-minute project is my rubber-stamped scrapbook page, entered in the Rubber Stamping division. The rules stated that the entry had to be "70% stamped" so I stamped the brown paper, the tag, the ribbon, and the blue paper in the background.

Last week I posted about the flowers I was making using scrapbook paper, and here's the finished ornament:


I made a tassel out of gold embroidery floss and I think the whole project turned out really nicely. The tutorial can be found here (part 1; part 2 is at the end).

I just realized that I didn't take pics of the kids' Lego entries. Bad Mom! I'll be sure to take pics at the fair itself.

The fair opens September 30, so hopefully we'll hear pretty quickly after that if anything won.


The *best* part of the day, though, was meeting IndigoGentry and Saradippity, two of my fellow Ravelers. They're just as awesome as I thought they'd be.
I hope you're all having a great weekend!

SewFlakes!

One the local quilt shops, Sew Flakes, is having a Great Sewing Room Tour, and I (as Pieceful Stitches Designs) am a sponsor. I've donated two copies of each of my patterns as well as a gift certificate for $25 off machine quilting.

Go check them out!

Speaking of quilting, a while back I made a slideshow function of the customers' quilts I've done this year, which you can see here.


Every so often I get the urge to dye my hair and I did it again yesterday:


You can also see the blue pearl necklace that I made yesterday. It's a single strand, knotted between each pearl, and long enough that I can wrap it around as a choker. I see more like that in my future.

I think this hair color looks more natural than my natural color with my skin. The really funny thing is that the kids didn't notice until Greg said something. LOL! [This stuff is supposed to wash out after a month or so.]


Speaking of Greg, he's started building a bed for Gillian and she's been helping.


Greg has developed an allergy to sawdust, and I'm thrilled that they're wearing masks and safety glasses. YAY!


I'm terribly behind on my blogging, and so I'm going to continue with some catch-up stuff.

Last week was the annual scrapbooking convention, and I took two classes. The first one is called "Boxerpalooza" and is where they give you lots of scrapbooking stuff from their company (Boxer Scrapbook Productions) and show you ideas to use it. I got a lot of excellent tips as well as cool scrapbook supplies. One of the owners is a quilter so we chatted about fabric after class.

The other class I took was "Four Pages, A Bazillion Photos" and it was neat--they had some good ideas for putting lots of pictures on a page. Here are two of the four pages (without pics--I haven't gotten that far yet):



I also did a Make and Take from the Tattered Angels booth, using Glimmer Mist:



It was really cool, and I now understand more of the appeal of Glimmer Mist.

I also did some shopping. I couldn't resist a bunch of clear stamps, especially since the big ones I got were $3!!!


Now I just need to *use* them. LOL!

On the knitting front, I finished a pair of socks:




The yarn is some that my wonderful Aunt Louise sent a couple of years ago (I don't use sock yarn all that quickly, but I sure enjoy making socks!).

I also made a headband to use up some of my leftover sock yarn:

That's Mountain Colors sock yarn and it bleeds read like nobody's business, which is why I didn't send it to my Mom to use in her sock yarn blanket.

And I finally found a project that would successfully use the Disco yarn that started to be two different pairs of socks:

That's the Lacy Baktus, with an edging I stole from something else (I think a stitch dictionary--I'd have to look to be sure).

And last up on my catching-up list, this basket that we made in spinning guild at the August meeting:


It was fun to make! The teacher had the bottom and first round one for us or we would've been there all day. :-)

I think that's about it for the moment. I've been doing customer quilts but you can see those in the link at the top of this post.

I hope you're all having a great weekend!

New addition to sidebar: Magic Loop socks

This is a quick update post (I'm once again ridiculously behind in posting, but I'll add a whole bunch later).

A couple of years ago I made up a handout to show my technique for doing two socks at once, top down, using the magic loop method (see tutorials in sidebar).

I'm adding the PDF with my illustrations about how to do the heels on two socks at once. Here's the direct link, or click in the sidebar.

This weekend is Fiber Christmas in July and I'm teaching four classes, so I'm frantically getting ready for that.

That's all for now!

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Queen of the Household

I hereby dub myself Queen of the Household for successfully replacing the fan on our vacuum. LOL!

Here's the fan that was broken (and incredibly loud!!!):

It was cracked in multiple places and made an incredible noise when I turned on the vacuum. It's also filthy but I guess that proves the vacuum was doing its job.

The new fan went in really easily and the vacuum is quieter than it's been for a while. It's an industrial Sanitaire vacuum that my grandfather bought for us as a wedding present, going on 14 years ago (gasp!!!). It's a fabulous vacuum and I'm very proud of myself for diagnosing the problem and fixing it myself.


On the knitting front, I started a new pair of socks. I'm trying these toe up, with a heel flap, and hopefully they'll fit.


I have a hard time getting the color balance right, but you can get the idea.


I also got a skin for my Sony Touch e-reader. I'm not thrilled with the quality of the picture (someone used the unsharp mask in Photoshop a few too many times) but I love the way it feels on the device. Next time I'll order one from DecalGirl instead, though.



I love my e-reader, although it's going to take me a while to duplicate my paperback collection in digital files. I have to remind myself that it's taken me years to build up my paperback collection, and I don't need to have all of them NOW. LOL! On the other hand, it's really nice to be getting rid of things and I need to move that to other areas of my life. I was good and got rid of a stack of knitting books that I'll never use, and I need to go through my quilt books next. I think my yarn collection might be getting purged next. We'll see.

Ravelympics

It's been a busy week or so since my last post. (Why do I wait so long between posts?)

First up, Carmine is no longer with us. It turned out that he was older than a year old, and was FliV (I think that's right -- feline leukemia) positive. Very, very positive. I know we made the right decision but it was tough. On the other hand, we've seen a lot more of Lenny and Squiggy since they basically disappeared while Carmine was around.

Greg has been very busy with his new tools!

He sprayed some coats of polyurethane on the aquarium table:


And here's the finished table:

Isn't it gorgeous? It'll sit for a few more days to let the finish really harden, and then we'll get it set up in the living room with the fish tank.


Thursday night Greg and I went to see the opera Rigoletto at the Tulsa Opera. It was great! It was the final dress rehearsal, so our seats were really good. It's wonderful knowing people behind the scenes who got us tickets (thanks Lena and Somer!).


Friday was the school carnival at the kids' school, which was torture for the adults but the kids loved it.

They entered the Twinkie decorating contest, and here are their entries:


Those are Gillian's penguins, and Ryan did a car ("it's NOT a train, it's a CAR!"):

They both won ribbons so they were thrilled.

We won one of the class baskets! It was filled with all kinds of gardening stuff:


Now we're eager for the weather to warm up so we can get started on the garden.


During the Olympics, there's an event called the Ravelympics during which knitters (and other fiber crafters) attempt to finish certain projects. I managed to finish a pair of socks for the WIPs Dancing (Work In Progress) category, and I ripped out an almost-finished pair of socks for the Aerial Unwind category (no pic at the moment since they're just two balls of yarn again).

Here's the finished pair:


I really like the heel on this sock, and I'll probably use it from now on. There's no picking up of stitches!


I also got a quilt done for Calista, again using glow in the dark thread. Cute, huh?


That's it for the moment! Thankfully I don't have a lot going this week so I can concentrate on getting another two quilts finished. (I hope I haven't just doomed myself. LOL!)

Tulsa State Fair wrap-up post

I've been a bit scattered lately, but I finally got the pictures ready for this post.

My friend Calista and I went to the fair on Monday, October 5, just the two of us (NO KIDS!) and had a great time looking at all of the Creative Arts stuff. We spent about an hour and a half just looking. It was great!

We found the kids' stuff first.

Gillian's Lego kit entry:


Gillian's decorated T-shirt entry:


Gillian's weaving:

Ryan's drawing:


Gillian's drawing:


Ryan's Christmas ornament:


Then we wandered over to the Creative Arts exhibit area and found my stuff (and Calista's, but she's got pictures elsewhere).

My quilt (which will be going to Karen for her birthday, which was in January):


My socks (at the top):

The Sweepstakes winner for knitting (Rori's Hey Teach sweater is the blue one on the right):


My broomstick-lace-ish crocheted scarf, next to the first place winner (not sure why that one got first, but it's not up to me LOL):

My crocheted hot pad, which was in the Crocheted Article, under 24" division:

And my Hyrna Herborgar shawl, center bottom:

Last but not least, here's my rubber stamp entry, in the scrapbook page category:


Here's a view of the glass cases:

Everything still smells like fair food (fried), but at least they're secured in the cases.

These were some really neat baskets that I loved:


And finally, Calista and me:

I'll post pics of the family excursion to the fair a little bit later!