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Recycled Pincushion

As usual, I waited until the last minute to make my pincushion -- why do I do this?  I had an idea in mind for a long time.  Maybe 6-7 weeks ago we were cleaning out Maddie's drawers and getting rid of the clothes that no longer fit her.  I took most of them to the local re-sale shop and the rest to the charity thrift shop, but I kept her old blue jeans. 

There was a pattern in one of my Japanese craft books for these little zippered pouches that are basically two squares that you sew together (or you can do this with one rectangle too) that looked really cool.  You sew three sides normally, but the third side you squish the other way so that the side seems come together and it makes it sort of 3-D. 

Well, that's exactly what I did.  I cut out two square of the denim from one pant leg, zig-zagged and straight stitched each square with white thread for decoration and threw in a loop of rick-rack so I could hang it up.  Easy as pie, except for hand sewing that 4th side together -- ouch!  Where the heck is my thimble!

Finish up those pincushion!

I'm amazed by all the pincushions people are making out of recycled materials.  Everything from cans and jars to gravy boats and gelato dishes -- really!  I'm hoping to get the gallery up tomorrow over at the Pincushion Challenge website, but there is still plenty of time for you to dig through the recycling bin in your own home and come up with a nifty pincushion.  Heck, I haven't even started mine yet, although the materials have been laying in the sewing room for over a month.  (I'll give you a hint -- we cleaned out Maddie's drawers and I found some great things to use!)

Knitting Video Podcast

Don't worry -- *I* haven't started another podcast!  But I did want to share a new podcast with you.  There are a lot of knitting podcasts out there, but this is the first *video* knitting podcast I have seen.  It's caleed Let's Knit2gether and I just watched the first episode.  I like it because you can see the techniques she's describing -- very cool!  She talks about knitting socks on one and two circs and even show you how to cast on if you want to knit 2 socks on 2 circs.  I like it!

Green & Black's -- I love you!

So look what arrived on my doorstep yesterday!  A huge box of chocolate -- who wouldn't love that?  Someone from Green & Blacks's PR saw that I was reviewing some of their products on my blog and sent along this lovely selection for me to try out.  And I know that she read my blog well, because she put two of the white chocolate bars in there -- Green & Black's make the best white choclate bar that I have found -- and I've tried quite a few now.

So stay tuned -- I'll be reviewing these on the blog.  Including the hot cocoa, which I've never seen in a store near me and am very eager to try.  And the Ginger bar -- I think that's a new one.  Yeah!   

Confessions of a Work at Home Mom -- episode 4

I had to upload my pic for iTunes for Confessions of a Work at Home Mom, so I figured I might as well let you know that episode 4 is up.

Oops -- it needed to be a .jpg, not a gif. Grrrr. . . .

Pincushion Challenge -- Recycle

I'm such a slacker!  I don't have my Recycle Challenge pincushion finished (or even started) yet -- but that's okay!  The deadline isn't until Saturday.  Plenty of time!  And you can do it too.  Remember, you have to have made a pincushion for one of the challenges in order to participate in the swap for October/November -- so get going!

Chocolate -- Vosges Barcelona Bar

Time for another chocolate review!  And this is a good one -- the Vosges Barcelona Bar.  First let me tell you what it is -- It's a slightly darker milk (41% -- a lot of milk chocolate seems to be in the 30% range) combined with hickory smoked almonds and grey sea salt.  Now I'm a sucker for the whole sweet & salty thing, so I knew that there was a good chance I would like this bar.  And apparently so do a lot of other people because I had a bit of trouble finding it.  (Keep in mind that I don't live in a major city, so opportunities for chocolate hunting are limited.)

So when I went up to Chicago to play in the park last week with Maddie and Theresa, I decided to take a look and found it!  After all this searching, I was hoping it would live up to the hype I had created for it in my own mind.

I have to say that I finished the bar in 4 nights -- it was delicious!  The salt was intense and flavorful and combined perfectly with the sweetness of the milk chocolate.  And the hickory smoked almonds?  They gave the bar a strange and interesting flavor that you weren't expecting -- a bit of savory in your sweet and a nice crunch too. 

If I had one complaint -- well, I have two complaints.  First, the bar is way too expensive.  It's $7!!!!!  There's not gold leaf on the thing -- it's chocolate, salt and almonds for goodness sake.  All high quality, no doubt!  But $7???  (Okay, now that I got that off my chest.)  And second, there was a bit of a distribution problem with the salt.  The first square I tasted was *very* salty.  My first thought was that if the whole bar was this salty, I wouldn't be able to eat it.  But every other square was perfect, so all was well.  I just think that for that much money, ever square should be perfect, know what I mean?

In the end I can't complain -- I'm already thinking about driving up to Chicago to get another one -- it was that good.  The perfect combination of ingredients in the right proportion -- it's magic, I tell ya!

Great Knitting Video

An update. . .

I did another episode of Confessions of a Work at Home Mom and I'm now in iTunes too.

The ring is open again. . .

I may be crazy, because I opened the Knitting Blogs Web Ring again.  I don't know how long it will remain open.  Usually this is how it works.  I open it and get flooded with applications -- it's kind of exciting!  Everyone wants to join the ring -- yeah!  Then I realize how much work this means for me.  I start doing the work -- it's okay. . . I actually like to work.  Work is good.  I come across a few sites that don't meet the requirements -- frustrating but no big deal.  I start to realize that I have more sites than I can check in the next several months so I close up the ring.  Then people start emailing me because they want to know why it's taking *so* long to get moved from the queue to the ring (when something like 500 people joined within 3 weeks!)  Then more people complain -- then I start not even wanting to deal with the ring.  It's a vicious cycle and every time I re-open the ring I try to prepare myself for what is about to happen.  I give myself a little pep talk and swear that it will be different this time.

We shall see.

Renegade & a new Stitch-Cast

I just uploaded the latest Stitch-Cast -- it's on sewing.  If you listen, I'd love to hear from you!

And I talk about Renegade Craft fair a little in the show, but I wanted to mention it here.  We got a chance to stop by the craft show before we went to my grandma's 80th birthday party yesterday.  I picked up some cool things from Happy Owl Glassworks and got the new Sublime Stitching book.  There were quite a few vendors and it looks like the big trends included screen printing, letterpress and clothes & other things made out of thrifted fabrics (and other materials). 

Oh and there was a weird glow in the sky on our way home last night:

Confessions of a Work at Home Mom

I started *another* podcast for fun. . .
Confessions of a Work at Home Mom.

I'm knitting a sweater (sort of. . . )

I've said before that I don't knit sweaters, but I suppose that rules are made to be broken.  I mean, I *have* knit sweaters before, so I guess I'm capable of doing it.  At any rate, I recently added the SOAR blog to my Bloglines (as I'm obsessed with the idea of actually attending SOAR one of these years) and they recently had an interesting post about the current afghans for Afghans project.  They are trying to get 900 sweaters or vests by the beginning of October, so that they have one for every student at the Afghans 4 Tomorrow schools.  Well, I looked through the patterns on their website and I saw the In-VEST for Peace which requires scraps of 100% worsted wool.  Now when you design felted bags for a living, one thing you have a lot of is scraps of 100% worsted wool!  And I've never knit a garment from side to side, so I figured I'd give it a try.  In one night I finished the entire left front! 

So, I'm attempting to break my own rule and knit this sweater (vest) and maybe it will keep a kid a little warmer this winter too.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. . . . 

Happy Birthday Pretty Princess!

Pete turns 41 today! Why don't you stop on by PeteLit and wish him a Happy Birthday?

(Okay, here's the story on the photo. Maddie loves to play games and Pete, being the great Daddy that he is, lets her choose her favorites. For a while all she wanted to play was Pretty Pretty Princess. As you can see, he won!)

Sock knitting it is -- and more Chocolate reviews!

Well. . . looks like socks are the favorite by a long shot coming in at 43% as of just a minute ago.  Speaking of socks, I'm making good progress on Pete's STR socks (er, sock -- I'm still on the first one.)  I'll post a picture as soon as I finish the first one. 

Since I have a pile of wrappers in the drawer, I thought it was about time for a chocolate update!  So without further ado. . .

Okay, I know there are a lot of Green & Black's fans out there, so this may not be popular, but I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the Green & Black's Caramel bar.  First let me tell you that it's an organic milk chocolate bar with a soft caramel center.  The little pockets of caramel are nicely divided so that you don't have to eat the bar all at once, so that was convenient -- it's a pretty large bar after all.  The chocolate was rather soft, sticky and sweet though -- this is where they lost me.  You almost couldn't discern where the chocolate ended and the caramel began.  I guess I wanted a more distinctive chocolate and a saltier caramel maybe?  I shouldn't have been surprised since the first ingredient listed is organic cane sugar and the second is organic whole milk powder, but I love a good caramel bar and I thought G & B would come through.

So far I've loved the Green & Blacks White Chocolate bar, liked the Green & Black's Maya Gold bar, disliked the Hazlenut & Currant bar so much that I threw half of it in the trash (I bought it at Target and discovered it was past it's sell by date, which could be the reason for it's "off" flavor), and found the Caramel bar dissatisfying.  Hmmmm. . . I'm holding out for the Butterscoth bar, which I hear is *awesome* -- but I have yet to locate one.  Any ideas where they are sold in the States?

The Violet Crumble is an Australian candy bar made by Nestlé that is unlike any mass market bar in the US that I can think of.  The slogan on the wrapper says "It's the way it shatters that matters" and it did shatter!  Actually the first thought that came to mind as I took my first bite was -- smores.  It had that toasted marshmallow taste, combined with the chocolate -- then there was the crispness of the bar.  I have to say that I'm usually not a fan of mass market candy bars, but I loved this one!   

I've also tried the Cafe-Tasse Blanc -- White Chocolate Bar and it wasn't nearly as good as the Green & Blacks.  I don't have much else to say, so I'll leave it at that.  More reviews coming soon!

Knitting Poll!

All my talk about the type of things I like to knit got me thinking. . . What do you like to knit?

What's your favorite type of knitting?
	Socks, socks, socks.
	Lovely Lace.
	Make mine colorwork.
	Felted things.
	Scarves and other accessories.
	Sweaters, silly!
	Something else entirely (leave a comment to tell me!)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Some mail arrived while I was gone. . .

First, a word about swaps.  I was burned on the the last one I joined.  (I feel bad for the swap organizer -- what a drag.  She had 8 people that didn't hold up their end of the swap!)  So, I was thinking that this was a sign that I should hold off on doing any more swaps for a while -- then the lace swap came along! 

Second, a word about lace knitting.  There are primarily three types of knitting I do:

1. Knitting Felted Bags -- My "mac & cheese" knitting, comforting and familiar.  It's work, but I love to do it.
2. Sock Knitting -- This is my "on-the-go" knitting.  I always have a sock project in my little Longaberger basket, ready to go whenever I hit the door.
3. Lace Knitting -- The knitting I do when I have time to knit -- at night or on the weekends when I want to really *enjoy* my knitting.  I *love* knitting lace!

Okay, so I had to join.  And as luck would have it, I was matched up with Jae who showered me with the most excellent gifts!  The yarn she chose is a beautiful sage green -- Jagger Spun Zephyr -- I've never used this yarn before, so I'm eager to try it out.  It feels lovely!  And the pattern is the Baltic Sea Stole by Fiber Trends.  She included some other goodies including something that I have never used, but think is ingenious -- Post-it tape!  How come I've never heard of this before?  Have I been living under a rock?  What a great thing to use to mark your charts.  Thanks, Jae!!

Another package arrived too. . .

It's the rug hook kit I purchase at Michigan Fiber Fest from Linda at Hooked on Ewe.  So it looks like I'll be trying a new craft in the coming weeks.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Blue Moon Fiber 3 ply

Ah -- 3-ply!  I am in love.  Now don't get me wrong, at first it was a struggle.  I had only done a navajo 3-ply before and that was always on a spindle.  I attempted it once on my wheel after reading a Spin-Off article, but it was just so fussy.

After a few different placements of the lazy kate, and figuring out exactly how I needed to hold the plys, it just came together!  Here's what I did. . .

First, here is my super-deluxe lazy kate.  It's not unlike what Theresa has been using -- just a box with some knitting needles stuck through.  I put the kate next to the wheel and pulled up all three strands with my right hand.  This hand was kind of like a guide and the plies bent back around this hand before heading off to be spun.  This helped keep the tension and keep the plies in order.

My left hand actually had to keep things in order too, otherwise two of the plies sometimes wanted to go twisting up and leaving the third one out, so I separated them with my fingers up close to where the twist started -- this kept things all neat and orderly. 

The yarn was washed up last night and is still hanging to dry, but I can already tell that it's a winner!   I really like the 3-ply and I'm going to ply up the balance of this lovely stuff today!

And I just want to say thank you to everyone who left a nice comment about my friend.  We were able to get down to SC in time to see her before she passed away.  I have really wonderful memories of her growing up and as I said, she was a crafter.  I'm actually searching eBay for some of the crafts that she used to do back in the 70's and hopefully I'll have more to share with you soon.  I think it would be a nice memory of her!

New Stitch-Cast on Braiding!

I finally found time to do an episode of Stitch-Cast!! This week it's all about braiding -- Kumihimo, lucet, etc. . . I hope you like the show!