Christmas Kid Art

My Christmas gift from Lainie:

I love it!

Okay, I just had to edit this once I posted it.  I’m looking at the shelf behind the picture and honest to god, it looks like a big pile of poo.  (hee hee hee-incredulous laughter) Folks, really, it is not.  I do not put poo in my bookcase.  It is actually some antique looking toy gun that came from my mother-in-law’s house.  I think at the time I found one of the kids playing with it, I put it up because I dislike guns and the trigger doesn’t work anyway.  And it’s sat there for months.    So….just in case you were wondering…..

Happy End of 2008!

Here we are, at the end of 2008.  Goodbye 2008.  I won’t miss you.  Oh, are you heartbroken?  I’m sorry, you’ve been replaced with another….2009!  And he is way younger and fresher than you are, tired, grumpy, old 2008.

Ah, the new year…a chance to make new resolutions, to start fresh, to fill out a date book and swear you’ll use it every day instead of missing appointment after appointment.  I have some resolutions….but I’m afraid if I put them down, I’m setting myself up for failure.  But then I read that you must write them down so that you keep accountable to yourself.  So, I’ll put some resolutions down (the ones I’m really serious about):

1.  Get to the gym 3 days a week.

2.  Try to resist buying yarn as much as I can.  My short term goal is to not buy anything (magazines, beads, books, yarn) craft related for the month of January.  Being the yarn/craft addict that I am, I am taking small steps to try and ensure success!  (And for my stitch ‘n bitch group, that means I’m missing the awesome sale at the Fold on New Year’s Day!  What willpower!!!!)

3.  Give regularly to the charities of my choice.  I also plan to knit blanket squares for the Pine Ridge Reservation project and for a blanket that my stitch ‘n bitch group is going to make for Safe Passage, a women’s shelter.

The rest of them are boring, so I won’t post them.

Instead, I bring you:

My mittens!  (Yowsa, is that a bright background.  I grabbed the owner’s manual to the hydrodynamic power plant set that Cole got from Santa as it was handy).  It’s my second pair and these fit a lot better than the other ones I knit with recycled yarn.  However, the top one hides the bottom one because I accidentally knit the second pair a bit smaller.  Still fits, though!  Can you tell that these mittens are a dark brown with tweedy flecks of bright colors?

I also received a skein of sock yarn from Robyn in a trade.  I haven’t posted any of my other recent purchases, but I just had to post this, because I love love love the colors!

Beautimous browns with hints of orange and red and blue.  Love it!  Thanks, Robyn!

Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone!  I wish you all the best for 2009!

Messing Around

I made a lightbox tonight!  (can you believe it, Beth?)  It still needs some tweaking and I still need some help with my picture taking (like:  I don’t understand why some of the pictures turn out yellow, which means that I have to photoshop them, which means that sometimes it distorts the colors of some of my stitch markers):

I’m hoping to get this to work, ’cause I want to post new stitch markers to my Etsy shop!

Photography technique suggestions and constructive criticism welcomed!

Oopsies….done!

I made another item from the fabulous Craft Leftovers! 

It’s an “oopies”…Kristin designed this to hold her treo, or her blackberry, or something techno like that.  The button eyes hold the flap shut.  I haven’t decided what to put in here, but I’m thinking credit cards, etc. — totally fun, easy and quick!  Instant gratification!!!

Christmas….COMPLETE!

Whew!  The house is a wreck, the children are deliriously overtired from a day full of opening presents and playing and I’m happy to say I made it through another Christmas!  Tomorrow is a full day of work for me.  You would think the holidays would bring slow days full of cheerful customers, but it’s the opposite.  I think it’s because we’re heading to year-end and there are loose-ends for everyone to tie up.

I leave you with a picture from earlier this week.  It was taken at the end of the driveway.  Notice how tall the snow pile is to the right of my oldest?  To give you a comparison, he’s 4′8″.  We have nowhere for the snow to go!

Hope everyone’s Christmas was good!

Shoplifters of the World, Unite

Shoplifters of the world, hand it over, hand it over, hand it overrrrrr….

WHAT GROUP SANG THIS SONG?  PEOPLE!  MY YOUTH!!!!  THE SMITHS!!!  Craig just picked up a box set of the Smiths…oh, how lovely.  I was transported back to being a 17 year old wearing black, feeling lots of angst…I played it extra loud on the cd player when I took Cole to spend the night at Grams’ house.    I asked him if he liked it and I got a “mmm….not really” but in a mild voice.  It wasn’t total disgust, so that’s good.  C’mon, Morrissey had a mean falsetto! William, William, it was reallllllllly nothing….

I finished a short project!

2 Dishcloths!  From Craft Leftovers.  What’s cool about these dishcloths:  you use feltable scruffy wool/jute along with cotton yarn, so that it felts when you wash it and it makes a sort of scrubby to use on your pans.  The first one contained lots of errors:

Yargh!  There was one teeny error in the pattern (which the patternmaker, my crafty buddy, got back to me immediately with a pattern correction when I emailed her – thanks, Kristin!) and you can also see when I slipped stitches, I kept the yarn on whatever side I was knitting on.  WRONG! (Don’t worry, folks, this one will still be used-it shall not be a misfit dishcloth!)

Let’s look at the second one I made (with yarn all from the same kit, so nice!):

HOO-HAH!  Can you see the cute checkerboard?  That’s the scruffy wool/jute.  This took me so little time and  I busted some stash in the closet.  I highly recommend this  to make as a gift.  If you only know how to crochet, she’s got a pattern in the package for that, too.  And one kit makes two scrubby cloths.  Perfect!

In other pathetic life news:  I continued my “bad parent” streak by missing Lainie’s final tumbling recital on Friday afternoon.  Craig was there, though.  I did remember to go to Lainie’s parent teacher conference at the preschool on Thursday.  One up, one down.  And I began buying my own stocking gifts today.  I used three 50% off coupons at Joann’s to buy cool books – one on green living, one on cute japanese sewing projects and another one on what I would call “making your life cuter”.  Something about domesticity.  Even if I’m pathetic (and I know those books won’t fit in my stocking), at least I’m getting something I really like, right?

Organization

I spent 3 hours on Monday reorganizing my craft, yarn, and WIP areas.  I’m not sure if they look much different, but they are more organized and compact.  I consented to moving my sewing machine and felted sweater scraps to the basement, so that freed up some space.  Here are some shots (but like I said, not sure there’s much difference):

(crappy lighting alert – it’s winter in the midwest, we don’t get much sun)

BEFORE                                                                                                                                                        
AFTER (still looks messy, doesn’t it?  But these are my WIP’s and all of my beads (and some fabric which needs to be made into valences).  I actually moved a bunch of stuff into this room from Lainie’s bedroom)
BEFORE (Lainie’s closet and blanket chest a/k/a stuffed dog storage bin).

AFTER (blanket chest has nothing on it and while the closet still looks messy, it’s MUCH better than before. The green bin holds fabric but the rest of them?  Yarn, baby, yarn! Plus the above shelf has yarn, as well.

I have a picture of the “before” craft closet, but not the after, so I’m not showing it to you.  After spending all of this time on these three areas, though, I did realize that I have an awful lot of yarn and craft stuff.  (“ya think?” says my stich ‘n bitch club – yes, ladies, I know, I know!) So, it’s time to get knitting.  And try to hold off on purchasing anything for awhile.  (Good Luck to me!)  I did pass up some sock yarn on the ravelry destash group today (regia sock yarn, a great price, too) so it’s small, baby steps for the yarn addict.

I’m knitting my first kit from my crafty buddy, Kristin!  It’s the Perfect Dishcloth…Knit Style.  I’m having fun just working on a small time committment project and knowing that I’m using something from the yarn closet!

The wind – it is a howlin’

It’s 1:03 a.m. and I’m listening to the wind howl against the back of our house.  It’s been sleeting for a good amount of time.  Considering it was in the 40’s tonight  when I went to knit night and the high tomorrow is supposed to be something ridiculous like 6 degrees, we’re definitely getting some sort of fierce weather system.  I’m picturing an ice rink tomorrow.  My biggest fear?  That school will be cancelled (I’m taking the day off).  I need peace and quiet tomorrow, darn it!  I’m planning to try and be productive.  No two hour naps like I took on Friday afternoon. 

Oh, Friday.  Remember how I took the afternoon off?  I did that because Lainie had her Christmas program at daycare at 4:00.  I picked Cole up right after school and headed over to the center.  Got there at 3:50 p.m. (plenty of time to get a good seat).  I walk into the class and the kids are eating  cookies.  I look around and stupidly ask:  “did I miss it?”  I DID.  I had the time wrong - it was at 3:30 p.m.  I missed Lainie singing Christmas songs while wearing reindeer antlers outlined in glitter.  As the shock and  guilt was washing over me, one of her teachers made sure to come over to me and say “it was posted all week”.  Yeah, I know it was, Miss Diane. I thought it’d be the last class, since she’s in the oldest one.  WRONG.  I can never remember what her classroom letter is.  So, I felt like crying.  Cole sensed it because he stood there and said “it’s okay, Mom” and rubbed my arm.  (awwwww)  It put me in a funk for the rest of the night.  As people have reminded me, it’s not like it’s the only one I’ll ever see.  There will be more.  It’s just….I missed it.  NOBODY was there for her!  Oh well.

This weekend I knit 3 charity squares for “Afghans for Pine Ridge Reservation”, a group on Ravelry.  There’s a lady that seams squares together to make afghans for the poorest Indian reservation in the country (South Dakota).   I’m pretty much finished with all of the things I had planned knitwise for Christmas and the projects waiting for me are the log cabin blanket, the baby blanket and a sweater I haven’t picked  up in months.  Man, none of that seems very appealing.  So, I don’t know what I’m going to do.  I think I will try to organize my craft stuff, which is spread over 2 closets and a corner of my bedroom.  The yarn stash continues to grow (Lainie’s closest) and so does the craft stuff (Cole’s closet) plus all my WIP’s (knit and craft wise) are spread out between the corner of my bedroom and on top of the blanket chest of Lainie’s bedroom.  It has me feeling distracted.  But I also committed myself to making new stockings for the kids and I bought all the stuff to do it.  The clock is ticking…why can’t I get motivated to start that?

Tomorrow:  PRODUCTIVITY!  I will get something done!  Just….what?  Stay tuned.

Proof that my children and I really do have fun

take that, naysaying husband!!!

Cole, what book are we reading right now?

Yeah, baby!  #7!!!!

Lainie, what’s your favorite picture in your book?

She’s crazy about that snowman book.  We read it every night!

Lainie’s much slower eating her ice cream before bed.  So Cole starts messing around.  Single bunny ears:

Double bunny ears:

Hey, what are you doing with my knitting needles?

Now, children, REALLY!!!

Then they came around to the other side of the table:

Such silly children, they make me giggle:

Good news!  After the heathens went to bed, I packaged 21 ornaments (christmas gifts) for my coworkers.  I think the final breakdown is 8  felted sweater wreaths, 7 beaded snowflakes and 6 knitted socks.  I took a picture of the socks in all their glory:

I’m glad that tonight was a fun night with the kids, because my work week has sort of sucked.  I have some troublesome accounts that are acting up (that would be 3 or so, all in varying degrees of difficulty), then I had two customers pass away.  One was one of my favorite customers.  Just an old retired farmer, always cracking a joke and a smile.   Today was his funeral.   In the trust business, people come and go (as in they pass away) – it’s sort of what goes along with the territory.  You learn to treat death a bit differently.  But this one, well, he was special.  And it weighs heavy on my heart.  But tomorrow is my last private foundation meeting for the year and I’m taking the afternoon off!  Whoo hoo!

I’m hoping to do get my mother’s presents wrapped and mailed, baking started, and some more little gifts made this weekend.  Happy Friday, everyone!!!

Goodies!

I actually won a contest awhile back on Knit and Purl Mama. I guessed how many skeins of yarn she would purchase at Rhinebeck (13). I got some awesome goodies (so much, my goodness!):

Really neat Cascade yarn and needles!  Oh my!  This is a cotton yarn, so I was thinking about maybe doing a nice washcloth for my stepmother and put it in a basket of bath goodies for Christmas?  Still debating…

A Robyn’s Nest magnet (which looks sturdy and will be perfect for holding up school papers on the fridge), stitch markers + homemade stitch markers and a groovy skeleton!

Lots of fun stuff here…a pencil that Lainie has co-opted, along with lollipops for the kids, lip balm (so very useful in our 18 degree weather) and a cute little bug thing that puts a smile on my face every time I look at it!

And finally – my goodness, what a bunch of great loot! – a necklace and earrings made for me!  It’s so funny, too – before Lainie was born, my sister in law always addressed our cards, etc. to “c3″ just like that (except she put the 3 at the top of the c) – which stood for me, Craig and Cole.  This is so cute!  I can’t wait to try it out!!!

Finally, I bought some cool sock yarn from her shop.  It’s in the “Robyn’s Nest” colorway, which is ZEN GARDEN (ooh!) and so soft.  These colors (blue and gold)remind me of the high school where Craig graduated from (about 30 minutes south of here):

I thought the exchange rate was really good, too (Robyn lives in Canada).  Robyn, thanks so much!  It really made my day.