Ten on Tuesday: 10 Favorite Snacks

1) Nature Valley Nut Clusters - Just found these when I was picking up as stack at a gas station a few weeks ago.  I was shocked to find such a healthy option.

2) Sensible Portions Veggie Chips and Straws - Another gas station find.  Perhaps HESS should be the place I start looking when I crave new and different snack foods... two out of ten favorites isn't bad. 

3) Stop & Shop Bruscetta Salad on french bread - Had my frst taste of this snack in a long time this weekend.  I totally forgot how yummy it is.  Too bad it seems like a seasonal item at my store.

4) Hood Cottage Cheese with Pineapple - A great sweet and creamy treat.  Almost feels like I'm eating dessert... almost.

5) Quaker Chewie Snack Bars - Good to throw in your pocket when you are running around and very busy.  I really like the chocolate chip ones.

6) Granny Smith Apples and Peanut Butter - Just the right amount of tart, sweet and salty!

7) Blue Diamond Bold Flavors Almonds - My favorites are Wasabi & Soy and Smokehouse.  Very filling and good for you if ou can stick to the serving size.

8) Celery Sticks and Blue Cheese Dressing - A nod to Rick on the Knit Wits Podcast... I must admit this snack is fantastic so long as you aren't trying to record a podcast while you're eating.  Best podcasting bit ever!  Sir, your snark is epic!

9) Bagel, Pepperoni and Blue Cheese Dressing - Might as well continue with the blue cheese theme!  This snack goes back to when I used to do live action role play (LARPing) with some of my friends back in college.  We'd pack up and head down to CT for a weekend and live off of a cooler until Sunday night when we would leave and go out for dinner.  This bagel sandwich was great because you only needed to refridgerate it after the packages were opened and most of the time there wasn't any leftovers to worry about in the first place. 

10) Curry English Muffins - My mom used to make these for us on Christmas eve and they are fantastic!  They are a mixture of olives, curry and cheese served on top of an english muffic and toasted.  So very yummy and a Loranz Family Tradition.

A Walk on the Beach

This past weekend, hubbie and I were able to get away for the first time since Christmas.  While we didn't have a particularly busy weekend planned, we did get to spend some quality time together and relax.  We started off  with a nice walk on the beach.  While it was still a bit chilly and windy, it was a nice walk and I was able to finally take some pictures of something that wasn't snow or full of the blandness of color that winter provides.  

Self portraiture at it's finest... in high winds, lol.



No problem!  Too damn cold to swim anyway :)

A tiny jetty in the middle of the beach.  Perfect for perching AND taking project photos!

I finally was able to get a nice picture of my finished Checkers Scarf crocheted in Cherry Tree Hill in the limited edition colorway Afflication Anyone?

After our little beach excusrion we went home and worked on our craft of choice.  Brian worked on his Warhammer 40K minis.  This is his form or relaxation, whereas I spent my time crocheting and reading.  Then we went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.  It was a wonderful day and I can't wait until we can do something like this again!



Enough Love to Go Around Afghan Block

After about a week of this block absolutely kicking my butt... I got some much needed help from a fellow crocheter at the FiberKnots weekly meetup last night.    Ok, so me having problems with this block shouldn't exactly be surprising.  The description for the month's block did say that this block is not for beginners.... meh...  I like a good challenge!  While making this block didn't so smoothly, it didn't take all that long either.  From getting stuck on the beginning of row 2 last week to finishing everything up tonight, I'd say this block took me about 4-5 hours to complete, which I don't think is too shabby.

The pattern I used was the 2011 Crochet Block a Month filler square for January which was Enough Love to Go Around by Penny Davidson.  While I started with her directions, I have to say that I didn't follow her pattern for long.  Unfortunately I found her directions extremely hard to understand, which could be due to my inexperience, so instead I followed a rewrite of the pattern by BlameCrayons which you can find on her blog here.  I thought her directions were quite clear and relatively easy to follow even for me. 

Now that I have three 12" blocks done, I'm really starting to understand just how big an afghan made of 24 12" inch blocks and 12 6" blocks will be.  Actually, I think I need to do some math to figure out how things will go together... or if I have the correct number of square to make things work for that matter.  Well, it's too late now.  My brain went into sleep mode so figuring out a diagram for the afghan would be nothing but an exercise in futility.  Night all!

Work In Progress Wednesday: The 6 month old Beginner's Toe Up Socks

So... I kinda started these socks back in September of 2010 as part of a knit along.  Then, well... real life hit and I kind of lost track of the whole "knitting along" concept.  Oh well!  Honestly I'm really not a sock knitter to begin with.  Of the two pairs of socks I have attempted to make in 3 years, I've only completed one sock!  It was knit from the top down and I made the cost on edge way too tight, so I can't even pull the darn thing all the way up my leg >:-(  It bums me out so much that I don't want to even attempt it's match.  I think that original sock might just get used as decoration somewhere rather than fulfill it's purpose as a foot covering. 

Now, the sadly neglected knit along socks are going to be another story.  I am determined to finish them.  I even have both of them started!  Also, they are knit from the toe up, so there won't be that nasty too tight to fit over my calf problem. Back when the knit along started I was smart and cast on and finished the toe on both socks so I wouldn't get second sock syndrome and have yet another lonely foot covering.  So, as of right now I have the right sock completed up to where I will start the gusset increases so it fits over the arch of my foot. As for the left sock, I still have a few good inches before I get to that point.  I'm trying to work on the both in stages so they both get something finished before I start the next section.   So, hopefully in between all my crochet projects I'll be able to get these done in some semblance of a reasonable amount of time.  Only time will tell however.  Oh, in case you are curious, I am making them out of Plymouth Yarn's Happy Feet sock yarn in a variagated turquoise.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Favorite One Hit Wonders

Apparently there were quite a few one hit wonders in the 90's!  All of my favorites are from then, which I guess makes sense as that when I was in middle and high school, my musical formulative years so to speak.  And just so you know, I still adore all of these songs.... no matter how bad they might sound.  All the links go directly to a video of the song on YouTube, so feel free to listen to each.

1) Walking in Memphis - Mark Cohn

2) Life is a Highway - Tom Cochrane

3) Stay - Shakespeare's Sister

4) I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers

5) Breakfast at Tiffany's - Deep Blue Something

6) The Freshman - The Verve Pipe

7) Bittersweet Symphony -The Verve

8) Closing Time - Semisonic

9) Mambo No. 5 - Lou Bega

10) Three Little Pigs - Green Jelly

Well, that was a fun jaunt down memory lane.  I think I might have to make a new playlist in iTunes now!

Painting with Bleach and Luminarte Twinkling H2O's

A couple weeks ago I took a class with Jenn Shurkus, the creative chick, on painting with bleach on black card stock and then painting over the bleached areas with Luminarte's Twinkling H2O's to create a beautiful mottled stain glass effect.  You can see the cards I made during that class at the bottom of the post. I have been itching to play with all my lovely H2O's for quite some time now.  They have been reformulated, come in bigger containers and I have a whole mess of them that have been calling to me to start playing.  So, today I decided it was time to get my craft on and try this technique out at home.  

When I was looking around for some good candidates to stamp with and I found this gorgeous poinsettia stamp by Magenta I got last Christmas.  I ended up embossing it with a Versamark pad and some fine detail gold embossing powder since the leaves and petals were so intricate and fine.  Then I painted the whole thing with my standard issue grocery store bleach and sat down to wait.   

Now, the thing that's so hard about painting with bleach is that you don't exactly know how things are going to come out all the time.  your results can vary greatly depending on the bleach and card stock you are using.  I got pretty lucky with the card stock I bought today.  The bleach did work on it, but I wasn't totally happy with the amount of bleaching that occurred.  Compared to the painting I did in class with Jenn, the results today were much more subtle, which in turn made the final product look less like stained glass than I had hoped.  That's ok though, I'll just have to try out some different types of black card stock to see how they work.  I only had one option for paper today and considering, I'm reasonably happy with the results. 

Since the paper didn't lighten as much as I hoped, I ended up really layering on the H2O colors and trying to shade with them using some of the techniques I would normally use when working with copic markers such as shading by repeatedly going over one section after letting it dry.  I also was having a bit of a problem with my heat tool, which I use to emboss and dry the H2O's between coats.  It was the first time I had used it since I got it and it started smelling funny.  I looked carefully and the metal tip where the heat comes out was touching the protective covering around it rather than free floating.  I guess I'm going to have to invest in another heat tool soon... sadness.   

Anyway, if you want to learn more about Luminarte's Twinkling H2O's or their other products, you can check out the Luminarte Blog.  When I get better paper, I'll make sure to try this technique out again and share the results with you. 

Work in Progress Wednesday (just a bit late): Checkers Scarf

Since I've had so much going in lately, I decided to start a very simple crochet project that I could easily throw in my purse and have with me at all times. On Monday I started working on the Checkers Scarf by Sally Beaty in a special colorway of Cherry Tree Hill worsted weight superwash merino called Affliction Anyone?  This yarn is one of four different colored skeins I bought online from a hand dyer that based her colorways on MMORPG, The World of Warcraft.  This one is supposed to remind you of the colors of the warlock class and since most of you probably haven't played the game, I'll just tell you that the colors are spot on.  

I have been holding onto these four skeins of yarn for quite some time now because I wanted to use for a really good project because I literally can't get any more of the yarn.  The person who dyed it is no longer in business :(  Unfortunately, I only found out about her lovely yarn very close to when she stopped producing.  Oh well, you win some you lose some.  

I really like the pattern because a) it is really easy and therefore memorize-able and b) it's a basic granny square type look, but the way you turn each row makes the double crochets lean and look really interesting.  I should be able to finish this up this weekend since it really is so easy to work on.  This past week has just been so busy that I really haven't had any time tow work on it at all.  So, I'm just happy that I have as much done as I do.  It's also really nice to not have a deadline for something, seems like life has been filled by those lately.  Anyway, until we chat again... happy crafting!