happy 1950's birthday Kate!

Ok, so I know this image looks odd.... but I wanted to put up one I took at our friend Kate's birthday party and I didn't really have a chance to get any good shots. So I was playing around with the filters in Photoshop (which I usually avoid) and thought this one actually gave the rather "blah" image I took some interest factor.

The filter is called water paper and I guess it's supposed to mimic the use of watercolors and how the paint bleeds across the page. Overall, I think it makes the picture look like it's from the 50's. So, it's nothing much, but I wanted to share it and wish Kate happy birthday!

new project: malabrigo hand thingies

So, I just wanted to share my newest project with you. I'm making malabrigo hand thingies because they have a similar look to the pattern of my hat. So far I'm about halfway done with one.

I just love this yarn too. It's so pretty and the color varies slightly from more pink to purple throughout the hank. I've made a few booboos and frogged it a couple times, but I'm pretty happy with this rendition. Well, I'm happy enough not to want to rip it out again and start all over anyway.

So that's what has been keeping me occupied lately.

birthday shenanigans

This was just one of the indignities I was forced to suffer this Tuesday when the fam got together for my birthday dinner. I knew something was coming.... mostly because dad had called and warned me that my torture was imminent. I also had a tiara with flashing lights and feathers that had a big "30" written on it. The candle pictured is actually a very specific kind of retaliation for what I did to his cake one year.

Let's just say colored green sugar made the top look like AstroTurf and there was a gravestone candle involved... I'll just leave it at that. Also, my mother I'm sure played a part as well. I have tortured her with such illustrious birthday hijinx announcing her 50th birthday on Medway Cable Access, actually putting 50 candles on her cake (all lit) and then giving her a birthday card referencing the fire dept. being ready for her cake to be lit.

Is that wrong?!? Nah..... so I guess I had this coming right?

ta-daa!!!

Guess what I finished today.... SQUEEE!!!!

I never could have done it without Tara who suffered through my asking her questions all day yesterday through a few hours of knitting and many of tinking (only on my part). I was giving myself a hard time about this hat becaase it seemed to be taking me so long to do. But, I just realized that I started it on the 18th, only 8 days ago. That's not too bad, especially for my first hard and a hard to understand pattern.

This project was full of firsts: knitting a hat (1), in the round (2), using both knit and purl stitches (3), decreasing my stitches (4), using double pointed needles (5), and learning how to make centered double decreases (6). Ok, I think I need a non-learning intensive project now so my brain doesn't start coming out my nose, lol!

As I said Tara was a huge help as well as the staff of Black Sheep for fixing one of my bigger mistakes. A great reference that I used today (when there was no really available to help out) was this Knitting Glossary on KnittingHelp.com.

Anyway, I'm really happy with it and probably won't take it off for days.... just because I can :-)

working on knitting during lunch... industrious or downright stooopid?

So, I started working on my hat again this evening. I was looking at the pattern as I normally do and something just didn't look right. Then I got paranoid. I went back and carefully removed some stiches thinking I had miscounted, then I started in pattern again.

No, still didn't look right. Finally, I noticed that it looked like I dropped a stitch somehow along the way when I was tinking (un-knitting or knitting backwards). So, I tried to fix ithwith what I was hoping was success, but I counted my stitches and I now have 92. Ok.... I started with 90 and any addition other then in 3’s wouldn’t work because the pattern would be off. AAAARRGGGGGG!!!!!

I so should have never brought it to work and knitted during lunch. I knew somethign aweful would happen if I did that… and surprise, it did :-( Now that my panic has waned, I started thinking and I probably just did a couple yarn overs when I was talking to people during lunch. Then when tinking made the sitches look uneven, so I thought I dropped a stitch and in the process probably did drop some or add some.

Regardless of the situation, there is nothing I can do or Youtube can show me tonight, so I’m going to Black Sheep during lunch tomorrow to ask them to help me. Otherwise I’m going to go insane.

This hat was going so well this time.... at least taking the pictures calmed me down. It looks great other than the train wreck of a job I pulled today.

hey look, I finally got a nice sunset!

I was so mad this morning! I work up extremely early for me and said "hell, I'll stay up and head into work early and get some things done on the way." I was driving down the hill by Ferjulian's when I saw the most gorgeous sunrise ever. One of those really dark moody ones... Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to slam on the blinker and pull over anywhere so I missed my opportunity.

This has happened to me so many times I can't even count the total. So, pissed that I had missed the cool picture I went to work and went about my day. On the way home however, I struck gold!

So, here is my first sunset in like forever... I was beginning to despair ever finding some neat to photograph ever again (well, other than my crafty creations).

the solution to creative laziness

One of the things I'm always giving myself a hard time about is that I only seem to find time to stamp when I am taking one of my monthly classes at Ink About It or if I am reproducing a card from one of the classes. I'm almost never creative on my own!

So, I was surfing the interwebs a couple weeks ago and found the A*Muse Lounge, an online community/haven for lovers of all things A*Muse. I was just looking through the posts in the forums and found that they are doing challenges. Well... I think I finally have the answer to my stamping laziness!

So, needless today I finally registered today and sat down to make my challenge card. The challenge was: something new. I just picked up this tree set last week (after one of my classes, sigh), so I thought this little tree was a good candidate.