Did someone say contest?

I love contests, so I thought I'd pass on the fiber contest love here. If you go to enter any of these, could you please tell them you heard about it here. Since I found these contests through Ravelry, maybe you could say something to the effect of "I found this contest from Ravelry's CarissaMarie on her blog at http://creativecarissa.blogspot.com."

In a lot of instances not only do you get to enter a contest for free stuff but I get an extra entry for telling you. And since I was nice enough to spread the contest love, don't you want to do the same back? I thought so. :-)

Anyway, check these out:

Free Soy Fiber for Spinning at Trampled by Geese (ends Jan 31)

Free Stitch markers and Yarn at TamiKnits (ends Feb 9)

The Week in Review

Atonement

What a fabulous movie. Husband and I went to see it on Monday since he had the day off. I have a major thing for WWII movies and this one definitely did not disappoint.

I don't want to give too much away here but although the story was sad, the writing and acting were spectacular. Amazing. Keira Knightly and James McAvoy were fabulous. I highly recommend it.

Just make sure to bring your ID card since it's rated R. "Oh, I don't need to bring my ID Card," you say? What's that? You're in your mid twenties? Well so am I and I got carded. I haven't been carded to see a rated R movie in 10 years!

I'm sure it has everything to do with my new hairstyle (it's a fun, trendy cut with streaks of purple) but still, Joe made fun of me for the rest of the day.




Death by Socks

I finished my socks up on Saturday evening but had to wait until Tuesday to get them out in the mail. Here they are in all their super bright and cheery glory:

I know that self-striping yarn isn't for everyone, but I quite like them. I'm also pretty proud of how identical I was able to make them (one benefit or machine printed yarn).

Two days after I sent them off to my victim in Canada (stop laughing Cambria), I recieved my death socks in the mail:

Aren't they purdy? They are a merino, cashmere, nylon blend from The Knittery in the "Water Lilies" colorway. My assasin, Bev, did a great job and they fit great; which is no small feat (feat, get it? Phil would be proud. Sassy will not be) considering my feet are rather large and she wasn't able to try them on me until she sent them off. Thanks, Bev!

Knitty Surprise


The Mid-Winter Knitty Surprise went live on Thursday. There have been times where knitty publishes patterns I just don't get (Cleaves anyone?) but THIS PATTERN knocked my socks off. I. Must. Have. It. In fact I went and bought the yarn for it yesterday (shhh. Don't tell Husband). I'm trying to decide if I should start it today or wait until my drops jacket is done. I'm leaning toward starting it b/c I think it may go faster than the jacket (which seems to be coming along oh-so-slowly)

Why I love being a Pampered Chef Consultant: Reason #75

Free stuff! I earned some of the new Spring Products for free for my sales in November and they arrived on Thursday as well. Hooray! I think that may be one of my favorite things about doing Pampered Chef...I have literally hundreds of dollars of super high quality kitchen products that I earned FOR FREE. Nice.


Adventures in Crochetlandia
While I learned how to crochet when I was about 12 or so, I never really did too much with it beyond scarves and either edgings or embelishments for my knitted items. I found this pattern while cruising around on Ravelry yesterday, though, and decided they would be perfect for a certain someone's birthday coming up today. So I went in search of fun, tropical, summery colors and created a whole flip flop wardrobe for her wine (or martini) glasses.

I'm not normally one to knit or crochet coasters (because once you start making coasters, the next thing you know, you're knitting toilet paper cozies and airfreshener dolls) but I really like these so I hope she does, too.

Cool like Cupcakes

The Death socks are coming along nicely (I'm done with one and 80% done with the other) so in the name of taking a break lest me fingers fall off, check out this sweet cupcake gear:

Ceramic Strawberry Pink Cupcake Cookie Jar Container W/ Cherry On top (as seen on Etsy)
I think this is pretty cool. The only two things keeping me from getting it are the price (reasonable considering someone made this by hand but still out of my budget for a knick knack) and not really having any space for it. Pampered Chef is coming out with some pretty sweet pink products in May, though, so we may do a cupcake theme in the kitchen or bathroom this Spring.



Cupcake Print Rainboots (as seen on Target.com)
Love them! In fact, I have a pair. They make me happy. :-)




Cupcake Bling (I found these on emitations.com)






Cupcake Undies (sold by Nordstrom)

The latter comes wrapped up looking like this:

*Sigh* If only cupcakes had become the thing BEFORE I got married. We could have had a cupcake themed bridal shower with cupcake-themed undies. Nice.




Alrighty, I best be off to bed. As I go, I will leave you with this thought: www.cupcakeclothing.net sells NOT ONE ITEM with a frigging cupcake on it. Not a one. I feel like protesting.


Find more cool cupcake gear at Target, Nordstom, Johnny Cupcakes, CafePress and Amazon. Cheers!

Armed for War

I am now officially a compulsive e-mail checker.

Death by Socks begins as soon as the pattern posts....which is whenever the organizer happens to post it....any time today. And now that it's after midnight, well, I want to be the first to get the pattern since my victim lives in Ontario and the person living for me only lives one state north of me. :-S My experience working for a book distributor two jobs ago taught me that mail to Canada is SLOW. The good news is that mail to Canada goes through Ontario so my victim will get her socks faster than if she lived in British Columbia (even though BC is closer geographically).

For those of you who have not heard of DbS or Sock Wars, it's an assasin-style game where each knitter is assigned a victim. Your goal is to knit your socks (all knitters knitting from the same pattern) as fast as you can and mail them to your victim to "kill" them. Once they are dead, they mail you the yarn and unfinished socks there were working on for their victim, which you finish and send to their victim to kill them, who sends you their unfinished socks......it goes on and on like this until you either die and are out or emerge victorious.

I'm curious to see how it goes. At any rate, as ambitious as I am, I'm not too optimistic that I'll last very long. My assassin either talks a good game or knits very fast, and lives pretty close to me. Once the socks she's killing me with are done, it will take 1-2 days to get here while mine will take at least a week to get to my Canadian victim.

If I die early in DbS, I can join Sock Wars, which starts in March (assuming I decide I like the whole knitting-as-a-game thing). There is some talk on SW about people in previous competitions which have made their socks out of worsted in order to get them done faster. This, in my estimation, is cheating. I own a pair of worsted weight socks and they aren't good for anything but hiking socks. And while they are pretty decent hiking socks, I don't really hike enough to make good use of them. That and if I'm making socks with skinny yarn on tiny needles, I'm going to be miffed if I'm offed by someone using worsted and size 7's.

Anyway....that's my sockerly rant. Better go check my e-mail again. Wish me luck

The Laziest Blogger Ever

Today I was accused of being the laziest blogger ever. And while I don't think I am THE laziest (I've seen blogs that post once every 3 months or so), Kortney is right in that I've been slacking.

So in an effort to embark on a massive catch-up session, here we go.....

Spinning














A while ago I decided I wanted to learn to spin. In July or August I met a woman at the fair who said she'd teach me on her wheel but then we moved to a town about an hour away from where she and her knitting group are and I lost her contact info in the move to boot. Then I started looking around online for local places that taught you how to spin. They were either kind of far away, too expensive, or their class schedules weren't going to work for me.

Then I started poking around on the internet some more. I found some videos on you-tube and some very nicely written tutorials. I didn't have time to play with spinning much due to Christmas knitting deadlines but I did make a drop spindle out of a dowel and a wooden toy wheel. After my spindle languished in my craft closet for a few weeks, I finally revisited it the night before Christmas Eve and tried to spin dryer lint. While I wasn't able to make singles with it, I saw how this spinning thing worked and found some cotton balls to try instead....and it worked! I was making yarn with cotton balls! Well, technically I was making singles, but I was so excited I spun all the cotton balls in the house (which was only maybe 10 or so). The next day I went to Walmart and bought two huge bags of cotton balls, one white and one blue, thinking I could make variegated yarn with the blue and white. For some reason, though, the blue ones don't spin very well. Or maybe they spin just fine, but I can't spin them very well. They made very slubby singles.

So spinning cotton balls was a fun and economical teach-myself-to-spin adventure but now I'm ready to move on to wool. :-) I just need to find a shop that can sell me some wool.


Punk Rock Knitters
Sometime right before Christmas, I inherited moderator responsibilities for the Punk Rock Knitters. We're getting ready to do a Punk Rock Knit-Along. If anyone is interested in KAL'ing or joining the PRK's, contact me through the Punk Rock Knitters site.


Christmas Knitting
Since I can't really show off Christmas knitting before Christmas, I will show you now.

Exhibit A: Christmas Knitting for my Dad
The Hat is the Hot Head Hat from the Original Stitch n' Bitch. The scarf is a simple garter stitch scarf knit longways in the same yarn. I used Lion Brand Thich N Quick in Black and Pine and maybe size 11 needles?

Exhibit B: Christmas Knitting for my mom
These are Fetching from Knitty. I used yarn I recycled from one of my grandmother's sweater's (my mom's mom). Since it was super skinny (I think somewhere between cobweb and laceweight), I held 4 strands together and knit them on size 5 DPNs. When I gave them to my mom, she cried. Dan (my step dad) said it was good crying, but I still felt like a total ass because you're not supposed to make your mom cry on Christmas. Ever. I think she likes them or at least I hope she does. I haven't seen her since Christmas, so I'm not sure if she's wearing them but I think my little sister (the 10 year old) will if she doesn't like them.

Exhibit C: Hat for My Brother-in-Law

There's no picture for this one because I'm having a hard time getting my sister to send me one (we didn't see them on Christmas or else I would have taken a picture myself). I wanted to take a picture of it on my husband's head as a model, but Joe's head is apparently much larger than Kelly's, so I'm still waiting. Anyway, it's the Half Pipe Hat from the new Debbie Stoller Son of Stitch N' Bitch book made in Lion Brand worsted Wool Ease in black. I made him a hat last year, too, but it was a little too small so he never wore it and my nephew wears it now instead. Cambria says this one fits much better and he likes it.

Exhibit D: Booties for my new baby niece
This is the only decent picture I have of these (and it's from my camera phone, so it's hardly amazing). Hopefully in April, I will have better pictures of them being modeled on tiny baby feet. The yarn is Moda Dea Baby Talk in lilac and the pattern is Dainty Bootees from Knitting for Two by Erika Knight.


That's it for Christmas knitting. I was pretty busy this winter so a lot of people got non-knit handmade gifts or store bought gifts this year.

Jack's First Christmas
This year was Jack's first Christmas and he made out like a bandit. He got all kind of treats and toys and clothes. Our house has started to look like doggy toy central. One of his new toys is a log that you put little baby squirrels in and your dog is supposed to take them out. So up and down the hall, we have baby squirrels, a squeaky dog, a gingerbread man and a log. I think we might need to teach Jack how to "clean up" and get him to put all his toys in a basket or something.

As far as clothes, he got the red and white collar he's wearing in the picture above (it had bells at one point but I think Jack moves around so much that they fell off) and this awesome hoodie from my sister and her family:
If you can't read it, it says "Punk Rock Pooch." Love it!



I haven't taken pictures yet of the things the humans got for Christmas this year, but let's just say that it was a very cupcakey Christmas. :-) That will have to be a post at a later time.


So this post is getting kind of long. We shall end here and when we return, I will tell you about adventures in Oregon with my cousin and his girlfriend, Erin.