Late Post

It's been a hectic few days for me, so hectic I've not had time to post. I'm usually annoyed when I can't post, so it's been bothering me. I've been busy at work and at home, and finally am settling down just a little before I start ramping up again for Thanksgiving.

Over the past weekend I threw together a last minute BBQ birthday party for my son, who turned 13 this year. He's never had a BBQ for a birthday because the weather is always gloomy, this is the first year it was about 80 degrees outside (amazing!) and so, he finally got his BBQ. I would've preferred more time to put it together, but it turned out great.

Last Friday, I went after work and immediately bought up the fresh carne asada, fresh chicken, and tortillas, etc. I buy from a grocery store called "Mi Pueblo", the meat I buy is prepared and marinated. It tastes delicious and is so tender and priced good! After leaving Mi Pueblo, I met up with my hubby and bought the remaining items at Safeway for a fresh salad, fresh potato salad, spanish rice, and chili beans, chips, dip, fresh salsa, and drinks. My son made up the menu, and I cooked it, everything but the meat, my hubby's department. Bright and early Saturday morning I went to Party City and bought a huge 1 & 3 silver balloons and a bunch of coordinating red and black balloons. Made a pit stop at Petco to pick up food for Rosie (big baby!), and also headed to Target to pick up supplies for the party, paper plates, cups, etc., and a quick bday gift "Call of Duty" Xbox 360 game, the latest one + 2 t-shirts.

We scheduled the party for 1:30 p.m., I got back from the stores at about 10:30 a.m., and started chopping all the fixings for the fresh salad, potato salad, spanish rice, chili beans, and fresh salsa. I make everything fresh, I don't buy prepared foods (rarely). All and all, I got everything done by 1 p.m. sharply and showered up. I was like a robot, zooming around the kitchen all day.

Here's my birthday boy, he's going through that awkward stage, braces, puberty (lol), but he's still my baby, even if he ummm...gets on my nerves *-)



That's my little Godson my son sitting next to my son.

These 2 silver balloons cost $10 each, over priced, but a nice touch for 13 years.





See my hubby? He's the one grilling it up, in the background is cousin Tura, holding his cell phone probably looking at sports scores and the white guy next to him is my husband's younger brother Mark. They don't look like brothers and their the complete opposite of each other. Oh and Rosie snuck in for a picture too.

Here's a better one of the party girl...



So what got done on my list?

--Get house clean and ready for Pop's 13th Bday party tomorrow (Sat) Phew!
--Order cake (last minute, I know!)
--Get BBQ food, carne asada, chicken, hot links, hot dogs, fresh salad, ingredients for potato salad, chili beans, chips, dip, soda...
--Send out about 8 packages of completed Traveling Scarve's sections (Whew!!) I swear I knitted 2 full scarve's this week. Each section I'm knitting is about 6 x 6, so maybe at least a scarf and 1/2. I'll be happy when these are in the mail. This got done, but I kind of screwed it up.. I'll share shortly
--Send out my Starbucks & Yarn Swap package, Tea Swap package, Glamour package
--Start stalking my new Christmas 2008 Swap spoilee
--Finish knitting my Pocket square for my Tech Square Afghan
--Forgot, make food for party bright and early Saturday... I'll be consuming many Venti White Mochas for this I missed out on the Starbucks 8(
--Buy last minute present for my son
--Take my daughter to get a trim before the party
--Go to Green Planet Yarn and buy some Alpaca Tweed yarn at $7.95 a skein! about 200 yds.! I've decided to go with this for my CPH.
--Start CPH 8-)
--Pay bills (uggh!) Kinda done
--Save the world 8-)


All in all my list kinda got done there's stuff I still have to do. In the middle of all this, I also volunteered to be an Angel for the Day of the Dead swap. I sent out my package Wednesday, so my spoilee should get her goods by tomorrow. I paired up with Monkijan on Ravelry, I sent Part 1 of a package and Monkijan will send Part 2 today. I put in 2 skeins/balls of yarn to make a Skull Cowl, one black O'Wool 100% Organic yarn and 1 Night Lights Glow in the Dark white yarn, plus the pattern, some fresh luxurious cocoa butter and bathe salts, some skulls and bones candies, a skull planter (a gift to me from the wonderful Devotiont2knit), some decorative post its, some Kahlua chocolates, and some other trinkets. Monkijan's will have more food goodies and more DOTD themed goodies. I think if your getting sent a package from an Angel because your swapper flaked, you deserve a bit more than the normal package!

As I noted above, I did get a bunch of TS scarf packages out, but I ended up sending 3 scarves to the wrong downstream. YIKES! I found out yesterday, basically for my TS#25 SO group, I had an original downstream, Kellygirl5 who I was sending to and then it changed to Denise. Well when I was frantically rushing to the post office on Monday, I looked through my saved Rav messages and found Kelly's address, not remembering I don't send to her no more. Well, Kelly is going to work the scarves as normal and send them to Denise who will then send to Kelly's downstream. What a mess I created but at least there's an easy way of fixing it. I know not to make that mistake again.

I also got out my seedling for the Traveling Scarves Group #42 Tweed Heads. I went with a brown tweed yarn from O'Wool 100% Organic. It is a very pretty brown and I went with the "Mock Cable" pattern which I'm loving, it's kinda cool cause it really does seem like real cables.





I think I'm going to just love this Tweed Heads group, I've already got one new section from Cristi-Leal, and the tweed she used is pretty! Is there really any tweed that isn't?

Until tomorrow 8)

Swaps and TGIF

First off, I'm so thankful it's finally Friday! I did have this past Tuesday off in honor of Veteran's Day, but the remaining days after just seemed to drag on, literally!

My list for this weekend is:

--Get house clean and ready for Pop's 13th Bday party tomorrow (Sat)
--Order cake (last minute, I know!)
--Get BBQ food, carne asada, chicken, hot links, hot dogs, fresh salad, ingredients for potato salad, chili beans, chips, dip, soda...
--Send out about 8 packages of completed Traveling Scarve's sections (Whew!!) I swear I knitted 2 full scarve's this week. Each section I'm knitting is about 6 x 6, so maybe at least a scarf and 1/2. I'll be happy when these are in the mail.
--Send out my Starbucks & Yarn Swap package, Tea Swap package, Glamour package
--Start stalking my new Christmas 2008 Swap spoilee
--Finish knitting my Pocket square for my Tech Square Afghan
--Forgot, make food for party bright and early Saturday... I'll be consuming many Venti White Mochas for this *-)
--Buy last minute present for my son
--Take my daughter to get a trim before the party
--Go to Green Planet Yarn and buy some Alpaca Tweed yarn at $7.95 a skein! about 200 yds.! I've decided to go with this for my CPH.
--Start CPH 8-)
--Pay bills (uggh!)
--Save the world 8-)

My list is long and I'm probably leaving out a lot of things, but I've got to try and make it happen. It is going to be a turning point for me with my son, who will be 13 years on the 19th of this month. Once he hits that 13, I will officially have 2 teenagers, no more babies, even though they still act like toddlers, well sometimes.

The years are flying by so fast with my kids, my daughter who's 15 right, only has 3 years until she's 18, which is freaking me out, and my son, only 5. I will have 2 adult children by the time I hit my mid-30's. It's been quite an experience raising them, and growing with them as I obviously started young (do the math). I wouldn't recommend starting as young as I did, but in retrospect there are alot of advantages to it, as well as disadvantages. I would repeat it again if I had the choice. It is a harder road to take, but if you can make it through it is definitely worth it. My hubby and I are both looking forward to our mid-30's because we hope and plan to spend alot of time doing traveling, in small fragments, like 2 days here or 3 days there. It's amazing how your born by youself, in a way, you do have your family your Mother at the very least, but as soon as your 18 years old (for most people) your on your own in a world alone working or going to school or just doing what you want. When you have kids you start your own little circle of life and it's just really amazing as the kids grow how you in a sense create this micro-society with it's own culture, habits, you name it. Maybe it's me, I think way to much, but it is a pretty fascinating experience.

In other Swappy news, I'm sad so very sad to say that my "Day of the Dead" Swap I participated in has turned out bad. I've been in more than a few swaps and this is the first I've encountered this. It's upsetting and you'll be upset when I tell you. Basically my "spoilee" who I was spending time getting to know and putting a package together for, has seemed to "fall off of the earth", literally. I had been in constant communication with her since the swap started back in August, and she was so nice, then after our last chit-chat via PM on Ravelry on 10/29/08, it's been total silence. I've gotten no response from email's, PM's, blog comments to her blog, nothing. I sent my DOTD package to her at the end of the swap, got a delivery confirmation of 11/6/08, and there's been absolutely no acknowledgement from her. I've been stalking the DOTD swap thread in "The Odd Ducks" group on Ravelry, and still nothing. I finally sent a note to the Swap organizer, and sadly she magic linked me today to inform me that myself and another member of the swap have something in common, my spoilee is her spoiler, and besides my spoilee just not acknowledging my package sent, there was also no package sent to out to the other member in the swap. My spoilee didn't send her spoilee anything and hasn't responded to anything.

I'm in denial of this, I'm holding out hope that maybe there's a valid reason she's not responded? Could there be people out there that pretend to be nice just to score free stuff? Isn't that a horrible thing to do? Even though this has burned me, I'll still join swaps, and know and hope that not all swappers are like this. This is obviously the ugly side of swapping but the good side outweighs the bad. You get to meet others who share the same love of fibery things as you, you meet friends, you get fun surprises, and overall your heart grows bigger for it.

I'm going to make a suggestion to the swap organizer of DOTD who has admitted that for some reason the DOTD swap has been hit with a good amount of flakes this time, that possibly there's some type of a swap reference check made when people join swaps. Maybe they can give references from other swaps they've joined to account for their swap worthiness, what do you think? I'm kind of for it, but at the same time it's kind of a like a credit check, and I'm usually against those. Because of this turn out, I'm glad it's Friday, and an end to the week I found out I was burned in the DOTD swap.

Enough of that, let's get onto some goodies! If you remember I missed my Skein Lane Retreat 2008 this past October because my Grandfather fell ill and things weren't looking good, thankfully he's healthy now!

Well I got in touch with Carolyn from Skein Lane afterwards and she is just awesome! There was a "Cable Pillow" project for everyone to make at the Retreat, and she offered to send me the pattern, goodies, and yarn for the project to boot! Isn't that awesome!
I got my package yesterday, and the yarn is greeny good, I can't wait to make this project not that I need another project.







Check out these cute "Hand-made" labels!



Carolyn is just so sweet to have sent me this, I'd also like to wish her doggy good luck in getting better. I would go crazy if anything happened to my doggy, so I understand what she's going through. Let's send her good thoughts!

Last, but not least, I have so many Traveling Scarves that I've finished that will go to the post today, but I didn't bother taking any pictures of most of them because I didn't have time, however I did have time to take a snapshot of this scarf. It's owner is "Gramma's" on Ravelry, and it's been flagged as a quick turn around. Gramma provided her own yarn, some red malabrigo and blue malabrigo, it is very pretty!

Here's my contribution to this lovely soft scarf, I give you the "Mock Cable" pattern:



And here's a full view of the entire scarf.. it's so long I could barely fit it in my picture.



That's all folks! TGIF!

Another kind of FO

This weekend was very productive for me. For the longest I spent alot of my time working on computers at home, testing, tweaking, and rebuilding. For family and friends around me, having someone like me, who knows how to fix computers, is a nice little treat for them. It's kind of like having your own Carpenter or your own Mechanic. I get alot of requests to help with computer issues, or rebuilding of a computer. This weekend I decided to build 2 new computers for my kids and also rebuild one for a close family friend.

This was the scene in my office:



I got all 3 computers done, there's some little tweaking I need to do here and there, but all in all, there all finished objects of a different kind. 8-)

While I was working on my computers, I was also able to complete my very first Crochet Bag. I didn't work off of any pattern, I've found a genius on Youtube.com who is in my opinion the Queen of Crochet and the most selfless, she has hundreds of free crochet videos. I'm addicted to her site, when I crochet, I always have her page up for any quick tips or videos I can watch. Her Youtube site is "The Art of Crochet", username is tjw1963. If you crochet or even if you don't crochet, you'll be amazed at all the videos and help Teresa gives.

The bag is just adorable, and in a pinch can be turned into a beanie! The pattern really all the way through is basically a crocheted beanie that at the very end you turn into a bag by flipping it on it's bottom and threading a strap through the eyelet holes under the fan ruffles.



This is the FO, and you'll see there are 2 drawstrings the way the bag is designed you can either pull the strap to create a 2 drawstring effect or pull it out to one side and have a larger wider drawstring to hang over your shoulder.



Here's another shot of the 2 drawstring view, you can clutch in your palm as a little bag or you can hang over your shoulder.



And it has a pretty fan ruffle top that adds a bit of flair to it, gives it a fancier look.



This is the inside of the bag, I was able to stuff about 3 balls of yarn with some accessories and still had some room.



Bag Specs
Yarn: Vanna's Choice Worsted Weight in Brown
I only use yarn from Michael's for projects like this, bags, accessories or Amigurumi, I don't like to use my designer yarns, which I feel should only be used for garments
Yarn Used: Approx. 150 yds.
A one skein wonder!
Dimensions: 21 inches in diameter, 10 inches from the base to the top ruffle
Started: 11/08/08
Finished: 11/09/08
Pattern: Crochet beanie bag video's Part 1 & Part 2 from Tjw1963 on Youtube
Difficulty: Easy/Beginner
My Rating: 5 needles!
Will I create again: Definitely!
What can it be used for: It can be used as a WIP bag, a small purse, or in a snap, a beanie!

My First Love

My first true love is books, I love books, I love libraries, I love studies, everything that surrounds literature. I am one of those people, all you know who we are, that hoards books galore. I still have every book I ever bought, and all are still in pristeen condition. I'm also one of those people, who is really anal about keeping the book in "like new" condition. I make sure my hard backs paper covers aren't curling or ripped or creased the wrong way, and I'm equally as anal about my paper backs, where I try not to crease it. It is harder to control with paper backs, some just are worn unfortunately. But reading books, just being around books, and smelling books is really my first true love. Since I started knitting, my book purchases has severly decreased, although my passion still exists.

I have thought about purchasing audio books, but for some reason that just won't do it for me. I'm on old-fashioned book lover, I have to have the actual book, the look, feel and smell of it. This form of reading is really becoming an "old technology", with today's Internet and online columns, things have changed tremendously for written print. I aspire to be a writer, is it obvious? In fact, I'm probably going to try next year to slowly start making a career change, we'll see how it goes.

Lately as I've been knitting and working on all my projects, I've been hearing books call to me. I think about some of my favorite authors, and feel like I've ignored my friends. The genre's I love are Mystery, Drama, Documentary, and anything else that catches my eye. One of my all time favorite authors, and true master at her craft, is the great Anne Rice. I'm such a huge Anne fan, I love her writing, the way she tells her stories, the way she takes you back to a time before any of us were ever thought of, is just mesmerizing. Although she has completely vowed not to write her Vampire stories anymore, she still is my favorite. I long for another story of Marius or Lestat, which brings me to point of why I'm posting. I've seen some snippets of a new movie that caught my eye, and it is Twilight.



This movie is right up my alley, I can't wait to see this. I need to start reading the books, I might just miss the movie so I don't tarnish the books true meaning. Film adaptations of books can go good or bad, or in between. When I read my books, I usually create my own image of the characters including their voices, and when I see a film adaptation of a book, I'm either satisfied because my image is in line with what was portrayed in the movie, or I'm kind of annoyed because the image is ruined. I like to read the book before the movie, because if I read after, my images are only that of the actors. Reading is truly an imaginatory experience, it really allows your mind to open up into another world. One of my other famous authors, is Stephen King, this man is a master at storytelling and a master at character building. His pieces have such a broad range, it's unbelieveable. One of my other favorites is Margaret George, she truly outdid herself with "The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel", this was book I couldn't put down. I was enthralled the entire way through the 1000 pages, in fact I read it in like I think 2 or 3 days, which was crazy, but I loved it.

Another author is Dan Brown, he's well known for having written the controversial "Da Vinci Code". I was never a fan of the book the Da Vinci Code, I read the book before the movie came out, and I forced myself to finish it. It just wasn't a page turner for me, the movie was doable, and better than the book in my opinion, not in quality of the story but in just keeping your attention. My fave of Dan Brown is "Angels and Demons", a great book, and how I came to find Dan, and really enjoyed the book. I think there is an film adaptation of this book too, but not too sure when it's set to come out.

I usually stay loyal to the authors I have on my shelf, I try to add variety, but it's hard for me, when I go to the book store, there is such a huge assortment to choose from, I get overwhelmed and usually stick to my list of authors.

My first love of mine, is still my first love, and I'll have to pay a few visits to the book store to stock up on the Twilight series, and learn all that I can about this fantastic story.

Are you a reader? Do you have favorites?

Until next time,
Rocky

P.S.
I hope I didn't bore you with this post

Falling For Ewe Swap Package 2

Falling For Ewe Swap Package #2


Originally uploaded by RockyMoreno

I received my 2nd package from my wonderful "Falling For Ewe Swap" secret spoiler.

My spoiler has remained secret, and has been stalking me all this time.



I love her packages, the first was package was full of fibery goodness! And this one is another winner... somehow my spoiler knew I love Post It's, and Journals! It's a knitting journal!



One of my other favorite things is to collect stationary, office supplies, wax for envelopes, quills, all that. I love the form of communication from the pre-technology age.



I also got 3 balls such soft and pretty yarn, and a cute Knit Picks WIP bag.



A great Friday package!



Have a Good Weekend Everyone!