Knitters are cool

What can I say? Knitters, and I shant forget, Crocheters, are so cool!

I have received 2 completed Traveling Scarves groups this week, both are beautiful.

First is my SO's scarf, all in really nice black and gray colors.



To all the gals from my TS#25 SO group, THANK YOU MUCH FOR adding your wonderful knitting to my SO scarf!

Next is my NORO scarf



It is so pretty, and I love all the different NORO additions. THANK YOU TO all the members of the TS#37 NORO group, I really really enjoyed Mod'ing the group. It's been a pleasure and I'm sad to see it coming to an end. Everyone is getting their scarves in the mail soon, I was lucky enough to get mine's last week.

And now for a Knitter who can really put a package together! This is my package for my Harry Potter - A little bit of everything swap. It comes from the wonderul Minerva Wood.



She knitted me "Habitat" from Jared Flood, my absolute favorite designer. I love the red and the pattern. Everything in the package was perfect, and I got goodies for my dog and cat too, which they've loved playing with.

THANK YOU Minerva a.k.a. Yogaknot on Ravelry.

~R

And I'm off!

The De La Hoya vs. Pacquaio boxing get together party Saturday went great. We BBQ some marinated carne asada and chicken, I made a fresh macaroni salad. For orderbs we served Garlic & Cheese Toast with fresh Spinach Dip, BBQ Hot wings and Chips & Salsa. For desert, I whipped out my secret weapon.



I made some Cranberry-Pumpkin bread that I make every year around this time, it's delish!



It's a combination of fresh cranberries and pumpkin puree with seasonal spices. I know the recipe by hard and right smack in the middle of it, I realized I was missing my key ingredients, FUDGERS! Well, not wanting to waste more time, I decided to improvise and make my own combo of spices, and boy, what a great thing that was, my bread came out better than it's ever tasted. So good in fact, I'll stick with my new combo of spices and will no longer make the original recipe. My bread was a complete hit and before I could snap any fresh out of the oven baked pictures, it was almost all gone! Here are a few left over morsels...



I'll be making more later this week because I still have 1 bag of fresh cranberries left. I shared the original recipe click here if your interested 8-)

Our get together was fun and relaxing, but the event we all gathered to watch, De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao turned out to be horrible. I was hoping that De La Hoya would pull it off, but he did such a horrible job, in fact he didn't even fight? Pacquiao had such an easy job to do and win when all De La Hoya did was just stand there and get hit. I never saw De La Hoya do this before, it was so upsetting. He may just be done with boxing as a fighter, but as a presence and force in the sport, he'll be around forever.

Friday evening before the party, I finished off the last 3 Traveling Scarves I had, which I had one from each group.

Here is Purpleturtle's scarf from Group 25 SO, I added the top brown section using Lamb's Pride Wool, I strung 2 ends of the yarn together to get the right gauge for the section. I went with a Box Stitch.



A full shot of the scarf



Here is Mspalmtree's scarf from Group 37 Noro. My section at the top, using Noro Silk Garden in 245 & 279 knit with the Box Stitch.



A full view of the scarf



Finally here is Adore1's scarf from Group 42 Tweeds. I added a Mock Cable stitch using O'Wool 100% Organic Brown Tweed yarn.



And I'm off finally knitting my Christmas gifts, starting with my husband's beanie that I've been improvising the design on. It's nothing fancy and nothing cutting edge, a Cable beanie.



I'm slow at cables, it's annoying, and I can get slower if I let the cables annoy me. I need to get this done by Tuesday, if I can without wanting to kill the cable needle.

Last, I'll leave you with a snugly picture of my doggy sleeping by our Christmas tree, she looked to precious to not take a picture!

My Friday

For today, I just need to get through this early but short day. All week I've been working 6-3, and it's nice getting off at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, but just tiring getting up to be at my job at 6 a.m., but not too bad considering I have about a 15 minute drive, if not less. I have no issues getting up early, but this week has just been tiring for me. I do feel I was very productive this week though, with all my personal stuff that is.

I got all my 5 swap packages out to all my spoilees, this was a task in itself. Just packaging everything making sure I had all the requirements for the swaps and also making sure it catered to my spoilees preferences. I hope the packages are greeted with acceptance and glee!

I also sent out 2 Traveling Scarves packages, one for my Group 37 Noro Combo, which was Gramma's gorgeous scarf and also for my Group 42 Tweed, which I totally flaked on, well inadvertently.

I had finished Cristi-Lael's pretty tweedy scarf weeks ago, put my notes in her journal, packaged it and left it on my desk in my office to send out the next day. Well my son or daughter, one of them, both won't own up to it, moved the envelope package and covered it with my son's binder. It was out of sight out of mind for me, and the other day when I was going through my office I came across it and was just in complete horror! I immediately updated my post for the group's tracking thread with an apology. I think I'm going to have to buy a lock for my office cause my kidees seem to like being in there and also using it to discard of unwanted things.

One cool thing I found out from a awesome Mod in my RR group on Ravelry (I apologize I don't have her Rav ID), which if you don't know, you gotta try, is being able to ship First Class Mail packages from your doorstep without having to actually visit the Post Office.

You say how is this?

Well if you have a PayPal account, then you can! Logon to your PayPal account and go to Products & Services, select Multi-Order Shipping Labels, from there Create a New Order, I use a fake Order #, like for Group 37 Noro, I used 37-1, 1 signifies my first package sending out, the next Noro package I send will be 37-2 and so on. Fill out all the info, and weight, and delivery confirmation, then do Pay and Print, and voila, you have a valid, paid for, label printed for you from your printer. Tape to the package and put in your mailbox for your Post Man to pick up. I just love this! It's so much easier than having to go down to the Post Office. If you need to ship a package and don't want to be hassled, this is a pretty easy way.

So, speaking of my TS Groups, I also finished another scarf, Purpleturtle's Group 25 SO, but still need to weave in ends and package. It should go in the mail tomorrow, which will leave me with only 1 TS scarf! WhewwHoo! (can you feel my joy?) I do love participating in the TS groups, but sometimes it can get just a wee bit overwhelming, especially when you start getting a bunch at once.

Contest info to share, I submitted my comments and post to "The Nautical Knitter's" site the other day for the Snowman Stitch Markers Contest she was having and guess what, I visited her blog again and found out that I was one of the lucky winners! Thanks so much DK! I can't wait to use them. Congrats to Deb (aka iaisknitter on Ravelry) and Yvonne from Purlin’ Goldens who also won some cutesy stitch markers.

These are the cutesy Snowman Stitch Markers I'll be getting soon!
Photo courtesy of DK the Nautical Knitter's blog



Now onto some gritty stuff, this weekend is going to be a huge boxing fight, yes the De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao fight!



I'm pulling for the cutey, De La Hoya, I've always been a fan of his. I must admit though, I am not a 100% convinced he can beat Pacquiao, who himself is a very strong boxer. Pacquiao is fast and has good stamina. In De La Hoya's 24/7 series, he says there will be a knock out, I'm thinking it will go 12 rounds. I'll be having a nice little boxing party get together at my house Saturday for this, complete with dip, spicy buffalo wings, pizza, and of course beer and wine. Only dilemma I have is choosing what knitting project to do during the fight, needs to be something I can do blind.

There are many other things going on for me this weekend, but none as exciting as the De La Hoya fight. I hope you all have a good weekend! **Go De La Hoya!**

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!

Back to normal

My site is now back to normal, Halloween is officially over 8( As much as I love this time of year, it makes me sad sometimes because it goes by so fast. At least Thanksgiving comes late this year, so it gives us more time!

I have updates on my Traveling Scarve's groups.

First up, Group 37 Noro Knit & Crochet combo, I decided to just knit this time, as opposed to crocheting. The stitch pattern I went with is "Mock Cable" pattern. You can't really tell that much from the pictures, but it looks like cables but is really a combo Knits & Purls. The color transitioning is just beautiful, but too bad the pattern doesn't show up much.



This is going in the mail, either today or tomorrow at the latest. The scarf's owner is "Trustcrazyideas" on Ravelry.

Here's a full view of the scarf so far:



It's coming out very pretty! My contribution is on the far right end.

Onto the Traveling Scarves Group 25 Significant Others, this piece is knitted, only knitting allowed in this group. I went with the "Broken Rib" stitch, which doesn't pull like regular ribbing. I strung balls of Koigu together to get the right weight. The scarf's owner is "Lizabee" and her SO obviously likes greens, one of my fave colors. I was going to wind one of my greenie yarns, but I remembered I had 2 balls of Koigu from a previous project and thought, why not string together? Worked out perfect! I love the various tones of green? Don't you??? This too will go to the post no later than tomorrow!



Here's a full view:



That's my contribution on the end of the far right. I really love this scarf!

I still have 2 more separate scarf's to make, and then I'll be "scarf less" for a bit, at least until the next section comes.

For some updates, I've been searching around for some reasonably priced tweed yarn to buy for my Central Park Hoodie I want to make, and have been unsuccessful. Is it too much to ask for a reasonably priced luscious soft green or brown tweed yarn??? Is it? For now I'm still searching and its upsetting me because I really want to get this one started. Hopefully by next week I'll have found what I need. Soon I'll have some snapshots of a seedling CPH!

A goodie for you, I received my latest shipment from my Scout's Swag Sock Club, I give you "De Young":







Happy Wednesday!