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!

KnitSpinPrep_X_3

I enjoyed a 3 day weekend, courtesy of ME 8) I completed my last day of work at my former company on Thursday, and gave myself Friday off. It was sad to go, I'd only been at my last job since July 7 of this year, but when your in an IT support role, you really get to know quickly, almost every employee at your workplace. Well if your good at IT support, you do, and I can confidently say I am good at what I do. I really work hard to make sure my "customers", the employees I support, get their issues or requests resolved quickly. Really, employee's are my customers, and if you treat your customers with respect, attention, and honesty, you'll go far.

My Thursday was pretty busy and I tried to leave my job with all things done, and then shoot on over to go to my daughters High School Open House night. She got a good group of teachers this year, and thankfully! I've had some serious encounters with teachers that have been difficult.

Started my Friday off with some knitting, picking a stitch out for a Traveling Scarves Group 25 SO scarf section belonging to CoffeeKnitGal's on Ravelry. I sent her an email with some yarn and let her pick which one she wanted me to knit with, she choose some of Vanna White's new line at Michael's in orange. I bought this yarn specifically for my Amigurumi projects, but in CoffeeKnitGal's notes, she said she'd like oranges, so obviously she choose the orange 8). I do like how the trinity stitch looks, it kind of has a bobble effect, can you see? You Knit, Purl, Knit into 1 stitch, thereby creating 3 stitches out of one, and you get a bobble.

Can you see the pattern?





I tried really hard to get a good shot, but damn if my camera wasn't being bitchy with me! Trust me, it looks pretty in person. There is definitely 2 sides to the trinity pattern, both look pretty, so I decided to reverse the wrongside to the frontside half way through so you get half of the Rightside in front, and half of the Wrongside in front. If only I had better pictures to show you.

I also spent some of my Friday with my Mother, going over ideas to create my own Stitch Markers line, and we made some pretty good progress. I'm actually testing out one of the stitch markers she made, which is pretty cool. I can't wait until I have a few products for sell in my Etsy store. There's not much in my store right now, but I plan to have some good yarn, stitch markers, WIP bags, and other things to sell soon.

Besides the little knitting I did both Friday and Saturday, I also was really really wanting to spin.
I decided to try out my new spindle given to me by Marisol from our Knitter's Treasure swap, and also decided to spin the "Rise of Phoenix" Crown Farms Pencil Roving she gave me too. I drafted a very good amount, I mean the amount of fiber she gave me was enormous, I swear I didn't even make a dent in it! I drafted about a good 1.5 ounces, and started spinning. I can honestly tell you that I just really do love spinning.

My goal for this wool was to try and spin my fiber in the same weight continuously, I didn't want chunky here, skinny there, you know? I actually succeeded to keep it pretty uniform. Took me about an hour or so to spin, while also watching football. I actually think I like spinning and watching football over knitting and watching football.. hmm... maybe I'll use my football Sunday's as my spinning time???

Here is the fiber drafted



On the left is my spindle I bought when I first learned to spin at Purlescence Yarns and on the right is the pretty spindle given to me by Marisol, in the background is the bottomless pit of yummy fiber 8)



Some close-ups





Besides these fun things, I also spent time getting ready for Day 1 at new job. I'm looking forward to the 15 minute commute **woohoo!!**, and just plain curious on how my first day will be. I'm really hoping I made a good choice and just hope I'll like it there. Because I don't know what's in store for me tomorrow, I'm posting this early.

And to end this post with some fibery goodness,

**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!
**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!
**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!
**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!
**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!
**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!
**SOCKS THAT ROCK SPOILER ALERT**!!!!!


Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Club 2008, September installment in "Tidal Pool"!