Archive for November, 2008

I’m Thankful

Well it’s here folks, “T-Day”! I can just smell the smells of YUM-O! I’ve already started my prep work for my Thanksgiving meal, and will continue on prepping tonight. My 19lb bird will go in the oven at 6 a.m. sharp tomorrow morning. I went and purchased this to keep me comfy….

And, I’ll be making some of my traditional Cranberry-Pumpkin Bread tonight, to have with my coffee as well. I just love this time of year, so toasty warm and snuggly, and I get to knit! You gotta understand this is my first Holiday season where I’m knitting, this time last year I didn’t even know what a stitch was let alone DPN or FO. I learned the basic knit & purl from a dear friend, Leslie B., who I worked with last year. She was so nice to teach me and we became so close after bonding over our wooly love. Because it’s my first holiday knitting season I’ve been going crazy over projects to make and I just don’t have enough time or hands to knit with. Is that the life of a hopelessly addicted knitter? If so, I’ll like it!

There are so many things for me to be thankful for this year, one is the great package I got from Julsey7 on Ravelry, my spoiler for the “1930’s & 1940’s Glamour Darhling” swap in “The Odd Ducks Swaps” group.
I came home to this package yesterday in a small box, snuggly packed.

There was such pretty yarn inside it, in my favorite colors again, it’s from Freedom Spirit, 100% wool, Shade 505, just gorgeous! I got chocolates, a Mae West movie “She done him wrong” (Can’t wait to snuggle up and watch this one!), Mae is one of my faves too! I also got the cutest buttons that I’m already planning to use for a cowl, and a classy leaf pin. And the card that was in it with Mae’s face on it, is so pretty! It will go adorned on my tackboard in my office.

Besides my glamorous package, as I was saying, I’m thankful for so many things, here are some that I can share

–I’m thankful for having a loving and supportive family
–I’m thankful for having 2 awesome children who are growing into responsible adults
–I’m thankful for having my dog, Rosie, who has filled my heart with a love I never knew existed until having her. Pets really do bring out something special in your heart.
–I’m thankful for my daughter’s cat, Gracy, who I know fills my daughter’s heart with love.
–I’m thankful that both my husband and I have jobs during this hard time and that we have a roof over our family’s heads and are able to provide for them.
–I’m thankful for my health, and my familie’s health.
–I’m thankful for making it through the financial hell I went through with my home I had owned in Newman. I wouldn’t wish that kind of stress on anyone, it is such a difficult thing to deal with.
–I’m thankful that my husband and I made it through that together.
–I’m thankful that daughter is here, and is healthy. She’s always been a fighter, and had complications and 3 surgeries the day she was born. When I look into her eyes I can still see her eyes as they were the first time I looked into them when she was in her incubator at the hospital.
–I’m thankful that son is a growing young man, and is healthy. He too had a 1 week stay during his first week, I can still remember sleeping with him at the hospital that Thanksgiving week.
–I’m thankful for having learned how to knit and for having come this far with knitting. Knitting really has expanded my mind to a whole new world of creativity. It is to me the “gateway” craft unto others. I’ve spun off learning how to spin, how to dye, and how to crochet, and now how to design. Knitting truly is a talent to cherish as it can come in handy with everything. Think about it, if we ever had such a disaster here where we were without our luxuries, you could knit baskets, bowls, anything to survive. If you ever got stranded on an island, could you not knit clothing or making a hut just out of the basic structure of knitting? There are so many ways knitting is a key talent to have.
–I’m thankful for so many things, not all I can list, but I will say that I’m thankful for all of the friends I’ve made through knitting and all the wonderful people I’ve met through it as well.

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

Regards,
Rocky

Everything at once

Over the weekend we went to my little cousin’s 7th bday party, Alyssa. She is so cute and the sweetest girl. Her parents surprised her and had her birthday party at Boomer’s in Modesto, CA. They have everything there, from go karts, to water boats, mini-golf, rock climbing, batting cages, lazer tag, arcade games, you name it.

The kids had such a great time, and really enjoyed the rock climbing. My son climbed the rock wall over 4 times and did each turn in record time. We said he looked like Spiderman up there, he navigated that wall like it was nothing.

My daughter tried too, but had a wee bit harder of a time.

It was such a great time, but very tiring. The long 2 hour drive to the party gave me plenty of time to finish knitting my Holiday Stocking. I made one for my Death By Socks Christmas Stocking Swap Pal, Yarnwhisperer. I have to apologize to her, I had over a month to get this done, but fell behind on so many projects and ended up casting on this past Friday 11/21/08.

I didn’t know what to do for a stocking, so I decided to wing it and let the project happen as I knitted it.

I started off with a provisional chain cast on and knitted in red for about 9 inches, then turned the heel, onto the toe, which was about 2 1/2 inches. I used a plain stockinette because I felt it would look nice.

I then swiss stitched in a snowflake design, plus Yarnwhisperer’s initials “A T”. After closing up the toe, I removed my crochet chain and picked up the live stitches, then with white yarn, knitted for 2 rows, then reversed knitted the opposite direction to make the right side the wrong side. I was pretty skeptical at first, but it worked out better than I thought. The 2 knitted right side rows allowed the reverse knitted (purls on right side) to puff out, so it really looks like a stocking.

For the yarn, I used Vanna White’s Red Yarn, very soft, and economical, and this yarn from Stacy Charles that is white with laced tinsel sparklins through it. I thought it would be perfect and it is!

For added flair, I weaved in some red beads for the snowflake. I’ll put together the notes from my pattern and share for free again! I plan on making another one, but for my daughter, I might switch up the design though.

That’s my Bear in the picture, he had to share the spotlight.

Can you see those beads? I love how they turned out.

Besides my stocking gift, I also got a few gifts of my own, a lovely Starbucks & Yarn Package came from Shoegirl on Ravelry.

I got some really pretty Lorna Laces sock yarn, 217yds!, a cute mug cozy, in my fave colors, neutrals, a Starbucks gift card, Giada’s Tuscan Spice from Crate & Barrel (I love this!), Giada’s little menu, and some hand cream (which I love cause I’m always washing my hands).
Thank you Shoegirl!

Another goodie came Saturday, it is “Autumn Haze” from Socks that Rock 2008. This is the final installment and I’m in love with it. My absolute #1 fave of the entire 2008 club. I need more of this colorway, so I can make something absolutly pretty with it.

Aren’t those colors beautiful!

Ok one more goodie for yah, today I received the latest Madeline Tosh Society shipment, “Tourmaline”, and is to die for! It’s 1000 yards of luscious silky soft Tuscan silk! This is definitely an early Christmas present for me.

Oh, before I leave yah, if you want to enter a fun contest, please check out the Nautical Knitter’s blog, she is giving away the cutest Snowman stitch markers!

I’ll post again before Turkey Day!

Official Turkey Day Run

Today was my “Official Turkey Day Run”, what does that mean? It means a few hours at my local grocery store gathering all my food items in preparation for this coming Thanksgiving.

I’m pretty organized when it comes to this stuff, so I have a saved file with a list of my “Thanksgiving Menu”, with all needed ingredients to make the menu, and I like to go in and out as fastest as I can.

I print the list out each year, take my calculator and pen, and off I go. I write prices down as I shop and tally it up on my calculator. My goal this year, really out of necessity, is to get the most for my $$. I’m aiming to stay under $150.00, which is pretty damn low for me cause I usually spend a few hundred. I have between 10 -12 mouths to feed, all adults, with the exception of my kids and 1 baby. This means that everyone will eat larger portions and even get seconds.

Here’s what I’ll be making:
**Turkey** (probably a 24lb one or bigger)

**Mashed Potatoes**

And so much more! Homemade stuffing, Carrots steamed with fresh Rosemary, Fresh string beans and corn, and dinner rolls, gravy, and of course cranberry sauce. Yum-O! I can just taste the food now!

I got my Turkey items, now all that waits is the prepping, which is mandatory to have a relaxing Turkey day. Guess how much I spent? My bill tallied up to $96.00! Of course I have 4 items left to buy, but that’s gotta wait until Wednesday morning, and I know I’ll stay under $50.00 with the remaining 4, plus I got everything in under 1 hour! Believe me the store was packed, everyone was turkey shopping, and all lines had cartfulls with like 4 people waiting in each line. I got lucky because the line next to me opened and the guy in front of me let me go ahead of him cause his girlfriend was off getting a last minute item.

Now that my grocery shopping is done, onto some yarny goodness. I got my latest installment of the Seven Deadly Spins Club, and is greedy!

Yellow to me is an acquired taste but this purse looks so pretty and fashionable.

I also got the coolest little $100 dollar stitch marker, but no pictures cause my camera could’nt focus on it.

This package made me greedy for more yarn, and wouldn’t yah know, I also got me hands on some Pirate Booty!

Latest colorway is Herron. It reminds me of those cold rainy winter days that are gloomy. It has a nice shade of purple blended in that act like a mellow purple umbrella to add that sparkle to your day.

I think this colorway calls for a cowl! I’m starting to love cowls, there so addicting. I’ll have to choose from the huge array of cowls I covet.

Another fun project I’ve been secretly working on is a pattern for a Christmas Stocking. I’m putting the finishing touches on it, and I’ll share probably tomorrow. It’s a fun festive project!

Well I’d love to stay and blog more but I gotta get my booty nighty night for me trabajo tomorrow.
Catch you tomorrow!

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
–Pay bills (uggh!) Kinda done
–Save the world

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

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
–Pay bills (uggh!)
–Save the world

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!

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