Like Mother, Like Daughter

All I did was offload her photo and put a copyright on it - on mine, just a simple focal b&w

Weekend Wonderment ~ 11/18 - 11/20

This is what a lazy weekend looks like.. at least to me.

1. I decided to challenge myself and figure out a simple crochet pattern.  Since I know how to do a Granny Square, I thought this particular pattern would be a good start so I could see in print what I already know how to do.  I need 12 squares in all and so far, I've got 4 that I like.
2. I am going to start mapping out a new project for January and it's so hard to do when you've got great new magazines like these two.  I want to make every single thing out of the Austen book.. literally, everything!  Plus, I want to get some baking done this weekend and my sweet Pokey surprised me the other night with Miss Paula's Christmas edition.  I can't wait to sink my teeth into it.
3. I've got two important WiPs that need to be "whipped" up and done.  I hope to have Button Up Buttercup completed tomorrow and this particular Hallow Pullover sleeve done by Monday.  That's my goal anyway... reality might be different.  I hope not but just being realistic.
4. Still chugging away at squares for Pine Ridge charity blankets and I'm trying to get the whole "crochet circle" thing figured out.  Squares are so easy to do in the car pick up line.  I can do one a day, sometimes I can even start a second so by the end of the week I've got a nice stack to mail out.

That's my weekend in a nutshell.  Next week, Hobbit only goes to school for two days and then we're going to spend some time over at Disney Hollywood Studios during her Thanksgiving break.  I know initially we decided that we weren't celebrating the holiday since Peanut couldn't be with us... and even though I knew this, I bought a "just in case" turkey when it was on sale and tucked it away in the big freezer in the garage.  Looks like we'll be making it on Thursday but only as a regular supper - no full fledged operation.  Parade, turkey, "A Miracle on 34th Street"... that's it.

So what are your plans for this "pre-holiday" weekend - anything exciting?

Keep 'em coming!

Wow, one day and already the choices are really great!  Look at what some of y'all have found for my super chunky funky yarn that will be arriving soon...

© gray0531 ~ Non-Felted Slippers

©paulinaknits ~ Speedy Cabled Beret

©ysolda ~ Urchin

©Tori Gurbisz ~ Ovate

© Christopher Auyeung ~ Oversized Ego Scarf

These are all amazing - I have no idea how I'm going to choose but this is the kind of "challenge" that I love to have so please, keep 'em coming.  Don't forget to leave your contact information (information or Ravelry ID) so I can get in touch with you.  Hooks, markers and surprise goodies are up for grabs until midnight, 1 December.  I will announce the winner on 3 December.

Y'all are doing an amazing job finding cool patterns - for those who aren't sure what's going on, check out the original contest post here.

Tuesday Tunes

Sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures... and this week, some desperate measures have been executed - all for the sake of one little Hobbit's Christmas wish to Santa.

On the strange off handed chance that Ellen would ever stumble on my little space in the blogiverse - we love you and hope that you are able to make our one wish come true.

Motivational Mondays, 14 November

Blogs fall under "Social/Emotional" for the weekly compass - at least, that's how I see it.  It involves relationships with others which is the exact definition of the spot.  So I think that sharing all my good fortune from giveaways that I've recently won would be a great way to kick off our week - because some of these wins may very well be paid forward to all of you in the near future.

Looky, looky... prizes!

The first item to come live with me was a bag full of crochet hooks, won from Things Crafty who was testing a variety of different hook manufacturers.  I now have an overabundance of size H hooks - from the quirky to the works of art... even a set that glows in the dark!

Look at them all - aren't they neat!

My next win was from The Cloistered Lamb and they sent me some beautiful stitch markers.  I love the deep, rich look of the beading and am almost too scared to use something so pretty as simply a stitch marker.  Aren't they gorgeous!

Source

Finally, I just found out yesterday that I won NobleKnits "6 Ways to Win" giveaway for my blog post of sharing their giveaway.  My prize is some beautiful Plymouth Haciendo yarn - 109 yards to be exact, which is one skein.

(Source) Imagine it in a fabulous autumnal rust color - because that's what I chose.

Now comes the hard part - what to make with the 109 yards of yummy goodness. I know I could make the ”Rustic Scarf Pattern” that they suggest except, I’m not a big fan of it… so do you have suggestions?

Someone else loves this handmade one too.. it's just gorgeous.

 See why I love giveaways so much - they create such positive energy and excitement.  I have been rather lucky with them and I like to pass that good fortune on to others... so what say we do that right now?  I'm going to giveaway a few of those crochet hooks (how many size H hooks can a girl use, right) AND those beautiful stitch markers.  I'm sure there will be other goodies in the bag as well but here's what you have to do to enter - help me find a free pattern for the yarn I won!  It's not your typical yarn so nothing I found will seem to work.  I can even offer this one up internationally!  Just leave a comment with the pattern link (and contact information).. that's it.

Hobbit selected these as prizes... she has good taste.

Happy hunting - giveaway closes December 1st - winner announced December 3rd. I wish all y'all good luck and I can't wait to see what you find!

Getting in the spirit

I could actually listen to Christmas music all year round but I get very excited when I hear it this close to the holidays. Did you notice the little countdown I added up there on the right... yep, only a little over a month left. Can you believe it? Me neither - I better get to knitting!

Sunday Snaps

I learned a new technique...

Participated in our own Festival of the Masters with Hobbit...

Created the best Apple Crumble ever... seriously, EVER...

Got a few new crafty things - from winning giveaways and bargain hunting...

Made our first ever homemade pizza (it was stupendous)...

And I completed half of my design "Button Up Buttercup".

All in all, it was a busy week - full of great things and one not so great thing.  That not so great thing has grown legs and taken off but hopefully it will be resolved by the end of this coming week. 

I am really liking how my fingerless mitts are coming out.  I should have the second one done this week and that would mark me complete for Nerd Wars, Round 2.  Another clean sweep of 6 for 6 with a Team Unity bonus on both rounds... and Tournament 4 is going bring about Club 33, an exciting new Nerd Wars team created specifically for people who love all things Disney.  So if you're interested in joining in the fun, might I suggest this fabulous new group - I hear the Captain is a real peach of a girl.

Dear McDonald's Corporation

As you can see - it's clearly pink and raw!

To Whom It May Concern:

My husband went to pick up supper for our family.  While there, he had to have them fix four mistakes with our order which prompted him to speak with the on duty manager, Elissa S****.

Once home, we all sat down to eat.  Our daughter requested to eat her Happy Meal (chicken nuggets with apple dippers and a chocolate milk) while watching TV.  We got her set up and we ate our meal.  After she had consumed three nuggets, our daughter came up to us and said her nuggets tasted funny.  I asked her to bring them to me and upon inspection, I discovered that her chicken nugget was raw!  I have no way of knowing if her other three were raw/undercooked as well but I know for a fact that this particular one was.  I called the location and was first greeted by a new manager who completely lacked people skills when his response to this information was simply "I'm sorry" - flat and unconcerned.  When I requested a manager above him, Elissa was placed on the phone.  She requested the nugget be returned to the store so she could see if it was indeed raw.

My husband put it in a baggie, after I photographed it several times for proof, and took it back to the store.  He filled out paperwork and supposedly it is being sent to corporate for review.  My daughter has been queasy for the past 18+ hours because of your mistake.  I would like to know what you are going to do to remedy this situation - I have been on edge for the past 18+ hours, monitoring my daughter for food poisoning from you.

Regards,

~ This was sent to the corporate offices, just in case they "misplace" our incident report from last night.

In honor of Veteran's Day

Source

I wanted to say thank you to all who keep me safe - sacrificing every day - so that my family is free.  To those who are serving and to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice, I am forever grateful.  To the families who give their husbands, wives, sons and daughters so selflessly - I am in awe of your strength.

Thank you.

Sneaky Pete...

One down... one to go.  Now, to figure out how to flip my directions for the other hand...

Tuesday Tunes

I most certainly did get lucky - with my husband and my kids.  My husband is the most perfect man... for me.  He is kind, patient and understanding.  He can fix just about anything that we break around here and he has a wonderful sense of humor.  Doesn't hurt that he's rather easy on the eyes either - yeah, he's a hottie.  My kids are bright and beautiful.  They have hearts of gold and so very talented.  They make me smile, sure sometimes it's through tears but I smile all the same.

So in honor of the month where we give thanks, I just wanted to take a moment to share why I give thanks for my sweet family... and thanks for y'all who come by to read my musings and ramblings.  I love getting your emails and reading your comments - while we have never truly met, I do feel as though I've got a computer full of friends.  Y'all are another lucky aspect of my life.

What are you thankful for today?

I just had to share!

It is perfection in apple form... I promise!

I made the best Apple Crumble ever in the history of me attempting to create anything remotely close to the perfection that I get at The Rose and Crown in Epcot.  When we went this last trip, back in early October, I noticed a disturbing fact on their menu... there was no Apple Crumble listed!  This left me with no other option than to figure it out on my own.

I knew what I needed - apples, cinnamon, flour, butter, brown sugar.  That's it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  So I searched the internet until I found the most perfect recipe - at least on paper it was perfect.  I tweaked it a bit (I mostly melted my better before I mixed it into my flour and brown sugar.  I also mixed it with a whisk and then folded it several times by hand - messy but it does make a difference).  I add a bit more brown sugar than called for and I also sprinkled it on the top.  The end result - yummy goodness so great you won't even miss the fact that The Rose and Crown took it off the menu... seriously!

Motivational Mondays, 7 November

I'll be honest, today I totally lack any sort of motivation whatsoever.  It's because of the time change.  Whether we are falling back or springing forward, it always has me bouncing sideways for a couple of weeks.  Personally, I wish we would stop doing it since it holds no useful purpose any longer.  We live in a "24/7/365" world, tossing my clock an hour in either direction doesn't change a thing.

So since I'm not really motivated, I thought I would gather some inspiration from the past week in order to trigger at least one area of my weekly compass and that might get the other areas to fall in place too.  Here are some things we did this past week that inspire me for this week ~

Hobbit had a full week of smiles and no notes - only 3.5 more weeks to make it a habit

I played with lighting, shadows and flash bouncing.. because these are not the toys you are looking for...

Got a pretty nice shot of the moon yesterday.  It always amazes me that I can see such detail, so far away.

Hobbit and I played chalk in our driveway while supper was cooking last night.

She made the best drawing of them all.

Definitely brought a smile to my face and got me a bit more focused... so here's what'll I will try this week so that I can improve my motivation each day ~

• Physical ~ Take Buddy for a walk every day after picking Hobbit up from school.
• Social/Emotional ~ Talk to Jacque and see about her coming for a visit.
• Mental ~ Finish my book this week and find a good romance novel (not trashy, just good).
• Spiritual ~ While waiting in the car pick up line, get focused and centered for the afternoon.

Sure it isn't very inspiring but sometimes you just have to be honest with yourself and realize that you are having an off week.  You forgive yourself for it and do your best not to get too far off track so that when it passes and you are ready to rock and roll again, you aren't immediately demotivated by the pile of things that life has stacked up behind you.  Celebrate the smallest of accomplishments when you have times like this - personally, I have a bag of Ghirardelli assorted squares.  When I do something, like finish the laundry today perhaps, I will give myself one... or two... as a reward because I pushed through it and accomplished something.

Although, I have hope since I did manage to sneak in my "Sunday Snaps" post with this one... perhaps the wonkiness of the time change won't be so bad this year.

Fetching is rather fetching

The coolest thing since self striping yarn.. nah, it's way cooler

Y'all know that I'm working a new design for fingerless mitts but I ran into a snag when it came time to work on my thumb.  I have done all my schematics and the thumb was my only challenge.. then I discovered "fetching".  It is a term coined by Elizabeth Zimmerman - a late, great knitting guru who has been my knitting fairy godmother for ages.

Miss Elizabeth took all the hard and scary stuff and made it easy, peasy lemon squeezy!  Just take a look at how simple a thumb gusset is now by using her fetching technique.  Oh my goodness, I was too excited to keep this to myself so as soon as I worked it through, I had to show you.  Isn't it amazing... oh, click the photo to make it bigger so you can see all the wonderment.

The first glove should be off my needles later tonight... now, buttons... buttons... where'd I put those buttons?

Sometimes

It's all coming together... now.

Okay, I didn't last a full day with the new layout because I missed so many of my old favorite features.  I like having the quick search words on the side - they look like a really funky art project to me - and my blog roll was gone so how else can I share with you all the goodness from my favorite spaces in the blogiverse?

So after I completed two more Nerd Wars challenges (Nerd Culture and Scientific), I just couldn't handle how my blog didn't look like my blog anymore.  That left me with only one thing to do - switch it back and heave a sigh of relief - and that is just what I did.  To those who liked like the new look, maybe we can try again once they add a few more features... to those who missed our tried and true image, welcome home.

Now that I feel I have righted the universe, I'm off to cast on for the super, duper top-secret pattern.  Fingers crossed, I've calculated correctly.  Last night, I was up until 1 a.m. measuring, graphing, calculating and physically mapping it out to scale on actual graph paper... and then remeasuring and adjusting.  Oh yeah, I'm hard core in the zone... y'all are gonna love it - I promise!

Weekend Wonderment (and something else) ~ 11/4 - 11/6

In full blown nerdy swing this weekend - giggle, snort!

There was no need to number this photo because it will all be happening at the same time, all weekend long - Nerd Wars, Round 2 is in full swing around here!  See that pretty cream cabled number - it may get frogged for an original design that hit me while I was driving Hobbit to school this morning.  I came home and started sketching it out... it's under Pattern Protection Services* right now but will be allowed to show it's pretty little face soon.

The two granny squares up there will be joined by a few more so I can send them off to complete the Giving Geeks challenge.  They are headed to South Dakota to help a charity called "Afghan Squares for Pine Ridge".  I really liked the information on the group so I joined them on Ravelry and will be donating all year - as my way of giving back to my daughter Peanut's new place of residence during the duration of her college career.

The beautiful rainbow square up there is answering my Scientific challenge in a most creative way.  The prompt was about anatomy and getting to the 'guts' of it all, which immediately made my stomach flip... and some of the finished projects made it flop.  I mean seriously, who knits a dissected frog and what do you do with it when you're done?  I certainly wouldn't cuddle up with and I know Hobbit wouldn't either... but at least it is the only dissected frog that doesn't smell of formaldehyde - bonus!  Y'all know that I am hyper-competitive (in a good-nature way) so I wasn't going to let this challenge get the better of me - and so I am creating a dishrag in the same colors as a Neuro Scan.  Yeah, that's right - you can't keep a good geek down.  I should be done with it today and it will more than likely end up with a few friends to become my mama's Christmas present... oh, Mama - don't read that... move along... there was nothing to see there...

Changing subjects for the sake of saving Christmas - what do you think of the new format?  I wanted to try it on for size.  There are a few features I miss right off the bat (post tag searching, blog roll list) but I think it might just be that I haven't figured it all out yet.  If you look up to the left side where it says "Magazine" and has an arrow - if you click there, you can see this blog in other formats, even Classic.  There was just something about this design that drew me in - although I am still trying to figure out how to do a few things, I think I might be digging it.  What say you?

*Pattern Protection Services is for the safety of all super, duper top-secret designs until they are ready to be revealed to the world to create... plus, it's fun to make you wonder what's under the pixels.

Psst... hey you... yes, you... come here...

Click here to enter

I'm only sharing this with those whom I really love and so naturally, I had to share with you.  You know NobleKnits, right?  Sure you do - how could you forget about that precious fluffy sheep over there... yeah, that's them.  Well, they're having a giveaway on Plymouth yarn!  Yep, I swear it's true.  Hop on over and take a look because they're giving away enough to actually complete a project that you could giveaway for the upcoming holidays - isn't that a win-win from the Multitasking Queen!

Go on and enter - oh, and good luck!

Bonus points for rationalization

Nerd Wars, how I love thee

I told myself that I had a goal of completing just two Nerd Wars challenges.  It's my first tournament and I didn't want to get overwhelmed.  That's what I told myself anyway... the reality of it was that I just had to answer all of them - including the Team Unity bonus.  I couldn't resist it.  It started all innocently enough and then BOOM!  I rationalized each project... you know how that goes - "There are only three left, you can do that easy"... "You've done all but two, go ahead and give it a go"... "Shoot, if you do one more and tie in the unity bonus then you've got a clean sweep!".  Before I knew it, I was crafting like crazy (loving every second of it) and finishing the last project with mere hours to spare!

This round, I fear I will handle myself no better... and I'm having a blast!

Tuesday Tunes

She & Him, that's the name of my newest musical obsession.  I have always loved Zooey Daschanel - her look, her acting, her singing - and have been wishing she would sing in a band.  Little did I know, she's been in a band since the turn of the century... I just didn't find it until now!

Her sound is just so soothing and relaxing - a real throw back to the 50s era.  I am hoping that others catch on to her now that she's uber popular as Jess on Fox's New Girl.  She is just the type of style icon we women could use.. that and I just love her because she's simply adorkable.

Nerd Wars: Round 1 complete!

I completed all 6 challenges AND the team unity challenge! I am so pleased with myself. Here is what I made this month... projects are on my Ravelry project page.  If you want any "patterns" for the things I  made, just shoot me an email and I'll write out what I did for you.

In the Pink ~ Nerd Wars challenge: Team Spirit

Finchen Coaster ~ Nerd Wars challenge: Scientific

Ragtime Queen Bookmark ~ Nerd Wars challenge:  Technical

Wisdom ~ Nerd Wars challenge:  Intellectual

Nerdalicious ~ Nerd Wars challenge:  Nerd Culture (and Team Unity qualifier)

Those are all the projects I created.  I also completed the Nerd Wars challenge:  Giving Geeks by participating in the Fellowship Walk for Child's Play 2011 over on Landroval server for Lord of the Rings Online game.

We raised $6223.14 - our goal was $5000... truly a bunch of giving geeks here!

I just wanted to share since I am pretty proud.  Yeah, my freak flag is flying high.