Mandi Knits   » Knitting, spinning, crafts, and being a geek.

I switched gears once again for a little while and picked up my embroidery for a bit.

My cousin (2nd cousin actually, I think?) Jenny is expecting her second son next month, so I decided to embroider some Onesies for her. For the one in the picture, I used the Sublime Stitching Kurt Halsey patterns and lettering from the Sublime Stitching book.

Tomorrow I’m going to embroider a second one using I Luv Veggies (one of my favorite pattern sets!). I’m also going to make 2 t-shirts for the “big brother” — I think I’m going to use Monkey Love and some of the car/truck designs from the book for those.

I like embroidery. I’m not great at it, and I like doing just very simple designs. That’s part of why I love Sublime Stitching so much: you can do simple outlines and they still are cute and look great, or you can really run with the designs and make them as complex and intricate as you want, and they look great that way too.

Anyway.

I’m hoping to get all 4 Onesies/t-shirts done tomorrow so I can mail them Saturday morning.

No really, it is. See?

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic.You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries.You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself. What Color Is Your Brain?

(via Stick’s Adventures)

Where does the time go? I blame it on the time change. Now that it’s dark when I get home from work, it makes the hours in the day seem less and less.

I have so much I want to get done before Christmas, as I’m sure many people do. And I’m constantly discovering new things I want to try or do or make.

For instance: when I was at Michael’s yesterday picking up my stamping goodies, I also popped into the scrapbooking aisle. We finally got back all our wedding photos, and I was thinking I really ought to put them into a nice scrapbook. I had good intentions of making a beautiful scrapbook with lots of journaling and embellishments and pretty papers… but ya know what? I’ll never get it done. I have a backlog of photos from four years ago that are still waiting to be scrapbooked. I’m ready to admit defeat, scrapbooking is just too time-consuming and I’m just not willing to devote the time and money it takes to make nice albums.

… But then I thought, maybe I should try digital scrapbooking. It almost feels like cheating, but at the same time, I’m betting I could get a lot more done if I didn’t have to actually get the photos printed and then go find all those stickers and papers and doo-dads. Thus began my search for scrapbooking software for the Mac — pickin’s are slim, my friends. I decided I’m going to try downloading the trial version of iScrapbook to see how that works. I realize I could do it all in Photoshop/InDesign but I’m going for simplicity here. I like the idea of just editing my photos and then being able to drag and drop them into pretty little layouts with frames and pictures and spots for journaling. Yup. Laziness wins out.

Then I got a bug up my butt today over my craft studio. I really haven’t been spending much time in there at all, except to wind a hank of yarn every now and then. My desk is covered in… well who knows what. Half-done projects, paperwork that needs filing, etc. And then there’s the whole issue of the “cat stuff”. When Gidget arrived at our house, we had problems with Gracie (our dog) trying to eat her food and (*cringe*) scavenge in her litter box. (WTF is up with dogs doing that!?) To solve the problem, all the cat stuff (food, litterbox) wound up in the craft room. That’s fine, but to make room for the cat necessities, all my things had to shift (in a hurry) so it’s just a mess. Nothing is in its place. Things are piled on top of eachother. It’s making me crazy. Like most cluttery messes, I can tolerate it for so long, and then I go ape-shit and turn into a clutter-busting tornado. So, that’s #1 on my agenda tonight. I even made a little sketch of how I want to rearrange the furniture and whatnot. Because I’m a dork like that. I also have the idea in my head that I want to go to Home Depot and buy some shelving. Then get pretty baskets for the shelving, and fill the pretty baskets with pretty yarn… oh yes. *drool*

Anyway.

So then, on top of that, I mentioned to Nick my idea about making Christmas cards (stamping/coloring) and he thought it was a great idea. Nick rarely shows any interest in my crafty endeavors, so when he actually is enthusiastic about something, I feel I have to do it then. So another trip to Michael’s is in store for me (tonight probably) to find some cute Christmas stamps for cards.

Oh but wait, there’s more! There’s also the three pairs of socks I’m knitting for Christmas gifts. And the hats/scarves I thought I was going to make (but may abandon hope on) for other gifts.

And it’s my own fault, ya know? None of these things (well, except perhaps for tidying up the studio) are necessities. I decide to take it all on because it’s things I want to do. But I feel like I can’t not do them! I would be sad to not have handmade gifts to give to people, for instance.

It’s scary sometimes because in times like this, I can plainly see how much like my mother I am. She’s always taking on these incredible projects as gifts for people (quilts in particular). She works on them to the point of exhaustion, but never complains because she wants to do it. I always kind of wondered why she was so crazy, working so hard when it wasn’t necessary. Now I understand. You do it because you love it, and because you love the people you make these things for.

I finally got a chance this afternoon to do a fun, crafty little project that I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time…

I made tags/cards to go with the socks I’ve been knitting for gifts. I wanted to be able to include a little message and the washing/care instructions with each pair. (I’d hate for the gift-recipients to end up with shrunk and/or felted socks after the first time they wear/wash them!) But I wanted to make the tags and fun too!

I’m not much of an artist, so I decided that stamps would be the way to go as far as a design. eBay has a huge selection of stamps. I found adorable cartoon sheep and socks hanging on a clothing line. I also picked up a stamp from Michael’s that says “Homemade By” and leaves space to sign your name. I got some small card stock, a black ink pad, and some nice colored pencils at Michael’s.

Here’s what I came up with:

(Click to see the super-large version of the photo.)

I was so pleased with how they turned out. The sheep stamp is just too darn cute! I can’t wait to give away all my knitted gifts with cards like these.

Heck, this could be the start of a new obsession hobby! I’d love to do our Christmas cards like this… hmmm…Oh! You want to know how to make your cat hate you…?

Glue SoftPaws to his or her claws! (Especially PINK ones. Heh.) Gidget really isn’t bad about sharpening her claws on things, but she does climb the back of the couch, which makes Nick cringe, so he requested we try these out. Gidget has been ignoring me all night because I had to be the “bad guy” who put them on her. Little does she know, it’s actually all daddy’s doing!

I started my first attempt at lace knitting today: the Juno Regina pattern from Knitty Fall ‘07. I thought it looked like a good first pattern to try; not TOO hard, but not so simple that it might become boring. I might be wrong, but so far, so good.

I’m really excited about it. Should I technically be working on this? Um. Probably not. I should be working on my Christmas-gift knitting. But… ya know… I had to take a break and do something different for a while, ya know?

The yarn I’m using is my Wollmeise Lace. The name of the color is “Pfauenauge”, which Julie was kind enough to tell me translates to “peacock butterfly”. It’s really very lovely.

I’ve actually made a lot more progress than what’s shown in that photo, but I couldn’t get a good photo of it because I don’t have enough hands to stretch out the piece and hold my camera. Maybe tomorrow I’ll pin it down to a mat and take pictures.

Anyway.

I did most of the knitting while watching a marathon of “I Love Lucy” on TV-Land network. Oh my, I forgot how much I loved that show! I used to watch it all the time when I was younger. I laughed harder than I’ve laughed in quite a long time.

Then “Beaches” came on and I made the mistake of watching that — I say “mistake” only because at the end I was a sobbing, pathetic mess. I hate that!! But it’s a good movie nonetheless.

So anyway, that’s mostly how I spent my day after Thanksgiving: knitting and watching cheesy television. Did any of ya’ll go shopping? Did you get any good deals? Right before I woke up this morning, I was dreaming that I was at Best Buy running all over the store trying to get my hands on a laptop that was on sale. I woke up before I found it though. Damn it! Ha ha. No laptop for me.

I’m happy to report that Thanksgiving dinner was a success.

I got up around 8:30 a.m. to start cooking. Dinner was ready at about 2:30. The turkey was very juicy and good, so that was a relief! I was so afraid I’d under or over cook it. But it was just right.

Oh — and that chocolate bourbon pecan pie? Oh my. Yes. That’s a new favorite for sure. Actually I could probably do without the bourbon and just have chocolate pecan and be just as happy. But either way… yum!

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Mine was emotional. I cried intermittently most of the morning. I’ve never spent a Thanksgiving away from my family before. I hope I never have to again. It also didn’t help that during the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, they kept playing Christmas music. Which just reminded me I’m not going to be able to go home for Christmas either.

Anyway.

We made the most of it. At least dinner was good. As was my post-turkey feast nap with Gracie-dog. (Ha ha.)

Is anyone going out tomorrow for the crazy holiday sales? I, for one, will be home in bed! I’m actually looking forward to a very quiet day at home.

Dear people at Butterball,

Thank you so very much for putting the gunky-turkey-bits into bags so that I don’t actually have to dig through the turkey to remove them. You just made my first turkey cooking experience SO much better. I will never complain again about paying a few cents more per pound for your poultry. (Anything to not have to see/feel those awful parts!!)

I baked pies! I’m going to gloat a little because it appears they turned out quite well too. (I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow, ha ha.)

I baked a traditional pumpkin pie (because you can’t have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie). And I also tried out this recipe for chocolate bourbon pecan pie. I’m so excited to try it!

Our turkey is pretty much thawed out (I have it in the sink with some water to do the last little bit of thawing). I’ll be making mashed potatoes and gravy tomorrow too. And corn. And crescent rolls.

I can’t wait!

I can’t wait to get up and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with Nick. I asked him if he wanted to bust out some construction paper and make hand print turkeys. I think he thinks I’m nuts, but I don’t care. Hehe.

I cast on another pair of Christmas-gift socks. So I now have three pairs of socks that are Christmas gifts, which are all in various states of completion: one pair is about 65% done, one is 50% done (one sock down, one to go) and the last I’ve only just started. The nice part with having all 3 going at once is being able to switch between them — it gives me different patterns and different colors of yarn to look at when I get bored.

Let’s see…

Oh! I got a new cell phone today! I got the new LG Voyager. I’m still deciding how I feel about it. It’s definitely nice — but it’s no iPhone, no matter how hard LG tried to rip off their design. (Heh.) But I do like it overall, there’s just some quirky annoying things about it. I think I’ll be happy with it for my contract period.

Anyway, I’m off to tidy up the kitchen in preparation for tomorrow. Hope everyone has a very happy turkey-day!