Will it be lion or lamb? Hmm..................

 This was the view on my road on March 1st so I'm thinking....................lion, right? Could go either way but I'm definitely leaning towards 'in like a lion'. If only the universe had made it a little easier to choose!  ;^)

(Here's to a lamb-like end-of-March!)

So definitely no walking outside for a bit until the snow melts (which it is doing today, matter of fact) but I had plenty of mail goodies to keep me company inside.

Lovely dishclothy and stitch marker gift goodness from Dee. LOVE IT! And the colors are perfect for me - purple AND lime. THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :)

I really do love a good cotton cloth to use around the house* but hate knitting with cotton (it makes my elbows weep in anger) so I never knit them very often and this makes me sad.

*the more you use them, the better they get until that day when, oops, they completely unravel from the middle or something because you've used it so much. lol

And then there was this.

ARGH! I got sucked into joining QPB.... again! 

We've doing this dance for yearsssssssss. Literally. Over a decade now! (For real.) They go 'Psst. I'll let you have all these books for $1 each  if you just promise to love me enough to buy one more over the next year' and I get ALL TWITCHY AND DO IT. And I buy the one extra book, immediately cancel the membership, they woo me for a couple more years and keep adding stuff to the deals to catch my attention (this also came with a Star Trek-y book light and an overnight bag) until, one day, OMG I'M DOING IT AGAIN. Repeat until one of is dead. Honestly, I don't know why they keep wooing me because I'm not good for any other purchases - surely this is not a good business model? It is what it is at this point, I guess. Plus, as much as I love my Kindle(s), I do still love an 'old fashioned' paper book. Books in general make me happy. 

I was particularly pleased to get the Grimm's one. I had one of those when I was kid and it was quite fascinating and...........odd. Almost creepy and very un-Disney-like. I watch that show Once Upon a Time and it renewed my interest in them, to the point where I just wish listed one on Amazon recently. I'm not sure it's good 'reading' material to just sit and read all in a go but I know I'll enjoy going through it here and there. I don't remember them verbatim from childhood but I remember snippets, like, someone stomping their foot through a floor and that being his downfall? (Rumpelstiltskin?) I should probably finish one (or all) of the 4-5 books I've already started though first, eh? lol

Well here's something that hasn't happened to me in a while! Mr. Man and his 'make the leg longer, longerrrrrrrrrrrrrr, longerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' made me run out of yarn on these when doing the toe*. BAH! (I swear he'd be happy if I made a pair of socks long enough to pull right up to his flipping EARS! lol)

Oh well. A quick dive into my leftover bits came up with this heathered gray that blends in so well you probably wouldn't have noticed I had run out of yarn if I hadn't said anything!

*The yarn was generous enough for a normal sized pair of socks so the fault is all mine - on that count. I have to say though, this Paton's Kroy line is a total bust and I won't be using it again. It knits up nice and thick, cushy and wears well. Good price on it. etc. So what's the problem? ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECT FOR THE CONCEPT OF DYE LOT. This is the second time I've used it for socks, using matching dye lots for the two skeins, and both pairs of socks ended up wildly different. One clearly has more vibrant colors than the other and they match only in that 'kinda sorta if you blink' way. Last year with a pair for my mother and now these - same thing. Not cool. Dye lots are there FOR A REASON and the coloring is off WAY too much for a commercial yarn to be anywhere NEAR acceptable. Grrr!

Anyhoo. I think next I might tackle one of the Cookie A patterns that just came in with my red sock club yarn. I'm kinda askeered of them though. *gulp*

They come with five charts to work through. For ONE pair of socks. 0_o

I blurred this a little so you can't really read them but you don't need to read them to see the page after page after page of charts for the design. Wish me luck! Heheheh.

Off to catch up on blog reading! Have a great weekend, y'all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Glad to see...

I'm not the only one hating on Blogger this week and the new word verification craptcha thingy-majiggy. Bleh. :(

Sore subject..................moving on...............

Well, it was a busy week trying to catch up on things and get back to normal after being so hurl-a-licious last weekend but I managed to finish up two more WIP's while catching up on TiVo stuff at night.

 Death by Candy Corn by Scarlett House.

I had started this one last fall when the pattern was released but those 'over one' candy corns threw me off and I put it aside after doing just one. Bad me. (I didn't like the 'half' stitch the pattern had for them, at least not on this linen, so I changed it to a full stitch, thereby increasing the work for them.) I can never, ever decide what color order I like the candy stripes to be so I switched them back and forth here to keep me happy. The glass candy corns I do are the same. Sometimes I like orange in the middle better, sometimes the yellow...........I've been making them for 10 years now and I *STILL* can't decide on the color order! lol

 This one is by The Trilogy, yes?

I did this pattern a couple years ago as part of an exchange, let me see I'm sure I have a picture here on Blogger for it deeeeeeeeeep in the blog innards........

Oh yes, here it is. But I always wanted to do it again for myself so now I have. Just took me a loooooooooooooooong time to get to it. :)

So yayyyyy for working through the WIP-bag! Very happy about this. All I have left now, WIP-wise, are three pieces................but they are all really big and involved so I don't expect I will finish them whiz-bang-like. I might need to..........mmm...........start a little something to keep me interested in the meantime. Just something small. Teeny tiny. Just one. (I can feel the WIP bag growing again as we speak! *sigh*) And I obviously have a lot of 'finishing' to do with all these new pieces but that will have to wait for the moment. My sewing table (if it's big enough to call it that) is a shambles at the moment and I don't have the heart to tackle it just yet. *ahem*

You know what February is?

It's the start of the Cookie A Sock Club!

Yes I joined again. I am weak and I REALLY liked the club last year. All of the yarns (6) and patterns (12) were pretty fabulous so I figured just one more year with it wouldn't hurt. 

 The first shipment is this luscious CASHMERE yarn. OMG SOFT! The only bad thing about it is that my camera is REFUSING to photo it properly. (And you can forget about *me* having the skills to do it on my own. Oh no, not happening! Point and click is my nickname. lol) It's a medium cranberry/magenta tone - none of this tomato red business showing up on my computer. Grrr! But I can forgive it, of course, because it's CASHMERE. :)

Okay, I'm tired of waiting around this afternoon for it to stop raining in Florida so I can watch the Daytona 500 so I'm outta here. (I was only half interested in it to begin with and the window has now closed and I'm over it. Going for a walk instead!)

Winnah Winnah, Chicken Dinnah!

 Random pick for the Roly-Poly pattern was Dee. 

Happy Stitching him!! :)

Of course, letting one pattern go created a disturbance in the force *shifty eyes*.............

Which I filled with not one but FOUR new patterns. 

DAMN IT! I'm doing this wrong, aren't I? Grrrrrrr.

Free Pattern! :)

 Ewe & Eye & Friends

Roly-Poly Frosty

I decided I'm probably not going to ever stitch this again, so if you would like the pattern for free, just leave a comment here on this post saying so and I'll draw a random name on Saturday or Sunday out of those people for it. Better it go on to someone who can also enjoy it vs. sitting here all lonely in my stash forever and ever. :) 

I was going to post that a few days ago but then I got violently, terribly ill (most likely food poisoning) and lost a couple days to nothingness and got behind on everything. Bleh. This go round was much worse than the last food poisoning round a few years back wherein the mother-in-law tried to kill me outright poisoned me on purpose fed me some not-quite-cooked-enough hamburgers at a cookout. On the bright side, I'm pleased to note that my bathroom mats are quite comfy in a pinch when you need to, like, curl up and rest for a bit on them. Two thumbs up for comfy bathroom mats! (Sometimes it's the little things.) *sigh*

Anyhoo, I have a wee bit of an update for the week.......

New beads..

 Kinda Valentine theme but black/white combos are classic any time.

 Not a whole lot of progress on the stitching front. I had hoped to finish this last week because it's a pretty small/simple pattern but then that whole 'too weak to hold up your arms' thing happened. :(

It's just not possible for me not to have at least SOME TYPE of knitting going on so I started a pair of simple socks for The Boy in this Patons Kroy yarn. They are coming out SUPER thick though and seem to be going slow slow slow. I think I'm tired of them already. lol Could be a problem.

Beyond that, I gots nothing. I still need a couple days of nutritious meals in me, I think, for my brain to be fully functioning again. 

(OMG BLOGGER IS ALL BUTT HURT TODAY TRYING TO POST THIS!@!@! PEOPLE. I HAVE THE POST-SICKIE COLD SWEATS BIG TIME AND DON'T HAVE THE PATIENCE FOR THIS NONSENSE.)

My bad.

I think I forgot there for a couple weeks that I have, like, a blog and stuff. And I should, I dunno, like.........USE it or something. lol

I have been keeping myself busy OFFline though! :)

There have been a few new beads posted:

I am making good headway on the long, long, long list of WIP stitching projects I have started or kitted up around the hosue:

An Ewe & Friends Roly-Poly Snowman. 

I had this kitted up for so long that I probably had 75% less wrinkles and gray hair when I first put it together. *cough* Finished it up in FOUR nights. (What the heck was wrong with me that I let it go so long??) I think I want to finish this up as cube. Hmm......

Some Midnight Stitching cutie-pie snowman hearts started last winter. 

I actually finished up a pinker version of the right one last winter but I ended up HATING the fabric it was on (too holey) so I restitched it on a better fabric and did it with a different red too, because I love deep reds. 

A trio of Bent Creek minis. 

(The third one, a wee little house, was downstairs when I was picture taking and if you think I was going to  haul off and go down two flights of stairs to get it in the interests of doing a blog post, well then, you don't know me very well. My sedentary nature knows NO BOUNDS.)

I'm loving my new most-favoritest nail polish (all new polish automatically becomes my most-favoritest, you know that, right?)

He gifted me the OPI from his visit to the hair salon last week and it's the perfect shade of green for this lime-loving gal. (Matches my pocketbook, my iPhone cover, AND my Fire cover! lol) Paired with an iridescent top coat? Totally springalicious! Like a perfect, glittery easter egg. I may be stuck on this combo for a while. (The top coat is clear with an iridescent micro-glitter - not white like it looks like here.)

Trying to get back into reading every day again. Currently on tap:

This one just came out TODAY (or the Kindle version was just released, not sure about hard cover) but I had it pre-ordered and actually started it this morning. I have a friend who has been living in India for a couple years now (husband's job was moved there) so I'm not entirely ignorant of how things work there but I still fully expect to be horrified, frustrated, angry, depressed, interested, saddened and moved by this book.

Enh. Not loving this one. I'm giving it a few more chapters before I give it up entirely. (It's probably not the book - I'm just hit or miss on nonfiction.)

You're either a foodie or you're not and non-foodies can ignore this one. Personally, I love these collections because I love food blogs in general. And I like how most of the essays are short enough that you can pick one off here and there when you only have a little time to read.

Watching a whole of this:

I never got around to watching it when it was on air but it's on Netflix streaming so I'm picking it off, little by little while I'm working, etc. I can't say I LOVE IT but it's entertaining enough.

I just finished up season three last night and it doesn't seem possible that it had enough juice to get through three MORE seasons? Hmph. I'm not sure I'll make it all the way to the end, to be honest. /shrug

Whew! I think I'm all caught up on the goings on of late now. Nothing terribly exciting going on, to be honest. lol It may not be very snowy/stormy out this winter but it's still winter and it's still COLD and, therefore, still a little dreary and blah. Here's to spring and more interesting goings-on! :)

We got some snow! Finally.

And then it was 55 degrees the next day and all melted away within 48 hours. 

Oh well. It was pretty while it lasted. 

I can't say I'm not enjoying the extra 'sunny' feeling this winter because of the lack of storms. (Anything to avoid that mid-winter blues/depression thing, yes?)

I wasn't feeling super great last week but I managed to suck it up and finally finish my last remaining knitting WIP:

 (Look: actual SNOW in the background!)

My Joy Mittens.......that I started last August. Feels good to get this one finally finished! They were easy to do but the heavy charting made it hard to give them the attention they really needed when watching tv so I only worked on them in fits and starts. I originally started these because, after searching and searching and trying assorted projects, I FINALLY found a pattern that I felt really worked with this Twisted Fiber yarn that had been sitting around in my stash for ages and agessssss:

 Do you know how much I used up for the mittens? Less than ounce of it. I still had a very-generous 2.6 ounces left afterwards so I whipped up the rest into a pair of simple socks:

(Paired with another scrap yarn for the heel/toes because 1) I like the jaunty, almost ridiculously cheery look of it and 2) the green yarn is a bit thin so I wanted something a bit heavier for the areas that would wear out the fastest.) Soooo, did I finally use up the last of the yarn?

Not quite. lol

There's still a healthy ball of it left. And by healthy I mean there is probably enough to do the heel/toes of another pair of socks, if I were so inclined, which I AM NOT. This relationship was great while it lasted but it's over now and he needs to move on without me. :)

Needles are now empty and I can get to digging up all the many many stitching WIP's I have squirreled away in various places.

 

Ravelry link for the mittens, for anyone interested in knitting them. It's a fabulous pattern, with great charts/instructions.

Oh happy happy weekend!

And it's nice and SUPER sunny too, which is ALWAYS a mood booster this time of year. :)

 Hard at work this week on adding little goodies on the site/Etsy for Valentine's and spring. Ahhhh, spring! It won't hit here until May but one gets tired of working on nothing but snowmen after awhile. (Still no snow here though. Haven't had a single flake since Halloween, which is totally crazy! I really don't remember if we've ever had a winter with NO snow before?!?)

Also: finished my 'Christmas' hat this week. Yay!!! Another WIP killed, only one left to tackle now. Nothing like being two three weeks late and stuff with the christmas knits, eh? But it's just for the hubs so he can deal.*snort* 

(He *did* get a pair of mittens and socks that made into his stocking for Xmas so I wasn't TOTALLY off the ball here.)

The pattern is called Snowbird (check Ravelry for links) that I purchased from the Stitches East show in 2010. It's pretty funny looking when you are wearing it, to be honest, but this is the same man who goes around the yard in a humongous rabbit fur hat - complete with ear flaps - when shoveling, etc. so at least nothing DIED for this one. :(

Of course, I find ALL winter hats slightly ridiculous in a vague, make-me-chuckle type of way, so it might just be me.

He wanted to have something he could wear to work so I did it in the color palate of his uniforms/work clothing - though he still can't actually be caught wearing it on work grounds, they're so so so so picky about such things. *sigh*  He'll have to save it for when he is working away from work - if that makes sense - but that comprises 98% of his work day so it's all good. The double layer of wool will be nice and toasty for working outdoors all day. :)

The only change I made was to make the inside brim in the same wool (Cascade Superwash) as the rest of the hat instead of doing it in cotton like the pattern suggested. Hates knitting with cotton. Hates it. *shudder*

I'm getting a little tired of doing nothing but colorwork project after project after project but I still have a pair of colorwork mittens that needs some thumbs so once more into the breach....................After that is done though I'm digging into some serious STITCHING. I WILL FINISH SOME ORNAMENTS THIS YEAR. WILL. I WILL. I WILL.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!!!!!!!!!

Obsession over.

 A fun little project for the holiday. 

 Little Cotton Rabbits free pattern, heavily modified because I did mine in the round vs. her doing 'em flat and seaming them up the backside.

I think in my mind I wasn't going to be happy until I hit an even dozen of these little jobbies and I was having fun coming up with new ways to do the designs but then the last one popped out like this:

Uh. Can you say totally BANANAS?

I mean look at the design on this thing!?! These aren't meant to be worn by actual PEOPLE, you know. 

So that was when I knew I had to quit before I started charting out, like, the New York landscape in wee sock form or something EQUALLY RIDICULOUS.

So, obsession over. They are put away until next Christmas where I will............I don't actually know what to do with them, to be honest. Put them on the tree? Maybe do a garland/stocking thing on the stairway banister? I just kinda liked knitting them. I didn't really care what they were for, you know? lol

During the holiday I also managed to correct an egregious wrong around here. Mr. Pigeon from The Pigeon Loft came with a most handsome Santa hat when I got him but, alas, when Miss HennyPenny joined the fold she was, quite sadly, sans hat. You can imagine how she felt about this. 

Those little beady eyes just stare straight into the depths of your soul, don't they? *shudder*

So I made her a styling hat too, complete with handmade pom-pom. (Which was quite the experience as it was twice as big as that when it started and then I trimmed and trimmed and trimmed and OMG I HATE MAKING POM-POMS.) So then I stuffed them both into the Xmas tree, per usual, with their hats and all was right with the world. The End.