Last Call

Ok, so I know that it's been a while. . a long while.  Like a few months . . .  and I know that I seem to start new posts like that all the time ;) you should be used to it by now.  

Anywho- Just wanted to post a quick little note about how awesome my Husband is :)

He wrote and recorded a Jazz Album.

Tonight is his CD release party.

Amazon has the MP3 for sale, which makes it available for lovely people like you to have a little listen to each one of his songs. . 

You can find it here.

 If you want to purchase a CD instead of the MP3 please contact me and I'll see what I can do!

I'm the "photographer" tonight so hopefully in the next week or so I'll post some lovely pictures!

Happy knitting everyone and if I don't make it up here before Thanksgiving. . Have a nice holiday too!

Not so Dirty Hippie

So my new friend Lilly sent me and Dear Husband a care package. Mostly books for us to enjoy among some other exciting things. The whole box smelled really really good. That's because she mailed me some Zum Bar soap. I've eyeballed this stuff before at one of our local grocery stores. But I've never picked any up, just sniffed the heck out of them while shopping. This soap has brought out my inner dirty hippie, but in a fresh and clean kind of way. I mean it is soap and I'd have to shower to use it, so I can't be that dirty. 

With all this hippie talk, and to Dear Husband's greatest pleasure (not really), I've started burning incense again.  Damn hippies.  My favorite incense of all time is Nag Champa, but I found some that was Nag Champa with Jasmin.  Yummm.

I've also been reading up on some home made products that are cheaper and possibly more effective then store bought products.
The most recent home-made, cheaper then store bought, hippie item: OCM Face Wash. OCM stands for Oil Cleansing Method. Using an oil that is similar to the pH of the oil my skin produces to help absorb excess oil.

I found an old plastic bottle in my home-made beauty supply box (that has been at the back of the bathroom closet for almost 5 years. AND, I might add, was covered in coconut oil that had leaked all over in the box of home made beauty supplies). I think it was Sea Breeze bottle at first. I put in 4 oz of caster oil then filled the rest up with extra virgin olive oil. I then put in a bit of tea tree oil since I have acne prone skin. This made a lot! I then started the hot water but I didn't get my face wet. I just applied the oil mix to my face and massaged it in. Then I got a washcloth really hot and placed that over my face, letting it warm the oils and let them do their magic. After a min or two I wiped the oil off. Easy as that. Afterwords, my skin felt tight and clean. It had that clean kind of shine to it. It was so clean feeling that I put on some moisturizer, just in case. I don't think I will stop using regular face wash just yet but it felt good to make something that felt so good to use. Felt even better when using a hand-made washcloth for the steaming part!

Post Apocalyptic Life Skill

I know that it's been a while.  And It definitely has nothing to do with not having anything to say because, wooly moley, a lot has been going on.  More on that later. . This post is just a quick little "HI" and a funny.  I saw this picture on Facebook and decided to share it here.  To whoever designed this; Thank you, it's beautiful! And sorry if I'm doing something wrong/bad by sharing this.  Have a great day!

How a Beekeeper keeps warm at night

Beekeeper's Quilt

I've started making the little honeycombs for this blanket out of left over sock yarn. The pattern suggest to put polyfil in them so they poof, but I've decided to not do that. So here's what I have so far, you might recognize some of the yarn from some of my other projects:

Did I mention that I'm using the same kind of yarn for all my "poofs"? It's knitpicks Stroll.

So many color options!! I can make some that are solid colored, tonal, or variegated. This will look great, laying over my lap, while I knit. Sitting in a comfy chair with either coffee, tea, or wine inside my future knitting cottage :)

What life brings. . .

A few weeks back my husband announced that one of his previous girlfriends had found him on Facebook and wanted to be friends. He hadn't had a real conversation with her in about 10 years. Now, I know how most wives would have responded. "OH HELL NO!" I couldn't be that way. Dear husband has every right to talk to and befriend who ever he wants. I'm not the kind of person who is willing to control someone like that. I completely trust my husband and if that makes me foolish then I guess I'm am. I'd rather be foolish then feel suspicious of him or her.

I will admit that I did feel a little weird at first. It was mostly feelings of protection. When I became friends my Dear Husband, his relationship with her was still fresh on his mind. He wasn't over her, and as a friend, I tried to be there for him. Eventually he got over her and we fell in love. His feelings towards her haven't been a problem for him since. So when he told me that they were catching up I kind of panicked. Dear Husband!? She broke your heart and made you really sad, why would you want to talk to her? But as I thought about it, he is the best ex-boyfriend to have. He knew that he was blaming her for how upset he was over everything in his life. Spilled milk, blame your ex, fail a final, blame your ex. . . Once he got over her he wrote her a letter apologizing for all the crappy things he did to her after they broke up. I've NEVER had an ex do that- yet. So she's lucky to have dated a guy who could own up to being a jerk and understand that his immaturity got in the way of them being friends afterwords. And I'm lucky, he's a really great guy that makes me happy. Plus, I got to grow with him as we both emotionally matured, learning from each other.

She lives across the state with her family but this past weekend she drove up to our little town to meet us and hear Dear Husband play live jazz. After meeting her I can no longer call her my husbands ex, she's more then that to me. But for privacy reasons I won't say her real name on here, so I'll just call her Lilly. Lilly and I have a lot in common and that feels good. We have lots to talk about!  Sadly, she's not a knitter, her mom spun and dyed wool, so she's been around it. I believe that she has a great appreciation for hand-made things. I feel that if I knitted her something she'd take really good care of it. And on the off chance that I can't convince her to learn to knit (even with my awesome evangelic knitting powers), we'd still be good friends.

Sock Progress July/August.

So this last month, July, was not a good month to start or finish any knitting projects. I tried and tried to get a good go at July socks but it just didn't happen. The yarn was to ugly and the pattern I chose just wasn't working out the way I had hoped. So, July came and went with out any socks. By July 25^th I'd already started swatching August's socks. And as of today I'm one sock down with one sock to go.

 I've also started working on September's socks, but that isn't going to well either. I've swatched a few times, trying to convert a top down into a toe up, again. Maybe that's my problem, I just need to learn to deal with top down socks. 

Another let down was the end paper mitts. Here's my swatch:

Isn't it pretty?! I was so excited until I measured my stitches per inch. Nowhere near what I needed. Decided not to go up in needles size (again), I might be new to color work but I do have some amazing experienced friends. I am to understand that the larger the needles you use, the more the fabric will stretch, the more it stretches the more you can see the color of the yarn runs in the back side. So no Endpaper Mitts for me, not now anyway. I did find a pattern that I did make gauge for, so hopefully before it gets cold out I'll have some nice mittens to wear.

You can find the pattern here: Vespergyle Mittens

Catching up with previous posts: you know how I said I was not going to buy any more books? At least not physical books that take up shelf space, require dusting, and attract paper eating bugs? I broke that rule pretty quick.

Maybe someday I'll just live in a bookstore/yarn store/coffee shop.  That would solve a lot of problems.

P.s. On a de-junking note I recently parted with two large boxes of Magazines

Great Day to Dye

A few of my fellow knitters and I decided it would be fun to get together and dye our own yarn.  We talked about it for a while but never set any plans into motion.  Then a while back, we did it.  We got together with our crock pots and Kool-Aid and made beautiful yarn.  And here are the results of that day:

the pink and red on the left are mine

I tired to do it again at home a few days later:

started out as red on one end and yellow on the other.  I was trying to dye the middle section orange in this photo.

as you can see, the yarn turned out peach.  no red or yellow or orange, the whole thing is peach.