Dye Day

I had two days off in a row. . which doesn't happen often enough.  So I decided I needed to dye some yarn.  I started with a hank of Bare Stroll fingering weight from Knitpicks and a hand full of Kool-aid packets.

The "BEFORE" picture

Two shades of red: Tropical Punch and Black Cherry

Decided it needed some Raspberry Lemonade

All Done!

Now the question is, do I love it so much that I want to keep it and make something with it?  Or do I want to sell it?  Oh decisions decisions. . .
If I keep it, it is the same yarn that I am using to make my Beekeeper's quilt.  So if I use it, any leftovers will be come a puff in the quilt. Hummm. . .   Please share your opinions!

Manhattan Music Festival

So a few weekends ago, I got to spend time knitting at the Manhattan music Festival. . .

That's the Hemlock Ring Blanket.  Love how blue this looks in the evening light of the concert.  I wanted my first attempt at this blanket to be washable which is why I went with Lion brand pound of love.  I chose this project because I really wanted to learn how to knit something "circular" in the round.  Once I get comfy with this I will attempt the shawl I wanted to make this past January, Evenstar Shawl.

Baby blanket factory

Following the footsteps of my little sister, I decided to try to sell hand knit items on Etsy.  My first Etsy projects will be baby blankets!!  So here's what I've been working on; 

This first one is made out of Effervesce by Yarn Bee in Creme de Menthe,  and the pattern is Sweet Pea Baby Blanket.  It was super easy and quick to knit up.  I never got board, which was surprising, because this blanket turned out so long. 

The seconded one is made out of Heartland by Lion brand in Grand Canyon.  The pattern is called Pine Forest Baby Blanket.  I really liked this one, the yarn worked perfect to show the lace pattern.  The neutral color is perfect for a boy or a girl.  So neutral in fact that it can be used as a throw or lap blanket when the baby grows up.

The third blanket is the famous (at least in the knitting world), Hemlock Ring Blanket.  I'm working this one out of Lion Brand pound of love, in white.  I'll talk about this one more in another post, once I have some more pictures. 

Now I'm having a hard time figuring out what to charge for them.  I'd like to get my money back on the yarn that I used as well as the time it took to make the blanket.  But, if I pay myself minimum wage for the hourly rate to knit up the blankets, each one would be REALLY EXPENSIVE.  So I'm worried that no one would buy them.  But I don't want to undercharge myself for the work that I put into them because that makes other fiber artists look expensive when they are not undervaluing their own work.  So I'm dealing with a moral dilemma.  If you have any tips on this or an opinion please share with me. 

Open letter to The Fly Lady

Dear Fly Lady,

     I have considered myself a "fly baby" since 2004. I've never set your routines and zones into place.  To me, making a cleaning routine and sticking to it is perfection and I am a perfectionist who is easily overwhelmed.  So overwhelmed that I give up and decide that it's to hard to do it right, might as well not do it at all.  I know, I need to learn baby steps. . .  But that doesn't mean that I haven't felt the effects of your cleaning missions and email reminders.
     Today is July 21, we are in zone 4: Master bedroom.  Today's mission was simple; get everything out from under your bed and only put back what belongs.  Here's what happened:

1. Sheets needed to be washed anyway, so the bed got stripped and everything is washing now.
2. Only two storage boxes go under my bed, a winter clothes box (mostly my husbands stuff) and a box with gift tags, bows, and wrapping paper.  After moving those, I decided to move the bed away from the wall, knowing that a few things had fallen from the night stands onto the floor.
3. What else did I find: 2 pens, 9 hair clips, 4 hair bands, a pair of winter boots, a pair of slippers, two socks that were not mates, two hair balls (a lovely gift from my cat), and enough cat hair to support a litter of kittens among the dust bunnies.  The carpet is suppose to be a coffee brown, this carpet was gray.
4. Picked up everything, and everything that I was keeping was put in its proper home.  Then a major vacuuming was needed.  

     I have no idea when the last time the floor was cleaned under my bed.  But after this experience I felt a bit confused but happy. . Confused because no one but my husband or I will ever actually LOOK under our bed, so I can't feel embarrassed by that mess if people come over.  Your original task was just to get rid of stuff that doesn't belong, not a deep cleaning.  But, under the bed is where my cat likes to hide/hang out when people he doesn't know come to the house.  It's where he likes to hide when things get scary or when we go out of town over night.  It is where he would develop an upper respiratory infection if it wasn't kept clean.  You just saved me a few hundred dollars in vet bills.  So thank you!

Love,
Sarah the "fly baby"
P.S.  It only took me about 20 minuets to do all of this.

If you are reading this most and are not the Fly Lady and want to know more about who she is, please visit her website http://www.flylady.net/

Crawling out from under my rock. . .

Wow, where have I been?  Not here, sharing my thoughts on my blog. . .  Work and personal life has been kinda bumpy.  So I haven't been doing the things I love very often.  Like knitting.  (I'll wait right here while you pick yourself back up off the floor)  So, no.  No knitting in the past four months or so.  I also haven't bought any yarn or patterns or needles.  Creatively speaking, I haven't purchased craft supplies in a very long time.  At least it feels like a long time.  So what have I been doing?  Well, last summer my Grandmother moved into a small apartment.  Which meant that a lot of her belongings had to go.  Along with some very pretty glass knickknacks, I inherited her cross stitch DMC floss.  My mother-in-law gave me most of her collection a few years back and I already had a lot of my own.  So I started sorting though them this past February, mixing Grandma's into my collection.  It got me thinking about how I don't really cross stitch very often, so why was I going through the trouble of keeping it?  Why spend so much time when I may never ever use it?  At this point I had already set aside my knitting.  So I went through my cross stitch stuff and found a project I'd started but hadn't come close to finishing.  So that's what I've been working on:

When I pulled this project out, it was just the pointe shoes.  So, from February until early May, I did the roses and leaves and some back stitching.  It's only about 45% done.  Here is what it should look like when it's all done, sorry for the blurry picture:

I originally started this because I wanted to decorate my bathroom with a ballet theme.  Light pinks, black, grey, and chrome.   Since my husband and I still rent, it's not really in my best interest to go out and spend money decorating our house the way I want my dream home to look.  But that doesn't mean that I can prepare for it now.  So ballet inspired cross stitch it is. 

Flying

I'm not sure if I've mentioned the FlyLady before, if I have, sorry for the repeat.  

The FlyLady is one of my heroes.  In preparing to organize my stash, I've started getting rid of things.  Not anything craft related, not yet anyway.  But following the FlyLady's cleaning routines has made a difference is just a short amount of time.  So, here's my FLYing story: 

FLYing refers to Finally Loving Yourself.  By taking the focus off of what I couldn't or didn't get done in a day to allowing only 5-15 min per task on my to do list has made life less stressful.  Yes, the to do list is still long and a bit overwhelming when you look at the whole thing.  But, when I give myself a time limit to work on a specific project, knowing that if I don't finish the project, that I can go at it again tomorrow, has made things less stressful.  It has made me feel productive with less negative self-talk.  I have defined deadlines at work, I don't need to do that to myself with my personal life.  One point she makes is that procrastination is a form of perfectionism.  If something can't be done perfectly, then we put it off, making the job much harder when we do have to deal with it.  I see that in myself, in the way I clean, get my car fixed, even in my knitting.  If a job seems to hard, then I don't do it right away.  That's what the book is about, though, it appears to be a cleaning book. . . 

I first read the book in 2004.  I signed up for daily emails and reminders.  At first it was totally awesome.  I'd come home from work and then look up what tasks had been emailed to me.  It got hectic really quickly.  I lived with my husband and a roommate, who had her own boyfriend who semi lived with us.  I was working two jobs, about 60 hrs or more a week.  I soon lost focus, decided that since I couldn't do it perfectly every day, that I wasn't going to do it at all.  And no, I do not blame the FlyLady for this, she said that my house didn't get dirty in a day, that it wasn't going to get clean overnight.  I expected miracles that involved cleaning fairies and magical spaces that would hold all my stuff.  Once my husband and I moved into our own place I realized what the problem was.  We had to much stuff for the amount of space we had.  Well, we couldn't afford a bigger place so the other option is to get rid of things.  In comes the FlyLady again.  One of her first bits of cleaning advise is to just focus on de-cluttering.  Get rid of the things you don't love and cherish, all the extra stuff is just junk that you have to keep clean and store somewhere.  

Ten years later and I still consider myself a "fly Baby".  I don't have a daily routine down, but what I do have is a good understanding of the work involved in keeping myself sane.  

Check out her website and maybe read her book (though the info you'll need is all on the sight). 

The Dishcloth Distraction

I recently went to Wichita Ks, to visit my sister and her family.  It was also my niece's birthday. .   We did go to Heritage Hut, a lovely yarn store, where I found this:

A friend of mine made Stephen West's Boneyard shawl out of this yarn, and ever since I wore her finished shawl, I've wanted some of this yarn.  It was in the clearance section, so I bought all that they had.

I also acquired these:

Thanks to my little sister, whom I blame for the dishcloth distraction, my stash has grown.  She had recently laid out her stash, end to end, and it covered her entire basement floor.  I guess seeing how much yarn she had made her decide that she really didn't need so much of it. . so she gave me a bag of dishcloth cotton.  At first she told me to go through it and just pick out what I wanted.  I picked out two balls, then told her that if she wanted to give me some of it, that she should pick out what to give me.  That's when she went to go get a bag to put it all in. .   When I got back home, I combined my new cotton collection with my current stash.  I started going though the yarn, sorting out full balls from leftovers.  Next thing you know, I knitted these: