Happy One Hundred - Some Wordle Fun!

Well, I've finally reached my 100th post.  Only took two years!  Oh, well.  I suppose that's okay because I didn't start blogging regularly up until this past year.

I wanted to do something fun for my 100th post, but nothing big.  I'm saving the big stuff for the holidays :)  That said, there's a super cute meme going around on CreatingTheHive.com - Arts & Crafts Community using a little widget called Wordle.  You enter your blog's feed into Wordle and it generates some art based on your blog's text.

So in honor of my three-digit milestone, here's what 100 entries about yarn look like:

I'm a little dismayed at my use of words like "like", "just", and "really", but it's pretty neat, huh?

What does your blog "look like"?!

And just so this entry has some project content, I've completed the first 3" of ribbing on my shrug and started the lace pattern.  I should finish the first row of lace this evening (after 3.5 hours of awfulness - I mean, Managerial Finance), so after that I should be able to tell how the rest of this pattern is gonna go down.  I hope it continues being friendly!

Knitting for Christmas Eve - A Cute Bolero and Knit Picks Haul!

Christmas Eve is always my chance to dress up during the holiday season.  As I've gotten older (and who's to say 27 is old, but now that my bones crack when I stand up and I go to bed at 10PM without complaint, I'm pretty sure I'm getting up there), there are more and more reasons to dress up in December.  There's always some kind of party.  But Christmas Eve has always been my night to really get dressed up, do my hair, go to the midnight service at the church I grew up in, and oh - celebrate my mom's birthday.

Shopping for dresses is probably one of the more horrific experiences I have.  I hate everything I try on, but it's something I need to do.  That's why this year, I'm going to recycle this sassy navy blue numer that I wore in a friend's wedding back in July:



I already know I love the dress and it fits well, so why put myself through the pain of shopping for clothes in the middle of Christmas?

However, the dress is not really church appropriate for a full-fledged holiday service.  At least not in my opinion.  So I need to get a cover up.  Again, I really hate shopping, especially during the holidays, and it always takes hours for me to find shrugs that I like.  Most of them are hideous, huge, and some of them have gross shoulder pads.  UGH!  It's awful.

But I'm crafty and determined enough to try my hand at making my own.  And that's why I purchased some of this Knit Pick Shine Worsted yarn to attempt knitting a shrug I actually like (ravelry link to pattern):



Originally I wanted to get a crazy bright color, but then I decided that the dress is navy blue and I wanted to wear my shiny red heels, so I'm toning it down with a safe, neutral cream color that I can match to any future ensemble I throw together.  And I'll look like a patriotic sailor, to boot.

And of course, it's not fun enough just starting a new project without treating myself to some Knit Picks Harmonies!  I drooled over the interchangeables when someone sent them with their traveling scarf, so I picked up some of my own in the sizes I'd need:



I'm finishing up some flowers for a Christmas swap I'm participating in, then I have a few custom hat orders to work on before the holidays.  But I think this will be my Thanksgiving break project.  You have no idea just how much I'm looking forward to that!  Classes will be done until January, then it's just me, my job, and coming home to knitting!

I suppose one of these days I should start working on my Christmas gifts.  I can't believe it's that time of year again already!

Halloween Swaps, New Communities, and I Carved a Whacky Pumpkin

First off, a big welcome to all my new readers!  I've recently joined a couple new initiatives and have been getting to know some amazing fellow crafters, so I'm really excited to say that a lot of them have followed me to my little blog :)

One of the groups I joined is a wonderful community called Creating the Hive.  If any of you are into crafting in any way (and it doesn't have to be a full-time gig, or even part-time), then you should go join ASAP!  For those of you who are big into selling on etsy, make sure to check out the other new comminuty I joined: Etsypreneur!  I haven't been as involved as I'd like to be due to time constraints, but I do get over there a few times a week, and I'm sure it'll be a great resource.  But anywho...

As we begin our Halloween weekend, I thought now would be an opportune time to write about a recent themed hat swap I received last week!

Most of you are aware of the swaps I do.  I join a bunch of them and really like not only receiving fun packages, but also sending off packages to everyone else.  My favorites are always those swaps that happen around holidays because it just gets you in the spirit of the season, don'tcha think?

That said, this swap was Halloween themed.  Halloween is only second to Christmas on my list of favorite holidays, so I like to go all out.  And the more decorations, the better!  So imagine the fun I had opening this package to find not only a really cute black slouchy hat (and candy that Hubby got to before I could even look at it), but also these adorable lanterns!



Isn't it a cute package?  Oh, and the pencil with extra erasers will become increasingly useful as I progress my way through more and more accounting classes over the coming months.  Believe me: I've been erasing a lot.

So anyway, our neighborhood's trick-or-treat is tonight, and I'm really excited to go home and pass out candy to kids for the first time (it's our first Halloween in a house, and let's face it: you just don't get kids when you live in a locked apartment building densely populated with young 20-somethings).  I've got my skull bucket full of nummies, and a Finance take-home exam to prop my feet up with when it's all over at 8PM.  Don't be jealous of my Fridays!  Then tomorrow is a big Halloween housewarming party that Hubby and I have been busting our tooshies for since September.  I hope it's worth it!

And in case you were wondering just how obsessed with my cat I really am, you should be aware that I carved a pumpkin in his likeness:

Okay, not really.  I'm Alice in Wonderland for Halloween, so I carved a Cheshire Cat.  But it looks a lot like my Chucky, don't you think?

Have a spooktacular and safe weekend!

The craft room. She is done. BWAHAHA.

As we draw closer to our Halloween Housewarming party, Hubby and I have been working hard on getting the house ready for 20+ people to come visit and destroy all our hard work, haha.  No really, we love our friends and want the house to be in tip top shape for when they visit.

For the past eight months, my poor craft room has been a catch-all for everything we haven't been able to sort through yet due to other projects (like redoing the kitchen and, well, just being overall busy with other things).  But the past two weekends, I got my butt in gear, finished all my grad school homework during the week so weekends would be free, and got to cleaning, organizing, and throwing things out.

And I'm now excited to show off what my craft room FINALLY looks like:

Here's the room when you first walk in the front door.  Those yarn cubes have been organized pretty much since we first moved in (just so I could have easy access to them and know what I had in stock before buying more... which... has been a huge issue in the past :P), but the rest of the room had a bunch of boxes.  We also bought that golden beige chair yesterday, and I think it goes really well with the room.  It wasn't expensive, either, and it's shockingly more comfortable than any of the big stuffed chairs I was originally looking at.

Here we have a view of my bookcase.  Well, bookcase and random clutter case.  The whole top shelf are just little boxes of notions and a sock monkey kit that I bought to make Hubby two Christmases ago.  You can tell I love sewing so so much.  The bottom shelf are all my general crafting books, knit & crochet calendars, and my beads for crocheting jewelry.  Those white posterboards are what I use to take pictures on, and the placemat is for when I eventually get around to making my own sock blockers.  In 12 years.

And here's my sewing closet and scrapbooking supplies.  My mom stole my sewing machine a couple months ago, so I haven't gotten around to all that quilting I want to learn.  It's probably better that way, considering there really isn't enough room to add fabric to this disaster area.  But still.

Oh, well.  I'm just so happy it's finally done.  If I had a before picture, you'd probably die.  And when we moved in, the room was a pastel pink!  So it's quite a drastic change that I love love love!  Totally looking forward to classes being done in four weeks so I can work on all my holiday projects in peace :)

I hope our friends appreciate the fact I got my craft room clean for them!  Haha.

Of baby hats and wedding anniversaries

It has officially been far too long since I've typed up an entry in here.  Three weeks, maybe?  Yuck!  I am not happy with that.  School, work, and pretty much everything else going on has cluttered up my life to the point any free time is severely lacking.



However, that doesn't mean I haven't been working on projects!  The projects I'll be talking about today were made for one of my fellow Shutterfly Gurus, Lisa.  Lisa lives down in good old Texas, that I actually got to visit recently for a work conference.  I didn't get to meet up with Lisa due to the hectic schedule, but it was nice to get out of PA for a couple days and eat some Tex Mex.



Lisa is celebrating the birth of a second granddaughter, so she asked me to make some baby hats after seeing some photos on my person Shutterfly Share site.  Of course, I was more than happy to oblige!



Here first request were two adorable munchin hats.  One in red and white, and one pink:







You can grab the quick and fun pattern here.



Her second request was a purple berry hat that was really easy to whip up one afternoon, and I think it came out better than cute:







You can get the pattern for this little cutie here.



And last but not least, she asked for a pink hat especially for her older granddaughter.  One with a huge flower on the side.  We all know how I love to accessorize my items with flowers, so this was a great time for me.  I even added a pink button to the flower for extra fun.







I don't have a pattern for that one since I kind of just made it as I went, but I'm thinking about writing one up for everyone :)



Lisa just received the hats earlier this week and loves them - thankfully!  She will doing a whole photoshoot this weekend, and I can't wait to see the results.  She's a great photographer and I always love browsing through her Shutterfly galleries.



And on that note, I can't tell you how thrilled I am that this weekend is finally here.  It's been quite a long week trying to catch up on everything I missed at the conference in Dallas last week, and I've just been crazy exhausted.  But it's totally worth it.  I've also joined a fun little community called Etsypreneur, and so far I've been having lots of fun over there in the forums.  If you sell on etsy, definitely check it out and friend me.  AND I'm excited to say that I received my first international order a few nights ago, so I'm looking forward to making that headband and mailing it out.



If that wasn't exciting enough, it's Hubby's and my first wedding anniversary on Sunday.  We're treating ourselves to a break by visiting my parents' lake house this weekend and exploring all the little shops and fun events the place has to offer.  We're also taking our homework because what's a vacation without having hours of homework? :)  Oh, well.  But anyway:

It really doesn't seem like a year already, but I guess that's a good thing.  We're looking forward to celebrating with champagne and year-old cake on the 10th, haha.  Hopefully it's lasted!  I'm pretty sure my mom wrapped it like a nuclear device, so we're probably good to go.  Have a great weekend, everyone!