kdlb-pad

Starting fresh

My whiteboard has been so full for so long and now it's clean :)

Starting fresh

Jewelry

When cleaning my desk, i started moving all the necklaces and other jewelry to my ironing board. Man, there were a lot hiding in here! :)

Jewelry

Mom's shawl/scarf

With both Mother's day and my Mom's birthday in May, I wanted to make her something knitted for one of those holidays.  Back at the end of March, I found (and mentioned in my upcoming projects post) a kit with a beautiful black and white yarn for a shawl, and it really made me think of my mom because she loves black and white.

Morpheus Scarf
Started: April 18, 2007
Finished: April 29, 2007
Pattern: Purchased kit including needles and pattern from Morehouse Farms: Morpheus Scarf
Using: Verigated Laceweight merino wool, in BlackandWhite in 10.5 novelty wooden needles.
 
This was the first time I got a hank of yarn instead of it being pre-skeined.  So that was an interesting process to turn it into a ball.  Photos for that are in this post.

I was worried about a normal cast-on being too tight, so I tried out a new lace cast-on that Eunny had on her site: Lace cast on.

These were also the largest needles I'd worked on, and I think I would have preferred metal ones, but these were inexpensive to add on to the kit.

All the way through, I had a hard time imagining how the dropped stitches were going to work!  This was the first time I'd done anything like this before.

Knit_shawl_beforedrop

Knit_shawl_beforeblock

I was surprised that the dropped stitches didn't really go too far on their own, I had to stretch and massage it all to get them to move down to the bottom of the scarf.

It actually lengthened the scarf by a great deal, as you can see by the before and after!

And then Blocking was also a new experience for me.  A good experience, but something new.

I love how the individual stitches turned into little rectangles when I laid it out, all perfectly aligned and such a neater pattern than while I was knitting.  I used the instructions that came with the pattern to do this because it was so new to me, and made a blocking area out of towels and an old sheet (actually one of my mom's I THINK from when she was in college, to come back around full circle)

Knit_shawl_onkristine

I had to try it on, because I was so interested to see how it would photograph.  I'll have to try and get a real picture on my mom one of these days, but it was fun to play and prop my camera up right to get the shawl/scarf over my arm and show some curlies at the same time, to add to the romanticness of it :)

Knit_shawl_wraptagged

Knit_shawl_card

Finally, I made a tag and a card to go along with it, completing the package for my mom.  The card has a small flower made out of the last little bit of the yarn after binding off.  And I love my heart hole punch for accenting!

nice saturday out

Yesterday was a really nice day.  I got up and then took a nap, and extra sleep is always what I need on the weekend.  And then we left the house for most of the day, wow!

The plan I'd  been formulating towards the end of the week was that I wanted to see Pirates 3.  I still had money on my gift card from Megan and Andrew (we used some on Spiderman 3), and so we went back to Cinetopia.  They have nice cushy seats.  We got our tickets and then went out shopping for a bit until it started. 

We browsed for a bit at World Market, where our favorite sparkling pear cider was on sale (it's a perfect compliment to a nice meal, beautiful flavor), and they also had some jelly bellys "Soda Pop Shoppe" that was a nice combo of pop-inspired jelly bellys, perfect for the movie.  Then we headed to lunch at Old Spaghetti Factory, which is on that side of town so we don't get to go there as much as we'd like.  After dinner, we headed over to Kohl's, where they were having a huge sale that we accidentally caught the tail end of - I got a purse that fits inside my laptop bag for 50% off, it's a nice style and has a pretty lining, and will work well for an upcoming trip.  After that, we headed back down to Craft Warehouse, where I'd seen a sidewalk sale when we drove past earlier.  Nice thing about going there is that E can walk down a few stores to a bookstore and I can not feel as guilty about shopping with him in the car.  I found more yarn needles (the one I was using on my super-secret project was too big), a bag of buttons, and this interesting jewelry on clearance that featured not only purple beads, but little purple buttons.  Seemed like the perfect thing for "now-crafty-me" :)

By that time, it was time to head back to the theater, and we went and settled in.  The previews were great, featuring most of the movies we wanted to see this summer (Die Hard, Harry Potter, Transformers, etc).  The movie itself was great too.

After the movie, we went out for frozen custard - yum, mine was a "wedding cake" one, where they mixed a whole piece of yellow cake with white frosting into frozen custard.

Last stop was the library where some of my requested books were in and others needed to go back.

It was such a nice time out!  My legs were sore by the time we got home, and so we sat on the couch and I watched Dante's Peak while knitting and E played his DS.

And today, I look forward to more rest, a birthday party for my mom, and some cleaning that's muchly needed.  :)

QotD: Favorite Finale

What was your favorite TV season finale this year? 
Submitted by Kristine.

Funny thing is, when I suggested this question, I still didn't know what my answer would be.  I'm sitting here typing and I still am not sure how to pick! :D

I went into the Season Finales with no spoilers.  I've been spoiler free for most of the season, in fact.  When it's close to the finales, I don't even open my "TV" folder in my feedreader because I don't want to be spoiled.  With the east coast/west coast thing, I don't look at my Vox neighborhood even when it's the night of a finale or some big reveal on one of my shows.

I think I'll have to go with Heroes as my favorite.  It really brought a lot of the characters storylines together, and even though it opened a lot of questions (like who will still be alive when we start next year, my fingers are crossed!)  And actually the episodes leading up to it were so strong that it really had me even more excited for it, which really made me in a very anticipatory state!

Second highest point of the finales?  Lost.  OMG, wow.  I'm still reeling.  I think that if I didn't have to wait 9 months to see it again, I'd be quite a bit more enthused, though.

Other great ones: Bones, love the last scene.  The Office, yaypamandjim.  Numb3rs was shocking.

My least favorite of the finales goes to Grey's Anatomy.  I just was underwhelmed.  I didn't like how they ended it.  It makes me not quite as excited for next season, truthfully, although I am enthused about Private Practice, the spinoff.

preview of moo cards promo

This will be announced tomorrow, but I got a chance to give out info for my friends and family first :)

Have you heard of Moocards?  They are like little business cards you can give out, and they are going to start letting Vox members print off their own.  You can get a 10-pack sample (for the first 1000 people) by following the steps below:

• Add Moocards to your neighborhood, even if it's just for now (until the order is complete)
  
• Then shop on their special version of the site at moo.com/vox
• Pick either photo or text cards and do the free 10 pack option.
• I did text ones and used fun fonts and patterns, and then my member photo/vox logo on the back.
  
• Moocards will ship anywhere in the world!

I have some coming to me, and I can't *wait* to see how they turn out.  I'll be sure and scan some so you guys can see :)

More details will be up on Team Vox tomorrow, but you don't have to wait till then :)

Edited to add: Probably don't share this with any one else until Team Vox posts, since this is supposed to be special first chance for my friends :)

Edited again: The Team Vox post about this is up now :)

Pink shakes

Mind was a strawberry malt, E's was raspberry slush. Pretty And yummy!

Pink shakes

Vox Hunt: Summer Reading List

Books: Show us your summer reading list.
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately.  I've recorded 86 books so far this year, which is kinda WOW, I didn't realize it was that many.  I guess that some of those are knitting books that I haven't read every word, but i have heavily skimmed them all from cover to cover at the very least.

For this summer, I'm going to continue on with the main Christian fiction authors I've been reading, as many of the series that the library has.  I keep up wikipedia pages for these authors because it helps keep me organized and seems like helpful info to share with other people:

• Tracie Peterson
• Beverly Lewis
• Gilbert Morris
• Lori Wick
• Lauraine Snelling

And then I'm going to keep reading every knitting book I can get my hands on too :)

I have a couple of Jude Deveraux's that I own and haven't read yet, so I'll probably catch up on those in between my library books.

Downtown

E and me waiting to in into pf changs.

Downtown

Up high

E walking higher than me.

Up high