out with the old, in with the new

I've decided to abandon my project of collecting knit and crochet squares for charity. I've only gotten a lukewarm response, and even then I haven't collected enough squares to complete a single blanket. Let alone enough matching squares to complete a blanket.

So, I've decided to donate what I have to the Little Lamb Blanket Project who collect squares of all sizes. They've already donated quite a few completed blankets in their charity, so that's where mine are going.

Off in the mail today, along with my taxes and whatnot!

growing!

A mere 6 days later, 4 of my planted-seed pots look like this:

How awesome is that?!?!? 1 green been, 2 little pots of basil, and 1 red pepper so far! Yay!

Earth Day Knit completed

I've been having a bit of trouble uploading a photo, but I did manage to knit an earth day project as per a KAL on ravelry's Illusion Knits group, it's a Mother Earth illusion dishcloth made with Bernat Cotton.

I miss my illusion knits, they're very unique. One of these days I'll manage to figure out how to lay out an illusion pattern of my own, I hope!

flippin' sushi boxes

A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon this fantastic craft on craftster, where someone made sushi roll cupcakes (which is unbelievably clever).

Since my mom's coming here for a few weeks in May/June, and she loves sushi, I thought that this may be a really fun craft for the two of us to do together one day. I've got pretty much everything, except for those bento boxes that the sushi's displayed in.

So, I scoured google, yahoo search, ebay, dollar stores, Costco, Sam's Club, everything - with no luck. Absolutely none.

I finally came across a place that sells them in the US - and better yet ships to Canada (few places do, I've no idea why) and for the last week we've been exchanging emails regarding different box sizes, payment methods (they took paypal! woo hoo!), shipping costs, minimal order, etc.

Finally got ready to order, and I get an email early this morning that they don't sell retail! Didn't they know this a week ago?!?!? What the hell!

So, a week was wasted, unfortunately. Since I'm on a bit of a time restraint, and I need to receive this boxes before my mom gets here, I was a bit ticked off that I was mislead. But, I have to admit that the woman who was emailing me was kind enough to direct me to a link to a place in California who sells the same size box that I was interested in. The cost for the items is a bit more (I have to order the box and lid seperately; the first company sold them together) plus, I find out when I'm checking out of this place, the two options to fillout my address is to fill out a US address or Europe. Considering that I live in neither, I'm having a hard time checking out my order.

Damn.

They're only open weekdays, so I sent them an email, explaining to them my time restraint and frustration of finding these boxes, so hopefully I'll be contacted Monday so I can place an order.

Phew. So, starting the weekend off on not a good foot. This always happens to me: I find a craft that I'm dying to make, and there's that one little peice that I struggle to find. Just one.

My other option, I think, and this is worst-comes-to-worst, is that between now and mid-May, we just consume a whole lot of sushi from the grocery store and wash those trays out really really well before filling them up with cupcakes. But, since my husband and brother aren't huge fans of sushi, this is a lot of sushi for me to eat in the meantime. I'd rather go with unused boxes, but we'll see what comes of the next week.

seed planting

I've no idea of it's the right time of year or not to plat seeds, but I went ahead and did it anyway. I filled 24 peet-cups with basil, green bean, tomato, and red pepper seeds. Fingers crossed, hope they grow!

I don't have the green thumb that most of my family has. This is my second year, second attempt at growing a garden from seeds. Hopefully I manage this time, and that we end up with a huge amount of plants!

Having a veggie garden is ideal for me - as much as I love flowers, I much more appreciate a plant that gives food. I love the idea of producing a meal that I grew myself, and hopefully this year I'll manage to grow it truly from scratch! Woo hoo!

my q&a to the black yarn swap

These are my answers to the black yarn swap for whomever has me.

1. Do you knit, crochet, or both? I do both, w/o preferance to either

2. What do you prefer to knit or crochet? (socks? sweaters? cables?) I've got the sock knitting bug, but I especially enjoy wrist warmers. Love anything with cables especially. What would you like to try to knit or crochet? Would like to get some more practice with argyle, or shawls.

3. What are your hobbies outside of knitting or crocheting? reading, watching dvd's, and am trying to perfect cooking.

4. Do you have any fiber allergies? Fiber preferances? no allergies but not a big fan of plasticy acrylics. I prefer yarns with some natural content like cotton or wool.

5. Do you have any favourite books, music, or tv shows? If so, what are they? TV: Lost, all the CSI's and Law & Order's; Bookwise: mysteries, Ann Rice; Music: rock, alternative, punk

6. Do you have any pets? a cat

7. Do you prefer salty or sweet snacks? salty, but I like chocolate too :)

8. Do you prefer coffee or tea? coffee

9. Aside black, which colours do you like/dislike? like burgundy, green, blue, purple, dislike white

10. What is your favourite time of the year? autumn & spring, and holidaywise, halloween

11. What is your favourite scent? vanilla, magnolia, lilac

12. What do you collect? gnomes, sheep and llamas

13. If there's anything else you'd like your swappee to know, list them here: I love postcards with maps on them, old hardcover books, skeleton keys, black & white photos, and glass beads.

my hair is too short - again

I have - once again - trimmed my bangs much too short.

Here's the thing: I have thick hair. So thick, that it prevents me from appreciating long hair, because it always gets tangled. I'm stuck having to brush my hair at least 4 or 5 times a day because it gets so knotty, therefore eliminating the possibility of having a 'pretty' hair do.

No pretty curls for me, they'd get combed out in like an hour. That is, of course, assuming that my hair style doesn't drop and fall in the meantime because my hair is so thick.

It's no wonder that my mom kept my hair in such a short 'do when I was a kid. But in high school, I decided to grow out my hair because I desperately wanted (for the first time in my life) to be able to tie it back into a pony tail, or a french braid, or something pretty, the way that all the other girls seemed to do. Well, I grew out that hair, and was sourly disappointed at how knotty it aways seemed to get, and the upkeep was just a pain in the rear.

So, tragically, in my early 20's, my hair got chopped up again after years of frequent-combing aggrivation.

But - here's the rub - I can't cut my hair too short. My face is much too round to be able to compliment a cute little 'do, and also with too short hair, I would get mistaken for a guy. Yes, I've one of those faces where there's not a whole lot feminine about me, so having a certain length is a requirement. So, I'm stuck with a plain ol' bob, and even to that, there's minimal variation.

I've also become accustomed to having my hair cut at home. Yes, there's just so many things wrong with that sentence. But, growing up, more often than not, my hair was cut at home. The advantage that I had was having someone with better perspective and I (usually) ended up with a nice cut. Unfortunately, I've fooled myself into thinking that I can cut my own hair.

Granted, I've had a few occasions where despite only using my own hands and a couple skillfully placed mirrors, I came out with a decent (although plain) cut, but a few times my hair came out too short, too squarish, or too chunky looking. It very much looked like a non-professional had their hand to it.

And today, it was no exception.

I was just so frustrated, the last few days, of this in-between hair style that I've had. It's been a few months since I've last been to a salon to get it cut. Good sense would've brought my behind to a salon today, since I was so annoyed, or at least waited until the weekend to have a decent chop, but oh no, I just had to pull out those scissors, didn't I?

I had dyed my hair ages ago. It's growing out. I wanted to see how short my hair would be if I cut all the dyed part off, just leaving the new roots. I thought it was long enough. I decided to experiment - of all places - with the front, and create bangs.

I am not a bangs person.

And, my hair is too short.

We have insult added to injury. It's official.

I even took a picture of my too-short bangs. I was going to post it on the blog post today. But, at this last minute, I'm not going to. It's bad enough that I've to put myself and the people I live with through my too-short-hair misery, there's no sense in putting anyone else through it too.

I am never, ever cutting my own hair again. Take my scissors away. Please.

noro in the mail

It seems that everywhere I turn online, there's someone bragging about how fantastic Noro's Kureyon yarn is. I've been hearing it for years. But, I've been reluctant to purchase any, largely to the fact that it's so flippin' expensive. Thankfully, I was able to come across a reasonable deal via ebay, and won a lot of 10 skeins of colour 195, a predominantly black Kureyon:
It feels a bit rough, texturewise, as I would expect wool to be, but apparently it softens up with wear. The colourway in it is beautiful; I've seen many knit things with kureyon and it's fantastically rainbowed, and it's no wonder why so many like it.

I was reluctant for a long time because of the expense, because I can only find Kureyon (or any Noro product for that matter) online. See, I'm one of these kooky people who also factor shipping costs in with the cost of the yarn. Spending $5 or $8 so on a skein of yarn isn't too bad, but if the shipping is going to double that value, especially when buying large amounts, I'd reserve from buying it.

Knitting, unfortunately, has become too expensive of a hobby. I believe in everything in moderation. Is $130 reasonable for just 50 grams of yarn? Absolutely not. (And yes, I've seen yarn priced over $100 a skein, and it's really not worth it.) I've always been a bit of a stickler of being anti-label, and tried to veer as far away as possible from things that are too main streem or trendy, despite my interests.

My thinking is this: an article of clothing is going to wear itself out eventually, irrigardless if the yarn to make it cost $3/skein or $10/skein, so in some cases spending a fortune on pressumably 'luxery yarns' may be a bit of a stretch.

But I digress.

The trick is, now, to find a suitable knitting project for my Kureyon lot. Off to ravelry again for a suitable pattern search!

bad Friday poem

I nearly got away

without blogging today

the rain didn't go away

my jeans are starting to frey

the skies were so grey

My bills, I did pay.

Welcome, Friday.

abandoned, recreated

The double knit argyle scarf from the other day has - once again - been frogged. And abandoned.

I was a bit disappointed at the width of the scarf. Even though I'm using yarn that's practically the same tension, the scarf itself was turning out to be almost 2 inches wider (nearly 9 inches) than what the pattern says the original was (7 inches). That was cleary much too wide, hence the froggation.

But, I still have all that Bernat Wool Blend to work with - and I lurve double knitting, despite it being a bit of a bitch to have to fix mistakes. So, I've decided to create a new double knit scarf pattern, this one being an actual 7 inches wide. My goal is to be able to submit it to knitty or some similar publication to get a bit of dough for it.

On another note: youth group reunion plans. Once upon a time, when I was in highschool, I joined an already-established youth group at the church behind my home. Not that I was particularily religious, but it was a cool place to hang out with people my own age. Anyhoo, it disbanded over 10 years ago and a few of us still keep contact.

There's been talk over the last 2 or 3 years about having a reunion, but plans kept falling through - so, I decided to get the ball rolling and host a reunion this summer, hopefully in July. I just sent out an open invitation to the few that I've kept contact with via facebook - and I hope that the word peters through to more former members so we can have a good get together. I'll keep it blog-posted as the months progress.