Spring CreativFestival

Today was spent @ the CreativFestival @ the International Center... which was very cool, although I was truthfully a little disappointed. The autumn one is HUGE, and a part of me was expecting the spring show to be something like it - but it was only like a third of the size. Nonetheless, I walked out with a crochet kit and a book - $10 off! Score!

adventures @ Knitter's Frolic

I spent a couple hours today hangin' out in Toronto @ the Knitter's Frolic over at the Japanese Culteral Center... it was sooo much fun! I had found out about it from Linda over at Linda's Craftique, since she had a booth there and was obviously attending.

I did find some fantastic goodies - a knitting kit with 4 skeins of baby alpaca yarn, and 4 1-skein patterns, which are going to make fantastic xmas gifts, plus a couple goodies over @ Linda's booth: a black sheep tape measure & a beautiful shawl pin.

I also had the great fortune - while ordering a cup of coffee - to meet Amy Singer of knitty, who was standing in line behind me! (Cool!) We chatted for a little while, while ordering our respective drinks; it was pretty interesting to meet a knitting celeb! :)

cooking & knitting

I don't know why this idea has been stuck in my brain the last few days...

Wouldn't it be neat to have a knitting themed cook book? I, being the knitting dork that I am, thinks so. A few months ago I was watching Martha and saw a woman making knit-looking sweaters out of marzipan and thought that was simply brilliant. But what other knitting and crocheting themed items can be made with food? Is there a special knit-tini? Something involving crocheted spaghetti and meatball pompoms?

Have I completely fallen off my rocker with this idea, or what?

back from vacation...

Well, I finally came back from visiting my parents in the south of France - lucky me, eh? Phew, it was an exhausting two weeks. A large part of it is getting used to the time change (6 hours difference), and once I got used to it the first week I had to get back used to the time change when I came home! Eep!

Also, with being @ my grandmother's, she's the type of person who is always out doing something, so we hadn't had a day of rest, we were constantly running around somewhere.

Since I'm limited to the number of pics I can post at a time, I will limit my stories of France as one description of my trip per post. (Believe it or not, we have over 250 pics that I had to load up after two weeks! I won't bore you with all of them, but will show off some!)

My grandmother lives on a property that's at least a half acre, with a single story home, beautiful front yard, and fruit trees growing out the wazoo in the back. This is a pic of her front yard one foggy morning, which I thought was beautiful:

The weird looking trees you see growing are (I think) mulberry trees, that have enormous leaves that just started to bud the day before DH and I came home.

These next 2 pics are of where my dad works... there are a few more but you get an idea of how the grounds look like:

It's a winery located in Pertui (sp?) ... it's a huge property that grows mainly grape vines (obviously) for making their own wine, and olive trees too for their own olive oil. The pic on the left is part of the winery itself; there's also a banquet hall, small shop, and another part of the winery in another building, and the family live in an authentic castle just up the hill behind the pictured building. The pic on the right is of some of the gardens, which there easily is at least 5 times more of. They grown their own vegetables and have tons of fruit trees as well.

I'm off to do a little work now, but I will post more pics of my trip later on in the week....

I'm leavin' on a jet plane...

Today DH and I are leaving to France to visit my parents for 2 weeks. It's a surprise for my dad, truthfully, since it's going to be his 60th birthday next week. I'm super excited to go, and to see packed suitcases in the living room for the last 2 days makes leaving a little more exciting.

I'm hoping that airport security will allow me to bring knitting needles on the plane - I've purposely bought wooden circular needles to knit up a pair of socks. So, this flight, I'm in truth teaching myself how to not only knit socks on circulars, but from the toe up as well. I've heard from a few peope that as long as I'm not bringing dpn's on the plane then I'm fine, and as long as they're wood (to avoid sounding off the metal detectors) then that's preferable too. Here's hoping.

For the next 2 weeks I'll have no internet service, so no blogging for me! But I'll be sure to update on whether or not the circ's made it on the plane, and also posting photos of my trip! woo hoo!

a sad/bad end to a mediocre week

Eesh, I'm not having a good day today. Hopefully the weekend will find me productive and more positive.

Firstly, I've had to leave my first negative on etsy. I hate leaving negives on etsy or ebay. I've only had to leave one other negative before, and that was on ebay. I know that we live now in trying times with the recession, and it'll result in unpaid items, but why on earth would you put the effort into buying something that you know you're not going to pay for? :P I guess I just find it a little frustrating, especially since this person and I have been convo'ing for at least a week about what she wanted to buy. She had the choice to not buy it whatsoever... but then to not only to buy it and not pay for it, but then getting upset with me for leaving negative feedback? Puh-leeze. o_O

Secondly, I've gotten another publication rejection. I've sent in what must be my 10th submission to knitty.com to try to get something published, with no luck. I'm starting to get the feeling that I need to somehow master the skill of lace or sock knitting and to come up with a pattern using either of those, to have something worthy of publication.

I suppose I can always try to get my current pattern published somewhere else... but it's still depressing a little, to be consistantly rejected by the same place over and over. Getting published just isn't all that easy.

gettin' jiggy with my first power tool!

I recently got the idea that I want to make some mitten and sock forms for my etsy store... but despite all the tools that DH has, a jigsaw is not one of them.

So, I decided to not only go out and buy a jigsaw, but also to blog about it using a bad joke as a blog post title. Bear with me, in my mind it's hilarious. Get it? Jiggy with it? Jigsaw? Isn't that so unfunny, it's hilarious?

Ok, maybe/maybe not. What's done is done. Let's see if I can use a power tool on my own without lopping off limbs.

PIF- paying it forward

I will rarely post items I have for sale in my etsy shop, so this is an exception.

I've got this afghan, which is hand crocheted - it's been marked down, and I've also marked down the shipping by at least 2/3's so it'll hopefully move faster.

If it sells during this current listing, I'll be donating $75 of the sale to www.kiva.org, and as that loan gets repaid, I'll continue circulating that $75 into the site as a lone over and over. It's a way of my paying forward some of the kindness that others have shown me, and I want to be able to contribute to others as well in a random act of kindness.

And, the bonus for the person who buys it is that they both have the satisfaction of knowing they're helping, as well as being able to snorgle into a good comfy blanket!

If you've a chance, please check it out.

Today, I blog about laundry

Laundry's knitting related, right?

:P Well, it sort of is, today. A while back I bought some Soak wash, and with it I got 2 mini free samples of Soak in different scents than my bottle. I finally got around to using one of the mini free samples today, and I'm soaking 2 handknit pairs of socks, a handknit pair of slippers I made for DH way back when, and a bra. In my sink.

And, if it's not enough that I've made a sink-full of soaking laundry a blogworthy event, I've even made it picture-worthy:

So there.

I'm going to spend the rest of my day whipping up some granny squares that'll go towards a blanket that I hope to finish - well, let's be realistic - by the end of the year!

treasuries on etsy

I've become newly obsessed with doing treasuries on etsy. I've already managed to put together 3 last month, which were so fun to do! Two of them were knit and crochet themed, but I think this month I want to focus on other things.

After spending a lot of time in etsy's chat rooms, I've come to realize that there are people who want to buy, but don't have the funds to necessarily go on a spending spree. So, what I want to focus my treasuries this month is finding items $20 or less... still with a theme for each.

Also, the goal is to put together at least 5 treasuries this month. I really need to get myself more involved in the inner workings of etsy, and doing a bunch of treasuries, I think, may be a good start.