Where are they now???

So, today's topic is "where are they now?" Old projects and things that were given away... All I could really think of (thanks to my friend Jen) were Jarett's old Pokemon items I made that I gave away. I gave them to Jen to find a good home for them... I think she has... but here is how they looked on Jarett. He was so happy at the time. He was a Pokemon machine. I guess turning 12 makes you too "big" for such silly pocket monsters... those were the days, my friend.... oh - check out the Pokemon sheets in the background!

Keeping Tidy

I am participating in a blog week which I am two days late for, but feel it's better late than never! Today's topic is about keeping yourself organized. There are so many amazing cases for needles. I have quite a few of them too! However, I am lazy. It's a pain to dig them out, unwrap or unzip them, choose your needles and then... OMG - put them back in the case?! Never happens. So, I decided to make my needles into a form of art display for my house. On my end table, I have my needles neatly display in a vase. In front of the vase is a cool acrylic holder for my Knit Picks Interchangables. See how pretty: In addition to the mini DPN's that are in a vase behind them, I have a neat container that hold my other DPN's which I just rubber banded together to keep the sets together. In the background, you can see another organization tool I use, which is pen/pencil and paper to mark off my rows as I do my knitting... I didn't mean for that to be on here, but since it's in the background, I thought I'd mention it. My last "trick" is that I have many cabinets (you can get them at any home goods store) to store my yarn. This is just one example: And that, is my contribution for today's Blog Week post. Enjoy!

Crazy Busy weekend!

We celebrated Jarett's birthday this weekend. First, he had two friends sleep over on Friday night. I found out that Pizzeria Uno lets you order online so I was able to put in an order for a regular pizza for his friends and gluten free pizzas for us! I picked them up on my way home from work (with orders of garlic mashed potatoes of course!) and they were hot and ready for when the boys arrived.

They had a long night of playing Air Soft wars and then jumping on the trampoline followed by video games and tv when it was too dark and cold to be outside. I sent them to bed at 10:30. I resent them to bed at 11:00. At 12:30 I was a screaming banchee insisting they be quiet and close their eyes.... they fell asleep!

In the morning, they had a breakfast of bacon and eggs and then the boys' fathers took them all paint-balling. They had a blast and came home with battle scars! Seriously, they were bruised!

We then had a family dinner at Outback were we can get our favorite gluten free dessert, Chocolate Thunder from Down Under. If you've never had one, it's a warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream, pecans, chocolate syrup and whipped cream.... did I add heaven to this description? Here's Jarett, a happy boy!

We missed him blowing the candle out - but here he is once the flame was out:

My sister-in-law ducked out of the pictures, but here are my parents and Bryan's respectively:

Sunday was our usual Hebrew School and Demo practice. It was a busy weekend, but lots of fun!

Happy Birthday Jarett!!!

I cannot believe my baby is 12!!! It seems like yesterday he was a tiny baby that I held in my arms. He is so proud to be 12 - here he is this morning:

Yesterday was Purim and we worked the carnival at Hebrew School. Jarett dressed up as Mordechai, the cousin of Queen Esther who was a savior to the Jewish people from Haman, who wanted the Jews to be killed. I sold tickets at the door and Jarett ran a booth called "Find the Tzadakh." Tzadakah is the Hebrew word for charity and basically is money. He had bowls of rice with money hidden and the kids got tickets that they could trade in for prizes if they found the tzadakah money. Here he is dressed up and working his booth:

More Crochet Blanket

Here is the progress on the blanket I am making for Jarett. It's been a little over a week and I've gotten pretty far on it. Crochet does go fast!!

First You Tube Video!!!

Woo Hoo!!!! Jarett recorded me making a video teaching how to do a slip knot. You can see it here. How funny is that?! You can hear him saying "action" to me in the beginning - so cute! Hopefully, this is the first step to many "how to" videos. Wish me luck!!

Entrelac is done, crochet is still going...

I finished the Entrelac Scarf. It came out shorter than I would have liked, but it will be a good "coat scarf." Not one to wear wrapped around... If I do another, I would use two balls of yarn instead of one. Or maybe not do the extra repeat. That would have made it more narrow though... It still came out very pretty - here it is:




Now I can focus on the blanket. I have a few more rows done. That's one thing about crochet - it does move quicker than knitting! Off I go to get a few more rows in before dinner.

On the way to Crochet!

Jarett asked for another blanket. My first reaction was no, I've made him a couple already, he has my grandmother's and we bought him a fleece blanket in December. I was watching Knit and Crochet Now (formerly Knit and Crochet Today) when he saw this blanket. He reasoned that I've knit him blankets but never crocheted him a blanket. Of course, he wanted it to be three solid blues - light, medium and dark. They don't make the yarn called for in the pattern in the "right" colors so I decided to be creative and make it using Caron Simply Soft and doubling the yarn to get the heavier weight needed for the blanket. I think it's still going to be a couple inches narrower than the pattern, but worst case senario, I'll crochet down the sides. Here is the yarn I'm using:




I saved the project for Tuesday so I could start it during Knit Night when there would be people there who were more familiar with crochet in case I got stuck. Here is the blanket so far - I only did a couple of rows, but so far so good!




I'll post more as I go along. I'm having fun with this though - I'm glad he talked me into it!

Knit Picks Chroma Entrelac Scarf

I used Knit Picks Chroma fingering in colorway Pegasus to make this scarf. I added one more repeat since I was using fingering weight yarn. As you can see, the color stripe is gorgeous and works the same as Noro but for half the price!! The yarn is soft and smooth and very easy to work with. I highly recommend it and will be buying more! This pic is not blocked, as I am about halfway through it, but you can see how perfect the stripe effect came out.

Citron

I had started Citron a while ago... I have to say, as lovely as it is, it became a little boring towards the end. Maybe that is why it took me so long to finish it!




I finally blocked it after having it sit around for a week or so:





Now it looks like this:




I used a hair stick at a shawl pin - works nicely and is a much better price!