Crafty Pancakes

It's time to help

I would like to ask you all to please take a few minutes and think about how you can make a difference. Just a few minutes of your time and a few dollars, collectively, changes lives. Jill is one of those people who takes it one step further. She will be participating in the Boston Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk for the second time! So please take a moment to visit her fundraising site and donate to her walk. In fact donate lots of money. No, how about gobs. Honestly, ever single dollar helps so please just do what you can. You can't tell me that with all the money we spend on yarn we can't just skip our next purchase and give that money to Jill's walk and help out! I made my donation and I hope you will do the same. It's guaranteed make your heart smile.

OK, so now that I have the mushy stuff out of the way.. Jill will also put you in a drawing for some bad ass prizes for every $10 you donate to her walk! How great would it be to be the first one to get your hands on a new, not yet released to the public, knitting pattern from Wendy Knits?! Not to mention Shi Bui sock yarn! Yeah, she knows how to appeal to us knitters.

She is almost half way to her very reasonable goal so let's see if we can help her make it all the way!

Please go HERE and help the fight against breast cancer by donating to Jill's walk!

Thank you!!

I'm pleading the 5th

I swear I have no idea how these got into my mailbox yesterday after my last post!

Neapolitan from Woolly Boully...

Sikkim from Yarn Ahoy...

Berry Smart from Yarn Ahoy...

Infusion from Zen Yarn Garden...

And Witch In A Blender from Razzy Tazzy Knits...

No more sock yarn.. no more sock yarn.. no more sock yarn (but club yarn doesn't count). I think that's equivalent to writing it on the chalk board. And just in case I try to get more of it through the doors of my craft room.. I have Mia a very scary guard to contend with...

I know what you are thinking.. that chick is ready to rumble!

I've been a bad girl

Why is Paypal so damn easy to use? It gives me the feeling that everything is free. I don't even have to go get my purse and type in my card info. It's just all there are my finger tips. PAY NOW. It's that simple. I see pretty yarn.. PAY NOW. I find another much needed wanted sock club.. PAY NOW. Shazzam, it's paid for! It hurts so good, ya know? Since you've probably guessed already.. I did indeed buy more sock yarn. Not only that but I also joined more clubs. I will just go ahead and get this out of the way now. It's like ripping off a Band-aid.

I'll start my confession yarn pushing with...

Black Rainbow from Perchance To Knit. It is ridiculously cool. I had never seen a colorway like this before...

Koi In A Blender from the Tempted sock club at Loops. The bright blue with bits of orange and white are great. Perfect name for the yarn...

Nouveau Bleu from Yarn Ahoy. Honestly one of the squishiest (is that a word?) sock yarns I have felt. It has a loose twist so it won't make the sturdiest of socks.. but who cares...

Berry Pop from Yarn Ahoy. The colors of her yarn are crazy beautiful. I have two more skeins in different colorways headed my way as I type. Don't judge!...

Spectrum from ShiBui. This crazy color combo will be stockinette socks for sure...

And last but not least I give you Orange Crush from MySmallWonders...

Bad bad bad. I'm slapping my own hand. I would like to blame it all on Ravelry, Etsy and Paypal. Thank you for understanding.

But wait.. just when you thought that I was only a lousy cook and a compulsive sock yarn buyer...

Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. I am a knitter. I'll make it one better. I used sock yarn! It's the Misty Garden Scarf from Scarf Style. I'm knitting it in STR Silkie Walking On The Wild Tide. It's a Christmas gift for my MIL. So at least there is a tad bit of knitting going on around here. I desperately want to start some socks but I can't pick a yarn.

The more I think about it the more I am blaming another new purchase for all my yarn buying. It's Ruby I tell ya!!...

Here she is by my other excuse for a yarn buying machine. She is big and beautiful and RED (my favorite color). I love her dearly. But you can see how looking at Ravelry, Etsy and pretty much anything else is sooo much better since I got her. I will travel with the tiny one, since Ruby weights about a ton and needs a suitcase as a laptop bag. But let me tell you how much my online retail world has been transformed. I mean geez, how great is this?...

We like to sit on the couch together.. sit up in bed and watch TV.. sit by the pool.. it's just me and her. Aww. And another thing about Ruby is that she is a sock club enabler! She whispers all the new ones in my ear and then uses her Jedi mind control to get me to hit that damn PAY NOW button!  I know I said I would elaborate on sock clubs in this post but just thinking about all of the ones I'm in makes me feel a little dizzy. The count at the moment stands at 9. Hand me a cool washcloth.

I might be hopeless

So on Saturday at dinner (previous post) everyone was talking about cooking, cookbooks, Food Network and all that jazz. Anyone who knows me knows that I cannot cook. I'm basically lucky if I can put a sandwich together right. Well all of this cooking talk got me interested in wanting to learn how to actually make something edible that wasn't from a jar or the frozen section in the grocery store. My dear friend Gaby, who is a great cook, told me that all I needed was Joy Of Cooking. That book would apparently teach me all I needed to know. Of course I ran out and bought the book. It is certainly the best cookbook out there. As I was reading through it yesterday afternoon the excitement of cooking was building. I put the book down to make some lunch and that is when I realized I might be a lost cause...

Umm.. that is a yam. A microwaved yam. A cinder-y, smelly, black charcoal-y yam. How in the hell can 1.4 sq ft of microwave produce enough stench to fill 3000 sq ft of house?! My gawd it was awful. All the windows open and a few hours later it wasn't too bad. I think the microwave is going to have to be chucked though. *Note to self.. you might want to read the chapter in the cookbook about potatoes. Even without some basic microwave/potato research you would have thought I would have seen this on the front of the fire starter...

Other than trying to still air out my yam smoke house I have also been trying to air this out...

It's my new Namaste Jetsetter bag in rust. Holy fishsticks that baby has a funky smell. I don't even know if I should put yarn in it yet. I haven't heard of anyone else having a smelly Namaste. Maybe it's just my luck right now. Do you see a trend?

I have no complaints about my other knitting bag that came in the mail from WhiteWillow...

Is that not the cutest sock bag of all time? No comments about how fitting a knitting witch is for me. This little gem doesn't smell and the construction is great. It's lined in duck cloth which makes it much sturdier than a lot of other sock bags I've seen. I can't wait to buy another one.

Buy buy buy. I should be doing more knit knit knit. I hate to admit that I joined yet another sock club this morning. It's safe to say that I won't be able to keep up with the sock knitting as fast as the yarn is going to be coming in. But can you really join too many sock clubs? I think not. More about that in my next post. 

Friends + Harlot + Food = FUN

To any of you who haven't seen the Yarn Harlot.. you are missing out! She was everything I thought she would be.. and more. Who would have thought that a person could make knitting absolutely hysterical. It was nothing short of fab-u-lous!

The day started out at La Petite Knitterie in Ladera Ranch. Lori Lawson of Capistrano Fiber Arts was having a trunk show there. She spins and also hand paints yarn. I couldn't leave without some of her beautiful sock yarn...

I normally go for brighter colors but these were too pretty to pass up. I would tell you the colorway but she doesn't name them.. odd. I am thinking they will make Christmas gift socks for some lucky person.

After some shopping and visiting at LPK we went up to the L.A library to see the Harlot. We didn't wait in line very long to get in and all of the seats in the auditorium were great. I was surprised that we were told that they didn't turn away anyone who showed up. I would have thought more people without reservations would have tried to get a shot at getting in. It was a really nice venue...

I kept wondering if that lady in front of me had an entire suitcase full of yarn with her. Stephanie was a great speaker and everyone laughed the entire time. Afterwards she met with everyone to sign books...

It was definitely worth the drive to L.A. Thankfully I had my bud Gaby navigating while I drove. If I had to have done both it would have been a disaster and we'd still be looking for the library. Here we are all happy and shiny after the event was over... (beware of the glare!)

Not only were we smiling and happy about having just seen the Harlot but we also had just found out that we landed spots in the Booty Club. And yes, I seem to always have sunglasses on top of my head. It's the only place I can put them and know that I will always find them. They are very important here in sunny SoCal.

After we left the library we went to Border Grill in Santa Monica with the rest of our pub knitting group, that had also been at the Harlot event, and had a great dinner...

It was very nice to be with Gaby, Chris, Bree, Jerry, Debbie and Carolyn. I am horrible with names! A good time was had by all.

To top the day off I came home to these...

It's the new Knit Picks Harmony sock needle set. These colors aren't nearly as nice as the bigger Harmony Options needles (according to the pictures on the site) but they are still cute. I probably won't use them though. I don't like to use wood needles since I knit so damn tight but I still felt like I wanted needed them.

All in all it was a fabulous day of fun, food and friends. A perfect way to spend the day.

*Pictures of me with the Yarn Harlot and the group dinner shot are courtesy of Jerry. 

Want a quickie?

First let me thank Flutter for the very sweet post on the 13th. I am flattered by your kindness.

Now I'll make this short and sweet. This girl has to go to bed early so she's ready to head to L.A tomorrow morning with some friends to see The Harlot.. yep, the Yarn Harlot. It will be a really fun day full of Harlot-y goodness with a couple of yarn stores thrown in. We are topping the day off with a great dinner at the Border Grill in Santa Monica. I've been to the one in Vegas and loved it so I am excited to try the other one. Now that is how to spend a Saturday.

I've got some show and tell. So many things are coming in the mail over the next week that I practically stalk my very grumpy mail lady. Yesterday she brought me this...

How 'bout that. More fabulous yarn. This one is from Twisted Fiber Art. It's her Kabam yarn in the Firefly colorway. If you check out her Etsy store you will see how she gets some of the most amazing striping I have ever seen! Stunning. She is a featured dyer in a new sock club I joined, Self Striping Club from The Sweet Sheep. That should be a fun one. I can't believe I didn't miss out on it.. like I did with a lot of the other cool sock clubs. Actually I made it into five so I shouldn't complain.

Ok, I need to mentally prepare for driving in L.A my beauty sleep.

Are you sitting down?...

I would like to take a second to thank Kayne West for his song, Stronger. I don't really care about the lyrics. I do however love that it gets me into treadmill mode. If anyone was to look in the windows of my garage when I'm working out they would sure get a good laugh. First of all I turn my treadmill time into a sort of lipsyncing dance party at 4mph. I'm surprised I haven't broken my leg yet. I'm sure one of these days I'll be having a good old time with my iPod on.. lipsyncing to some song that I wouldn't want playing in my car.. jogging and dancing my heart out until I go shooting off the back of the treadmill straight into some shelves. Now if I could only find music that makes doing weights a little more interesting. So thank you for helping me get my ass in shape Kayne West. I will do a special treadmill dance just for you tomorrow morning.

Now onto knitting news. If you have never bought yarn from Woolly Boully then take a break from reading this and buy some right this second.  I bought some of her hand dyed Meanie sock yarn in the colorway Beneath The Cherry Trees...

What a great color combo. It feels as good as it looks. I almost want to just leave it in a skein and cuddle with it instead of knitting up some socks. It's that great.

The first shipment from the Chick Flick Movies TvYarn Sock Club made it here on Monday. Jana really outdid herself. The movie theme for this month was Thelma & Louise...

The sock yarn is gorgeous! She also included a sock project bag, which she made herself, and two stitch markers. One stitch marker is a cowboy hat in honor of the sexy Brad Pitt character and she threw in another great marker for me since I didn't get the sunglasses in my shipment that some of the other clubbers got. What a terrific kick off to her sock club.

Now here is what you have been waiting for. Take a seat because it's quite shocking...

A real honest to goodness FO! These socks are so great. They fit perfectly and I love the way the colors work with the pattern.

Yarn: FW Citrus from My Small Wonders 

Pattern: Monkey

Needles: Knit Picks DPNS size 2.75mm                                                                      

Also take notice of my fancy new sock blockers.  I bought the palm tree ones since they seemed fitting for a knitter in The OC. Every sock knitter needs blockers! I'm sorry.. but to all of you who model your socks on your feet.. you look like you have cankles!

Now I'm just waiting for the new Knitty to come out. I'm hoping they have a couple of great sock patterns. I'm also waiting for some more goodies in the mail. I'll do some show and tell as they arrive.

I'm going to go gaze at my socks for a bit. I'm so proud.

One off and one down

Well summer is officially over it seems. I always like it when the school year is in session. I love the routine of getting up and having breakfast with my son, making his lunch and taking him to school. There is something calming about the whole morning. I can't believe that my kiddo just started 8th grade. It sounds so cliche.. but they grow up so fast. He wasn't to pleased about the first day of school photo shoot. I told him he only has four more to go after this...

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend. I managed to get something done while being a shut in to avoid the heat wave. I give you one Monkey...

Please ignore the crazy shaping. It's not the sock, it's the blocker...

Making one of those things out of a wire hanger isn't nearly as easy as it seems it should be.. as you can tell. Anyway, you get the idea. One sock down and one to go.

The first three hours of my knitting will be done to Big Brother After Dark. I have to officially admit that I like the show Big Brother 8 way too much. I got hooked on it in July when I was visiting my friend in Washington. Now I can't get enough of it. Thankfully for my knitting they not only have it on regular TV three times a week but they also air three hours of uncensored footage on ShoToo from midnight to 3am that I DVR every night. Knitting to mindless guilty pleasure TV is fun fun fun! Go E.D! I finished up my sock watching the DVR but managed to take a break to have some of this...

My famous homemade cookies and cream. I'm almost ice creamed out at this point.

After I finished my sock I hopped over to the Woolgirl blog and saw that they are going to have a sock kit for the movie A Christmas Story. I had to make sure to get in on that. They still had a couple of spots open as of last night so if you are interested make sure to drop her an email.

Time to turn on the DVR and cast on for sock two. My goal is to have it done by 3pm tomorrow. This is the only time in my life I've ever thought having one foot might not be so bad.