Would you like a treat?
When we first moved into this house, we had 3 bedrooms: the master, one for our combined office/game/tv room, and the third was a guest room. We put our bookshelves and a tv on the wall and then had a blow up mattress for when guests (read: the in-laws) came to stay. Well, we didn't have guests that often, and this spring, I had a brain storm: to stay in this house longer instead of looking for a bigger/better place, let's do some improvements to make it better! We redid our office room quite a bit, and then decided at the same time to turn the guest room into my craft room! Yes, that is complete joy on my face to be able to say that, I have always wanted a dedicated space for all of my many crafty hobbies. :)
One of the fun things I've done lately is attend a Scrapbook get-together at my sister-in-law's church with her and my sister and several of each of their friends. I've worked on a variety of personal scrapbook pages about me and my life.
This makes me wish I had a digital camera earlier in my life. There are so many great events that happened with Eric early in our relationship, and even our wedding, and I only have regular photos that I have to scan in order to use them, and the quality is not as great. But one nice thing is that when we got my new monitor, they had a free-with-purchase photo printer, and that's the one issue I had with getting a laser printer was that there was no longer a way to print photos. So I'm lucky now, and both are sitting on my desk right now. I'll probably move the photo printer to under the desk when I'm not using it to make the desk look less cluttery, but it sure is a nice option.
So even though it was my first time scrapbooking and I had very few photos ready to do, the scrapbook session was such a delight! (The red vines they had there were a nice treat, too!)
I've got a scrapbook just waiting to fill with precious memories of the events and photos and a chance to be creative with it all. I'm so glad Sarah invited me to join in because this is something I really find I enjoy!
Since we moved into this house, we've been "making do" with the office room. We jammed our desks and entertainment center in here with two fold up chairs initially. Then we rearranged and took pieces of the desks away so we could fit our couch in here. But it certainly hasn't been perfect. I have to sit sideways when I use my laptop, and the couch is falling apart (I bought it for $50 used from our neighbor's grandma back in 1998). Plus, there wasn't room for a craft desk, so all of my crafty stuff has been shoved in the closet and I work out of the overflowing bins when I do a project. We spent more time in this room than anywhere else in the house, between our desks, the playstation, and the TiVo.
So it's time for a little more rearranging to make this more livable instead of just making do. The last few weeks have been for trips to IKEA, first for brainstorming, and then for making lists and plotting. Of course, some time in Visio recreating the current layout and then rearranging digitally instead of with our muscles and that helps when comparing which furniture is better to buy.
We are going to redo the office and turn the guest room into my crafty room. The old couch is moving in the craft room, because it's just fine for one person to sit in still, it's only when there's two that the cushions split. So I can sit and knit with it. The office will get a bit of new furniture. The craft room will use the shelves that were previously in the closet and a small desk that had the phone on it in the office, as well a new desk/shelf unit and some tables for projects.
I've been cleaning up a storm, clearing out a ton of old junk and then moving things around to make room. I still have a bit to do, but every day I'm making steady progress. It's amazing to throw stuff away and realize just how old some of this stuff is and that there's not a time I'll ever really need it.
Of course, if I just lived in IKEA, that would save some money and time ;) But I'm so excited about all of this, it really is a welcomed change and a very worthwhile project!
IKEA had one room they had set up as a craft corner, with a beautiful countertop and even wrapping paper and ribbons on rolls. Love!
Where do you get recommendations for new books to read?
My favorite resource is actually looking at what other authors write for other publishing houses that I like. I've been reading books by Bethany House Publishing since I was 8 years old, when my mom first bought me a Mandie book. She read Janette Oke (tagged books), the first few books of multiple series, and then when I got old enough, I bought the rest of the books to those series and read more from the library. So now, it's easy to recognize the spines of other Bethany books on the library shelf. They have expanded their number of authors all the time, and so that makes for a larger selection too!
As far as my novels go, I don't tend to read what other people are reading, so it's not as easy to just skim through sidebars here at Vox. So things like going to the bookstore and browsing the aisles is a good way for me to learn of new authors that I may not have heard of yet. This is true in the crafting/knitting area, and the Christian fiction (tagged books). I did used to troll the romance aisles, but I just can't find anybody I love as much as my favorite Romance author, Jude Deveraux (tagged books), so I stopped trying.
When I'm trying to see what new knitting books I want to read, I like to go to a site that sell knitting books and see what is the most popular, like Knit Picks' bestseller list. Then I search for those on the library site to see which ones we actually have. General crafting books or cookbooks (other book loves of mine), I'm more likely to go browse the library shelves until I find something interesting and somewhat current.
I organize my reading here on Vox, and then in the last year or so, I've enjoyed working on author pages on Wikipedia (my wikipedia profile has some links) to keep up the book lists and info about the authors I'm enjoying the most. I tagged all of my books here on Vox with the series name and the author name so it's easier for me to see them when I'm looking to remember what books I've read from which author or whatever.
I'm interested to see if anybody in my neighborhood answered this qotd, it was definitely interesting to me!
Jamming all the essentials for flowers into one bin. We are just doing a few bouttineers to go along with the florist's but i like to be prepared!
Decopaging a box with tissue and hand painted paper :)
]]>It's been a while since I've made a knitting post (posts tagged "knitting")!
Recap of 2006: Back at the beginning of November, I had the idea to learn to knit so I'd have something to do when we were driving down to California on our trip. I started with a long scarf, and knew I wanted to keep learning more.
When I was done with that, I quickly cast on for my next scarf, a softer one out of Lion Brand Homespun in Barrington. I'm using a pattern from The New Knitting Stitch Library which is *p1, k1*, p1 on right side, and k3, *p3, k3* on the wrong side, using 18 stitches (stitch pattern is 6 stitches plus 3). It's making long stripes, and with the homespun hides all patterns slightly so I wanted something slightly more interesting to try and show it more, and this works well.
At the beginning of December, I decided I wanted to try and make some potholders for my mom's Christmas present. 3 is always the perfect number in my head, so I set out to make 3 different colored potholders using the Lion Brand pattern. I originally got Lion Cotton in Poppy Red, Seaspray, and Sagebrush, but then I wasn't sure this was as much my mom as it could be. So I decided I could make some for my Mother-in-law, too, and the Seaspray and Sagebrush were much more her. I found some Sugar n Cream in Black and Americana Ombre for my mom and Seashore, great match for my mother-in-law's other colors.
As I worked on these, my wrists got sore of pulling hard to work with 3 strands held together at all time, and I started trying out continental and that helps, but slowed me down some!
So I finished my mom's a few days before Christmas, and started in on my Mother-in-law's on Christmas morning. I ended up finishing them once we were at their house, and telling her what I was doing.
Here's the finished sets, all tied up together with a crocheted chain, folded nicely to almost look like a heart in the center! You can see them in process here, too (photos tagged "potholder")
Where I'm at now: My scarf in progress is doing VERY well - it's over 60" when I measured it the other day (my first was 99", I'm trying to get to that same goal or somewhere near it. If I sat down and knitted consistently on it, it would be done, but I'm using it as my fun knitting during TV because I have the pattern so memorized I can do it without thinking!
And then that comes to my newest project. I really want an afghan. I have one that's crocheted that a friend made me that is on our couch all the time, but I'd like to make one that I like. So I figured this would be a good way for me to learn a variety of techniques. I'm not quite as crazy as to start on Barbara Walker's afghan because 1-I don't like all the old patterns (created in the 70s or 80s) and 2-the squares are much larger than I prefer. I've been pouring over stitch books like the aforementioned New Knitting Stitch Library, and now the Stitchionary (some of these were on the Lion Brand site to start with, but now I have the real book from the library), and I'm coming up with my own patterns and colors.
I'll be using Lion Brand's Wool-ease this time. So far, I have Forest Green Heather, Mushroom, Woods Print (a varigated color), and Dark Rose Heather. I hope to get Cranberry, Avacado, Rose Heather, maybe Cocoa, maybe Purple (it's a really barney purple, so that doesn't quite match). I've got 3 1/2 squares done. First is Forest Green Heather in Small Diamond Brocade, Second is Mushroom in Purl Ridges, third is Woods Print in Simple Basketweave, and the one in process is Dark Rose Heather in Sugar Cubes.
To make it the size I'd like, I need 96 squares that are 6"x6" (which actually doesn't take too long to make depending on the complexity of the pattern). I'm seeing this as a long-term project, and will always have something going in the background, I think.
My goals for early 2007 include finishing my scarf and continuing work onh my afghan squares, and purchasing the rest of the yarn for that.
I'd also like to make some things for the favorite kids in my life. I'm not sure what yet, but at least a simple hat for Baby Leonard, and maybe a scarf for Leah.
Later on in 2007, I think I'd like to try socks. I'm not sure if I'm good enough to do them yet, but I'd like to try.
As well as the actual knitting, I want to keep reading books about knitting and getting inspired. Our library has a nice collection and I'm alternating my fiction reading with educational books, and I'll keep doing that until I run out. I'm also enjoying TiVo-ing Knitty Gritty on it's special run on HGTV (We don't have DIY, where it's really from). That's very inspiring. Finally, continue growing my bookmarks and feeds for knitting blogs, wow there are some great people out there on the web who knit!
Oh, and blog more about my knitting, it sure is nice for me to see where I've come from and how I'm growing!
See the first part: I painted plates for my family members for this Christmas, and then made a variety of baked goods to go along with them.
It wasn't hard to decide what baked goods to put on the plates. A nice mix of the family favorites, and my favorite things to bake were important. But I did want it to be a balanced plate (which usually to my silly brain means and odd (instead of even) number of options) and be very pretty.
Earlier this summer, I found silver balls (dragees) that I was eyeing for a long time and found that even though some stores don't sell them anymore for health concerns, you'd have to eat like a whole container of this brand to be harmful! So I knew I wanted to do some sugar cookies with those. I love decorating sugar cookies anyhow, so that was a must-have. I was in the middle of baking sugar cookies when the power went out, so that batch ended up not turning out well, so I did start again the next day with a different recipe (but chilled to be able to be cut out cookies) and that was much better.
Russian Teaballs was a must because that's an old family favorite. We wanted Fudge, but E wasn't as happy with last year's marshmellow creme kind, so we found this recipe, and that was a good one, although I'd probably use the microwave to melt together the chips and milk next time. Peppermint bark is such a fun idea, and I'd made it last year, so I was excited to try it again, this year using candy melts instead of white chocolate chips. And finally, pumpkin bread is my favorite kind of special bread, and it's an easy recipe so I knew that should be part of it.
I mapped out my weekends in advance to make these just at the right time to have them all perfect in time. The pumpkin bread freezes well so that could be done a little bit early, and fudge/peppermint bark could be done at least a few days in advance without a problem. Sugar cookies and Russian teaballs were done towards the end.
And then my favorite part of the plan was to get to go to each person's house and deliver them. We weren't quite sure how well that would work, but we wanted to try... if nothing else, it was a good chance to try and see each person's Christmas tree. :)
So I baked and planned and ended up with a bunch of pretty things:
And voila! the cookie plates were ready to be delivered.
We made it to see Matthew and mom right before she left for work last Saturday, and then saturday night we stopped to see Megan and Andrew. Sarah and their family picked theirs up from Eric's birthday party the next day, and Matthew brought Lisa and Jon theirs that same day because they were at home sick. So everything did make it to their homes, with the exception of the plate for my inlaws, which is coming with us on a trip this coming week. They won't have the same assortment because it was going to be hard to make them and take them all with us.
I'm really happy with how these plates and their baked goods turned out. I felt all Christmassy delivering them and it really was a fun experience for me. Hope you enjoyed the story!