what I have been working on

I found this pattern on someone's blog on Ravelry. It's in German but a friend who crochets & speaks German helped me figure it out.

Photo of the Day - week 8

Feb 18 - The Island of Sodor today, a more rural part

Feb 19 - Bowling in the house

Feb 20 - Someone is hiding in the 'fort'

Feb 21 - Teaching brother to play tennis

Feb 22 - Terrance the 'bullzidder"

Feb 23 - We had friends over for a picnic

Feb 24 - Teddy bear sleep over

I have a new project

A friend of mine is expecting her 3rd child in a couple of months. I decided I'd make some little crocheted animals & put loops on them so they can be hung to baby carriers and things.  I found a cool looking shark pattern but it's in German.  My friend Bettina helped me with some translating and I went back & rewrote it into English.  So now I am working on that.  Then I am going to to make a turtle & then an octopus. I haven't worked from an established pattern in ages. We'll see how it goes.  So far the shark is going along. I'm used to crocheting a bit more loosely than you need to for these stuffed things, and sometimes I feel like I am going to snap my hook in two from exerting so much pressure to pull it back out of the loops when I single crochet.

There is a treasure hunt going on in the digi scrap world. It looks like a lot of fun, almost 50 designers are involved. I started out on it, but a lot of the prizes require store registration to download & I am already registered in dozens of stores I'll never go back to.  I think I stopped about 7 or 8 clues in, after the 3rd store where I had to register.  I understand that with all the piracy going on that is the best way to make sure mostly only people on the hunt get the prizes, I'm  just not up for al the registering & since you have to download the prize to get the next clue, that ends the hunt for me.  I may pick it back up again this evening & register more places but my internet connection ain't all that at the moment so it's just easier not to right now.

got my Ravelry invite today!

I'm Stacey42,  because I am soooooo creative with my user names.

I've spent the day so far uploading photos of my projects, finding groups to join, searching out people, listing my hooks (OMG! I had no idea I had so many crochet hooks) and looking for things to add to my queue.

Ravelry is a dangerous place, not just from the possible crochet project ideas, the new people to talk to, and the cool yarn. But because Ravelry gave me a link to The Library Thing, an online personal booklist. You can slurp up you amazon purchases & add them all at one go to your Library. If you have a bar code scanner you can scan your books & upload that file. (DH is getting me a bar code scanner. He's getting it to test for something at his job & if it works for what he has in mind for them he'll buy another one for them & give me this one.  How geeky is it that not only does he think I might want a bar code scanner to catalog my books, but that I am actually excited to get it?) You can tag the books & rate them & link up with others who have the same books & see what else they might have.  The downside of the Library Thing is you can only have 200 books for free. It's $10 a year or $25 for lifetime, right now. They are still in beta.  I'm not sure how much I'll do with it so I"m not paying yet. But I have over 1500 books on my personal booklist, that I stopped updating around the time Mayhem was born, so if I use it I will certainly have to pay.

what to watch?

I like to crochet while I watch TV. We have a Netflix membership, but we don't rent many movies with them. We get TV shows. The last movie we rented with them was Ocean's Thirteen. I loved all 3 Ocean's movies, plus Beyond the Sunset with Pierce Brosnan & Woody Harrelson, which is the same sort of plot. When I am alone during the morning I have been re-watching classic Mel Brooks movies that I own - Blazing Saddles, History of the World Part 1, Young Frankenstein.

Mostly though I am watching the Netflix TV shows that we either didn't see all of, or haven't seen in ages. Right now we are watching season 1 of Eureka (we've caught season 2 on Sci Fi), then I have The Tudors from HBO (which we don't get) coming, followed by Firefly (only saw 3 episodes of it on tv) and then Babylon 5, my all time favorite sci fi series, which hasn't been on TV since Havoc was an infant. I watched reruns on SciFi while nursing at 2am. :)

Needless to say all this viewing is adding a nice pile of crocheted rounds to my afghan.

Photo of the Day week 7

Feb 11 - Sodor today

Feb 12 -Gordon delivery goldfish crackers for snacktime

Feb 13 - a two story car house

Feb 14 - Sodor today

Feb 15 - a rescue mission

Feb 16 - new playground equipment at the park

Feb 17 - a beautiful day for bike riding

My craft bag

I'd been keeping all my yarn in this big bin

and the crocheted rounds in zip lock bags, but it was a pain in the butt to drag out every time I wanted to crochet.  Taking out a skein or two made me lose rounds & left the skeins vulnerable to small boys.  Plus the more rounds I created, the more space they took up, so I had bags all over the place.

I went to Michael's & JoAnn Fabrics looking for a craft bag of some sort, maybe with wheels, that could hold everything compactly.  They had some nice scrapbooking storage bags & some nice cross stitch & embroidery storage bags and some nice yarn storage bags for knitting & crochet projects. But my goodness, the price!  Even without wheels.

Then I went to Wal Mart to see what I could find.  This is what I came up with. The bag itself was $8 and the little bins were 97 cents each. I've got 3 of them. I can keep a variety of yarn in the bag, which makes it easier to get the 'random' look in the squares. I don't lose track of the rounds & it zips shut so the boys can't see the yarn & aren't tempted to play with it. I just don't zip it completely shut and feed the yarn through the space.

My wrist is feeling much better. I did a little crocheting today & it didn't hurt but I'm not doing much yet. I haven't found any of those bracing gloves, but I'm headed to the big city Saturday to do some shopping with my GFs & will check a few places there. I'm thinking I might need to change my crochet style. I use the overhand (knife) method, maybe the underhand (pencil) method would give me less stress on those muscles.

Pat, I'm signed up to get on Ravelry. I signed up back in November but apparently I left an 'n' out of my email addy so it went to someone else or bounced.  I only realized that a week or so ago when I saw a blog post about it. So I had to go back & sign up again.  I think I should get my invite in the next couple days.

Repetitive Stress Injury

Also known as 'Hookers Wrist" :) (I can only imagine the hits I'll be getting from that phrase)

All the crocheting I have been doing lately has caused my wrist & forearm to be really sore. It actually hurt to drive today. I had to keep changing how I hold the steering wheel. I used to have one of those braces that held your hand & wrist in the proper position & helped prevent the problem. But I can't find it. So I am taking a break for a few days. I do have about 8 three round sets done & have gone through two more colors of yarn, which added 8 single round sets and 6 doubles, but I haven't sat & counted them out in a few days.

I did make myself my own craft bag for this project. I bought a $8 duffel bag at WalMart and 3 plastic snap top bins for 97 cents each. The bins hold the sets sorted in their various stages of completion. The bag interior holds the 3 bins plus 6 full skeins of yarn (and many more half used ones), one deep outside pocket can hold the completed squares if I am not at home when I finish them and a small exterior pocket on the front holds my scissors, hooks and the pattern instructions. A customized craft bag for $11!

Photo of the Day week 6

Feb 4 - the Island of Sodor, today

Feb 5 - Rain & melted snow left lots of puddles in the yard

Feb 6 - Apparently the Island of Sodor was recently invaded by some pirates & a small dragon

Feb 7 - We got a Wii! Target happened to have them in stock while I was there today

Feb 8 - Business as usual on Sodor

Feb 9 - Early morning train pile up outside of Tidmouth Sheds. Dangerous place, Sodor.

Feb 10 - We rented Cars for the Wii. Havoc has been very busy racing

Photos & more

Today I received the 2004 photos I ordered and the 8x8 prints of my layouts that I ordered. Why can't Wal Mart print photos in order? My prints were divided into 3 envelopes & appear to be loosely alphabetical, ignoring those numbers I put in the front of the titles. So 03mar004 comes after 07jul008 and then at random I'll find a photo from December in the middle of the ones from June.  So I will have to go through all 223 of them and sort them out by month before I can start putting them in the album.

We bought a Wii a couple days ago. I happened to be in Target when they had 5 in stock so I grabbed one. Havoc has been very into it. We rented a couple Cars games from the video store & he's been playing them. He doesn't fully understand the story games, where you have to find things & solve puzzles, but he loves racing in the arcade. I found the cheat codes online to activate the whole arcade. He's never going to complete the main game to unlock all the races & the races are all he is interested in right now. Mayhem is interested in the Wii but not so much. He can't use the controller fully, anything involving the B button is confusing to him so he gets frustrated fairly quickly with some games. He likes some of the games on WiiPlay, but he can't stay focused on them. All his interest is concentrated on his Thomas trains. It has been since before Xmas. Mayhem is all Thomas, all the time.

I've been playing Wii Sports myself. So I have not been crocheting. Tuesday night I did a status check. I had 39 single rounds, 17 double rounds , 2 triple rounds and 8 completed squares. We have a couple Torchwood episodes on DVR to catch up on and Ocean's Thirteen from Netflix as well. I'm hoping to get some crocheting done while watching them this weekend.

Photo of the day week 5

Jan 28 - and these are not all the Lightening McQueens we own

Jan 29 - Disney must have heard we were giving all our money to HiT Entertainment, so they have come up with these much smaller Cars we now must own

Jan 30 - we gave the boys a Playstation for Xmas. The original Playstation-from 1998

Jan 31 - we found the steering wheel control for Grand Tourismo.

Feb 1 - Nearly every toy we own is in this photo. Apparently it was a birthday party for all the trains. The other toys were the food and gifts. The blankets were for the sleep over they were having after the party

Feb 2 - the Island of Sodor - today

Feb 3 - the Island of Sodor - today. I spend a lot of time coming up with track configurations

What do I do all day?

Libby at the Sweet Shoppe blog wants to know how we spend our days. I am a SAHM currently and my days have a similar routine. I get up at 7, put a load of laundry in the wash, get the kids ready for school and drive them there. Then I go to the gym and/or run any errands that need done. If I am home early enough I rotate the wash, check my email & do a little scrapping. I pick the kids up at noon. We have lunch and then they play. Depending on what they are doing I play with them or get on the computer or do some housework, usually all of them. I clean one room per day. The boys usually help me. Around 3 we have snack time & quiet time. We generally watch TV then. Then more play and computer time, and there is generally some reading in there. About 5:30 I start dinner. We eat shortly after 6. From dinner until bedtime is Daddy time & I go read in the bedroom after folding laundry. Sometimes I work on a layout. Then bath time, story time & bedtime for the kids. DH & I watch TV, I crochet or read & he surfs the web & we talk. I'm in bed by 11.

Too busy to blog lately

I've been busy this past week. I did a layout last week for a Sugar Free challenge at Sweet Shoppe. The theme was "Why Can't I?" and as I had just recently gone through my crochet UFO bin, I chose "Finish Things" for my layout

I decided to make it a goal to finish one of these things & I chose the granny square afghan in the middle.

Even though it is the largest of the projects & will take the most time, it is actually the one I am most likely to finish. Most of those projects are UFOs because I get bored with them. The same stitch, the same yarn, over & over. It gets a bit mindless. I can do quick little projects, like the tarot deck bags I used to make, but larger ones, like scarves, ponchos, sweaters, and afghans bore me after awhile, unless there are changes in pattern & yarn.

The granny square afghan works well for me because every round is a different yarn, they are relatively short and by the time I get bored making popcorns it's time to switch to the front post double crochet rounds, that require paying attention & then I'm done with a square before that gets on my nerves. Plus I have the satisfaction of seeing a growing pile of squares in various stages of completion. I prefer a pile of stuff to an ever growing scarf. I get a greater sense of accomplishment.

I had 8 squares completed,one double round and 22 single rounds done. I had started out making entire squares but then switched to doing them round by round in sets, to increase the randomness & because it is easier to have a skein of yarn and crochet 4 single rounds at a time than it is to have this bin underfoot so I can randomly choose 5 colors to complete an entire square.

The idea is to use up the odds and ends of your leftover yarn & you end up with this totally random collection of colors.  I have lots of yarn. That is one several bins of yarn, just the Red Heart no dye lot yarn. So I have to plan the randomness. I take a skein of yarn & make 4 beginning rounds with it, then I make 2 second rounds with it. Every other skein I also make a 3rd round. Once I have a decent number of 3 round sets made I will start adding a 4th and then the 5th. The sixth round is black on all of them.

It has been 5 days since I made that layout. I now have 28 single round sets, 11 double round sets and 2 triple round sets. I do about 2 skeins worth of rounds a day,over the course of about 2 hours, each round adding half again as many stitches as the previous round.  I need 100 completed squares to make the afghan. You do the math. I can't.

Photo of the Day Jan 21-27

Jan 21 - Havoc's favorite bedtime toys


Jan 22- trains trapped under track. Life on the Isle of Sodor is dangerous


Jan 23 - The gate is to keep our elderly cat out of the boys' room but they play a game called "puppy' with it. The one in the room is the puppy & the other one is the daddy & has to find food & blankets for the puppy


Jan 24-We've had this 4 inch helicopter for almost a year. The fact that it still has it's blades is miraculous


Jan 25-This seems to be a parade of race cars. Not sure why the big Lightening McQueen is on the firetruck though


Jan 26 -Long awaited birthday present


Jan 27 -Another birthday present that is getting all the play time today

ahhhh coffee!

You Are a Plain Ole Cup of Joe

But don't think plain - instead think, uncomplicated You're a low maintenance kind of girl... who can hang with the guys Down to earth, easy going, and fun! Yup, that's you: the friend everyone invites. And your dependable too. Both for a laugh and a sympathetic ear.

What Kind of Coffee Girl Are You?

It's done!

Less than 2 weeks after the last prompt was sent, I completed my Journal Your Christmas album. I am so pleased with myself for seeing it through. There are only 2 days of prompts missing, because I just couldn't think of anyway to do those 2 prompts. That is pretty damn impressive for me.

I just ordered my viovio book of all the layouts. It's a 8.5x8.5 book. It is a 34 pages long (the 35th layout is the cover), full bleed, soft cover book and cost $15.51 plus $4.38 for media mail shipping (super saver shipping is available on orders over $30). I found the order & book creation process very easy. I'm not sure how long it will take to arrive. According to my invoice they expect it to ship by Jan 29. Media mail can take up to 21 days. So I'm guessing end of February I will have my book. I'm looking forward to it.

Photo of the day Jan 14-20

14 - the King


15 - The best thing about this ship is the anchor


16 - George - he hates rails


17 - We had 4.5 inches of snow today. Get the plows out!


18 - Sledding on the slick melting snow


19 - Weather related car crash


20 - Still snow snow left