Tag Archives: Fiber Arts

Promises to Myself

Posted on January 2, 2010 | Comments Off on Promises to Myself

I have thought a lot about making New Year's Resolutions again this year. Because the truth for me is that they normally get broken very quickly, I have decided against making any. Instead, my choice is to make some promises to myself. On the surface, it might not seem like there is much difference in the two. For me there is a huge one. A promise is a firm decision that must be kept. A resolution is not nearly as strong.

Here are a couple of promises I have made to myself, listed in no particular order:

  • I will work on losing weight and improving my over all fitness on a daily basis. I do not  want to  end this decade of my life  overweight and out of shape. One of my Grandmothers died a miserable death of heart failure and and I am going to do everything in power to avoid the same fate. 
  • I will use the contents of at least one of the four 19 quart containers of yarn in my stash. These containers and others have  yarn from Grab Bags purchased from Pisgah Yarn and Dyeing Co. in the past couple of years. There are already some specific plans for it.
  • I will try some of the patterns from a variety of sources that I have been saying for years that I will try. This is the year to do so.
  • I will finish the partially completed baby blanket that has been waiting to be done for months.
  • The gift for the grand daughter of a friend of mine will be finished and delivered.
  • My dishcloth blog: Dish and Wash Cloth Mania will have much more time devoted to it than it has had for a very long item. It has been ignored all too often in the past two years. From now on things will be different.
  • I am going to try very hard to blog here at least once a week. One of my goals is to be more creative in how this is done. This is a work in progress.

There are lots of things I want to do and write about this year. I am not making any promises about them. We will have to see how life works out.

May each of you have a Blessed New Year!

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Summer On It’s Way

Posted on June 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Summer On It’s Way

All of a sudden it is the first week of June. The question that is looms on my mind is : Where did Spring go? The answer to that for me is a bit long. It was spent finding and settling in to a new job. That took an enormous amount of energy.

Some of the time was spent learning a new spin on an old hobby. I have learned to crochet food and dishes, ranging from bacon and eggs to a complete turkey dinner, with lots of trimmings. I have tried my hand at crocheting a variety of fruits and vegetables; glasses and cups of beverages. In the middle of this,my sewing skills have improved.

In order to do all of these things,some internet searches have been necessary. New techniques have been studied. Patterns new to me have been found, some free and some not free. Places like ArtFire and Etsy have been discovered. I have learned to use tags with my bookmarks on my browser. I have learned to use a size E or F hook with worsted wt. yarn. 

My Dish and Wash Cloth Mania blog has taken considerable amount of time. Most of the pages have been checked and dead links removed. Many new links have been added. It is a wonderful labor of love. My amazement at the number and marvelous quality of designers. Working on this blog is always an adventure.

It is no wonder i have gone to sleep and waken with thoughts of fibers on my mind.

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Vacation-Yes!

Posted on August 21, 2008 | 2 comments

Following the proper procedure set forth by my employer, I requested vacation time two weeks in advance. My request was for two whole weeks, including weekends, one of which is my regularly scheduled one to work.  The  new schedule came out today and it shows I am on vacation after Friday of this week!!

I am so excited! We have been planning this time off for the past month and a half.There is lots of family time planned for fun and household projects. A lot of my free time will be spent completing some UFO’s; starting some new projects  and working on both of my active blogs.  There is so much to do and only two weeks to do it. 

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Everyday Activities

Posted on June 29, 2008 | Comments Off on Everyday Activities

I have been wanting to write for a while, but have not been able to think of anything to say. That is strange for me, since I normally have lots to say. There has been a lot going on in the past several weeks, but most of it is a part of everyday living. 

The weekend after my cousin died, which was Mother’s Day weekend, we had a bit of a minor crisis. The water pipe leading to the refrigerator broke after the refrigerator was moved. it happened late Saturday night/early Sunday morning  resulting  in a minor flood in the kitchen and into the basement. Luckily for us were able to find an all night plumber who came and stopped the leak. The remaining  plumbing repairs were completed after the weekend.  We filed a claim with our homeowner’s insurance and are going to have the final repairs made in the next few weeks. While we are waiting for the last  detailsto be worked out,  we are cleaning out the basement to make for some of the items that will be shifted around while the work is  being done. It is a major task but is progressing quite nicely.

Since then, I have been busy finishing up a couple of projects which have been needing to be completed. One of them is the comfortghan for my friend who lost her son last year.  It is almost done.There are less than ten squares remaining to be made before it can be assembled. Once it is finished, I will post pictures and share the pattern for the square. 

A couple of years ago !I listened to the first one or two pod casts  by David Reidy of Sticks and Strings. Life happened, and I lost track of it. In the past couple of months I have rediscovered it. Originally, I was going to listen to it while walking. That did not work out so well. Instead, I now listen to it and knit. It is much more enjoyable. I downloaded all the past episodes and am up to number 46. That only leaves 23 more to listen to until I am caught up.  I enjoy his style and variety of topics. I know that there are other good fiber related pod casts available. It just happens that his is the only one I am listening to at the moment.

One thing is happening on the knitting front this week that is exciting. One of the Yahoo groups to which I belong  The Cloth Of The Week, is celebrating its’ First Year Anniversary starting July first. The owners, one of whom is  Maile Mauch have some fun activities  planned for the group. You can also learn more about the group  on Ravelry if you arebelong there. This past year has sped by quickly with lots of learning taking place on my part. There is so much more to learn about and do with knitting.

Have a great week!

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Glorious Weekend

Posted on April 21, 2008 | 2 comments

This has been a most glorious weekend in my part of the world. On the surface it has been an ordinary weekend except that I have been home for the past three days. We have had plenty of time for rest and play, mingled with some weekend household chores.

I have kept busy with an assortment of fiber related activities. As I mentioned in my previous post on Friday, an order from Pisgah Yarn And Dyeing Co. arrived that day. I had been planning that order for months, waiting until there were several of the Kits and other special items available that I wanted. My motivation was simply to save on shipping. When I got home Friday night,

The box of yarn was pretty big and had lots in it. This was a good thing, until I took it out of the box and spread it all over the floor of our small living room. Most of it stayed on the floor until early Saturday morning when I put it away. Now that does not sound like too big of a job for a grown woman to do….Or does it?  What it meant in reality, was doing a bit of re arranging of my stash. It took a couple of hours to do this by the time I brought up an empty large plastic bin from the basement and  washed & dried it before filling it.   

One of my other goals for this weekend has been to post pictures of my knitting efforts on my Flickr account so they can be seen here and on Ravelry. This meant weaving in a bunch of loose ends and taking lots of pictures. In theory this was not too big of  a job. What happened was that most of the batteries for my camera were not properly charged. so as a result, what was to have been a little bit time consuming became a major time eater. There are still a few more items to be posted, but not many. If you are interested, go take a look at my Flickr album on the left. You will see lots of new things.

Most of the cloths I make are by my two favorite designers, Sue Schaefer and Maile Mauch. although their styles are somewhat different, I enjoy them both because a lot of time the patterns they create challenge me to think and learn new ways of knitting. Besides, their designs are pretty. :)

Due to family needs, I have unsubbed from most of the online knitting groups to which I have belonged in the past. One of the few to which I still belong is the Cloth Of The Week. This group, run by Maile, is different than any other group  because of its  emphasis on learning about knitting. there have been time when life has not allowed time to do each week’s cloth. In the past couple of week, I have been working on some of them.  In my opinion, it is fun learning with no pressure. I will try to post pictures of some of the cloths made from this group on Flickr.  Please do not ask me for the patterns because they are only available for group members due to copyright laws.  I spent some time this weekend making at least of the cloths from this group.

I also allowed myself the luxury of printing and filing a lot of knitting patterns. Some of them were freshly printed one while others had been in some piles for a while waiting for my attention. In the course of this at some point, I cleaned out a bookshelf and made room for notebooks containing patterns. It is not exciting stuff to do, but goes a long way in terms of organization and how I fee about myself.

May eacn of you have a wonderful and knitful week.

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It Is The Weekend!!

Posted on January 12, 2008 | Comments Off on It Is The Weekend!!

Can you tell I am excited? I am so glad this week is finally over. Nothing is wrong except that it has been a busy week. Work has been super busy which means that I am normally completely exhausted at the end of the shift. Conversations with some of my colleagues tell me I am not the only one to experience this. I come home, take some family time, to a load or two of dishes or laundry and sleep. It is not very exciting. Some days there has been  knitting or computer time.  At other times, the best I can muster is family time.

This brings me to another subject. As you may or may not know, we are a homeschooling family. We made this choice several years ago for a variety of reasons after a considerable amount of research, discussion and bit of prayer. We have reached the point in life where our families needs are increasing for educational and parental time with our offspring. That not to say we are lacking in this area. It is only meant to say that my husband and I are seeing the need for more of our time to be devoted to this area of our lives.

Because of this, I have withdrawn from some of groups of which I have been a member for quite a while.  The list owners have been notified privately of this, but I have decided to discuss this here. If you are part of any of those groups, please be assured my decision was strictly based on the need to give my family more time. Children are only young once and I want to keep my priorities in the proper order.

Having said that, please let me tell you about some weekend plans.  We will do the usual errands such as shopping for food, going to the bank, cleaning the house, taking the recyclables to the recycle center and laundry. We are also including lots of individual free time. We are all basically introverts and need time alone to recharge our batteries. It helps all of us to get through the busy times. My time is going to be spent doing fiber related activities.

Here are some of the things I want to do, listed in the order they come to mind:

  • Add links to my dishcloth blog. My files are full of them. My goal is to get up early each morning to do this. It is much easier to do before my family awakens. A side benefit to doing this is that the washing machine or dishwasher can be run while I am working at the computer.
  • Print out  and begin knitting patterns from some of my favorite websites. The one I am most anxious to print patterns from is K1, P1, Keeping You In Stitches Studio. Maile is a super designer in my opinion and has some  lovely patterns posted. I will also print some from the Peaches and Creme web site. There is a delightful assortment of patterns from which to choose, including bookmarks and dishcloths among other items. I have been wanting to take the time to print the patterns from these sites for a long time and have just never gotten around to it.
  • I will put the patterns I have printed into protective covers and file them in their respective note books for future use.
  • There are three dishcloths in varying stages of completion that will be worked on and hopefully finished this weekend. There are also three more waiting to have loose ends woven in. That job will also be done. These will most likely be done after my family is awake simply because I can do them while talking and listening.
  • I will print out patterns, both free and purchased from Harvest Moon Designs. Sue is one of my all time favorite designers. Knitting her patterns is always pleasant.
  • I will also try to work on two afghans that are in various stages of development. There are no promises on how much progress will be made on those.
  • Depending on how much time there is, one of my goals is to take pictures of the finished cloths and post them here.

Have a great weekend!

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Life and Knitting

Posted on October 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Life and Knitting

It has been almost two weeks since I last posted here.
Life has been busy but  not exciting.Here is some of what has been going on:

  • I continue to knit and crochet in odd moments.
  • A few dishcloths have been made. Some will stay here while others will go to assorted new homes.
  • Work continues on the Comfortghan for a friend at work. It is going very slowly.
  • My family and I have been diligently cleaning out and rearranging the basement of our home. This has consumed the past couple of weekends I have not worked for my employer.
  • Work is going through a super busy phase. There are days when I come home so tired it is all I can to have a snack combined with family time and go to bed. Sleep takes over.
  • This is allergy season for my family. It saps our energy. We sleep, try to eat healthy foods  and force a lot of fluids to keep going.
  • As a person with heart disease, exercising is a must. Walking daily, or at least trying to, is a priority. I can now walk almost a mile before needing to stop and catch my breath. My goal is to be walking five miles daily by my next appointment with the cardiologist.
  • We homeschool. Family time and teaching/learning time are a high priority and as such dominate life in my household.
  • I belong to some online email groups and have another blog. Mail is way behind in all of these areas. I feel badly about it, but am trying to catch up.

These are the things that have taken my time and attention from this blog. It is life and it is important.

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What a Week!

Posted on October 5, 2007 | Comments Off on What a Week!

I am so glad it is Friday morning. This means there is only one working day left in the week.
Work this week has been a bit busy to say the least. As an RN my shifts can go from super quiet to super busy in less time than a heart beat. Most of my days have had that happen to myself or my partner since the weekend.Thankfully the nurses where I work are a tight knit group who support each other not only in words but in actions.

I placed an order on Monday with Elmore -Pisgah, which happens to be one of my favorite yarn sources. It was a huge order to say the least, but my husband and son encouraged me to do so saying it is time to spend some money on myself for once. The Customer Service lady with whom I spoke said my order would be worked on that day. From past experience I figured my order would arrive late this week, just in time for my weekend off.  Wednesday morning there was a very loud knock at the front door. It was the UPS driver who runs the route in our neighborhood. The parcels he had with him were from Elmore-Pisgah.

To say I was excited was an understatement. I spent the  remainder of my morning going through the boxes. The cones of yarn were counted, admired and sorted by color families. Several of the colors are new to me. It will be fun to play with them. The packages containing the Specials   which had patterns in them  were opened and the patterns read. They look fun and interesting. Some of the yarns they contain are new to me. I have never used Country Cotton Cabled Yarn before. Using it to make the items in this package will be an experiment.  I will definitely order from this company again.

I have only made one dishcloth this week. Three more are on the needles. One of them is the Peas and Carrots Scrubby Cloth.  The other two are a cloth of my own design. One of my goals is to post a picture of the first one this weekend. Another goal for the weekend is to post pictures and the pattern for the cloth I designed.

This has been an interesting week.


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Weekend Mornings

Posted on September 29, 2007 | Comments Off on Weekend Mornings

It is Saturday morning. Weekend mornings are my favorite time of the week. My household is asleep.   They are traditionally my quiet time.  I can do what I want with no interruptions unless our dog wakes up and needs to go out.   By now I have been awake for almost an hour and a half. Outside the neighborhood is slowly coming to life. I can hear the activity on the main road a block away.The sun is well on its way to rising and waking the world. It is shining over my back from an open space between the curtains. There is a gentle crispness in the air that announces the changing of the season from Summer to Fall. It is beautiful. My house is quiet except for the sounds of the refrigerator/freezer running and the clicking of the keyboard as I type. It is peaceful and refreshing. There is time for prayer and  reflection. 

Some mornings I take time for a cup of tea; read a book or knit or crochet. Not so today.Today, as I do on many weekends, I have chosen to use this precious time doing an assortment of tasks on the computer.A favorite site has been explored for knitting patterns with which I am not familiar. Some have been added to my list of Things to Make.I have checked the dashboard on one of my blogs. There are no comments to answer. Email has been checked. There are no messages requiring my immediate attention.  A new widget has been added to this site and has been considered for another blog. I will wait a while before making the final decision about adding it.

In a few minutes I will take a break from the computer to check on the laundry. Then I will take time to work on one of my blogs. It is one of my favorite things to do. My readers and users depend on it being current to meet their needs. It is also part of my way to return a bit of what I have received from the  community of  fiber artists  who so greatly enrich my world.

By the time my family awakens I will have been refreshed.

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Photos to Flickr

Posted on September 10, 2007 | Comments Off on Photos to Flickr

I took the time yesterday to weave in loose ends on a lot of cloths. It feels good to have them ready to be used.

This morning I organized the photos on my hard drive and loaded some of them to Flickr. There is now a Flickr Widget on the side bar here. There are pictures of finished cloths as well as some WIP’s and other FO’s.

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