Cabinets

Dugan's getting ready for the holidays! No, not really, just further evidence of torture by Dina.

Stanley's enjoying some time with me all on his own, since the big, bad dog is in the other room and things are quiet in our temporary office.

Today was a productive, yet expensive day. Brad and I bought each other our Christmas presents (PAB - if you're reading this, don't give me a hard time, 'k? I know your position on Christmas gift giving time-frames).

I got office cabinets for Christmas! They're very nice, and I can't wait to get them installed. They're oak with a whitewash on them, so I think they'll go well with the floor and grey walls. Brad got an air compressor that we can use to put in the wood work and install the cabinets.

The casing are all painted and ready to be installed around the windows and doors. We were going to do that today, but by the time we were done cabinet shopping and tool shopping, I was just too tired to do anything.

I just realized I hadn't posted pictures of the floor. It turned out extremely well, especially considering that it was the cheapest flooring we could find. It's supposed to be floating, but we glued it down so that any future water issues would not find water trapped underneath the floor...

My Boys

My house doesn't stink anymore!

We've ripped up the carpet in the office, torn off the baseboards and moldings, pried up the carpet tacks and scraped the glue off the concrete. I've patched, primed, and painted the walls. Tonight I put up some shelves on either side of the window (need to get two more sets of brackets for two more shelves, I think that would look better). The wall color is grayish/silver with just the slightest hint of lavender. It's slight enough to suit brad, and just enough to suit me. Tomorrow I start on the flooring.

This week I also was able to start on some Christmas soap. I'm trying to emulate starlights mints. I think I did an *okay* job of it. If I had to do it again I would make them a little more intricate, but I'm still happy with how they turned out. It was a multi-stage process. First I had to pour the white soap and let it harden just enough so that it was solid, but warm enough so that I could cut and mold it easily. I cut each mold into 8 pieces and then shaped them so that they had a little swirl to them and let them harden completely. Then, I filled just the bottom of the mold with clear soap and arranged half of the white pieces and let that harden. Then I came back and filled the mold the rest of the way with red soap, scented peppermint, of course.

Sewage stinks

Due to a blockage in our main house drain, I'm getting a "new" office. new floors + new woodwork + new paint = lots of renovating fun for me! Those of you who know me well enough know that I really do mean FUN FOR ME! I've been dying to do some renovating around the house and now the house has presented me with an opportunity to do so. Not that now is the best time to be forced to have to do home renovations, but there's never really a good time...

Christmas crafts

Gotta start early, to try to figure out what to make for Christmas presents. These are my attempt at jelly roll soaps. They're red & white and peppermint scented!

My favorite season

My favorite time is upon us. I like the fall. I like the leaves, the cider, making fires in the fireplace, snuggling up to watch tv... This is also the time of the year that I seem to get back into making things as we're not so busy doing other things. Something about lower temperatures just make my fingers itch to knit!

Dugan ate all our slippers last winter, so I had to make more. I made a pair for me, Brad and Dina. We'll have to do our best to keep them out of Dugan reach. He's not very destructive usually, but if he comes accross dirty socks or underwear (yes, eeew, dirty underwear) then he just chews it to oblivion. Clean socks he could care less about.

So here's this year's crop of slippers (with Dugan looking on - it's really not possible to do anything without him on top of you):

Meanwhile, Brad & Dina have found a good joint hobby:

long time, no blog

Yikes, it's been awhile.

I've been busy with the typical summer stuff... yard work, enjoying the sunshine, visiting family. And signing up to host a foreign exchange student for the 2008-2009 calendar year. I'm not quite sure what we were smoking at the time, but we have a big house with rooms just begging to be used, so we thought we'd give it a try. Our student will be coming from Germany and will arrive on August 15th, just in time for the Hanson family reunion, the poor thing. I really don't know what to do with a 17 year old teenager, but I guess we'll find out. Everybody keeps saying - just treat them like any other member of the family. But, besides me and Brad, our only family members are the dog and two cats. I don't think she would appreciate being crated while we're out of the house. But, on the other hand, I think she does come house-trained, so that's a bonus.

In the meantime, I decided to tackle the upstairs bathroom. The wallpaper was a HIDEOUS metallic gold & pink pattern. Upon removing the wallpaper, I discovered that they had applied it directly to the drywall without any paint or primer. So I spent a day stripping wallpaper, pulling off bits of drywall and sanding, then another day priming the walls, then another day filling the holes and getting the walls smoothed out. Hopefully tonight I can sand the mud and apply another coat of primer. From there I hope to be able to just fill the small stuff missed the first time and be ready to paint. We'll see. I had taken pictures to post, but now I can't find them. Sorry. They weren't very attractive pictures - just ugly wallpaper and scarred walls.

Jacob, my oldest nephew and godson, turns 4 on Sunday! Time goes so fast. I'm trying to finish up the quilt I've been making for his "big boy bed" for two years. I'm not sure it'll be done in time for his party on Saturday, but I'll give it a try. For now, Jacob's very happy with his "Cars" comforter, so I can't imaging that he'll want to switch that out for a stinky home-made quilt for a little while. But, when he grows up a little more, it will be ready for him.

These are the blocks that i'll put together into the facing of the quilt. The red in the upper left-hand corner of the picture is the cordurroy that i'll use for the border and backing (here's to hoping there's enough of it to go around!)

A very brave/stupid momma rabbit gave birth to 4 little bunnies in our back yard. Unfortunately, only 2 have survived this far. I think Dugan gives the little ones a heart attack. He is obsessed with them and always wants to watch them. I didn't get a very clear picture, but they're very very cute!

The stash comes, the stash goes

I've been stuck in the house this last week due to being on call for work. While at first it seemed limiting, it now is kinda nice. It's a treat to not have lots of stuff scheduled for the weekend. Since I can't really go far, I've taken the time to relax a little and just knit. Last night I sat on the back patio, enjoyed the wonderful weather, watched the pets frolick, listened to A Prairie Home Companion and knit for a couple hours. The only thing that would have made it better was if I could have had a glass - or three - of wine. But since I'm on call and could get paged into issues at any time, it's better if I don't.



I've been adding to my yarn stash lately, there have been some great sales on yarn (which doesn't usually go on sale). I'm going to have to knit from the stash now for awhile as I've definitely blown my yarn budget. But I think I might be good for at least a little bit now! (Ruth - I got you some cotton yarn. You have your choice of the hand painted 100% cotton yarn or the slate grey 75 cotton/25 silk yarn. I have 5-6 skeins of each, let me know what you might want)

I picked up 4 new sock yarns, my two favorite are these: The blue-ish/purple-ish yarn is for a pair of socks I'm making for a coworker who has been particularly helpful lately (see completed socks below). The yellow/green/blue/purple is for a pair of socks for Brad that I still need to make.

Here's the purple yarn knit up into a pair of socks, and a pair of mittens that I recently finished. It's amazing how nicely the machine works with higher quality yarn. It makes such a difference.

There was some beautiful hand-painted yarn at just a rediculously good price. Here's a sample skein,it's already almost done being made into a swirl hat. It's so beautiful that I practically had to rip it out of the hands of the yarn store owner who had a really hard time letting it go. It knits like buttah.

This is the sweater I started a few weeks ago using Brown Sheep's cotton tweed. It's 60 cotton/40 wool. It's a common pattern that I've knit up lots of times, but this time I'm trying something different. I didn't put in a neckline opening because I'm going to cut up the middle front and put in a zipper. Yes, I know, cutting knitting sounds kinda counter-intuitive. But I've been reading up on it and think I can do it. I will, of course, be making a test swatch first and cutting that first. A little nerve-wracking, but it's time to try something new! Plus, knitting in the round and then cutting it into a cardigan or cutting in a neckline is a good way to be able to knit in the round as long as possible. I really don't like to purl.




The next project is one for the hope chest. Eventually, it will be a christening gown. I'm just working on the skirt for now since I don't really have a pattern for this. Once I get the length right, I'll decrease a bunch for the bodice and then put some arms on. Shouldn't be too difficult. I'll be trimming it in a silver/grey yarn at the bottom, a band between the bodice and skirt, and maybe even the neckline. Just something to take away from all the white. This one may take me awhile to finish - not because the pattern is difficult (which it isn't) but because I have to figure out what I want it to look like. I looked EVERYWHERE for a christening gown pattern with no luck, so I'll have to see what I can come up with on my own. It's my first attempt at knitting without a published pattern.





Here's also a closeup of the pattern, it's quite nice. Perhaps I should have used some finer yarn, but I'm pretty happy with it.



And, lastly, seriously - how handsome is this puppy? He's been full of energy lately and has been very well behaved considering that I've been a little busy lately and he hasn't gotten as much playtime as he might like.

Coming soon...

I've been tied to the house this week due to being on call for work, so I have lots of new stuff to post, but it's too late to do it tonight and my brain just hurts from work. So watch for lots of projects here soon.

(mittens, socks, sweater, swirl hat, lace project)

No Mittens

Oh, yeah, I was going to make a set of mittens...except it didn't quite work out. I bent a few of the ribbing needles (and they're not cheap!) and broke the yarn at least once. I'll have to go back to square one on that project.

Diapers!

Happy Mother's Day! Brad and I had a very nice day with Mom. She came over and we had Cheesecake Factory for dinner (yummie!) and then she helped me make a diaper prototype. I can't believe how unbelievably SWEET it is. I'll do some testing to see how much water it holds and how well it stays dry on the outside, and then pass it along to my friend Janel to have her use it on her newborn, Wolfi, and give me feedback. It took me most of the day to cut out a bunch and make one, but I think it will get quicker as I go. The worst of it was trying to figure out what the directions were talking about....

Ribbing!

I finally figured out the ribber on my sock machine. There are three dials on the tappet plate to make adjustments. I had made adjustments to 2 of the 3, the third didn't seem like anything that would affect anything. But, I turned the screw and, lo and behold, I had RIBBING! So tonight's project is a pair of mittens with some leftover yarn I have. Hopefully I'll have something that looks somewhat like a mitten to show you in a few days...

Tired, tired, tired

Brad and I were not very productive yesterday at all. We had planned all sorts of yard work and cleaning, but ditched all our plans due to rain and exhaustion. We've been on the run for WEEKS now, so it was nice to have a day to just chill out. We went to see IRON MAN in the morning, hung around the house some, took a 2-4 hour nap (Rachel - 2, Brad - 4). Got up, watched some TV, and went back to bed. We really needed it.

Today I spent at church, visiting the adorable new WOLFI, and taking down half of the garage shelving from the old house. I also loaded up the Element with all kinds of random crap still there. At home I helped do some weeding so that Brad could put down mulch. Turns out 2 yards wasn't enough. Oops. We'll get more later.

After chilling for awhile, I'm off to try to figure out the ribbing attachment on my knitting machine. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cute set

I finished the hexagon sweater, it looks much better with the smaller edging. The set together is just too cute! But now time to find a new project.

Rippin' out the edges

I ended up ripping out all the ribbing I had done around the edges of the hexagon sweater. Once I started casting off I realized that there was just too much yarn for that area. But hopefully this time it will go faster since there are 33% fewer stitches :-) I've found that with this pattern, it's not so much about following the pattern as understanding what it should look like when it's done.

In looking for more patterns for my sock machine, I somehow came accross this entire weird cloth diaper (disposable diapers are evil) sub-culture society. And I bought into it. So I'm thinking that I'll start making some cloth diapers for when Brad and I eventually have kids. Just so I'm prepared. If for some reason we don't have kids, I can always sell them. He'll think I'm crazy, but maybe I won't tell him. After all, he claims I promised 2 crazy-free years counting from the date of our wedding. All I remember is that I told him I was saving the crazy for until after we were married. But I digress.

Here's a free one that seems to be the most recommended: http://www.ottobredesign.com/en/print/pdf/vaippa_en.pdf

And here's the one that looks the most technically sound (using some interesting fabrics for the outer shell):
http://www.sewshoppe.com/hbptn.shtml

And this one looks interesting since the same size should fit newborns as toddlers:
http://www.sewshoppe.com/ppptn.shtml

Please, really, don't ask me how I choose my obsessions.

Now I just gotta get my hands on a surger.

TAH-DAH!

My first pair of socks is done! It took about 2 hours to do the pair, but I'm sure it'll get faster with time. I haven't tried them on yet as they're still a bit damp, but I think they might be a little too big. These were done using Angora Valley's Foxglove yarn (Cotton/Wool/Nylon 50/25/25). There's enough on the cone to make another pair (or more) and perhaps a pair of mittens if I can figure out how to do it on the CSM.

While I haven't been blogging, I have been busy crafting. An impromptu Niagara Falls visit was very productive in the knitting department. I had one of the hexagons for the sweater done, and I got the second one done on the trip. I've put the hexagons together and am working on the finishing. I might have to rip out what's done of the border, though. I decided not to use smaller needles for the ribbing around the edges, but still followed the pattern that has you do a 33% increase. That might be too much. But it's very close! This is very interesting how it goes together, but I don't care for all the loose ends that need to be woven in. Here's my progress:

Pants are done

The pants turned out just unbelievably cute. They look a little stubby in the picture, but they're not really. That diaper needs a lot of space.


I'm going to start the sweater to go with it tonight, though I'll have to use stripes as I don't have enough of the green yarn (actually, the color is "Rue") to do a complete sweater. That's okay, it will coordinate just fine. I have a bad habit of finding yarns I like and just picking up one or two skeins of it. It's too much for a small project, but not enough for an entire outfit. One of these days I'll learn, but the cost of yarn makes it hard to justify buying a lot of yarn for a project you don't have in mind yet.

New Favorite Pattern

The book I bought in Wisconsin, "Babies & Toddlers - a Knitter's dozen" was worth the price of the book for this one pattern alone. It's the one that has the pants made out of an octagon. I got the pants assembled tonight (still some finishing work to do). They just go together so ingeniously... I'll have to order more yarn to finish the sweater (or work out some type of multicolor pattern in order to conserve my green/blue yarn), but I'm looking forward to starting it soon! The picture is a little dark, but if I used flash it was just too bright. Perhaps I should have waited until daylight to take the picture.

Exerimental pants

Meanwhile, here's the progress on the octagon pants I started in Wisconsin. I just have a few rows of the octagon pattern left before moving on to the waist, cuffs, and side seams. I'll close up the hole in the middle as well.

Heels

My first attempt at a heel, not too bad! I've read horror stories from others about them. Now to make an entire sock...

IT'S HERE!!!

My sock machine showed up today, and it was in much better condition than I could have ever hoped for! Within 30 minutes of tinkering with it, I had it knitting. I got it all started up and have been knitting away, playing with the yarn and tension to see how it works. It's so very cool! You'll see lots of holes and inconsistent sizing, but that's just from me playing around...

I'm impatient!

I finally won a Crank Sock Machine at a price I didn't cringe at on eBay. It was shipped last Monday and I'm still eagerly awaiting its arrival. I wish it would hurry! It's coming from Quebec, so it might take awhile...

Fresh air will do you good

I always come home from a trip to Grandma's house with lots of inspiration and a renewed creative bent, and this time was no exception. I always take a knitting or craft project because I actually have time to sit and knit/craft there. I took some yarn with the intent of making a smal Aran-type cable knit sweater. In the meantime, I took a trip to grandma's local yarn store, which is quite a bit nicer than anything I have near me. I picked up two more skeins of my favorite Cotton Fleece yarn (by Brown Sheep). I also picked up a new book of baby sweaters, and found lots of new ideas! I had been using the same 2 patterns over and over. While they're great patterns, it gets a little boring after awhile. I've set aside the Aran pattern and have started one from the new book I got.

The new pattern that I just started appeals to the math teacher in me. The sweater is made of two hexagons sewn strategically in a few places. There's also a set of pants that are an octagon also sewn very smartly. I don't entirely understand yet, but it looks cool so I hope that it all comes together in the end. In the meantime, I'm finding that I need to get longer needles! There are a lot of stitches in these hexagons and octagons. You can kinda see the ridges separating the 8 panels in the picture. One edge will be the front waist, the opposite edge will be the back waist. From there, well, I'll figure it out when I get there.

Before leaving for Wisconsin, I raided my "current project" pin and found that I had been more prodcutive recently than I thought...I found 3 finished sweaters that only needed some final finishing. The yellow sweater is from my favorite pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman. In talking to the lady at the yarn store, she offered me $0.10/yard in merchandise to knit up a pattern of this sweater and send it to them. It turns out that it would only be about $30 for a few days work (and that doesn't take the cost of the yarn into account to begin with). So I'd earn about $14 for 8-10 hours of work. But I just keep cranking these things out, so perhaps I'll take her up on it. I could use some new needles!

The pink sweater is made from the "Wonderful Wallaby" pattern. I kept telling my mom how nicely and easily it knits up, so I talked her into buying a pattern and some yarn. By the time we got back to Cleveland, she already had most of the body of the sweater done. She hadn't knit in years, so it was fun to see how much she was enjoying knitting and how easily it was all coming together for her. (note - I couldn't get the picture of the pink sweater to upload for some reason....)

The brown sweater (which I may have posted before) is based on the same pattern as the yellow sweater. I just switched the texture for a color pattern. It worked out nicely. (note - brown one not uploading either. I'll try again later...)

Yarn Is My Crack

While I haven't been doing much knitting and such lately, I've at least been thinking about it. On Saturday I managed to hit my FAVORITE yarn store in Cuyahoga Falls. Sadly enough, good yarn stores are hard to come by, and Stitch, Piece, 'n Purl is a tough act to follow.

I haven't been able to find a good sock machine yet, but I'm getting ready for when I do! I've found some wonderful yarns just itching to be socks. I don't think the picture does the turquois/indigo yarn justice. The name of the color is "Salty Dog". Once I saw it, I just couldn't put it down. It's just so rich and deep and it called to me, I wanted to lick it. The skein on the right is a fun orange/yellow/green/blue.

I found that my favorite yarn company, Brown Sheep , is now making tweed yarns. I picked up a vintage baby sweater design a month ago and I'm thinking that might be just right for this yarn.

It's been quiet...

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I haven't been very creative lately...

Houndstooth

The Houndstooth bag has been felted and it turned out wonderfully! So much so that I think I shall make another, this time in green and black. I finally got my simple knitting machine in the mail and have spent some time getting it up and running. After a few rough starts, I finally figured out what had to be where and how to keep it from dropping stitches. When knitting the bag by hand, I can knit all 4 sides at once. On the machine, I have to do one panel at a time. Doing intarsia on the machine doesn't seem much faster than by hand since I'll have to sew it all together, but we'll see how it goes. I actually like the idea of sewing the panels together because it might help give more distinction between each side of the bag.

Closet's done, dude

The utility room closet is DONE! I cut the last shelves today and have started to move everything back in.

Everything tastes better when chocolate coated....

I decided to dip the caramels I made in chocolate and wrap them up. Yummie. I think I forgot to take a pic after dipping, but here's the pieces ready to dip... Brad's favorite way to eat them is straight out of the freezer. I prefer my chocolate and caramel at room temperature so that it melts in your mouth. We're meeting friends for dinner, so I'll be offloading much of this load on them, you can tell we like them way too much. Can't have all that candy sitting around for Brad and me.

And I now have 8 repetitions of the hounds tooth pattern done on the bag, just 6 more to go and it'll be ready to felt. It's going a lot quicker than I thought it would. It looks more hounds-toothy in the picture than it does in person. I'm not sure why. Ruth - I think this might be a good pattern for you, I'll have to send it along when I get around to sending you the hat pattern I promised.

I had been trying to get my grandmother's knitting machine to work for the last few months with no luck. I've spent many many frustrating hours with it. Ugh. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with the machine, or if I'm not doing something right. Grandma's machine is pretty fancy and has lots of bells and whistles, so I decided to start on something more simple. I won a basic knitting machine off eBay, I hope it arrives soon! It doesn't do anything but just knit. No intarsia, no ribbing, no tucking, nothing but knit.

We're off to see "Better Off Dead" at the Cedar Lee tonight and meeting friends for dinner beforehand. Should be lots of fun, I'm just hoping I don't get paged from work during the middle of it. Time to go check my databases to see if anything looks like it might cause me issues later.

Utility Closet - Check

It's been a busy week here for me. I was on call for work, so it meant that the lines between working and not-working times were a bit blurred. In the meantimes, I was able to just about finish off the utility room closet. I hung most of the shelving. I have to buy one more bracket for the shelf supports to go on the right side of the closet and then cut some shelves to fit the width of the closet. But then it's DONE! I also removed the bulky folding door that took up half the utility room when opened and replaced it with a folding accordion-style door. It's a little cheesy, but it does the job. Since all the shelving is hung from the walls, I'll have some space on the floor to put laundry baskets, which will be nice.

I got a little further on the hounds-tooth bag that I mentioned before. The pattern is just starting to emerge, I can't wait to finish it and get it felted and see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, here's my snow-crazy dog. We got lots of snow this week, and he loved bounding through it. You can see his "tracks" in the snow. When there's fresh snow, he makes a few tracks and then follows those until it all melts.

Caramel

I figured out the recipe for caramel....

1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup which sugar
1 cup brown sugar (am going to try next batch with 1.5 cups)
1 stick butter
1 can evaporated milk
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp vanilla

Combine Corn syrup and sugars in a large heavy bottomed pan. Heat on medium/high until the sugar starts to bubble a little and has become less granular. Add butter and mix until the butter is all melted. Stir in evaporated milk little by little.

Heat this mixture on high until it reaches approx 235 degrees farhenheit. Cook at that temperature for 2 minutes, then remove from heat. Stir in salt and vanilla, pour into prepared (buttered) pan, let cool, cut and wrap.

This is the closest I've come to the taste I like, while still having that great caramel consistency.

Done with the green

I took the utility room closet apart this afternoon. I had picked up some paint from the old house and got half the closet painted and realized that it looks really atrocious. It's a cool color in a room that you can accessorize with curtains and pillows and sundries, but in a closet it just looks like the sad ancient olive green stove left behind by a previous home-owner. So I'll be heading to Home Depot here soon just to get some plain white paint. I'm usually against white, but for the closet maybe it will just look clean and fresh. Yeah, that's it.

We didn't do the casino thing yesterday, insead we went to a yarn store, a tool store, and out to lunch at Willoughby brewing company. We got home and watched a movie, and Dugan and Stanley got comfy. So CUTE!!!

I started a hounds-tooth felted bag, pics coming on that once it has some shape to it.

Mom was over as well, she's a wiz at the tax thing from dad's rental business, so I feel like we have a handle on the craziness that is tax season now. Yay!

Brad's out of town this week :-( But at least that means I have GUITAR HERO all to myself...