Everything but knitting!

The busy continues! I've been absolutely swamped lately, and haven't been crafting as much as I'd like- but that sort of thing happens when you own your own craft-related company.  No time to actually do it!

Things are the nursery have been slowing down a bit.  Things with Good For Ewe have been picking up a lot!  I had one trunk show in Bloomington at In A Yarn Basket (lovely shop, very knowledgeable staff, loved it there!) this past Saturday and I'm taking this Saturday off of trunk shows to go to my BFF Ben's wedding in Michigan City.  But I have also booked a morning appointment with a yarn shop owner in Champaign Illinois who wants some sock and lace yarn.  So I'll be in Champaign when the shop opens at 9:30 and then wedding-bound after that.  Whew- it's going to be about 11 hours on the road on Saturday but killing 2 birds with 1 stone is totally worth it.  I have 10 yarn shows booked for this Fall- one of which is a week long. It's in Chicago and I'm really hoping to sell enough that I have to make a couple trips back to Indy to refill on yarn.  We'll see.  I'm really just hoping to sell enough yarn to make up for the cost of the hotel for the week.

And I'm really really hoping that all of the shows this Fall mean that I can move out and get my own place in the Spring- fingers crossed! That would be awesome! Not that I've been checking out houses online or anything like that...

Still going on dates.  They're slowing down now that I'm on Round 2, but I think I might have another first date or two next week.  We'll see.  I'm taking it day by day right now.

So...crafting.

I finished a potholder this week.  I found one that had been started and had 2 rows done a couple weeks ago and stuck it in my purse.  I finished it Saturday night and gave it away to one of the people that were sitting near me when I finished it. I have tons of dishcloth cotton hanging around so I might have a purse potholder for a while until the stash is a little more controlled.

I'm making a baby blanket for a friend of my mom's who is getting a grandbaby! My mom knows the drill with these- go buy the yarn and I'll make it sometime in the next week.  She got a different brand than usual because it was on clearance and very pretty.  Since she's not a fiber crafter though, she didn't think to compare the yardage to the brand we normally get.  We normally get 5 balls of the usual at 175 yards per ball, so she got 5 balls of this yarn as well.  Except that this ball has 71 yards on it.  Which means that when I'm done with my 5 balls of yarn, that's a really small baby blanket.  She did go to another Joann Fabrics to find the rest of it.  Now we have enough to make most of 2 of this color, which I'll start and then have hanging around next time I need another baby blanket- I'll just need to find another few balls of this yarn eventually. (I do need one more ball of yarn in this one to even it out a bit)

I'm having a really hard time keeping Party Girl off of the blanket.  She's quite the afghan-enthusiast. 

I'm still working on my Halloween cross stitching every once in a while.  I worked on it for a few minutes last night while I was finishing my Sookie Stackhouse audiobook.  I have another book lined up so there will be more work on this soon- or at least before my next book club meeting. 

And lastly...my new project/obsession.  My quilt. 

I'm quite in love with my new quilt.  I spent about 4 hours on 3 different days on it (after all the cutting had been done).  So far I have the first 60 squares all attached (see above).  I have 3 more rows of 10 sewn together that I will attach vertically so then I will have 90 squares attached.  I probably have another 40 squares that are made but still floating around, unattached.  

When I went to buy the white fabric (technically the color is Bone) they only have 2.5 yards of it.  So I bought that, washed/dried/ironed/cut that up and once I have that initial 2.5 yards of white in there I will measure and do some math and figure out how much I need to order to finish the rest.  I'm doing a queen sized quilt- a generous queen to leave lots of quilt hanging over the side of the bed.  I'm also going to be continuing the pattern on a couple pillowcases as well so I can match it all.  But I figured I'd take a breather and finish a couple more knitting/design projects before I dive in to the rest.  

So that's that.  What are your summer crafting projects? 

Summer Lovin'...kind of

This summer I have been busy.  And I love it, but it's cutting in to my crafty time and that's bugging me a bit.

My biggest new addition to my life is dating.  I bit the bullet and joined one of the nicer (and more expensive) dating websites.  I had joined several of the free sites a couple years ago and was tired of seeing guys taking selfies with no shirts on in the bathroom mirror.  And the dates were getting progressively worse.

So I joined the fancy site the day after I got back from TNNA.  So far I've gone on 5 dates, and two of them were really fun. But that's a good thing- knowing what you don't like is almost as helpful as knowing what you do like.  I really haven't been in that many "relationships"- they're long, few and very far between and I'm getting to the age where that sort of thing doesn't really work.  So I'm dating.

Some of the highlights have been:

Finding guys who don't think knitting is the dorkiest thing in the world.
Guys love the ladies who wear ninja turtle hats.
Having something to do on Saturday nights.
Shutting down 3 bars in one night and going out with a karaoke duet from Grease.

Some of my very favorite omg bad moments have been:

Going out with a guy who hasn't figured out that he's gay yet.  Awkward.
Being told I'm really pretty...when it's dark.
Being told that my hair and eyebrows don't match.

I'm sure I'll be adding to the lists as this adventure in dating goes on.

And so we move on to the crafting...

I finished a few projects this week....let's start with some socks!

I love them.  They're plain Jane stockinette socks and have been living in my purse since April 2012.  Which is pretty embarrassing.  I went to knit night at Jessica's house on Friday with the crazy idea that I was going to finish a baby blanket and I ran out of yarn pretty early on.  I finished these socks instead, so it's still a win.  I love them and can't wait until a nice crisp Fall day to wear them.  The knitters at the nursery aren't sock knitters (yet) but they've been ooh-ing and ahh-ing over these anyway.  I think a few shall be converted this Fall when they see how toasty my toes are in that cold greenhouse. Yarn is Regia something or other, Erika Knight colorway.  I bought 2 set of the Erika Knight colors at Mass Ave a few years ago and still have the other left.  It will probably be a plain Jane pair of socks too.

Baby Blanket!  I've been carrying this project around since July of last year and finally took that one down this week. It's my design and I will be debuting it at the trunk show in Bloomington on Saturday. Which means I still need to weave in the ends, get it photographed with Jessica's adorable little girl, and then write up the pattern and have it printed.  I know the pattern will take a whopping hour to write and format, it's just getting motivated to do it seems to be an issue.

Naturally I have lots of other projects that I'm working on but the project count is a little bit down for the time being.  I haven't made any progress on the blue Chord Girasole since I last posted but that will be traveling all over the midwest with me this Fall for different trunk shows so I'm not too worried about that. 

I'm still madly in love with my Halloween cross stitching. (Just over 1/3 done) I can't get enough of the audiobook/ cross stitch combo and it's the ultimate stress relief.  By the way, the new David Sedaris book Exploring Diabetes with Owls is fantastic, the latest Sookie Stackhouse murder mystery book...not so much.  But I've been committed to the series for several years now and I have to know how it ends. I have a couple more lined up for after Sookie is finished though. 

I have 4 more oddballs of blue and green yarn that need to disappear into Party Girl's blanket.  I'm really very over this project, but I told myself I had to finish 3 more projects before I start my new quilt. And this one is way overdue to be finished.  I was thinking that I should finish my two cross stitch projects before I start the quilt too but I'm just too excited to get started.  I also rationalized with myself- I can't listen to audiobooks and quilt at the same time because I miss what's happening when I have the sewing machine going. So I'll just stick with the cross stitch/audiobook combo, the quilting/music combo and the knitting during every possible other moment thing.  But the baby blanket, socks, and the scrap monster blanket have been bothering me for a while. 

So that's what I've been making.  I'll flash a couple quick garden shots and then be on my merry way- I've got some Good For Ewe work to get done before the trunk show this weekend. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!