Posted by SewPixie on April 25th, 2009 in Knitting, Yarn

Hello everyone! Just wanted to give a few updates about my current knitting projects. I’ve been sewing some dolly bags a well, but knitting is much more conducive to catching up on my DVR so I can stop running out of room.

First up the February Lady Sweater. I am getting close to finishing up the first sleeve, which of course leaves the second sleeve. So far so good. I’ve become quite practiced at fixing the gull lace parts when I mess up.

The other main project is fair isle fingerless mitts. Last weekend Candace and I took a fair isle class and started on these. They are knit in the round and we will steek them (yes, CUT the knitting eep!) and have two mits. I had the hardest time at first with continental knitting (with fair isle you knit with two strands of yarn, one in each hand usually) but found that I was wrapping the yarn the wrong way around so of course it was hard.

I’m also finding that I am acquiring more yarn. Really, it is just leaping into my arms and there isn’t a thing I can do about it. Did you buy that? Okay so yes being on my own is driving me a bit mad. Last Sunday Candace and I tried to go to Scottsdale to check out the hyperbolic crochet reef exhibit but turns out there was also a culinary festival so no parking for us. So like good little girls we went home. Ok I lied, we went shopping. First we checked out this yarn shop called Jessica Knits where I found some sale yarn and some yummy alpaca silk (it jumped at me really it did) and then we went to JoAnn’s there I proceeded to buy fabric. I have no idea if I’m doomed to be alone forever so I guess I’m just stocking up on stuff to do.

Which now leads me to today. The yarn shop hosted a stash sale today. Tables were rented to people wanting to sell off some of their stash. The table rental plus some that a generous person gave with the proceeds of their sales went to Ronald McDonald House. About $250 raised! So I was kind and helped some people lighten their load. $160 some worth of cotton cashmere for $80! So yeah, now I have like 3 more sweaters worth of yarn. Maybe the aqua should be kitchen stuff.

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Posted by SewPixie on April 17th, 2009 in Daily Life, Yarn

Last weekend C and I headed over to Gilbert to see some people about some Alpacas. The fantastic people at Mesquite Valley Alpacas had an open house so we were able to meet and greet with some nice people and some nice animals. The rain didn’t start up again until after we left so it was a good time had by all, with the exception of my back. The alpacas were very sweet and quite interested in the bucket of food that C got to hold. As for purchases, I bought about 4 ounces of fiber from a nice Alpaca named Cal and some laceweight from an unnamed Peruvian alpaca I have dubbed Pepe. As much as I like knitted lace I think my brain would seep out my ears if I tried it so I think the laceweight will be something to ply with the singles I spin from Cal.

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Posted by SewPixie on February 25th, 2009 in Daily Life, Knitting

I’d love to show you my progress of the February Lady Sweater. But I’m at work so I can’t get to Flickr. So like go to my stream and stuff and see. I just past my 2nd buttonhole so it is going well. I have two other gift projects to work on as well so I’m going to have to alternate projects. That and I want more hats done for the shop.

Once upon a time my friend C had a Mini Cooper. Sugar was its name and it was a fine little car even it she was a bit of a lemon. Life changed and Sugar went on to a new home but C still pined for the Mini life. Another piece of the universe fell back into place last Friday when C drove off with her new Mini Clubman. I had the pleasure of riding in the new car to the Pavilions on Saturday night to meet up with other Minis and on a ride to Show Low and Payson on Sunday. Most of my February Lady Sweater progress was done on the run.

Other than that life is much the same as when I last left off. I’m still trying to get the house clean and the animals are still ruling said household. It still isn’t May (for reals, what’s up with that?! haha) so I haven’t left for my vacation yet.

I’m knitting and sewing and playing Mafia Wars on Facebook and chatting and smiling and working and exercising and thinking and cleaning and falling hard and crocheting and catching up and pondering and well…living

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Posted by SewPixie on January 31st, 2009 in Daily Life

Let’s start at this weekend and work backwards shall we? Okay so, Friday was the annual trek to the Phoenix Quilting & Sewing show. C and I have made this trip a little tradition over the past few years. I like to joke that we are the youngest people there not in strollers but it is still a good time.

This year we skipped the make and takes as none of the projects really caught our eye. We did however check out the Fair Isle clinic. HOLY CRACKERS! I was able to do it! No, really, I was able to knit with two colors of yarn and with one in each hand. I do hope you were sitting down for that one because it shocked the heck outta me. So now of course I totally want to try it some more. Which then just reminded me that I have been really slacking at Ravelry. Oops.

After the Sewing we went on to yarn and visited TYF. I’ve been a big baby about the cold and haven’t been there in ages but it was awesome to see Terry, Candy, and Fred. I bought some more wool to make fulled hats for the shop and also some yummy sock yarn. I HAVE to finish my niece’s socks first.

Now let’s travel back in time!! Last weekend was Las Vegas with C and D. We went up on Friday and came home Sunday. Getting there was like running the gauntlet! So the plan was to leave early, like noonish. Well, D and I needed to stop at a post office and a credit union on the way to C’s house. Easy peasy right? I tell her to go to the Hallmark by my house since they have a PO and it is so much faster than the regular one. Um yeah…they were closed for lunch and wouldn’t open for another hour. *sigh* Ok so we will go to the CU and then the big PO. I can’t make this stuff up people…we turn into the strip mall where the CU is and the CU is blocked off by yellow tape and there are cop cars everywhere and news crews. So yeah….let’s find a CU that isn’t being robbed. We then go to another Hallmark and ship off the items that needed sending. Then we go to Wal Mart that has the CU in it that D needs. Me, I just need an ATM for Vegas money. Guess what…the ATM was broke. So we got on the road late but did make it to Vegas after driving through lots of fog and watching out for zombies.

While in Vegas we met up with a Blythe pal and had a meet over at the mall. I’ve met Laura before and she is just fabulous. She brought her daughter this time who was so bored with us. Poor kid. While at the mall I picked up a new bag and such from leSportSac which is super cool and I freaking LOST MY MIND and bought Gracie (yes, Gracie the plastic doll) a keychain at Coach. The rationalization I have came up with is that I won’t have to put her through college or pay for a babysitter or for bail money.

The last big ticket item news wise is that I joined a gym…again. This time I have been twice and am already sticking to it much better than the other times i have joined. I am very motivated to get into shape. Both because I just plain need to for my own sake and that I’ve got a vacation coming up in May. I will be meeting up with someone I haven’t seen in 16 years so I’m a bit more than freaked out. EEP!

Ick and my flipping divorce paper work STILL isn’t done. GAH!! It serves me right, you get all upset and don’t want to thing to happen and then when you accept it and actually look forward to it it takes for-frickin-ever.

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Posted by SewPixie on December 4th, 2008 in Daily Life

So yeah, I’ve pretty much had a headache all week. Yuck.

The ex is coming by tomorrow to get some of the stuff out of the back room closet. Thank goodness, I need that room for craft supplies dang it!!! Yeah, yeah I have a craft room, but um, I kinda have too much stuff. I did get a chance today to give some of me extra supplies to the Kindergarden class of my coworker’s little girl. So that will be a good way to destash some things I probably will never use.

I did stash some more music recently. I started listening to Sticks and String, which is a great podcast, and there was some really nice piano music by Rob Costlow. I popped over to Magnatune and bought one of his albums and guees what, the artist is from Indiana! And went to Ball State for a bit before transferring to IU. Let’s all sings It’s A Small World…one..two..three and go. If anyone likes piano music let me know because the cool thing with Magnatune is that when you buy music you can give it to 3 friends for free. Neat huh.

Oh and before I go, who said it was okay for it to be December already? I have to finish up a quilt for one niece and finish socks for another one. Yipes!

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Posted by SewPixie on November 17th, 2008 in Daily Life

YAY! I received my ITIL exam results this morning. I passed!! I missed one question, woot woot!

On the needles are several project still: Baby Surprise, Moebius wrap, Mystery KAL Blanket, Mystery KAL Bag (the one I started during the Ravelympics), and Bridget’s socks.

I am also working on inventory for the shop. The fabulous Rob at Bullfrog (where I got my stamp) is cutting me a new template for cutting out the back pieces so I’m pretty excited about that. In the mean time I am working on ones I have had cut for ages. Oh, and my new tags arrived so I will start to use those once my current ones are all gone.

Which leads me to a question about packaging. When I first started, the bags were wrapped in tissue paper. Then for a while I had plastic goody bags, and after that zip top bags. I like the zip top bags because it makes it easy to keep them lint free and visible. Plus, I figure the person can re-use the bag. I’ve been making stickers with my new stamp to put on the bags. THen I may punch a hole in the Moo cards and attach that to the zipper tab as the ‘tag’. Does the old tissue paper packaging seem more ‘special’ or are zip top bags just fine?

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Posted by SewPixie on November 1st, 2008 in Knitting, Yarn

The work stuff last night went well. My defrags were scheduled until 10am but they finished up around 6 so it actually fit inside the normal maintenance window. I’m not certain if it is my Windows VM or what but RPC over HTTPS is dog slow so I’m not too sure about that change.

Anyways, back to the knitting! Episode 70 of Cast On went up the other day (YAY!) so I had a listen and worked some more o the TYF Mystery Blanket. I am a little way in to Clue #6. It is pretty neat how they have it set up. Each clue starts with a question with two choices. You work pattern A or B depending on your answer. The questions are like do you have straight hair or curly hair? Do you like spaghetti O’s or pasta salad? Rise early or sleep in? Cool huh.

Clue 6 is the rise early or sleep in question. Sleep in, no contest! So as you can see in the photo I am starting to get little triangles that point down for the sleeping in. I also switched from the 24″ Addi Turbo (woosh) circular to a 40″ Knit Picks Options circular. I have quite a lot of 40″ cables. I forgot they came in packs of two….so I ordered like 3, which meant I got 6. Doh! So if anyone need to borrow a 40″ I’ve got you covered.

I have laundry and cleaning to do but I did go get groceries, and got a lot done on the blog design and new shop (I even ordered a custom stamp from the logo I made) so I am going to sit back and knit and watch some movies. There are a lot of projects I want to cast on so I wanna get going!

And a big YARRRR mateys to Jen’s little ones. Such cute little pirates!

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Posted by SewPixie on October 21st, 2008 in Daily Life, Knitting, Yarn

So my stupid DLP TV went out AGAIN on Sunday. Now the issues can probably be fixed with a soldering iron and getting at a board inside the thing but I hate the thing so I refuse to do it. So I am giving it to the ex and went out last night and bought a new TV. I got a Sony Bravia and last night it worked really well (OMG did anyone watch Heros and/or How I Met Your Mother???). My friend Devon helped me pick it out then she and I met up with Candace at Olive Garden where I had more than my equal share of the wine. Ooops.

I am working away on the TYF Mystery KAL blanket. I’ve moved on to Clue 4 and after Candy’s help I understand the stitch pattern well enough to correct mistakes. This weekend Candace and I will be going to a mobius shawl class so that should be good. And if I haven’t said it lately, if you knit listen to the podcast Cast On. Brenda Dane reminds me of my sister and there are loads of good stories as well as good music.

Oh yes…PowerShell. PowerShell is the best thing since sliced bread. I am running my script right now that goes to all of my Exchange 2003 servers and grabs the application log events and such to give me the database sizes along with how much of that is dumpster items and whitespace. It is soooooo cool!!!

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Posted by SewPixie on August 7th, 2008 in Daily Life, Knitting, Pets, Yarn

Okay so after much debating, I joined Ravelympics at the last minute. The deal is that you start your project during opening ceremonies of the Olympics (5am my time!!) and then finish by the closing ceremonies. I decided to use the yarn I bought for another Mystery Bag\Sampler Bag.

So since I am really bad at waking up early I may cast on at 5am then promptly go back to sleep.

Speaking of waking up….Pixel (my cat) understand English. I swear! When I came back from Indiana but was still on vacation he was waking me up at around 8am. By ‘wake me up’ I mean that he meows and paws at me until I get up and give him wet food. Sunday night I tell him that I have to go to work in the morning so I need to be up by 6:45-7am. He starts waking me up at 6:30am. The same thing Tuesday morning. Tuesday night I went to bed really late so I told him I was going to sleep in and not get up until 7:30. He starts at 7:15. I am not kidding! Then last night I tell him that my carpool ride is going to the gym at lunch so I have to get up earlier like 6:30-6:45. Yes, he started waking me up at 6:15am! So either his internal clock is 15 minutes off or he knows me well enough to guess that I will want a snooze. Hehehe!

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Posted by SewPixie on June 8th, 2008 in Daily Life, Knitting, Yarn

I have been a bad blogger once again. Actually, I never am much of a good blogger but eh. Some may notice the time on this entry then wonder if I have been to bed yet. Those of you not in the know…I am a notorious late sleeper. Yesterday I didn’t get out of bed until 2pm, though in my defense I felt a bit ill. Well, Napoleon (my ferret) started sneezing around 5am and I am such a hypochondriac about the furry kids that I had to investigate. He is fine now, probably a little cold or dander in her nose or somesuch. I cleaned out his room\cage though and out in fresh linens (I don’t use bedding like with hamsters or something), water, food, etc.

I have been knitting like crazy lately. Candace, Suzanne, and I all joined the Mystery KAL at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. It doesn’t start until Wednesday so I am on pins and needles with my gauge swatch all ready to go. We know it will be a bag and use four colors of Cascade 220 Superwash and that is about it. Major kudos to Terry and Candy for designing the pattern and the mystery. Upwards of 60 people are signed up for the KAL! I chose the Petroglyph colorway, Candace chose her own colors, and Suzanne went with Monsoon.

I did still manage though to finally baste my latest quilt. Now just to freemotion the quilting and bind it.

I also bought a new camera. I got a used Nikon D40. I still have a ways to go in learning just how to use it but very slowly some of my knowledge from high school photo class is coming back to me. I really like the pictures I am getting form it though. I am keeping the Canon though since I don’t want to take this big camera with me everywhere.

The pets are doing well. We had a bit of a scare with Kitaro a couple weeks ago. B moved again and the housemates let Kit into the backyard and he got away. Freaked me the hell out since it is clear across town. His tag still has my number on it so thankfully a nice person found him and he got back to B’s safe and sound. He got a firm talking to by me when he was home next. That dog!

I am still going strong with my Blythe 365 project. I restarted Crafting 365 again a while back and am about 50 days into it this time. Whew.

Other than that…trying to clean the house as usual. My oldest niece will be in town next weekend so that will be awesome to see her. Also next weekend, Candace and I are going up to Jerome for Knit in Public Day. That should be cool. I’ve never been to Jerome but hear it is funky and artsy. Woo! Oh yes! And I have my flight booked for Indianapolis at the end of July. I didn’t take as much time as I had wanted all at once due to schedules at work but I am flying out Saturday the 26th and flying back on Wednesday August 2nd. Even with that vacation I still had oh about 12 vacations days left so I am also taking random days off here and there. I am so terrible about not taking my vacation days. I will be getting a head start next fiscal year though as I will be going to California in September to visit Deana since I’ve known since before Kindergarden. Yay!!

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