Never ending baby blanket

One of my friends was going to have a baby and she wanted it to be a surprise, so she wanted general items. This is rather hard to do now days. It seems the world is content to deal with boy or girl and nothing inbetween. Since I am a lover of all things thrift I went to the ARC stores and got her about 10 items that would be great for a boy or girl. I wanted to add a little something personal to the gifts, so I started knitting a baby blanket.

Now I started knitting about a year ago and I have done mostly scarves for myself and one for a friend (which I believe I posted on here). I recently tried a jacket for my new cousin Liam and it turned out pretty well, but it took me 6 months because I'm still new at it. This blanket has taken me WAY longer and its only about half way finished! I wasn't able to give it to her at the shower, so I had planned to give it to her when they baby was born, which has already happened. (She had a little girl.) SO my NEW plan is to give it to them at Christmas. (Christ almighty it better be done by then!)

Now at the time I started this no one knew what she was having, so I picked what I thought was a very general stripe yarn. I thought it would be good for a boy and still fit a girl. Ironically now that I look at it I think it fits a girl more, but hey who cares cause she had one! (thank you!)

I have already gone through one ball of yarn and about half way through the second one. I have a third in my knitting bag, so I seriously hope that is all I need. Originally when I started this I thought I would only need two (not a good thought on my part), but I went with smaller needles so I screwed myself a little there. The yarn I picked is still available at several stores, but the dye lot is not the same, so the ball I'm on now is the wrong dye lot. I figure if its in the middle it will look more like I planned it to be a slightly different shade. The bottom and top part are the same dye lot, so I should be ok to make it work out.

(you can see Stue lying next to me ready to attach any stray yarn... which I oh so love... NOT)

The first ball made great stripes, but the second one seems to be making misplaced stripes. I must have done it differently when I started the first one, but I honestly don't remember doing anything special. At this point I will chalk it up to it being the middle section and it just gets to be a bit odd. I will have to work harder on the last one to make it be more striped again.



I work on it for about 30 minutes to an hour each morning before work. Some nights I work on it to help me relax and sleep. On my days off I still work on it in the morning, but thats about it. I tend to work on other projects, as I currently have several going. I love how I do that to myself. Silly me!



Organized Craft Place

You ever have a "hissy fit", for lack of a better word, when you can't find something and you KNOW you have it? I used to have it all the time when I was scrapbooking. I could never find anything because I had (still have) sooo much stuff. Luckily enough I learned from my outbursts of anger and finally organized my craft place. Granted it took me moving away to finally do it, but I did it all the same! No need to quibble about why. =)

I wandered into Hobby Lobby one day, cause I do just about everyday, and I was in the scrapbooking supplies and BLAM right in front of me was an entire wall of storage ideas. I honestly think I wet myself. I felt a little overwhelmed thinking about what it would mean for me to get my supplies together. Then it started to come to me, just walking up and down that wall. I took some pictures with my phone and went home to think it over. Life squeezed in and took away a lot of my free time for about two weeks, but finally I had some down time! I went back and low and below stuff was on SALE. (The word everyone loves to hear!) This was not some pathetic 20% or 30%, but 50% off. I think I did a little jig right there in the store. I bought two 12x12 paper holders, two 8x11 paper holders, 4 storage boxes, couple of baskets, and about 23 plastic containers. I was ready to get organized. Plus I didn't even feel like my heart was going to jump out of chest for how much I spent because it was practically nothing. (OK not NOTHING, but better than it would have been if it was not on sale) Now I'm not saying everyone should go out and get it ALL right now. It worked for me because I had some cushion money.

As I sit here typing this I'm looking at my bookshelves and feeling so proud of how organized I am and have stay, because come on we ALL know we start out OK but fail miserably in such a short period of time. I have labels on everything, which I made, and everything is put away. (the picture of my desk is because I was waiting for the glue gun to cool off)

Check it out:

I have this bookshelf and another that flank my desk. This has all my paper, stickers, and scrapbook albums (new and finished ones).

Each of these plastic containers is labeled and holds stickers. I have 17 of them.

All my paper is sorted by color and labeled, which I made. Every time I buy a package of paper I ripe it apart and sort the paper by color. That way it doesn't pile up and I know what there is to use.

These are the plastic containers I use for stickers (and also for ribbon). They come in this large size for $1.99 and a small size for $1.29. They are very handy.

This is the other bookshelf. This holds my flowers emblessiments, photos, stamps, ink, ribbons, paints, paint brushes, and some books and magazines. My sewing machine in the item on the lower right side.

There are two bags on the ground to the left of the bookshelf. The tan one holds all my fabric pieces for my fabric flowers. (The bigger fabric amounts for sewing and quilting is in my closet) The black bag is full of all my cross stick supplies. All my thread is wound on dollies and numbered.

There is another bag off to the right that is not pictured that holds all my yarn, needles, and other knitting supplies. (Its fairly large)

I use the smaller containers for my ribbons. I have 6 small containers and one large one.

 These are all my stamps and stamp inks. I need a bigger basket, as I have more now.

 Flower emblessiments and eyelets. All in containers and sorted.

I haven't decorated this yet (I got it from a friend yesturday), but its on my list. Its holding my knitting, cross stick, and card books along with my scrapbooking magazines.

All my adhesives and pens are in one container. My lighted table is next to my container for my stencils and embossing supplies.

All my string, vellum, metal work, and other emblessiments are in this container. All my cards and envelopes are stacked with each other.

All my scrapbook albums. The finished ones are from the dark red one all the way to the right side. The new albums are from the dark red one all the way to the left. The binder next to the dark red ablum holds all my templates, cross stick patterns, patterns for sewing, knitting directions, and random craft directions.

My work desk is flanked on either side by the above bookshelves making it easy to just get the item I need.

The case on my desk is the supplies I use for my fabric flower pins. I'm waiting for the glue gun to cool down before I put it back in the bottom part of that container.



Everything in its place and easy to find. I have only thing that I have issues with is my large stickers. They are in a container on the lower left side of my desk. They are all in there because they are too large to go anywhere else. Those are not sorted, but at least I know where to go to find them. =)

Be inspired to be more organized, or at least some what!

Starry Night

My friend Sarah was an Art minor in college and she has always been an artist. She sent me a card with Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" on the front and it gave me an idea for my bedroom. People tend to over look their ceiling as a option for projects. Mine is less than great because it has styrofoam balls all over it. However, that did not keep me from doing something for it.

Hobby Lobby has an entire role of cardboard items. I vagely remember them having cardboard stars, which they did. They were 2 for a $1, so I got 15 of them. (I like odd numbers) I painted them a dark metallic blue (took two bottles of it and they were $.97 each). Office Max had a small contairer of white thumb tacks (to match my ceiling) for $2. Took me about a week to paint them all. I did one side at a time so it would be easier to have them dry. I had blue fingers for a while... I always manage to get paint on myself.

Once I had them all painted I randomly hung them and now I have my very own starry night.