Beautiful Etsy Yarn

I’ve only recently returned to knitting after four or five years away from it. My knitting passion has always been and still is – socks. I’ve knit sweaters and afghans and scarves and mittens, but my passion is socks, socks and more socks. Socks knit with fine wool yarn, the smaller the needles the better. Just something about that detailed fine knitting soothes me. And with cold weather here and more TV watching than in the warmer months, knitting socks is always a good project for sitting in front of the television at night.

I can quite literally spend hours and hours looking at fabric and yarn on Etsy. Because I have at least 20 boxes of yarn stashed away in my basement (cleaned out of my quilt room when I moved from knitting to quilting), I don’t buy yarn. Just like my fabric stash, my yarn stash will hold me for many, many projects to come.

But, just like fabric, there are times when a yarn “speaks to me” and must be bought! And so it is with two skeins of yarn I recently purchased from My7Kids’ etsy store

The first thing that attracted me to this yarn was the subtle and unusual colors. Then, as I read the description, I found that the fiber content is perfect for sock knitting -- 70% lambswool, 20% angora rabbit, 10% nylon. That little bit of nylon adds just the right amount of elasticity to the socks, and of course the lambswool and angora are both soft and warm. Perfect for winter socks!

The second yarn I purchased from My7Kids is this gorgeous 70% wool, 30% acrylic blend. The masculine colors appealed to me for socks for my grandson, and the 30% acrylic content appealed to me because they will wear longer than a 100% wool.

Both of these skeins of yarn are “recycled” from sweaters and then hand-dyed in these gorgeous colors. When I originally read that in the description, I was worried I would receive yarn with a lot of loops and kinks in it, but not so. I’ve started working with the lambswool yarn and it is a dream to knit. No fiber kinks or nubs at all, and if I didn’t know it was recycled, I wouldn’t realize it as I knit.

The price is about 1/3rd what I’d expect to pay for yarn of this quality – and, as Martha says, “That’s a VERY good thing!”

A little Brayden update

Oooooeeeee...my little grandson is now almost 3 years old (March 1st!). This little guy changes almost daily -- whether in his vocabulary, his counting, his desire to learn, or his wicked (can you tell I'm from New Hampshire?) sense of humor, every day is an adventure with this child. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm flattered. This is what Brayden was "working on" today: Yes, I've been knitting socks again. Brayden loves to watch me knit and sometimes sits in my lap and I put some yarn on needles for him to play with. Today he gathered up his yarn and needles, sat on the couch by himself, and "knit" away. I asked him what he was working on... "Socks for Umpa." Awwww... Then Umpa walked into the room, and Brayden promptly pipes up, "Umpa, don't pull my stitches off!" LOL I've mentioned before that Brayden has shown great interest in learning his letters and numbers, so yesterday was our first official 30 minutes of preschool type activities. We read his favorite monkey book, "Ten Little Monkeys" and talked about the numbers, then we did this activity that I found on a great blog called Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. I printed off the five snowman print-outs found here, then put one "button" and the number 1 on the first, two "buttons" and the number two on the second, etc. Then I made little hats with the same numbers, 1 thru 5. I had Brayden count the number of buttons on the snowman, showed him the number on the page, and had him match the hat with that number. It went very well! He understood what I was talking about and easily counted the buttons, and made the match ups with little help. I'll be adding numbers 5 through 10 as soon as he's confident with these and can point out the same numbers in other situations. Mr. Fussy Eater helped me make crockpot beef noodle soup yesterday, but wasn't here at dinner time to taste what he'd cooked. Today I did a bit of extra babysitting so my daughter could work some extra hours, so Brayden had beef noodle soup for lunch. My gosh, he actually TASTED it (which is a huge hurdle with him) and LIKED it and ATE it! There's hope for the child yet! Brayden's Crockpot Beef Noodle Soup 1 beef shank 1/2 stew beef (I cubed up a portion of a chuck steak) 1 cup carrot slices 1 cup diced celery 1 cup diced onions 3 tablespoons beef bouillon powder (or 3 cubes) 1 tsp black pepper 1/2 tsp salt 1 can diced tomatoes in sauce 2 dashes Worcestershire Sauce 8 cups water 2 servings dry spaghetti, broken into thirds Place all ingredients except spaghetti noodles into crockpot, cook on low for 7 hours. Remove shank bone and cut up shank meat and return to soup. Add in uncooked spaghetti and turn on HI for 30 minutes. Serves 4 to 6.

Where to find Giveaways

Wooo Hooo! I’ve won another giveaway (Amy Schimler fabric with the most adorable matching buttons. I won the fabric in the center of the picture. Click on the photo to enlarge.)! I do believe that’s #6 in the past two months. Lucky? No! Smart? Yes! You can’t win a Giveaway unless you enter, and I enter a lot!

I thought I’d share some web sites that keep a running list of Giveaways.

Etsy Giveaways

Bloggy Giveaways

The Giveaway

One World One Heart - 100's of Crafters - Begins 01/19

I have my own personal Giveaway rules. First, I read instructions thoroughly – some want you to describe something, some want you to write about a subject, some want you to simply leave a comment on their blog. Some want you to post or link to the information about their giveaway on your own blog.

Second, I never put my name in for items I either don’t care for or can’t use. Baby and scrapbooking items are big giveaways, and I can’t use either. These Giveaway items are often handmade items that come from the heart – they deserve to go to new homes that will appreciate them to the degree the giver intended. So if you don’t care or can’t use an item – move on.

Lastly, I do not enter giveaways for which I have to return to the web site to find out the winner. Ninety-nine percent of giveaways will email you if you win. I have enough disorganized bookmarks – I don’t need more.

So go forth and COMMENT! I’ll even let you have the HGTV Dream House Giveaway – I can’t afford the taxes or transfer fees on a $2.5 million dollar house and trying to sell a house like that in the current economy? Ummm…. no thanks. You can have that one!

Extreme Blog Makeover

Wow, how cool would it be to have someone actually look at your blog and give it a makeover?! I have two blogs - this one (duh) and my Quilting on a Budget blog, and of the two, I'd be hardpressed to decide which one needs a makover the most. I've seen many free blog backgrounds and blog templates, but every one I've seen and contemplated downloading warns me that all my links and widgets will be erased when I do it... Ummmm... no thanks. So here's a good deal -- Tara of BlogMakeovers byTara works with several blog designers, many of whom design backgrounds and buttons and whatmacallits very suitable to crafters and quilters. Tara comes to your blog and does a complete makeover, including Custom background, Custom header, Custom made sidebar headers, Optional navigation Bar, Three column layout (something I desperately want!), Custom made signature, Favicon, and Your own blog button! How cool is that! And from now until January 31, she is offering these services at 50% off... so that's... $13.00! Considering 18,000+ people have viewed this blog (eeps!), and another 8000 have hit the QOB blog, I think this might be money well spent. And oh yeah, Tara is also having a Giveaway of a free blog makeover, but don't enter that because I really, really want to win it myself.

The Weather Outside is Frightful.....not!

I almost feel bad for the Cincinnati weather forecasters today...almost. My goodness, I'm not sure if they could be much more wrong in their forecasts lately. My husband and I have decided that our local Krogers must sponsor the weather forecasts behind the scenes, because every other day the forecasters are claiming !SNOW! (which we all know means big business for the grocery stores) and yet... no snow. Our streets are pre-treated (yet again), the local news stations yanked their fine news reporters out of bed for "Special Reports" starting at 4:30 AM and yet... it's 10:00 am, 38 degrees outside and no snow... again. Do you know how silly it looks to have reporters reporting from the streets and highways when there's actually NOTHING going on?? I liked New England weather forecasters when we lived there. They always got the forecast wrong in the RIGHT way. They wouldn't predict snow and we'd get a six inches. I remember one long-time Boston television forecaster reading a letter a viewer had written to him. "Dear So and So -- I just finished two hours of shoveling your 'partly sunny' off my driveway." Think how much easier life is when you don't know the snow is coming. You don't make a panic run to the grocery store. Kids don't already assume they're going to have a snow day. The snowplow guys get to sleep in until the phone actually rings with the news it's snowing out. I wonder what they did "in the old days" before weather forecasts? I'm thinking -- people looked out the window to see if it was snowing or not. OK, as I'm typing this I just looked out the window and it's snowing...LOL! I'm betting all the news reporters have given up and gone home, the local weather forecaster is dancing around the news station in glee, shouting "See! I TOLD YA!" and the local Krogers stores are preparing themselves for the second round of panic shoppers... Now watch - just because I posted this, we'll have a blizzard, I won't get out of the house for three weeks, and darn it, I have no milk or bread. Maybe I should take a quick run to Krogers...