all craft some of the time

i took these picture weeks ago. well two weeks ago. sunday the 14th was all craft night at the house. i took pictures with the hope that i could show off some of the things i finished and the newest addition to my on going prayer shawl. i then lent my camera to jen and have only now gotten around to bragging about my awesome craftyness. i'm lazy it happens.

so the humans of the house have chosen to participate in disney's give a day get a day program. for those of you who don't know what that is, basically you sign up with disney to volunteer with a designated organization in your area and when you have completed your volunteer time you get a free one day ticket to disney. well we decided to help out the binky patrol which is an organization that gives blankets to kids who need comfort. the blankets are made of fleece and are called tie or no-sew blankets because all you do is get 2 yards of fleece and then cut and tie the edges making fringe. so easy, and i thought they were pretty fun and soft. and i usually hate fleece. we each made two. i thought i'd pick fleece colors and patterns that could be used for either a boy or a girl and i did the large ones for teens.

the first one i did

the second one i did

they are a nice size and i was excited with the second fleece i picked because the squares made the measuring much easier.

while i didn't get to work on my prayer shawl that night i did take a moment to take a picture of the progress i had made. two days earlier at my bi-weekly thursday night knitting group i finished the second skein of my shawl. i had been itching to start the next skein but wanted to take it's picture before moving on. i threw in a mo for scale.

thanks mo dog!!

it's a nice size. i think when it's done it will be a great length but i'm sure i'm going to wish it was wider. because of that fact, i am now on the hunt for a simple blanket pattern that i can make that will be a good size for wrapping myself in. i know i could take the current measurements and adjust them to make the right size but i haven't figured out the method for that yet.

some day though.

the end!

progress bitches

sorry i'm just so very excited about me.

over the weekend i made some progress in my "craft room" and i'm very proud of myself. while the progress may not be noticeable to the average bear it sure is to me.

my craft room is really the den, and over the last few years it has been crammed full of peoples extra crap. when teak moved his junk in we divided up the house so everyone got an extra spot. jen got the blue room which was already full of her stuff. teak got the garage cause he's a man. and i got the den cause it was what was left. i was happy to take the den cause there is a corner with build in shelves and it's perfect for all my many books and what not. plus i already had some stuff in there.

well in order to make room for everyone else's crap in their prospective rooms i had to get anything of mine out of them and that meant just shoving it into my room. so the den ended up just being a storage container for awhile. in fact some stuff from my actual storage unit made it's way back into the house and was locked into the den. until now.

over the weekend i spent short amounts of time in the den rearranging and moving and throwing away various boxes, papers, toys and other random things that i found. the weekend goal was to uncover a set of plastic drawers that i knew were in there somewhere and i knew were full of crap. the purpose for uncovering these drawers you ask, to clean them out and fill them with KNITTING THINGS!!!!!

for christmas i got some books and some yarn and a really neat bag to carry things in but as the months have gone on i have acquired more things and the bag is perfect for a current project it isn't big enough to hold everything especially all of the yarn i have and all the future things i want. so i started thinking about storage for craftiness and before i could buy anything remembered i already had the perfect thing. and i was off.

the plastic drawers were buried behind a ton of other boxes and randomness so i had to move and attempt to organize those things in order to even get to what i truly wanted. but after an hour or two i made my way to them. cleaning them out was the next step.

one drawer was full of fabric i didn't even know we had. another drawer full of sheets of plastic used for plastic sewing or whatever it's called. you know the stuff old ladies make tissue box covers and what-not out of. and the last drawer full of books. most of them were books and patterns for making those plastic things but a few were for some other types of crafty things. bead work and an all purpose craft book and book about friendship bracelets from 10 years ago. that book had some pretty neat thread bracelets in it if i remember correctly.

the fabric was placed in a box and combined with other fabric i had lying around. the plastic sheets were put aside for the thrift store as were most of the books. i kept a few. there was some neat stuff in them, but the plastic pattern ones all went. as did the yarn that you use for those types of projects. and then it was time to refill the drawers. the top one now contains yarn. practice yarn or yarn that at this point in time has no purpose. the middle drawer contains yarn with a purpose. extra skeins that will be need for current projects or yarn need for the next project. and the bottom still has books. the old books that i kept and my new knitting books. i will most likely also keep extra needles and such in these drawer somewhere too but that doesn't need to happen right now. a little progress at a time.

the point of all this, other then to clean, is to organize things. it's a chain reaction. if i clean and organize parts of the den then i can put stuff away in there and some of the things needing to be put away are in my bedroom. so if i put the things from my bedroom away then i can clean and organize my bedroom. and if i can clean and organize my bedroom perhaps some day i won't feel like i'm living under piles of crap. but instead i will be living peaceful beside them.

the end.