Two on Tuesday

Things that make me happy this week:

1.  Spending time with friends, laughing at the most ridiculous things (like dinner's sponsored by the letter R) :-)

2.  Sitting here at work knowing that Jonathan doesn't have to go class tonight so I may get a few quality minutes (maybe even an hour!) with him this evening

Quick Update

"Happy" Monday everyone!  No, I wasn't too thrilled to get up and head into work this morning so Happy is me trying my best to put on a happy face

1.  We just had ourselves a freak little snowstorm here in DC!  It was so balmy and nice over the weekend (highs in at least the upper 60s), but when I went to grab some lunch today it was FREEEEEEEEEZING!!!!  Sure enough the "light rain" they were calling for this afternoon ended up being snow!  It was coming down pretty hard for about 30-45 min the ground (sidewalks) are much too warm for anything to have accumulated.

 2.  Have no fear Pammy Sue - I've been working on my round ripple!!  I put in many hours both on Saturday morning and evening and even took pictures Saturday night so that I could show you all the progress I made from one day to the next (I'm terrible about blogging on the weekends....thinking about moving everything over to wordpress once I get my shop set up as I will be able to blog and edit much m ore efficiently on my iPad with wordpress).  Sadly yesterday was a total wash due to a migraine on day 4 which turned into nausea when the Excedrin finally took away the pain....I did a little work yesterday morning, but for the most part I laid on the couch looking at my work wishing that I had the energy to sit up and work on it.  Never happened.  I posted my new pictures HERE for everyone to see!

3.  Thanks to those of you who voted on my name poll for my online shop.  I'm not quite ready to make my final decision, so I've reopened the poll through this Friday in hopes that I can get more feedback!  This means if you haven't voted yet, PLEASE DO!

Let me know what you think!

one of my big New Year's resolutions this year, is to start my online shop for crafty goodness!  I talked about this some last year, but with all the wedding...well everything, I just never got around to it!

I'm very excited for this next stage of crafting, but first I need your help!  I've added a poll on the right hand side of my blog showing the list of names that Jonathan and I have come up with thus far that don't currently pop up if I Google search for them.  I'll leave this up through Sunday around noon and take your opinion into serious consideration before picking my final name.  I really have NO front runner favorite at this point!  If you have any other ideas that aren't listed to your right, please leave me a comment here of other creative 'n crafty names!

Thanks!!

Take Two

As promised, I went home and frogged aaaaaaaaall but round 1 of my round ripple.  I spent most of last night reading, trying, cursing and frogging before I finally got the hang of the pattern!

This morning I started round 8 so I'm officially past the work I lost from yesterday and you can DEF see the difference now that I'm crocheting according to Julee's pattern!  I've also finally committed the pattern to memory (plus you can see what you're doing more now that it's a bit bigger)

I do have to actually do some chores (and make dinner tonight), since neither happened last night but I'm hoping to to get to the color change at round 15 before tomorrow's update!

Oh!  before I forget, stay tuned this evening and look for my new poll I'll be adding to the blog!  I'm currently taking suggestions for the name of my online shop and will be asking for votes on the best name - maybe you're favorite will be selected!

Ever Wonder Why?

Ever have a bad experience crocheting and think, "why the hell do I do this to myself?"

yea....I had one of those mornings.

After reading Pammy Sue's post about doing a Crochet Along, I jumped at the opportunity to 1.  join :-)  2.  challenge myself with a new pattern and 3.  actually finish a Crochet Along for a larger project (for once!)  When I got home from work last night, I got my chores done as quickly as possible so that I could ask my color consultant (aka Jonathan) about what yarn I should use, post a picture of my choices on Flickr and GET STARTED!  I only got about 3 rounds in last night (of course by now it was about 9:30 p.m.) before the pattern was no longer making sense.  I opted to stop while I was ahead and just get up early this morning and crochet before work, vs. finding out I had rounds and rounds of work to frog in the daylight hours.....

I got up at 5, got ready for work and had 1 full hour to crochet before I had to leave my warm apartment and drive to work.  About 5 minutes before I had to stop crocheting, right around when I started really feeling proud of myself for tackling a pattern that's more difficult to follow that anything I've ever started (and actually completed) in the past, I found my mistake.  At each point I was doing a fptr into the fptr from the previous post.  After re-reading (or maybe maybe just reading in it's entirety for the first time) I saw that the pattern states "fptr AROUND the previous fptr"  DAMN.IT  No wonder I was missing the ribbing.....

It's very pretty as is, but you can see right where my hook stopped I did one correctly and how it'll start to rib.  Sure I could just continue the pattern how I've done it for the past 3 rounds, but that would sort of be cheating wouldn't it?  sigh  I'll be frogging tonight once my chores are done and I will make it right this time!

If anyone is curious about what yarn exactly that I'm using:

Bernat Berella - Soft Heather
Loops & Threads Impeccable - Sea Green
Vanna's Choice Baby - White (Angel)
The pattern also calls for an "H" hook, but I'm using an "I" hook as I crochet a little tightly and don't want the finished product to be too stiff.

Marie Anne - not sure why but I can't get your link to properly load onto my site anymore!!  Last week the link showed up when I copied and pasted (vs. the picture) so this week I just copied the image...of course this means it doesn't link back to your site.  If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!

all mixed up!

I'm so confused with having Mondays off from work the past couple of weeks - I just realized that it's already Tuesday again :o)

This week I'm going to give two things I'm looking forward to in 2012

1.  challenging myself with new crafts

2.  spending more time with my husband (time that doesn't entail wedding planning!!)

What are you looking forward to in 2012?

New Years Snow!

We had a green Christmas up in Chautuauqua County, NY.  Christmas morning there wasn't a cloud in the sky actually, and it seemed a bit weird to me!  We came back to Maryland on the 26th for the work week and then went back home for New Years weekend.  We had nothing much planned for New Years (we're not really into going out) so it seemed like we should take advantage of the 4 day weekend and spend some more time with our families.  In years past, we've stayed home that entire week.  We usually end up with some big snow system that hits New Years Eve and/or Day and we have a heck of a time getting out of the area to return to work in the new year.  Turns out this year was no different.

Oh Sunday (New Years Day) they started talking about a big Lake Affect snowstorm coming.  Each and every time this year that they've talked about snow coming, it ends up being nothing, so when Jonathan asked if we should leave a day early, I looked over weather.com on my iPad closely and thought, no it just seemed silly to try and beat a storm that might end up not coming at all!

Here's my parents backyard on Sunday afternoon as the snow clouds started coming in

Around 7 pm the freezing rain/snow started a bit, but just enough for a dusting on the ground before it stopped.  My mom said she woke up around 2 a.m. and looked out and you could still see grass.  I woke up at 6 and while I laid under the blankets staying warm, I heard the snow plow go by not once, but twice.  I got up and found this

They finally got snow!  Here are the "after" shots of the backyard

and here's Dad cleaning out the driveway for Mom to get to work and me to get out at all!

From Panama, Jonathan and I headed out the long way home and made the snow drive to I-86

Once we got on 86 the roads were clear and we made good time back to Maryland (even though the "long route" is about 60 extra miles and 1 more hour on the road)

The only other time we ran into the lake effect snow was on I-79 S

By the time we got to Grove City, PA you could see the grass again!


Happy New Year's everyone!  I'm looking forward to all the great things 2012 has in store for us.  My resolutions are coming together nicely, and I'm hoping to announce a big project for 2012 by next week!