DIY: Learning to Knit (or crochet)

When it comes to crocheting I learned how to do that on my own a few years ago, and honed in on my skills recently by looking through some videos online so I knew at some point I would want to knit to give myself more diversity when working with yarns. I can't take all the credit for learning to knit though because a friend of mine was really pushing for me to learn for a while. With her moving out of town I thought it was time to bite the bullet. Considering that the holidays were over I felt it was high time that I start getting gifts ready for next year (yes I plan this far ahead because we have that many people to get gifts for each year),so knitting was the plan and resolution for the New Year. I am happy to report that this is the first resolution I ever stuck to! I am not completely done as I plan to give a scarf to every member of my family, but I have 2 3/4 of 12 complete (this includes my entire immediate family as well as Nick's and my grandparents). I got started a couple weeks ago and haven't really stopped since.

And I LOVE it!

I learned via the internet and stalking of certain profiles on youtube. I searched through a lot to make a couple scarves and found a couple REALLY good videos and other not so great ones. My favorite videos were by a video poster called theknitwitch on youtube, she went slow enough that I could see what she was doing, but not so slow that I out stitched her. I would highly recommend that anyone looking to learn how to knit use her videos for guidance.

Also if you want to run to the store and get needles and yarn here are my recommendations:

Size 10 1/2 (6.5mm) Bamboo knitting kneedles (trust me you will LOVE the bamboo, just keep them away from cats who like to nibble the wood.)
1 or 2 skeins of Red Heart Brand medium weight Worsted yarn. (it's cheap and does not fall apart easy)

AVOID: Lion Brand Homespun until you get used to knitting. This yarn aggravated me till I got my rhythm right and learned to knit looser (Not an easy task!)

Take your time and look through tutorials, also play with patterns on your own. I played a bit and found that a knit and perl rotation made for a really neat looking scarf, and once you learn the difference between the stitches you open a world of possibilities!

I also found that making a list of future projects was very helpful. I knew there were plenty of people that I would want to knit for including every member of my family, so prioritizing was imperative in case I didn't finish everyone's in time. I completed the most important one first. My grandmother has been an avid crocheter so I felt I should pay homage to her and give her my first ever completed knit project. It was a burgundy simulated stripe scarf with crocheted rose and leaf detail. (learned how to do those during the process of learning to knit) She loved it so much that I had to dive right into the next project, a cream zig-zag scarf for my sister-in-law to be. She is getting married to my brother this summer so I picked the color in honor of her wedding, and the zig-zag was kind of fun and different so I thought it fit her perfectly. The next one to start was for my fiance who demanded perfection and I had to start over on many times. I have finally gotten into a rhythm with the Lion Brand Homespun yarn and worked out the kinks in the yarn to get it where it is 3/4 of the way completed.

I have worked my butt off for about two weeks straight, through sickness and family visitors, and I am happy to say that I am progressing well through the list of scarves I must complete before Christmas next year. I figured I would give myself a month a piece, but I know I will finish a lot now while it is cold and less and less as it gets warm again. Giving myself this leeway and end goal is making it really easy to enjoy!


The scarf above is the one I made my grandmother



This picture is of the scarf I made for my sister-in-law to be.

DIY: SAD Buster

Many people, like myself have a weird feeling that comes over us on cold day number one and stays throughout the winter till the sun shines for a full week and we start getting pounded with rain instead of snow. It is a black blanket of heavy sadness and dread of the outside world, and can lead to some real hermit-like issues. Experts call is Seasonal Affective Disorder, I call it hatred of winter and absolute boredom.

I don't like the cold, I never have. I think it is pretty, but there is a reason I keep my apartment at a comfortable 70 degrees all winter long. I hardly ever leave the apartment in winter and as a result the blanket comes on December 1st and doesn't leave till Mid-march. This brings with it many emotional issues, and depressive tendencies that I have tried hard to avoid all my life, but after a few days of being cooped up with my crazy cats, you would feel like a basket-case too. I have found that there are few ways of battling this issue that don't make the feelings worse.

The first idea that I had was learning how to knit. Talk about knitting myself the perfect crazy cat lady sweater. I quit that idea fast, and moved on to what I thought were better ideas. Taking a walk was another idea, a really horrible one at that. Taking a walk in the bitter cold leads to one of two things. Frostbite, or slush in your shoes. I don't particularly like either of those, so I had to think of new ideas. Going to visit people! That seemed like a really great idea except that EVERYONE I know and their brother is working from 9-5 during the week, and those are the hours in which I am at my worst emotionally. Baking? Well that led to emotional eating, although it did also produce 36 dozen cookies that I packaged as gifts for Christmas.

In a last ditch effort to improve my mood, I threw on some old jeans, and an over-sized sweatshirt and said "I give up!" http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=503360419195669643I sat on the love-seat located by my window and planned on staying there till the snow melted. I stared out the window and watched the snow continue to fall, and felt myself sinking lower and lower into the plush microfiber, and almost drifting into a daze. I quickly snapped out of it as a massive chunk of snow fell off of my roof and on to a bush on the side of the house. It was beautiful. I ran for my camera, snapped a picture, and completely snapped out of it.

The one thing I like most about winter is how it looks! It is gorgeous, pure white and clean. The cleanest white place I knew was the town park and I knew I could find some beauty there if I just tried, so I took a walk down and snapped a few photos. I would load them, but the uploader doesn't want to work today, so maybe in the near future.(you can see them on my facebook though) If the sun were shining it would have made for a better day of photos, but I still loved some of what I was able to capture, and although it still looks somewhat depressing out, I know that the spring will bring a whole new set of photos for me to capture. I only have a couple more months to go, and I think I can make it that long.

DIY: 5k

Ok, so I will admit I am not doing the 5k entirely by myself, but I am training to do it with the help of a Droid application called Couch 2 5K (C25K) I am not a runner, but I have always wanted to be a runner, and to run the Boilermaker, which is a pretty large road race in town near me. A friend of mine started the program and really likes it, so I figured that I would give it a shot. Today was day one, and boy do I have news.

For one, I think I am going to buy the full version and not the lite (free) version. Simply because it won't run in the background of my phone, and let me do other things while I am running/walking. Because of this, I really didn't do today's routine, instead I was accidentally doing week 4, and I was REALLY not ready for it! So I will be trying again tomorrow, and hoping that I will be able to do it easily three times a week. The first week is kind of easy (considering that I was able to do most of week 4 without dying) it's a 5 minute warm-up walk followed by the running routine which is alternating 90 second runs with 60 second walks. The whole thing runs for about 20 minutes, and it is something that I definitely can do after today's little mishap.

So minus the pains in my legs from too strong of a run, I am roaring and ready to get to work on this program. Come tomorrow morning when the pain REALLY hits, I am sure my mind will change a bit, but lets hope not. It would be really great if I could drop a few pounds during this, but with the holidays coming I am doubting it, regardless, come July of next year, I will be running the 5k version of the Boilermaker!

DIY: Birthday Paper

Supplies:
-Leftover white or brown packing paper, (A lot of companies pack goods with this stuff and I keep it to re-pack breakable items and make my own wrapping paper.) or white wrapping paper that you can get cheap from the dollar store.
-Tissue paper OR rubber stamps of your choosing.(can use both but it is a different technique and takes MUCH longer)
-Ink stamp pad in your color choice
-Toothpicks
-Tulip Glitter paint
-Glue sticks
-Paper Towels

Instructions:
***Before I get started with the how to, let me clarify to all of you who got scared by glitter, I use the glitter in TINY amounts so that it is gift-able for both boys and girls.***

Choose your paper method you would like to use out of the following:
Option 1-Tissue Paper ONLY
If you decide that you want to use JUST the tissue paper method, then congratulations! You have chosen the easy and cute method of making wrapping paper. Please see my past blog with the tea cup card on how to stick crinkled tissue paper to the plain white or brown paper and have fun doing so on the proper sized paper to wrap a gift. Use the plain white or brown paper as your base and strips of different colored tissue paper for different effects.

Option 2-Stamped tissue paper method
If this is your choice, then life gets a little bit difficult and it takes much longer, but here is the basic technique.

Step1-Take the tissue paper, and flatten it out on a flat surface lined with paper towels under the tissue paper to prevent the surface below from getting inked.
Step2-Take stamps of your choice and stamp the tissue paper, then allow to dry.
Step3-Using the glitter glue and a toothpick, dot, line or detail small portions of each stamp to create a glittery detail on them. Allow to dry fully for about 4 hours.
Step4- Test the glitter glue to make sure that no spots are tacky, and carefully crumple tissue paper to prepare to adhere to plain white or brown paper.
Step5- Adhere tissue paper to white paper using the glue stick(see the technique in my past blog tea-cup card making if you need more help) and press out any major folds you don't want seen.
Step6- Allow to dry for up to two hours, and you are ready to wrap. Use a simply ribbon when wrapping and detail with a little glitter glue if you desire.

Option 3- Stamped paper method. This method is a little bit easier than the stamped tissue paper method, and it tends to be easy to do POST wrapping. If you decide that the wrapping paper that you used is too bland, you can do this to amp up the wow factor in your wrapping. Whether you wrap the gift first or not is your choice but the method is the same.

Step 1- Stamp directly on the paper and allow to dry completely.
Step 2- Using glitter glue and a toothpick, dot, line, or detail small portions of each stamp to create a glittery detail on them. Allow to dry fully for about 4 hours.
Step 3- Test the glitter glue to make sure no spots are tacky, and use paper or finishing wrapping the gift with a pretty bow. If you desire, you can add small amounts of glitter glue to the bow as well for a small pop of more glitter, just allow to dry before gifting!

I have become very frugal, and not only keep all of the past paper and bows from my gifts, but the packaging as well. You never know when it will come in handy, or when you might need to get a little crafty!

DIY: Drought

So I have decided that I am no good at this blogging thing when my life is so hectic already. I still dabble in DIY projects once in a while, but I don't have the time to take the pictures or write up something to make it easier for you to understand or do. Plus with my recent trip to Florida I haven't had time to breathe I am basically sorting through 900+ photos of Disney World and an area resort that we stayed in. For now, I am doing some planning for small trips in the coming months, and attempting to get ready for two weddings, also in the next two months. It's a very stressful time because there are so many requirements to being IN a wedding, let alone attending. This weekend is my sister's Bachelorette Party, and along with a couple other bridesmaids, I am trekking over to Newburgh, NY and attending a BBQ and night out with my sister for her Last Fling Before the Ring.

I think it is a cute tradition for some, and something that I have no desire to take part in come my turn. I never was big on going out, getting plastered and blaming it on the fact that it was my last chance to do so, so I don't see myself doing it to celebrate my last night as a free woman. The way I see it, once I moved in with Nick, my free woman status was over. Yeah, I have my own mind and my own life, but I enjoy the time that I spend cooking, and time with him, much more than being out and about with other people (no offense to other people, they just aren't Nick lol). I guess the way that I see it, me and Nick are basically married already. Tying the knot will only make it official and change how we file our taxes.

It's odd how quickly my wedding has turned into such a small deal since all of these other weddings started to take over. It's like my mother's house was taken over my glitter monsters, and card stock fairies, and normally this would be cool, but it is becoming scary. It's to the point that I don't want to talk or think about my wedding around my family. My mom has stopped getting on my case about setting a date and sending out save the dates, but has gone into wedding overdrive for my sister! Not to mention that every single conversation revolves around the wedding and whether or not I have everything in order for myself. Sad part is that I do, and have for about 4 months. I am just that efficient, now if only I could be that efficient when it came to DIY posts. Hopefully I will have one soon. I do have a plan for DIY creative gift wrapping once the holiday's get closer, so I guess you have at least that to look forward to!

DIY: Zucchini stamp art.

So, four cats really keep me busy! With Nick being in California for the last week, I have found very little time to do much other than take care of them, and go pick up my farm share. Which lately has been abundant with Zucchini! Now normally I am not a fan of zucchini, except in the occasional bread or skillet meal, but lately, I have been finding neat ideas using the zucchini that I thought you might be interested in knowing. This is a really great idea for kids especially, but I have found that even for me it is a great idea. The good thing about it is that you won't be using anything that you would normally eat!

The best part about a zucchini stamp is that there is really no necessary carving like you would need on a potato. Zucchini's are a bit porous, so the have a neat design on them already. However if you desire to carve a shape into them, go ahead and using small amounts of paint you can dab designs onto greeting cards, or even furniture. When you decide to change colors, cleaning the zucchini is really simple, and can be done by either slicing a chunk off, or rinse the zucchini. The possibilities are endless, and I must say that it has given me many card ideas for the near future. My mother for instance is turning 50 this year, and I am sure I will find a great zucchini to use to stamp '50' on her card! You can change the design on your zucchini as well, try a serrated knife for a ripple effect, and using different cross sections of the zucchini for different designs. Another idea it to score the surface of the stamp with a fork and create a wavy pattern. Like I said before, when painting with veggies, the possibilities are endless!

Leoben and Zarek

This is the first 'public' announcement of our new kittens and I figure that some people might want to see them, so here are a couple shots. This is Leoben (pronounces Lee-oh-bin), getting comfortable "Froggy-style" on our bed.
This is Zarek (Rhymes with Eric) a little groggy after waking up, and stretching out. He fell about ten seconds after this shot thanks to the flash popping up and startling him.

This is my favorite shot so far. Zarek and Baltar sitting in one of the kitchen windows together. It's like a daddy and his child, and I think it is absolutely adorable.