Photo Dump - Knitting Content!

Small horse for my aunt. Will be sending this off this week. Made out of Eco-Wool. Ravelry Page.

Slippers for my grandma for Christmas. FiberTrends pattern. Ravelry Page.

Tweed Fetching. Made out of DB Donagal Luxury Tweed. Ravelry Page.

Shop display wrap. My own pattern. Silk Rhapsody & Silk Mohair Glitter by ArtYarns. No ravelry link at this time.

Enjoy :D

BlogStalk: 3 I love, 3 I hate

I love fall. I love everything about this season. The colors, the smells, the weather, the leaves, warm drinks, hand knits. All of it. It is my favorite season.

I love the beach. And the ocean. I love the sound. I love how calm it makes me. I miss it a lot up here. It's really quiet here compared to the coast.


I love nature. And photographing nature. It's pretty amazing what you can capture on a little screen if you try hard enough.

As for my hates, no pictures. I use the word hate a lot, but when I sit down and think about it, they're all more pet-peeves that true hate.
1. I can't stand people without common sense. I have no patience for them. If you're stupid enough to get yourself into the situation, there's probably not a lot I can do for you so don't ask.
2. I hate ants. One of the main reasons we moved was because of the ants in the foundation of our old duplex. It was nasty and disturbing. I think this is one of my only true "hates"
3. The other is earwigs. I have an intense, irrational fear of them stemming back to my insane mother who thought that shaping her children with fear was a good plan. Therefore, hate, loathe, and am terrified of earwigs.
4. Since that kind of goes with 3, I'm going to give you a bonus. I can't stand ironing. See my post from last Friday. Hate, Hate, Hate ironing. It makes my back and knees hurt, it makes the house smell like warm, moist cotton, and it's beyond boring. Oh yeah, and the humidity makes my hair frizz.

ChatterJam.com

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Christmas is right around the corner...

And if you're anything like me, you're starting to plan out gifts. I've been working on the knitting I'm doing for about a month, but I have a lot of family! I can't knit for everyone. And I'm always looking for little things to add to their gifts, knit or not. The only problem is trying to buy these gifts and still pay bills. Coupons can definitely help with that!

Coupon Chief has one of the largest selections of vendor coupons that I've seen! They have a great selection of Home Depot deals. My husband is addicted to this store! If I decide to buy him a new tool for Christmas, the free shipping or online clearance center could help me afford something really nice for him.

I'm always nervous about buying my MIL presents, but I know candles will always be a hit! I've never seenThe Candle Bay before, The Candle Bay deals are so great that I will need to look at it! I think I'd be able to find little gifts to fill out my packages here.

So as your planning out your holiday shopping, check out Coupon Chief and see if you can find a great deal to help save some money this season!

Long Week...

Ugh, It's been a loooong week. DH has been in TX all week for training and I've had to take care of the house and the dog all on my own. Combine that with my boss having a breakdown and only making it in one day so far this week and you've got one doozy of an overwhelming week. But DH is back tomorrow and that means I get to breathe again. And relax. And sleep. But before he gets home, I've got a buttload of work to do! Italics means it's done! Italics are good:D
Look at that! I finished everything but the tomatoes and ironing!

I need to unload and reload the dishwasher. Not sure if it will need to be run or not. Quite possibly.
I need to wash the dog and then clean the tub. And probably most of the bathroom.
I need to clean the rest of the junk out of the kitchen and off the counters.
I need to put away the laundry that I did last weekend.
I need to wash sheets and towels.
I need to iron from the last month's laundry. (I HATE to iron. HATE, Loathe, despise, get the picture?)
I need to do something with the 5 pound of apples spread throughout my kitchen before they go bad.
Ditto for the 3 pounds of green tomatoes.
I need to put together a menu and shopping list for the next 2 weeks.
I need to make the nutball dough for Saturday dinner so that it can chill overnight. (meatballs, but walnut based instead of meat based)
I need to sleep. A lot. I haven't slept well by myself this week. I'm just not used to it and it's been cold.
I need to take out all the trash in the house because when 1 can got full this week, I just started using another and now 2 out of the 3 are full and they need to go out to the big can because I can't let him know what kind of slob I am when he's not home.

I am two weeks behind on blogstalker and just can't seem to motivate myself to catch up. I have my pictures all taken and edited for my 3 things post. I just can't make myself write it up. And I don't have my pictures for the statue post because the camera is in TX with the husband.

And work sucks. I don't want to go in to why. But I'm completely overwhelmed and frustrated with my job. I want to like it. I do most of the time. But this week has just been too much. Too much. Thank goodness it's Friday.

sm00bs!

Sm00bs over at livejournal is the one who turned me on to the PayPerPost system. It's been really interesting to read all of her paid posts and learn about different sites. Here's an example of her work: http://sm00bs.livejournal.com/223238.html
Her posts are always concise and clear. She seems to really get a handle of what the advertiser is looking for and to put a great spin on it. I met her when she was pregnant with her daughter through a Secret Pal Exchange. It's been so much fun to watch her daughter grow up and to see her finding different ways to bring in money while still being able to stay home with her daughter. I hope that I will be able to do the same once we have children.

*This is a sponsered post by PayPerPost*

BlogStalking, Week3: From here to there

I'm way behind on this blogstalking thing. I'm hoping to get caught up within the next week. So here is my week three. For the most part, when I need to get somewhere, I go in my '02 Ford ranger. I love love love this car. We got it with just over 11,000 miles on it about a year and a half ago. We paid too much money for it, but it's a great truck. See:
Excuse the dust. I badly need to clean the interior of my truck. The outside looks pretty great right now. It's been raining off and on and that washes all the dust off and makes it nice and pretty.
More lip stuff in my truck. I really do think that I have a problem with this.
Think anyone could tell that I have a dog? There's a leash or two in there, a halti, and a water bottle and bowl. Oh yes, and my fantastic air freshner that smells like sandlewood. Yummy.

Week four will be up by the weekend and hopefully Next week will bring week 5. Or even this weekend. It's been... strange... around here. DH is out of town on a training trip all next week. It's the first time we've been apart overnight and I'm not looking forward to it at all. I think it will be nice to be able to clean without him critiquing how I do it. And to be able to go to bed whenever I want to (our house is under 600 sq feet, so sleeping while he's still up isn't much of an option). But I think the novelty will be gone by Tuesday and I'll start getting lonely. Very lonely.

Car Guy Garage

I've stumbled upon a website that my husband has fallen in lust with! CarGuyGarage is The Place to buy gifts for him . I pointed out these lifts to my DH about 5 minutes ago and he's still obsessing over them. Unfortunately, we don't have a garage right now. He's been looking at car storage sheds around town and he says that these are the best prices he's seen. We can't get it right now, but if we could, this would make a perfect Christmas gift for him. I'm going to have to browse through the site a little more closer to Christmas to see what I can find him. And they have an email coupon list! So if you sign up with them, they'll periodically send you coupons and exclusive sales. He's like a kid in a candy shop!

*This is a sponsored post by PayPerPost*

The big red thing that we will not speak of after today...

So I promised you pictures and content about the red thing that threatened my sanity last week. This is what the cursed red yarn turned into:
My boss loves it. She absolutely loves it. So I guess that this story ends well. I'm still mad at the yarn. And at the pattern designer. I went back to double check the pattern requirements. I would have been about 300 yards short of the total yardage for the pattern. But here were my mods: No collar, no belt, 5 inches less on body length, 2 inches less on each sleeve. That should have eliminated at least 300 yards, But no. Instead, I bought an extra hank of yarn that I will probably never use. But I already split it into two balls and used half of one of them, so no returning it. Pooh. All well. I never have to work with it again. That's my consolation prize.

But I promised you a picture. So I gave it to you. Enjoy.

PayPerPost Introduction

After seeing a friend of mine over on LiveJournal posting numerous posts about payperpost, I’ve decided to follow in her footsteps. PayPerPost is a blog advertising company that pays us to review various websites and help spread the word.

I'm learning about so many new companies by looking at all the opportunities I have through this site. I'm excited to get to share some of them with you.

Mainly, I'm doing this because we are desperately trying to pay off debt right now and this seemed like another way to add to our income that didn’t require selling our souls to an MLM. It is a great alternative to a second job. I’m at the computer anyway; why not make some money off of it? This means you guys will be seeing more posts! They ask that we keep the blogs at least 50% regular blog content – aka: not ads. So that means more pictures, more recipes, more life questions, and more general chatter from me!

I’m really hoping this turns out to be helpful to our finances. Our goal is to be able to get through the holidays with less debt, not more. So initially, my earnings will be going towards Christmas presents and towards our travel fund. Once the holidays are over, all my earnings are being dumped into our debt. If I want to go to school fall of ’09, we need to be out of this ridiculous credit card debt. September knocked us back some, DH’s car had some serious issues and it was the tail end of my summer paychecks at part time. Now that I’m back up at full time, I’m really hoping it will get easier. I understand that ad content may drive some readers away. I’m not happy about that, but I’m ok with it. I blog about knitting and food because I love it and I’ll keep writing about what I love. But we absolutely must have some more money coming in from somewhere and this is the perfect fit for right now.

It's COLD!

It is so cold out today. My outside thermostat says that it's 42, but I could see my breath when I took the dog out, so I'm kinda inclined not to believe it. I'm all wrapped up in my PNW shawl and am realizing how warm a shawl can keep you. So what do I do? Go stash diving to find another yarn to make a new shawl for this winter. I came up with a full pound of Weaver's Wool by Mountain Colors and the Shoalwater Shawl pattern by Fibertrends. I did this pattern once before and loved working on it, but I cut out too many repeats (to save yarn of course) and it turned out too small for daily use. So this time, I have a full 1400+ yards of yarn to play with, so I can make it as large as I want to. I think I'm going to do it in stockinette instead of garter, though. I liked doing it in garter, but I think I'll like the way it looks a little more in stockinette. And I'm going to do it a little more dense than the last one, light worsted on size 9's instead of 11's. I want this baby to be warm and snuggly for this winter. It's feeling like it's going to be a doozy of a cold one.
Our heater just kicked in, so while I'm defrosting before heading to work, I'll give you a WIP update!

Finished:

• Felted slippers (Christmas present) I've neglected to blog about these, post coming after I felt them.
• Stuffed Horse (Christmas Present) Also unblogged, pictures to come
• Jaywalkers in Tofutsies, I have to re-do the toe section on one, but they are essentially done
• The evil crocheted red thing that we spoke of last time. Pictures to come.
  

What I'm working on:

1. A warm, chunky sweater out of Elann's Peruvian Highland Chunky. I just have the neck to finish and one arm to go. I'll probably finish the neck this weekend and the arm next weekend. If all goes according to plan, that is.
2. DH's sweater out of cotton fleece. This sweater was a disaster the first time around, so I'm hoping the second time goes more smoothly. I'm just about 2 inches into a top-down raglan that I'm designing for him.
3. Worsted weight Jaywalkers, Christmas Present. I turned the first heel yesterday. These are my new travel project and are going so QUICK!
4. And now, the Shoalwater Shawl. Yummy, warm, soft, woolly goodness to be cast on today.
5. A felted cat as a work display. I have the two back legs to do and the tail, but I've stalled out on this. It's just painful to work on. The faux fur just makes things sticky and not stretchy and a little miserable. As long as I finish before Halloween, I should be ok.

Wow, 5 projects including my work related project. I'm doing good! Of course, most of what I've started recently wasn't even in the ravelry queue, it's just stuff that strikes me and I cast on for. Such is my life as an ADD knitter!