Tifffany's Ramblings

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Well, this week has been a busy one. I got off audit for the new job role I was trained on (which means my work is no longer checked before it goes out to the world), and I found out I got a raise and a promotion. Also, a guy at work called me pretty (a no-romantic-interest guy). Whew, it was busy! No word yet on how big of a raise cause it has to be approved by a higher authority, but my manager says I will be happy with it. Aaaand it gets backdates to Oct 2, so I will get the extra since then in one check, woo! To celebrate, and cause I'm lazy, I took off Saturday for a nice 3 day weekend.

What did I do? Well, I made some caramel apples. I just used a package of caramels and it was pretty easy. Personally, I don't care for candy coated fruit, but my mom does. So she'll enjoy them. I also carved a pumpkin, cause it's not Halloween without a Jack-o-Lantern. I lose interest in carving pumpkins fast, so I picked an easy one this year. Here he is with the lights on and off:

I should mention that what I have in it in the second picture and what I will have in it tomorrow night is not actually a candle. It's this piece that fits in one's mouth and lights up all different colors and is good for rave parties, etc. However I have an easily triggered gag reflex and it bothered me, so I found another use for it. It flashes the colors pretty rapidly and looks neat with the skull. I painted the skull part white cause I thought with the quickly flashing light it was a bit harder to stay focused enough to tell what the design was. So this way it's obvious, and reflects the light well.

I also worked on some Xmas stuff, pics of it tomorrow if I can get my butt in gear. And other crafty news to report... until another day.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Another post written in advance, this time just a quickie. Way earlier this year, I designed my own Christmas stocking out of some bits and pieces of wool I had left over from other projects. Add some fancy yarn, fabric, and ribbon and you have a felted nontraditional Xmas stocking. Here it is, in a not very good pic:


I designed it to look like a victorian boot, which was fun. I had big plans to make a few more and then submit it for some sorta online mag, but couldn't figure out the whole submission thing and decided that my camera wasn't good enough to represent it in that medium anyways. But I still love it and may make some more. The lining is sewn so that the heel part of the boot is "cut out" from the interior, lest small things fall in there never to be seen again (or at least not easily retrieved).

I did already write up the pattern as specific as I could, so if anyone wants it let me know (I have it in Word format). Just leave a comment, with email address so I can send it back, or just shoot an email to tifffany(at)gmail(dot)com. It's good for using up bits of leftover felting wool and to have something to do with the fun novelty yarn out there.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

In an effort to post more often I am cheating and writing this on Monday to publish at a later time. But it's all old news anyways so that's alright. A few sweaters I finished up earlier and took pics of a few weeks (maybe more like a month or so) ago but have not yet shown off. Well, here they are.

First up is the tennis sweater from vogue knitting:

I'm so not a fan of having my picture taken, can you tell? I used Lion Microspun for this since I had it in my stash and wanted to use it up. I only had a little bit of white leftover from a shawl I made for my mom to take on vacation to Cancun with her, so I omitted the stripes at the neckline. I also did less rows for the neckline so there was a bit of a deeper V, cause i don't like things anywhere near my neck if I can help it. I like the way it turned out, now I just have to actually wear it. :)

Second (and last, for now), is the Chic Cardigan from Hot Knits (I think) that I worked up with some earth colored Paton's Divine. I have shots of i both opened and closed for your viewing enjoyment:

I think I like it better open, even tho I spent forever (and a significant bit of bucks) picking out the buttons. This will be nice for the fluctuating temperatures at work, except that this yarn tends to shed. What else is new.

That's all for now. I have some more things I'd made in my absence (from blogging) that I should round up and photograph one of these days.

Monday, October 24, 2005

So I've been quite a bit busy lately and thus have forgotten to blog. But I'm here now and have a lot of updates (with pics!)

Last weekend I called my friend up cause she had gotten a new puppy. She wanted me to come see it, so on Sunday I headed out to Pennsylvania and saw her. She's a dachsund (the puppy, not my friend) and they named her Nestle. And she is just the tiniest cutest dog ever!

I came back later on Sunday (got home a little after 8) and was going to go out to see The Fog, but it didn't play until 10:30pm and I was a bit tired, so I nixed that idea.

Monday I sat around for a bit debating whether to stay in my pajamas all day or go out. I finally decided to head out around 2 or so because I needed to return a movie and such... and I ended up getting a new tattoo. I wanted something on my side and I was able to find some flashart that I could piece together to get something I liked. And the shop was so clean and sparkly that I couldn't resist. Here is what it looked like that day (click all pics to make bigger):


Then it was back to work for a week, but not before I finished this:
I really like the way the detail came out on the edging. To make this I used one ball each of Lion Brand Baby Soft in pink and purple (not the official names), a giant ball of Lion's Pound of Love in White, and misc amounts (over 8oz) of Red Heart SuperSaver in white to finish it off. Gotta love using up the Red Heart. I have 2 more balls of the Baby Soft (blue and green), so I may have to make another.

Then earlier this week I got a present in the mail! It's this beautiful bracelet made by Marie over at Knitti-Me. Here it is, and it's all mine mine mine:
It matches perfectly with my new pajamas that are so soft I am having trouble taking them off in order to put on real clothes. Who needs real clothes anyways? I would gladly live in life in my 'jammas if I could. Also received with this beautiful bracelet was 2 matching stitch markers (head on over to her site to see em) and I hilarious note. It made my day! I won these little treasures by correctly guessing that some mystery buttons were originally on long underwear... go figure!

Finally, Joann's was having a big sale this weekend, so I couldn't resist heading over. I picked up a few skeins of yarn to compliment some I already had, and whipped up this autumnal scarf/hat/mitts set:
I had originally planned these to be for me, but I'm not sure they're my colors. In any case, what I used to make them was: almost 2 balls of Katia Countryin color 10 (bought off Elann ages ago), almost 2 balls of Schachenmayr Toy in color 31 (bought at Big Lots in PA), 2 full balls of Sensations Angel Glitz in color Glitz Copper (bought from Jo-ann of course), and almost 2 balls of Moda-Dea Ricochet, one each of Soul and Salsa (also bought from Jo-ann, on clearance for $1). All together I would estimate the set cost about $25 to make. Now the question is what to do with it. Step one involves modelling the mitts to show they are actually useful. Step two is probably to stick it up by all the other things I've made and have nothing to do with. My 3 huge rubbermaid totes are full and I am now moving on to laundry baskets. I think I need to find a craft fair or something to take this burden off me ;)

That's all for now! Not really working on Kepler much but started a new baby blanket. Cause, why not?

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

This is my latest obsession. In my job I listen to music all day while I work, when I'm not in meetings. This particular cd has been in my player for a couple days now. Well, it does come out so that I can also listen to it on the way to and from work, of course. When I love something, I really love it. It all started when I picked up a used Wheatus cd at my local record store. They have a deal with buy 3 get 1 free on used, and I had always been fond of Teenage Dirtbag and their cover of Erasure's A Little Respect so I bought it...and loved it. Much fun hyperness and a bit uncouth (in a good way). So then I got Suck Fony, which is fun but a bit more mellow. Their new release, Too Soon Monsoon is a bit of a hybrid between the two... a bit mellow and a bit hyper all at once. If you like bands such as Placebo and Dashboard Confessional, then ya might like this.

In other news, I broke a nail today so decided it was time to file them down a bit and am having much trouble typing. So that's all for today.

Monday, October 10, 2005

I still haven't gotten a scary makeover, but I did spend last night at some frightening haunted houses. Well, at least they frightened me. I went to Nightmare in Painesville, which is several haunted houses all grouped together on a local fairground. It was dark and scary and lots of fun. The picture to the left is one of the creatures, I couldn't find anything better to show. But I'm sure I ran away from her at some point.

Also last night, I had some yummy shrimp at Red Lobster, thanks to the special endless shrimp deal. I've been wanting to go there for awhile now. And their biscuits? YUM!

I took some more pics this morning. One came out really good but then I somehow messed it up... oh well. Here is the One Stitch Baby Sweater from Lion Brand with cotton-ease in Orangeade. It was a simple knit, but kinda heavy having all that hanging from the needles. I made the smallest size (I think), and it took well under 2 balls. I'm saving the rest of the orange for some colorwork once I make some more little baby items with my one or two balls each of several colors of cotton-ease. For buttons I just used whatever I had in my button stash. They're not all exactly the same, but close enough.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Wooohoooo, I love 3 day weekends! No, I don't get a holiday day... but I didn't have much of a weekend last weekend cause I had to change my work schedule so this weekend I happen to have an extra day off. Yeah! I was in training all last week learning new job stuff, so I will be practicing that starting Tuesday. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Yes, I saw Just Like Heaven yesterday. It was a pretty cute movie, funny in parts but mostly kinda sappy. It had really beautiful colors in it tho, which I am a sucker for. Kinda a chick flick, but still fun... and great music! ;)











And that's not all! I also saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose last night. It wasn't what I was expecting, but still good. I must say that one thing I dislike about movies is tons of flashbacks, and this one definitely had plenty of that. Of course, some lady with 3 small kids sat right in front of me and there was much noise to be had. And some guy (or hoarse-voiced woman) sat right behind me and kept making burping/gurling/other disgusting noises throughout. Oh, the fun of being me...

More tomorrow or soon! I am ready to head out and have some fun! :)

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Earthy Stole

As I said, I had a photo shoot one day and took some pics of some FO's I've had done. Well, here's one of them. A scrappy stole I knit from some leftover bits and a few balls of novelty yarn to spice it up. I really love making projects like this, uses up all the letovers and comes out with a very interesting texure. First, a pic of the whole stole:

And because my camera is the sux, I took a closeup of it so the different yarns in the fabric were a bitemore notieable. Here that is:

No idea what I am going to do with it... for now it's just sitting in a bag. More for another day...

Monday, October 03, 2005

Scrappy Blue Bag


Just a quick post to show off this lil bag I made. I used lots diff blue yarns and some cotton held double for the main color. I also lined it with denim from old jeans. It is a very heavvvvy bag because of all the cotton and denim, but kinda cute. I like the way it looks tho, esp on the inside. I think I have enough blue scraps left to make another bag, a diff style tho. When I add a denim liner on it, I may have to use the rear pants pockets for some inside pockets, that's be fun. Sorry, couldn't get a good pic of the inside and I used no pattern for this.