New Toy.

A brand new, all-mine circular saw and a good bread recipe. What more does a girl need?

Featured Post at New Dress A Day! And, a fun little wall-hanging

Almost famous!

Until this weekend I had pretty much forgotten that I'd submitted my summer sweatshirt re-size to Marisa over at new dress a day.

On Saturday I had an epic marathon day of parent conferences (28 in nine hours!), so needless to say I was feeling slightly overwhelmed and a bit beat by the time I got home around 5pm. Imagine my surprise and delight to open an email from Marisa saying that she had selected the sweatshirt re-size I had submitted to her in the summer to be featured on her blog on the 18th!

there I am!

Head on over and check it out, as well as her many other posts. Marisa started several years ago with a year of daily low-budget/no-budget dress transformations and now she's kind of a big deal. I'm excited and honored she picked my project. It's almost like I'm famous now, too.

Project Updates: Knit Edition

I've slowly been going through my project bags and baskets and bins in an effort to finish the various knitting projects I've started over the years, or to revise projects that have been finished but sit dormant. A little round up of things I've checked off the finish & fix list over the past few weeks, or that I've been motivated to make some progress on.

Entrelac Infinity Scarf 

This was a "regular" scarf that I had knit from two skeins of this colorway, plus a third skein of a close-but-not-close-enough colorway. The other skein had too much bright red and pink to really blend well, and I just wasn't happy with it. I completely ripped out the scarf and reknit it with the two matching skeins. I sewed the two ends together and viola! An infinity scarf - and just the right length (diameter?) for doubling over to create a cozy cowl. The pattern is an entrelac stitch, which creates a bit of a basketweave pattern. I'm digging it right now although it uses a bit more yarn because of how it is constructed. The yarn is variegated, which gives the blocks of different color but the pattern can be done with any number of colors for each square or triangle.

new cowl!

Lightening the Load: A Bit of Housekeeping for the New Year

so much space. and it's all mine. 

Since moving into the house I've realized that I have a lot of stuff. At times all of it (most of it) has held some value to me, and plenty of it continues to hold value. But a lot of stuff I've held on to "in case I need it." And "in case" hasn't happened yet. Of course, now that I have a house, a tiny part of me is trying to reason that I have all this space - I may as well spread things out! But I don't necessarily need to have to spread out - I like having the space.

But it's also the new year, and I'm feeling a bit like I need to lighten the loads that make up parts my life. That and I like a good method of procrastination from things that should be done, like cleaning, or lesson plans or grading.