Superbowl Monday

First things first, I have no crochet pictures, even though I completed the black & white striped beanie and made 2 different sample granny squares...I forgot to get pictures of them!  I was cooking this weekend and getting ready for Superbowl, so tried to cram my normal weekend duties into Saturday.
I have food pictures :)  I am liking food photography at the moment, so food plus my iPhone are kinda my thing right this moment.

Soon to be salsa!

I couldn't resist how pretty this looked in my red colander after I washed them up.  All shiny and so full of color!

Jalapeno Crescent Poppers 

Found these on Pinterest a few weeks ago and pinned them to my food board, had to try them!  So good, I made them pretty spicy adding more then the called for jalapenos, but I like spicy and so did everyone else at my Sister's.  I also made BBQ Chicken Wings at my Daughter's request and a 7 layer bean dip.  My Sister made Corn Salsa, Guacamole and Sliders.  Plus we had the assorted cheese/salami/cracker tray and chips & dips.  Even the game was exciting this year.  I managed to crochet through most of the game working on Steven's Bender hat (haven't taken pictures of it since it's just a plain gray beanie right now.)  

Kid enjoyed the game ^.^

I finished off a star blanket yesterday that I stumbled upon while looking for some green yarn.  Decided Kid needed a new blanket, that's it in the picture that he's laying on.  The blanket had been sitting incomplete for quite awhile now and since I had completed the last of the navy blue round, all I needed to was snip and sew in the loose bits and fortunately I had done the sewing in of ends as I changed colors so it took 5 minutes and Kid had a new blanket.

Almost time to go home for the day so I better get things locked up!  

Listening to:  Seven Days of Lonely by I Nine

Happy Friday!!

Excellent that it's Friday.
I have things to do and really nothing like the weekend to get them done!
I am nearing completion on the Black & White Striped hat for Katlyn.  So that will be off the hook either tonight or tomorrow and just need to get a flower made for it.

24 rows total on this with 4 bands of each color stripe.

So yeah, that's my wonderful fun filled post for today, pretty exciting stuff right!  I have been cranky lately, probably that's just from missing my boys.  I need to take a trip, though Christopher is planning to come down and bring Brooke for a visit right after Valentine's so there's that to look forward too, I always love to play with Brooke and am gathering crafty ideas to keep her busy and get new art from her....wicked Grandma I am :)

Happy Friday!!

Listening to: Awake by Disturbed

Bright and Cheery

According to Puxatawney Phil we will have 6 more weeks of Winter.  Living in Southern California I am wondering where Winter is in the first place!  It's a bright, sunshiny day here in the San Fernando Valley with the temperature at 72 degrees right now, so if this is Winter now I wonder what the next 6 weeks have in store for us!

Now for this evening the DVD I ordered came in the mail today

One Piece Collection 4

We watch a lot of anime lately.  My Daughter loves it and has gotten me watching all these shows and quizzes me on the names of characters!  Seriously hard too, because they are not names like Harry or Ron, they are names like Kyoya & Tohru and I seem to have this hard time remembering them properly and my Daughter finds it amusing.
On the bright and cheery my sister brought these in for me today

Seriously, my love for polka dots is crazy :)  And they're red to boot!  Happy me, I am taking them home and fishing out the perfect vase for them to sit so pretty on my kitchen counter!
I have no picture of crochet, but I have managed 3 rows today on Katlyn's black & white beanie all while she was doing the driving, first to school and then after school.  So soon, very soon it shall be done and I can get the flower on.  I am in a swap this month and my partner loves project bags, so while I was going to do a heart garland this being February and all, but now I may just whip up another project bag!
Nearly the end of the day for me, so I better clear off my desk.

Listening to: Winner Takes All by Sammy Hagar

Weekend Update

Ok here’s a late weekend wrap up, late only because it’s Tuesday and not Monday.  I start my weekend well enough equipped with a list of to do’s....BUT (see how big that just got!) I never seem to get them completed, oh I get the regular things done, like laundry, but I never really get much more done.  This weekend I had a list, I stuck with it and got 95% complete by Monday night! So my weekend extended a bit I suppose, though I did work Monday, but by golly I was getting that bloody list checked off last night!  The most time consuming thing on the list was my hair.  I do my own coloring and it was crazy overdue!  Roots were BAD, my pink was faded and I needed to do some bleaching because I had not done it the last few times and my hair grows fairly fast.  Ok, get home last night and immediately change into clothes for hair dying, have to of course start with the bleaching of the 2 inch roots underneath everything, so that the pink will be all there at the roots as well.  Bleach on, get the trash down, get the recycling down, Katlyn makes dinner for us (how nice for me!) Throw a load of laundry in while dinner is cooking, play with the puppy and check out the newest hat I am working on. (The black & white stripes for Katlyn) After dinner, I’m on to the next step in the hair coloring process, now I know that I don’t have quite enough of my favorite pink that I use and the place that I used to get it has gone out of business and the other beauty supplies don’t carry it!  Ugh, it’s fine I have some leftover HOT neon pink from Katlyn’s experiment, I can mix them together.  I mix and decide since the hot pink one is so much pinker then the one I use normally I pull out the jar of purple I have from another Katlyn leftover (she changes her colors whereas I stick with pink) figuring I could put a dab of purple in and darken the pink a bit.................HAHAHAHAHA........no!  Does not work that way, the tiny bit of purple added makes it purple, crap!!!  I show Katlyn and she insists that it’s fine and pink!  Ok I put it on, still looks pretty purple to me, but she still believes it will be pink.  I get that up and processing and then complete the black step and hurry up and wait for it all to process!  Shower and hey guess what, that purple is flippin’ purple!!!! Damn it!  Now I have purple hair in spots because of the bleaching and dark purpley/pink for the rest and of course the rest of my head that is black is itching liking crazy as it does for about a week after dying. *sigh* I have fairy hair, I just need wings!!  This is what happens when I put off my list!  I will be going to the beauty supply this weekend and hoping that they have a product that works the way Punky Colour does or I will have to order it online and live with purple fairy hair for a couple of weeks!
Ok enough whining I shall post pictures from the weekend now :)

Reading and Crocheting Saturday morning.

Wanted cupcakes and decided I needed to take picture of the process

It's so red

Just playing

All baked, too bad they don't stay as red as the batter

The start of dinner

Sponge Bob mac & cheese (my Daughter had to have it)

Notice no pictures of the hair dying, I'm clever like that!  I will see if I can get a shot of the purpley mess I've made :)
That's it, I'm wrapping up for now, I am working on the hat for Katlyn, it is simple black & white wide stripes and will have a flower attached when she picks the color that she wants, though I might just make a few different ones and put pins on the backs so she can change the flowers as she chooses.  Rereading Harry Potter from the beginning, we watched the movies so many times that I thought it was time to read the books again from the beginning, I was rereading the Deathly Hallows but I changed my mind and am back at the beginning.

Listening to:  King Nothing by Metallica

Mindless hookin'

Just what I need to do and maybe get me out of a rut.  Though honestly I'm not in that much of a crochet rut because I have huge amounts of ideas running in my head at pretty much any given moment! Ongoing projects,  Katlyn wants a striped beanie with a flower...ok, Steven's Bender beanie...coming along, Samantha's blanket...coming along slowly.
Then there are the ideas!!  Oh so many of them, first off it never helps that I spend too much time on pinterest, because the fabulous things I see and pin end up in my head as well!  I have a green blanket I am designing in my mind for my Niece Danielle, a rainbow beanie I want to make, and hooded clock that I want to make but haven’t found just the right pattern yet, a gorgeous purse, some heart garland...just endless things and really I never get anything started.  I second guess everything, every color and end up not doing anything, wandering.....ok well on to something simple and mindless and a great stash eater! I found this on pinterest (of course)

http://teawagontales.blogspot.com/2012/01/bit-of-kitsch.html

I love that's it's simple granny squares and yet lots of colors!  Maybe if I start a granny blanket I will get some much needed anchoring!  I suppose it can't hurt to try anyway!  

I am doing some housecleaning around my blog as well, getting rid of outdated links and moving things around a bit.  I am going to have to design a new header picture as well, since I can't seem to get the one I have to fit across the entire top, hmmmm.  I have some more changes coming too, just getting them worked out!

Listening to: I Said the Wrong Thing to the Right Girl by Keel

Weekend things

Did some yarn dying this weekend.  I had an idea and it worked out almost the way I wanted.  I say almost, because it is kool-aid and it's not quite as dark as I like.  I am going to have to get some acid dyes to get the effect that I really want.  Anyway I do like how this came out regardless.  I striped the kool-aid when I had it in the crock pot (which I just had the picture up and have mistakenly deleted and can't get it back!!!) and then when that was done cooking in I "flipped" the yarn over and sprinkled in patches the same colors.  The colors all bleed down throughout as is cooks along, but there are usually still some bits of white mixed in and on the bottom, so the "flipping" (seriously using that term loosely, because one cannot possibly "flip" wet yarn!)  So this is Lemon-Lime (green), Blue Raspberry & Berry Blue (blue) and a mix of Pine-Pineapple & Lemonade (orangey/yellow).  the yarn I used was from my swap partner,  Riverstone Worsted by Louet, very nice yarn for dying.

All done and ready for drying

Another view

A crazy messy

Ok the red mess above is an experiment gone wrong.  Red kool-aid in any form (strawberry, black cherry, fruit punch, etc) is very strong, you would think I would remember from when my kids were little...red kool-aid never comes out of the carpets!  Anyway, the yarn soaks the red up super fast and it really just takes over, anyway the above was done the same as the green & blue combo only with Berry Blue & Strawberry  and then when it was flip over time I realized that the red was not going to play nice at all and the blue has turned to purple...sigh.  Ok then I added Black Cherry in spots and waaalaaaa...that's the result.  It's not that bad right?  I am thinking fingerless gloves for it. I used Wool of the Andes for this messy, which I have a few more hanks of still.  So all in all that was my weekend project.  I did manage to get some cleaning of the house in and took the puppy for his first shots and worked on Steven's hat.  I really need to just buckle down on the hat and get it done and move on to the next item!

I think I need to buckle down in everything I do, work, household things and crochet.  I am wandering right now and that's not always a good thing.  

Listening to: Ladies Love Country Boys by Trace Adkins

Yarn Diet & Destashing!

Well I decided last week while driving to work (all my ideas spring up in traffic!) that I really need to do something about my yarn stash!  I have been accumulating yarn for so many years that I just don’t remember!  I have donated some in the past, but it never really makes much of a dent in the reduction process.  I tried using up a lot with my last ripple, and while I did use loads of it, it still never quite gets the bins emptied!  I have 8 bins stuffed full and baskets and vases and jars, all around the house.  Heck I even have 2 hanks hanging as wall art in my living room on a pretty hook (must take a picture!)  So I decided (remember back at the start of this paragraph?) to go through it, and that’s what I did last Saturday.  Now the yarn that I have in 98% acrylic, you know all those Red Heart skeins that are forever on sale...I have my bins organized in color groups, variegateds & “fancy” yarns.  By fancy I mean any yarn that is not Red Heart or the equivalent, so Fun Fur or Suede or such.  So I went through each bin one at a time and pulled out everything I would not use (reality check!) anyway I managed quite well indeed on getting the numbers down!  I have 3 bags stuffed and ready for donation drop off tomorrow and organized much better.  I now have a bin for Homespun, for variegated, groups of colors,  the fancy ones and WIP's.   I got rid of old magazines and pattern books I will never use as well.  Made lots of space and this weekend I am going to match up yarns with patterns so that things will have a purpose.

These bins BTW 

I also decided that instead of buying yarn for no good reason (HAHAHA, seriously there is always a good reason!) Ok, without using some up first, I will not be purchasing any random yarns.  I get yarn monthly from a swap I am in on Ravelry so I am not really in a yarn deprived state and since I have to buy yarn for my swap partner, I still get to acquire new yarn, it just doesn’t get to be for me!  My Daughter is very proud of me!

Ok on another note, please someone explain to me why it is every. single. time. I try to write a paragraph someone feels the need to talk to me!!

That's it, I'm off to complete some work at this place where they pay me!

Listening to: Sound of Madness by Shinedown