Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, I don't have a whole lot going on so I thought I would just post some pictures of the cards I've been making lately! Nothing too exciting, but their pretty (at least I think so).
Isn't it funny how you sort of ignore a hobby when you have tons of time to work on it and the minute you think you'll no longer have copious free time you suddenly throw yourself into your hobby? Maybe I'm the only person who does that. I hadn't really spent much time playing around with my stamps and making cards until I started sending out my resumes and got a job interview.
Then, suddenly, all I wanted to do was sit around and make my cards. Silly really! But here are a few that I really like.
Here's one for Valentine's Day...not that we really celebrate this hallmark holiday in our house. But, maybe I'll make a card for my DH...or...just give him one I've already made. I guess I should do something with these cards. Like, uh, maybe send notes to my family and friends...but no. I make them and then they just sit on my craft table. I have a box full of ever increasing handmade cards that I suppose some day I will actually give to other people. Well, we can hope can't we? At least I have fun making them! I do have some people in mind for some of these cards. Like my little purple cat card here. It's got my sister's name written all over (not literally). I just have to get around to writing a little message and getting it in the mail -good luck on that. I've gotten into decorating the envelopes to go with
cards. I think it's sort of cute and clever. I could see how it could get a little out of hand and a little too much, but a few small stamps on the envelope isn't too bad. You have to be careful not to be too "twee" - a British English word I learned from a Brit in my ski class. After quite a bit of confusion I learned "twee" means overly matchy-matchy. Like that person wearing a hot pink and lime green stripped shirt with lime green hoop earrings, a hot pink scrunchy, and shoes that are hot pink and lime green. You know what I'm talking about, right? So, hope you enjoyed looking at a few of my cards. You're lucky I only posted pictures of four of them since I have an over flowing box and I could have posted pictures of ALL of them!!!

Maybe I'll have something more interesting to blog about later. Hey, at least you can look forward to a post about skiing in Italy. DH and I are signing up to join this weekend's CERN ski club trip to Tuile resort in Italy. Should be fun, I hear it has really great skiing there. so, we'll see.

p.s. you can click on any of the pictures if you want/need a bigger, clearer view.

Some new projects

The Sweater


Well, I've mainly been working on some new projects around the house, so I thought I'd share them with you all. Breathe a sigh of relief, most of this post will be pictures. I don't think I have too much to say about my ongoing projects past a brief description of what they are...then again, once I get started you never know what I might come up with to say!
Let's get started. First off, my knitting projects: I started my very first sweater a few months ago and am finally getting back to working on it every now and again. It's about time I did some work on this project. I bought this yarn - a tweed wool - while I was in Ireland last September. It was in Donegal, which is known for their wool and tweeds. I love this yarn so much and I wanted to find something special to do with it. It took me a long time to fabricate a makeshift measuring tool, figure out how much yarn I actually had to work with then wind all that yarn into center-pull balls. Once I discovered I had enough for a sweater I had to find a pattern. A big thanks goes out to Mrs. Tire (aka Bereni) who helped me find a pattern and gave me the belief that I actually could succeed in knitting a sweater. Unfortunately, since moving away from Williamsburg I no longer have her to lean on and fix my knitting mistakes. I have a feeling its going to be more difficult going alone on this sweater, but I shall forbear...at least I hope I will. We shall see, we shall see. For those interested I am attempting to knit a Raglan sweater ( I got the pattern from some book of Mrs. Tire's but I can't remember the name). I am still trying to decide if I will make it a v-neck sweater or a crew-neck. it's not the easiest pattern for a semi-beginner, like myself, to follow because it's a sort of build your own as you go. Should be a good learning experience if nothing else. Plus, the good thing about knitting is if you don't like it you can just frog it (rip it apart -frog, rip it, rip it - get it? don't worry I didn't get what the heck people were talking about the first time I heard it either).

On to knitting project number 2: the scarf. This is something I can definitely do. it's super easy and it was started by someone else! My friend Christine discovered that lugging around size 5 straight knitting needles and yarn while attempting to backpack across Europe was not an ideal situation. Thus, she left her needles and partially knitted scarf with me. Perhaps I should mail them to her in California, but I have a feeling between planning her wedding and dealing with her first year of film school, on top of settling into a new apartment she probably doesn't have loads of free time for knitting. She started her scarf out with just knitting plain and simple. I decided to spice it up a bit and do that basket-weave sort of pattern I've seen so many places. It's simple in itself, you knit 5, purl 5 over and over to the end and you do this for 5 rows, then you switch and purl 5, knit 5 for 5 rows. You get these fun little squares. I attempted to take a close up picture of this pattern, but the picture isn't very good - sorry.
Color is utter crap, but you can kinda see the pattern!

Last of the knitting is a finished project: My Christmas stocking. I finally finished it. Much to Josh's disappointment mine is bigger than his. Men are always concerned about size! hee, hee.
I didn't mean to make mine bigger, I was attempting to knit it the same size, I just have idiotic moments when I forget that if I 'm using
thicker yarn I don't need to cast on as many stitches to get the same size. Oh well. Actually, I think my stocking looks a little ridiculous, short and fat - kinda like Ally!

And finally, a non-knitting project. Josh suggested the clever idea of recovering our couches. I was a bit reluctant even though I agree the nasty green couch could do with a makeover. It's kinda falling apart and most of it is no longer nice faux suede material, it's pilling faux suede material! My objections were: 1) we have yet to find a fabric store
2) we don't have a sewing machine 3) I forget, but I'm sure it was a good one. Naturally, we just happen to be at Ikea and what do we find? Fabric at a decent price. We decided then and there to get some and see what we could do to spiff up our old, worn-out couch (which is pretty new to us since we just bought it used in July!). So, we selected some red fabric and after having measured, cut and washed it, I spent some time today hand-sewing some pieces together. This is going to be one long and bumpy ride! We'll see what the final product looks like and hey, if it doesn't work oh well. I'll have had something that occupied my time and we'll be out maybe $30, so that's not too bad. We couldn't have bought a new couch for that, even another used one! So, all-in-all I think it'll be ok. Yeah, you can all point out this post to me in a few days when I start ranting and raving about how my beloved husband convinced me to take on this cockamamie project! Till then, adieu....
The Fabric












The Couch

Ha, ha, ha it's rather funny to me that we are covering our green couch in red fabric - how Christmasy of us!!!!!