dang it

I also forgot to mention something very important. The River Cities Fiber Guild was Monday night. And I got to (thanks to Grace) spin on my first wheel. So yeah, my want for my own spinning wheel is now like quadrupled. Now the nice ones are like minimum $400 dollars. But there is a company that makes them out of PVC pipes for about$150-$200. For now I will stick to my spindle. They are having a retreat on April 4th and 5th and hopefully people will bring extra wheels (because some of these ladies have 2 or more) for me to play with.

I have returned...

from the conference mostly in one piece. My feet still hurt a bit from walking too much. And I fell like I need a week of good sleep to catch back up. There were many days I would get to the conference hotel (from the one I was staying at) between 7 and 8 AM and not get back to my hotel until 10 or 11 PM. But the couple of days I got to stay at my in-laws before the conference was lovely. I drooled over Tracey's sewing machine and serger. The sewing machine has a touch screen interface for goodness' sake. Note to self: I need to get out mine to sew up my swap partners stuff. And then Tracey said her next big purchase will be a felting machine. At that point my brain melted. Instead of sitting there with a hand held puncher, this thing works like a sewing maching but instead of a sewing needle it has 5 felting needles. I will definitely be planning a long visit after that is aquired, maybe a month or so :) .
Tracey used her lovely sewing machine (or maybe her old one, these bags apparently gave her fits) to make me a little bag. I promptly decided it was the perfect sock project bag. No more losing DPNs in the knitting bag for me.







And why would I need a sock project bag? Because I am hooked. I finished my first (We shall no longer talk about the other one I tried to make. We will consider it to be some sort of cozy so as not to taint the good name of socks everywhere) sock. Using Magic Stripes Yarn from Lion Brand. I am using the pattern on the ball band, which I just discovered you can get on the lion brand pattern website, and also just discovered that the yarn is discontinued. That would explain why I got it for $1. But it is lovely and fits so well. I am having no problem with SSS (Second Sock Syndrome). In fact, it is already cast on. My only problem comes with resisting the urge to cast on another pair of socks. The only thing preventing me is that I don't have size 2 DPN's. Oh and they will be lovely socks.


An elephant I crocheted for Ashley















BECCA, DO NOT CLICK here, here or here. You will ruin your birthday present. But it turned out so well I had to share. I got the pattern here...sort of...I did a lot of changes. But I got the basic premise from this pattern.

Artist Trading Cards

Hooray. All of the Artist Trading cards have been received through the Harry Potter Crafts Yahoo Group swap so I can post the pictures of the ones I did. I need to gather all the ones I got and take pictures. They were all very cool.

Mine were made using sheets of felt and my needle felter. They each had a back that opened so you could see a small card I had stuck in there. Since they were Valentines, they each had a corny message in them.
Broom: You've Clean Swept Me Off My Feet (cause in HP there is a model of broom called a Cleansweep)
Snitch: You've Caught My Heart Just Like a Snitch
Potion Bottle: Don't Make Me Use the Amortentia, Be My Valentine (I think it was something like that)
Cauldron: something about bubbling over, I don't remember
Wand: You've Cast A Spell On Me.

Ta dah

Graffiti I can get behind

Knitting Graffiti in Charleston, WV. How fun? The people in Huntington would probably hunt me down and burn me at the stake if I did something like this. The fountain on campus would look pretty cool with some sort of knitted cozy. Some of this stuff can't be easily removed. But a scarf. How can you object to a scarf? You unwrap it and it comes off. If we could convince all the artists who use spray paint to switch to knitting and then after a certain amount of time send the items to a charity. Who would lose in that situation?

Going out of town for the week

So I thought I would post some stuff before I go missing for a week. I should be back next Saturday. I am going to the American Academy of Forensic Science conference in Washington D.C. I am leaving tomorrow and will be spending the weekend with my In-Laws and finally giving them their Christmas presents. It should be a fun week. But I'll miss my hubby. We had a good St. Valentine's Day. I took half the day off work (to avoid the crowds) and we still ended up waiting for 1/2 an hour at Red Lobster. But it was ok, because Spiderwick Cronicles didn't start until 4:40 and we had lots of time to kill. Insert some hilarity about neither of us carrying a time piece and then me finding my watch, but it not being adjusted for daylight savings and then me not actually being able to tell time on a watch with no numbers (there is a reason I don't wear it).

So I will leave you with some cute kitty sleepy time. I missed the picture of her with her leg over the skein of yarn that is the same size she is. She probably would have gotten friendlier with it, but it is still wrapped in plastic for this exact reason. For use in baby donation stuff. Cat fur = not good idea. The hat is mine, so I don't care. The squares (see below) are to be sent as the "Bring Back Knitty Gritty" squares. So I washed them. The purble and blue granny square, well, it is now hers. She has napped all over it and I don't know what else to do with it so anything I've made that she can't lay on has gone under it to protect it from kitty lovin'. Becca, your stuff gets special plastic bag protection.

Speaking of said squares. I made up some squares(rectangles) to send in support of Knitty Gritty.

As I said I'll be gone for the week, but I don't want to leave you all hanging on some of my projects. So I am tucking the pictures behind a link with instructions on who shouldn't use them.

First, Tracey, No Peeking! You'll see this tomorrow.

And my Amigurumi Swap partner shouldn't click on this link, or this one. It will be sent out today (hopefully)

See you all in a week.

Hi my name is Nadine...

and I am a giant freaking nerd. I was curious about who comes to my blog. I know some people who read it, but I am getting some comments from people I don't know. I was curious to see how people were finding me. Probably some through Ravelry, my Yahoo groups. Mostly I just wanted to see how many people read my blog.

So I was reading blogs and some of them had counters, maps, fancy things that told them were everyone was from. I couldn't decide. Well, today at work I checked on our advertising we do using Google Adwords. The answer knocked me in the head. There was a big ad for Google Analytics. I got it hooked up and it tells me how many people come to my site, how often, do they come back, what page they are referred from. No names, but that isn't really important, it does tell me where they are from location wise. It showed that on the 8th, I doubled my readership. What the hell did I do on the 8th? I've spent like 1/2 an hour going over all of these statistics, playing with settings, having fun reading pages and pages of charts and numbers. I was super impressed by the fabulous pie chart telling me that 77 percent of my visitors are new and 23 percent are returning viewers. A pie chart...excited...statistics?

I am amused by my nerdiness. But more than anything, I am wondering what I did on the 8th.

Ah Ha!!! I figured it out. I posted a comment on the Yarn Harlot's blog. ...OMG!!! Did the Yarn Harlot visit my blog!!!

I finished just in time to start next year's

The last Christmas present is completed. Shush! I know it is February! But I got it done in time to take it to them next weekend. Must dig out wrapping paper. Well this is meant to be a short post. Will be taking pictures and posting a bit more sometime this week. Finished some stuff, started some stuff, in all a productive weekend.


p.s. if you want something "crafted" for Christmas this year, tell me now. I should have time if I start now.