Pictures

Not sure if the pictures really convey what I am seeing. But the fact that my mom thought my legs looked large in them as well lead me to believe that I'm not too crazy. Who knows. I think they look pretty hot scrunched up, so I am going to make them a bit longer....

Giant freak legs?

I have almost one leg warmer done. I really think they look nice...except for this one part where I somehow wound up with an extra stitch and now there is a small hole there that probably only I can see but it bothers me. So I tried them on this morning and for some reason they make my legs look HUGE. I mean like crazy work out woman huge. I don't understand it. My legs are pretty normal looking without the leg warmers, and I don't think they are very thick...but when I put them on it looks like I'm she hulk. Crazy. I will post some pictures later.

Projects galore

My main crafting problem is that I love to start projects. Start being the important word there. Right now, just in my room, I have my leg warmers (which is getting to be about a foot long...one halfway done, one and a half to go!), a cross-stitch sampler, two unfinished quilts, and the elephant. And this is only in my room. There are a few more unfinished quilts in my storage unit (living with the in-laws right now...looking to buy a house...but until then we live in a small room) but seriously, I am a bit out of control. I know there is also one mitten waiting for a partner in the storage unit and a half finished knitted purse. I have all of these ideas and I love dreaming of new projects and buying things for new projects. I just don't always like how much TIME it takes to complete some projects. I do plan ahead a bit...for example, the cross stitch sampler is for a baby room. And I don't plan on having a baby anytime this year. :) So my thinking was if I started it now maybe it would be done by the time I had a kid...or my last kid at least! HA!

Exciting

Tomorrow is one of my favorite days of the year....quilt store sale day. Quilt Tree (my favorite quilt store, if you live in AK check it out www.quiltree.com) has a sale four days a year to kick off that quarters classes. I usually get there before they open and wait in line with the hard core quilters hoping the classes we want to sign up for aren't already full. I already signed up for the class that I was DYING to take, but decided to wait for the other classes to get 20% off. I love quilt store sale day.

Learning to read

I don't knit that often. And when I do, it is often something simple without a pattern, such as a scarf. I was getting really excited because I have finished about half of a leg warmer and I started getting worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish both of them. So then I decided to look back at the pattern and make sure I had enough yarn. Turns out I bought plenty of yarn but was using the wrong size needles. I was using size 11 (8.0 mm) needles and I was supposed to be using size 8 (5.0 mm) needles. WHOOPS! So now I am going to have to take all of that out and start over. Dang.

Fashionista?

As I mentioned before, I am knitting leg warmers. I have gotten some progress on them, the first one is about 5 inches long. Pretty decent progress for me. As I also mentioned, I am going to bring leg warmers back. Much like Justin Timberlake tried to bring sexy back, but I will at least look pretty hot doing it! :)

The other hot new thing in fashion right now is to wear leggings with skirts. So the other day I decided to buy some capri leggings with lace on the bottom and then yesterday I bought a short denim skirt to wear with them. And let me tell you...HOT. They are my new favorite going out clothes. Pretty exciting since I am never really in style anyway. :)

Knitting book

Because I enjoyed my birthday present so much, I decided to check out the book Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Leah has that one as well, and she has made quite a few projects out of it that have turned out awesome. So I headed to the bookstore last night and was able to score a used copy (Title Wave Books, best bookstore EVER! www.wavebooks.com) for a grand total of $3.50 after using my credit. You can't really beat that. So after work today I went and bought some yarn to make some leg warmers out of the book. That is right, I am bringing leg warmers back. I've got it all planned...see I was already planning on learning to play tennis this summer (Random side story: On the way to work this morning there was a tennis racket in the middle of the road...pretty sure it is my destiny and I may be the next Serena Willams.) and now I can wear leg warmers on the way to the court (because I will be wearing a tennis skirt) and I will look totally bad ass. I'm pretty pumped about it. I will post my progress as it happens. I thought I had the right sized needles, but it turns out I don't, so I will have to get those tomorrow.

Operation: Elephant has also found new life. While on the phone with Leah I read the directions out loud and realized where I may have gone wrong. So I have a new idea, and I think I will try that out later in the week. I'm excited that I may have it figured out...

Operation: Elephant

Failed until further notice. I spent quite a while last night trying to figure out this elephant. I was very upset when I wasn't able to finish it and it put me into a funk. I didn't understand the second step in the "Assemble Body" section. I followed the directions, but couldn't figure out which two places it wanted me to sew together, and without a picture I was left clueless. So I tried one way that I thought would work and when that failed I pouted for a while. I was also watching "Good Luck Chuck" which didn't really help my mood. I don't know what it is about Dane Cook, but he doesn't pick the best movies to make. He is a riot when doing stand up, and actually a decent actor (Dan in Real Life) but with a "comedy" movie he flops. ANYWAY. While watching this movie I came up with another idea of how to make the elephant work and tried that. After that attempt failed I gave up. I was done. After having ripped the fabric apart three different times it wasn't looking too good. And I was out of ideas. I was going to call my friend Leah, but I was worried she might be having her baby and didn't want to bother her if that was the case. So if anyone has made this elephant toy and has a clue on what might help me that would be great. Until then, the elephant sits flat on the floor. So sad.

Fabric, as promised

Here is the picture of the fabric that I am going to make the elephant toy out of. The pictures of the elephant came out of the book pictured, and are both copyrighted by the publishing company. The design is by Hillary Lang, and her website is www.weewonderfuls.com Check it out, it is pretty neat. The book can be purchased at barnes and noble, possibly your local quilt store (if yours is as awesome as mine, it will order any book for you without the obligation to buy), and of course, Amazon.com. It is a great book. The large spotted fabric is going to be the body and the small dots the inside of the ears...see what I mean about causing ADD? :) I'm going to try and cut out the fabric here in a min, and possibly get started on it tonight.

More Birthday Gifts

So I went by my friend Leah's house on Friday to hang out and get my birthday present that she has been trying to give me for a week now. I was pretty excited to get it because Leah is pretty creative and always gives awesome presents. Anyway, she made me a cute totebag and put a book called "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts" inside. EXCITING! She has had the book for a while and I looked through it once and thought it had a lot of neat ideas, but never got around to actually buying it. I was looking through the book and decided to try and make my favorite thing out of it, a small elephant toy. I went to JoAnns and bought all of the supplies (I figured I would try it with cheap fabric before I used my expensive quilt fabric on something that might be a disaster) and cut out the templates. That was about 4 days ago now. I haven't moved forward anymore. I'm lazy. I really want to make the elephant, but I hate cutting out fabric. Especially from templates. It is a pain. So I will keep you updated on Operation: Elephant. Who knows when it will be done. I will post pictures of the fabric when I get around to it. It is pretty crazy. It might give a baby ADD.