Afghan is imminent!

So, with Dave and Julie's munchkin #2 on the way (due the first week of October!) I've been working like a madwoman to get this afghan done. It's been a chore the whole way because even though everyone who's seen it has loved it, I've never really been a huge fan of the pattern. I finally got far enough that I felt it was a good size and now I've been working on the border for a couple of days.

It looks good. I'm happy with the results. I'm just not that into making zillions of shells and nothing but, ya know? Once I have it finished I"ll post a couple of good pics and maybe if I ask nice I can get a pic of munchkin #1 with her afghan.

Can't take the heat!

I'm dying for the weather to take a turn towards fall! I can't wait to take the nephew apple picking again, I think this year he'll be able to help make applesauce! I love jack o'lanterns and colorful leaves and temperatures in my kitchen that allow for pots to bubble away without making the whole downstairs hot and gross!

Most of all, I look forward to actually being able to sit under an afghan or a quilt to work on it! I have a baby afghan to finish for Dave and Julie and the baby is coming up fast! She's due the beginning of October and I have almost half the afghan to finish, but without air conditioning in most of the house, I couldn't even consider working on it.

I have a quilt top that needs to be made into a quilt and I have a huge set of Dresden Plates that need to be made into a quilt top and then finished off. I have a few sewing projects I'd like to do for the nephew, too!

More than anything, I'm tired of making fabric yo-yo's because it's too hot to work on anything else. Not that I dislike making yo-yo's, I just like to have a choice.

I do love summer because of my garden, but I get very little done with yarn or any larger projects.

Bumming around the house.

So, apparently, we were exposed to MRSA. If you don't already know, MRSA is an incredibly antibiotic-resistant variety of Staph.

So far, neither of us seems to be infected, but we're still waiting to hear about the lab work to see if we're carrying it, and potentially contagious in spite of not actually getting sick. We spent the weekend in more or less of a quarantine - we were allowed out of the house, but no hugging anybody, and no close contact with small children, elderly, diabetics, pregnant women, or people with compromised immune systems.

The plus side is, we got a lot of cleaning and laundry done, and I finished my quilt top!

My mom got some bird print fabric squares at a yard sale for like 10 cents for the bundle. I decided to edge them in dusty aqua and then a brown print to frame them out a little before assembling them into a quilt.

I worked on the borders of the squares on and off most of the week, and on Saturday I took advantage of being stuck at home and finished them up and started assembling them into the quilt top.

I couldn't seem to get a good pic in the studio.

The lighting was all wrong every time. However, I've discovered that from the right angle, my backyard takes a beautiful picture. Here's the finished top, hanging from the fence, just above my herb garden!

I'm going to wait until the weather heads for cooler temps before I iron this and start actually assembling the quilt.

Busy Bee.

Been working on 2 afghans on and off as well as a cross stitch and brainstorming another pattern for the "Fishin' Buddies" booklet. I'd like to say I have a good reason for not posting more regularly, but let's be honest with ourselves here.

I have been busy, work, family stuff, the garden, started bike commuting, still getting the house in order and so on, but if I can find the time to play Wheel of Fortune on Facebook, I can make time for the blog.

Liam is done with school now, so work should be starting back up at Tilghman Street, which means more work on Crochet Pages. The site for Tilghman Street needs to be much more interactive than Crochet Pages ever has and hopefully some of what I learn in the process of making that happen will transfer over to give you all the best look and feel we've ever had.

You all know that crochet is one of my favorite things, and while I may walk away from time to time to get other stuff taken care of, in the end I'm always back to my art. Especially the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart. I come from a long line of needlework types and I'm not about to let that drop off in favor of silly things like having a social life or planting a garden. ;-)

Checking in with you all.

I haven't forgotten about you all, I just haven't been designing much. The priority at our house has been getting healthy. Portion control, smarter snack choices, and for me, no more dairy. My mom and our close friends are being hard-core supportive, which is awesome.

The no dairy thing has been tough, because I love cheese and ice cream and cheesecake and did I mention cheese. Or ice cream. But with some help from vegan/vegetarian friends, I'm adjusting.

It's going pretty well. With a little luck I will start having a little more time for designing once new eating and grocery shopping requirements become the routine.

Thanks for bearing with me!

So which is it?

It started the other night. Last Wednesday actually. You've probably heard about it. There was a huge Natural Gas explosion here in Allentown. A 3 block walk from my house. Almost.

We're fine, no damage to our house or anything, but let me tell you, the shockwave from an explosion can leave a lasting impression. Knowing that 5 people died in the resulting fire kinda sticks with you too.

My heart goes out to all of the families affected, this is a true tragedy. And made worse by the fact that our Natural Gas infrastructure is a mess and at the rate they're currently fixing things, it'll be roughly the 2nd of Never when the upgrades are finally finished.

We sat and did some math. The necessary upgrades will cost $13 billion to complete. But I was curious, what does that much money look like? How do you get your head around that many zeros. I looked up the population of Allentown and at the most recent estimate it's roughly 111,000 people. Then we said, a Grande White Mocha is $5.50 give or take.

So:

$13 billion divided by 111,000 people, divided by $5.50 per White Mocha, equals approximately 21,000 coffees per person.

21,000 coffees per person divided by 365 days in a year, works out to 58 years and about 2 months.

In other words, the cost of repairing that Natural Gas infrastructure in our little city, is roughly equivalent to free coffee for the entire city for the next 6 decades.

WOW!

That's all very fascinating, but I'm not sleeping now. I've been up until like 2am for something like 7 nights in a row now. Granted Saturday and Sunday I had off and some of those nights I did close at work, but still.

The question is, is this just insomnia triggered by a rather frightening event (a friend of mine actually needs to have repairs done to her living room wall from the shockwave) or am I having some sort of existential crisis. Add in the fact that I have OCD and it's anybody's guess.

All I know, is right now Tylenol Simply Sleep is the only reason I'm getting anything close to enough sleep to keep going. Bleh.

I have a new baby! (sorta)

I am the proud owner of a brand new laptop!!!! We finally bit the bullet and bought a brand new Toshiba Satellite! This should help my productivity and upload schedule significantly, especially since I'm working on a new pattern book.

Also, I've had a couple of brainstorms for the Fishin' Buddies booklet. As soon as Open Office finishes downloading I'm going to get started working!

Good things are happening and I hope that you all will feel that it's been worth the wait.

My Mother-In-Law

I love my mother-in-law. She's a sweet grandmotherly type, who almost makes me feel guilty about not being the type of woman who could her son into kids he doesn't want. Almost. Her name is Dot. (I'm not kidding.)

She called us up the other day and asked if I wanted to take her arts and crafts supplies off her hands because she wasn't going to be doing anything with them anymore. Because it's no fun without Lois (the neighbor lady across the street who has also given up doing arts and crafts). Because she doesn't like to shop for supplies without Lois, who won't tag along because she'll be tempted to buy something that she won't use anyway because it's cute.

So the husband tells his adorable mother that I said yes, I''ll be down to take a look at what she has. I called her back later when I had my work schedule handy and told her when I'd be down. I get the in-laws house and I can't hear the pugs barking (Ollie and Ruby) and Dot is talking absolutely forever to answer the door.

Just when I've almost decided that "Something Terrible" has happened, she finally opens the door. Turns our she broke her foot. I can't hear the pugs because she let them out that morning and the porch steps are a giant pain in the ass with the huge orthotic boot she's wearing and she hasn't bothered to let them back in.

So I look around the living at the half dozen or so totes and decide that I'll just take it all. Then Dot points out that there's more totes down the hallway (which is about three more, plus a pile of grapevine wreaths). So at this point I'm thinking no big deal.

I asked Dot if she wanted me to go through the stuff at their house or bring it home and return what I don't want or what? She says that anything I don't take she's just going to throw out. I said, do you just want me to take everything, and if I can't use it, just find another home for it?

Dot says "Could you?!?! I mean I don't want you to be stuck with stuff you won't use. I don't want you to take it home and then tell everyone that your mother-in-law stuck you with an incredible pile of shit and that you don't want any of it and don't know what to do because you couldn't say no, but it's a bunch of useless shit and you don't want it."

I said confidently, "No, no problem, I can find homes for anything I won't use." Secretly wondering how I'm going to do this, but I've already volunteered to take it all.

Then Dot says "There's more in the spare bedroom."

"That's okay, I'll just have to make a bunch of trips, we'll have an excuse to visit."

Then she shows me the spare bedroom. Then she tells me there's more in the closet.

****

So at this point, we've made nearly a dozen 45 minute round trips to my in-laws, 4 of which it took to even make a dent in the stack of totes Dot had. I think we're about 2/3s of the way through getting it to our house.

I have no idea where I'm going to store all of it, or how I'm going to get rid of what I don't want/need. What I originally thought was 12 or so totes, has turned out to be more like 40. But I finally have a wreath for my front door and so does Lisa, and I have another to give to Jess & Mike and I have a heart-shaped wreath to hang between the sconces in my living room. I'm also a long way toward replacing all of the Christmas ornaments we couldn't keep after the fire, and I'll be able to get Jess & Mike a good start for their first Christmas in their own apartment.

I ended up spending $12 on specialty floral picking pliers (that was after 50% off) and I'm sliced open 4 of my fingers (I'm running out) with the stupid steel picks for the pliers. There's styrofoam fake berries all over the living room. My back, third floor room looks like a floral supply warehouse, and much to my husband's delight/dismay, I'm happier than a pig in shit and so is his mother!

That being said, anybody need any floral supplies??

The house is starting to look like a home!

So after a chaotic summer, things are finally (crosses fingers) starting to fall into place around my house. I've starting finding time to read again, and what I'm reading right now is Julie Powell's Julie and Julia. She blogs her cooking project, she's got an audience, she uses hilariously colorful language. And then I thought, "I have a blog, too!" Immediately followed by, "and it won't have an audience much longer if I don't start posting something!"

Everybody has that mailing list that they belong to, where after a while you just start deleting the emails without actually reading them because you feel guilty/are too lazy/don't want to hurt anyone's feelings/whatever, and never quite get around to unsubscribing. ...And I've had the horrifying realization that chaos like this past summer is precisely why I started this blog in the first place and OH MY GOD! What if I write the posts that everyone deletes without reading and HOLY CRAP! I should do something about that!

And as I write this I also have the realization that I should have refilled my OCD meds like a week ago and I haven't yet and that might have something to do with the panic and the unreal speed that my hands are flying across the keyboard and yet if it has stirred me to think about my blog and my audience again, I can't help but think it's a good thing. (Maybe I should get in touch with Julie Powell about motivating me???)

At any rate, the studio is not really coming together yet due to a hilarious story involving my mother in law and more floral supplies than I've ever seen outside of a craft store (which I will cover in another post, because it's too good to not share, but would completely derail what little cohesion this post is still holding on to.

Suffice it to say, I've got to completely rethink how I'm going to handle putting the studio together. On the plus side, the house is starting to look like people actually LIVE here as opposed to the look of migrants surviving in a construction site that it has had since May.

The kitchen only needs the phone jack fixed and the silverware drawer installed. The dining room just needs the blinds hung. The living room floor and front porch need sanding and refinishing, but that's all that's left. Then the touch up painting and decision about whether we're recarpeting the staircase.

All in all, I've actually be able to hang a wreath on the door and decorate the kitchen some and it's really starting to feel cozy and livable in here.


I'm making a commitment here to start posting on a regular basis again. I'm also making a commitment to make the husband get the wireless set up again, because I can't take the pained looks he gives me when I pry him away from RPG.net so that I can actually use my own computer.

Wish me luck! See ya sooN!

Studio: Reboot

So, no access to my art supplies is driving me crazy. That combined with the fact that I have things like Ink and Paint that can't remain in the basement much longer now that the weather is getting colder, has made us come to the decision that I really need to put my studio back together. What does that mean to you?

Well that means:

• new items in the store (which will hopefully move off of Etsy)
• updates to the website in a more timely fashion
• new patterns!
• a permanent move from tripod to Tilghman Street Studios (fewer, more targeted ads)
• possible addition of video to the how-to's instead of just pictures

I'm feeling pretty ambitious about all of this. I'm up in the middle of the night, wide awake from having badly overslept and evening nap, and my brain is going a mile a minute.

We'll need to the get the hubby's computer up and running to make up for the fact that I may be living on the laptop for a good portion of our vacation next week. We'll be getting our new washer and dryer before too much longer with also means that I can felt without having to run down 3 flights of stairs to the washing machine. (The hook-ups are in the basement right now and the studio is on the 3rd floor. The hook-ups are getting moved to the kitchen!)

Speaking of kitchen, I had one that usable, if not actually finished and I'm thinking about trying to custom dye some yarn. Maybe doing some tie-dyes and such.

That's it for now, I think I need to spend some serious time with my notepad and my sketch book. I'll keep posting as new things happen!

And cooking some more

At my mom's again, because we still don't have a kitchen. Work has been prolonged due to failing a building inspection.

On today's menu:

• Tarragon Chicken
• Baked Chicken stuffed with Fresh Mozzarella, Fresh Basil and Roasted Tomatoes
• Bulgar Salad with Roasted Anaheims, Fresh Heirloom Tomatoes and Fresh Lime Juice
• Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Cream Sauce and Feta Cheese. This will be served over Fresh Spinach
• Fried Chicken dredged in Whole Wheat Flour
• More Energy Bark
• Fried Red Bananas with Brown Sugar and Cinnamon
  

They're here!

So, it's been like 5 weeks since we thought things were finally getting back to normal and the cabinets finally were delivered today. At this point, they're telling us that now that we have the cabinets, everything should resolve pretty quickly from here.

I've been working on quite a few charity projects with what little yarn I have that isn't packed away and I hope to be posting those patterns to the website in the next few days. Also, I need to renew our webhosting and domain name.

My knee seems to be recovering, although very slowly, so maybe, just maybe, things can start to get back to the low level chaos we call normal around here.

Thoughts, Prayers, Vibes

Please keep our neighbors in your thoughts and prayers tonight. An arsonist struck our neighborhood early this morning. If you don't know, we live in row homes, so the whole thing was pretty scary for us, since it was the house next store to ours that burned.

We're fine, just temporarily displaced. Everybody next store got out, some with the help of the fire department some on their own. The house that burned was converted into 2 apartments. The family downstairs got out pretty safely, although their little guy was taken to the hospital just to make sure he was ok.

The upstairs family was not as lucky, the fire department had to force entry and all four of them were taken to the hospital. Their 5 year old daughter is in critical condition, but from what I've heard they think she'll be ok.

Please keep these to families in your thoughts, send vibes, add them to your prayer list, whatever it is that you do. Also, please think of the family on the other side who only closed on their house last week.

Studio Update (or Slacker!!!!!!!!!)

So, it's become pretty obvious that I work much better when I am actually working in my studio. The dining room table has become synonymous with screwing around on Facebook, while the studio remains a workspace.

That's not to say Facebook isn't great, I've hooked back up with a lot of old friends and I definitely have something to kill time when my insomnia is bad. Unfortunately, it's also been a great way for me to end up with no time left for anything important. Therefore, the official mission will be: more back into the studio, Slacker. Get something done for once.

Also, the cat was much happier when I was working in the studio. Anybody with a cat will understand why a happy cat is a good thing. If you don't own a cat, let me just say this: unhappy cats can be destructive, in all kinds of ways.

Since I brought the laptop back downstairs Crochet Pages has been badly neglected. My other Website, the parent site, Tilghman Street Studios has been completely neglected. Not good if I want to make these the source of my livelihood. Something's gotta give and it's not going to be my lifelong dream on becoming my own boss.

A day late, and a dollar short (2009 - Year in Review)

Ok, I'm a couple of days late, but here's your Year in Review.

1) The Cocker Spaniel is apparently the world's Meanest Dog. I know my mom's cocker spaniel, Armand, was a pain in the ass, but really? According to this study, yes.

2) That girl in Germany who auctioned off her virginity, is apparently a prostitute, or at least according to the government she is. What does this mean? It means her auction earnings are being taxed at 50%. Ouch.

3) Another wacky goings-on in Germany: it seems their patent office was not amused when someone tried to register a patent for a GPS enabled death chip. I don't even no what to say about this one.

4) Everybody loves a hero. Especially when it's a dog. Especially when it's a little dog. Or Three.

5) On the sad side of things, we had our first Twitter related death. Again, I'm not sure what to say about this one.

6) Another technology based wacky thing. A ring-tone that makes your boobs bigger. Granted some of us don't need this or wouldn't want it, but the science potential is huge.

7) I read this story and kept thinking about my grandmother having fits about little garter snakes inside the garden fence. I can't imagine her killing anything with her bare hands.

8) So, there's bacon, bacon salt, bacon chocolate and now Bacon Envelopes. Have we gone too far?

I think we're only gonna do 8 this year because my browser is acting up. I hope I made you think, or at least chuckle a bit. Good luck in 2010.

Little by Little

So, I've gotten a little bit of time to spend on the fixing of the title graphics. I've gotten through a pretty good portion of the site, but there's tons left yet.

On the plus side, it's given me a chance to realize that a lot of the older patterns have terrible pictures. Fuzzy, dim, you name it. The Chocolate Bunny looks like a blob, and some of the others aren't much better. To that end, I'm going to do the best I can to get a new digital camera (for those of you who don't remember, I got a really good, but used Nikon about a year ago - for free - and the battery pack promptly crapped out on me.) in the next couple weeks. I found one that looks like it will handle basic website photos and snap shots really well and it's only like $40.

Little by little, things are falling into place.

Next on the list is to get everything switched over to the new Project Wonderful-friendly layout. That will take some time, but once it's done, it'll look really good. Also, it will bring in a bit of money and hopefully get you all some useful links.

Once that's done, I'll have a pretty good idea of how to layout really sharp-looking, ad-friendly pages for Tilghman Street Studios. Which will make me very happy. I think that there will be things at Tilghman Street that you will like quite a bit.

Honestly, though, even if you don't find anything that you like, the Crochet Pages fans will be benefiting in several ways. I'll be in charge of the advertising, instead of Lycos. No more pop-up ads.

Liam and I will be handling the T-shirts - we'll be using a grassroots print-on-demand style production - which means that they'll be hand screen-printed.

Eventually, we will (hopefully) be handling the book printing also.

In the end, this will lead to a better, friendlier website, and better merchandise with lower shipping costs. And unless I'm way off - this should make everyone happier.

We're Moving!!

Crochet Pages is officially in the process of moving. I don't have things set up quite the way I'd like, but I'm happy enough with it to let it go. All of the old links still work for now, but the site is located at Tilghman Street Studios (http://www.tilghmanstreet.com/crochetpages) now.

Before much longer, I will be starting to pull the files from Tripod and replacing them with redirect scripts so that your old bookmarks will still work. The main site pages (Patterns, Links, etc) will remain up for somewhat longer than the others, but those too, will be changed over to redirect scripts eventually.

I want to make this as painless as possible for everyone, but by the end of September, I'd like to have everything except the main couple of pages stripped down to the redirects, and by the new year, the Homepage will be the only thing left on Tripod.

Also, Crochet Pages now has a brand spanking new email address: crochetpages@tilghmanstreet.com. Hooray!

This has been a long time coming and I'm really happy about it. I'm such a geek.

Tilghman Street Studios

It's official. I have finally registered for a domain name and hosting where I can control the ad content and placement. Age's Crochet Pages will be moving from Tripod and under the umbrella of Tilghman Street Studios.

Tilghman Street Studios is another project of mine and if I can figure out how to get if set up properly, Crochet Pages will be a subdomain of this project. As soon as I have the official URL, I'll be sure to post it.

It may be a bit before you see the pages at the new location, there's a lot about the new host that is completely different from what I'm used to working with. I'll keep you all posted.

Finally.

So, after what? Like a month of no new anything in the way of crochet, I've finally got started working on something. I've got a good portion of the next "Fishin' Buddies" pattern done, with some pretty solid ideas for at least one more.

I have managed to get a couple of more t-shirt designs done, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I've been seriously considering pulling my shirts from Printfection and hand screen printing them as people order them. It's would be a lot more work on my end, and possibly a pretty big up front investment, but at the same time - the biggest stumbling block that I've hit with Printfection is the fact that I have to purchase one of each shirt to see how the printing works out before I can offer them for sale and at the rate I design shirts sometimes that can get very pricey.

The biggest evidence of this is the fact that after all this time of talking about offering shirts, I have what, one design available. Best laid plans of mice and men, I guess.

I'll keep you posted. But be aware, my wrist is healed enough now that there will be some patterns coming.

Just in case

So, for those of you who aren't a fan on Facebook, which I suspect is most of you, I thought now that my hand is feeling well enough that I can type a bit better, I would post a better update.

About a week and a half ago, I promised myself "Finish the Kitchen (we're repainting) and then the website is a priority. New Shirt Designs, New Patterns, New Etsy Stuff." Then about 3 days after that, I woke up in a good deal of pain.

I figured that I had probably done something stupid in my sleep, like spent half the night sleeping on my arm. Over the course of the day, the pain didn't go away, and in fact flared up enough to make my eyes water a few times. So, I went to the Urgent Care on Cedar Crest Blvd. to find out, "Now what is wrong with my wrist?"

Did I mention that this is my left wrist? And I'm left handed? And I'm a picture framer at the day job?

I was told that I hyper extended my thumb, probably when I was babysitting. That kid plays hard! I left thinking, well now I know, got the splint the doc told me to buy, took some Advil (as recommended) and went about my evening.

Over the course of the weekend, the pain got worse, the swelling got worse, from time to time my hand looked a bit dusky, and I had three episodes of numbness. So I went back to the urgent care. Same diagnosis, but this time a Rx anti-inflammatory (so I can actually start to heal) and I'm stuck in the splint until, at least, my follow-up on Monday instead of for 4-6 days until I start to feel better.

So, since I'm not doing very well using the touchpad (I have a laptop) and I can't hold much of anything, all of my projects are sort of in limbo. My apologies. I guess next time I should have a little less fun playing.