Date Night in a Box

A few weeks ago a bunch of women got together for a Relief Society meeting and focused on relationships--those with the Lord, our family, and our spouse. We did speed friending, which was lots of fun, and we also made Date Night in a Box.

What is Date Night in a Box? 

Well, it started out as Date Night in a Can, but the boxes turned out far cheaper, especially when you need 40 or 50 of them, which we did. So the person in charge of the boxes found these cute colorful Chinese take-out style boxes. Tied to the handle, my box has a little poem:

Sweetheart Notes

This little book has a purpose for you, 

It's use should be shared between two.

Simply write a love letter, a poem, or note

To the one you adore, love, and often dote

Then, hide this page for your sweetheart to find

And wait for a reply that will tickle your mind.

Remember, be creative and have fun

You have only tour loved one's heart to be won.

Tied with it are a bunch of black sheets of paper that we can write our notes on.

Inside it gets really fun! A few of us came up with a bunch of ideas for free or inexpensive date night ideas, the most expensive being $24. Some of them require a bit of travel, some encourage you to stay home and take advantage of what you have at your fingertips. All of them will be fun.

So here's what you do:

* Create a list of date ideas. They can be any price range you're comfortable with. 

Make sure that each date has all information needed for that date: location, website, hours, season, etc.

* Print that list, cut it out, and this is where creativity comes to play. 

You can simply fold the pieces of paper, 

do some other creative thing with them (like making fortune cookies out of them using felt and wired ribbon),

or do what I did.

I rolled them up. Then, using my daughter's unused teeny tiny rubber bands that are smaller then my pinkie (probably why they're never used!), I secure them so that they don't unroll. This way they stay nice and tight. You can stop here if you what, but I took it a step further:

I took strips of narrow ribbon about 8 inches long, and tied those around the rubber bands.

* Then I finally decorated my box, and called it done!

All I need now is a date!

Craft fairs

With Spring usually comes Craft Fairs, 

and we crafters always hope for good craft fairs, 

especially to start off the year. 

Saturday's Craft Fair:

It was terribly fun to sit with two friends of mine, and fellow crafters, and share the experience, and the better part of the day. This craft fair was at a school that was on the very extreme edge of town (there was NOTHING south of it). We supported the arts, as this fair was a fund raiser for the marching band. Too bad the marching band didn't show up, at least not that we saw. Live music would have been nice, but what can you do? On the drive to the school we saw no signs advertising the fair, and as a result of the lack of word spreadage (spreadage? is that a word?) There weren't that many people that came in, so most of our business was from other vendors. A few people who had students in the family came in, but not many. I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures yet. I have to get them from my friend, who took pictures for me. I'll add  them in when I get them though.

All in all, a slow craft fair (to the point where some crafters packed up 2 hours early!) but a profitable one. I think I've found a happy combination of items to sell. And through a little bit of variety and a lot of hard (but fun) work, I can make a few dollars to buy more yarn and ribbon, and support my addiction. Oops. Did I write that?

The three of us now have plans for more craft fairs, 

maybe even a major fair later this year, or next. 

It all depends on how things go. 

Here's Hoping!

Busy Beads

So I finally got proper motivation to actually sit down and write out one of my bead patterns. Usually there're hand written or computer diagrams that only I would be able to read. Mostly because I don't have one of those fancy pattern writing programs, so I had to find alternates. Those alternates consisted /, \, and * to represent bead strands and crystals. I didn't do written directions, those all belonged in my head, and if it got more complicated that just /, \, and *, then I took pictures as I went and called it good.

This motivation called for something else. Something better. Something that someone else would be able to easily understand (at least I hope so), because someone else would have to understand it.

So I got out my beads, found some colors that both coordinated, and that I had enough of (hey, I wanted it to look good since I was going to take pictures as I went), and got to work. It was only after I got halfway through that I realized I was patriotic with my red white and blue.

We can have Christmas in July right?

Sure hope so.

I took me forever to write and format this thing because I kept forgetting I needed to work on it! Oops. I am what they call a scatterbrain for good reason.

It was eventually finished, and posted for sale, but then the laptop that had the file PDF saved on it tried unsuccessfully to fly, and was lost. Woops.

So now I just have a picture. sigh.

Fire and Lariats

So here are the pictures of the Lariat necklaces I've been working on. They're just long strands of beads (longest is 52"!) with crystals and stones added on the end. I usually wear them in threes, but not always.

This is the two sets together...

...and separately.

And my next project! Something new for me work on while I'm still working on everything else:

Burnt Flowers

No burns yet. Yay!

Nature and Creation

I think it's been about forever since I last posted. So where have I been?

RED ROCK! It was a free day over MLK weekend,

and we took advantage of the nice weather.

Of course, Ariel had to come too...

Lost Creek had a decent falls because it was so early in the season

I LOVE the color of this wood!

Giggles had to check it out too.

Back at home...

I completed my first original crochet pattern! It's still being tested, so I don't have the pattern available yet, but very soon! For the longest time this didn't have a name, it was just Original Shawl. The edging kind of took care of that. Someone said it looked like Butterfly wings, so I went with it.

I'm calling it Flutterby Shawl

(pronounced as flutterbee)

Which brought me to my second original...

After I made a shawl for me, my daughter told me she wanted one as well. Lucky for me, her birthday was coming up. I dived into my stash and found this Patons Grace cotton yarn, and set to work google-ing (googling?) for pictures of a pattern that would work. I haven't written out the pattern yet, but I will, and post it eventually.

This one is being named after the recipient:

Lyssa's Shawl

I love how the back ruffles slightly. It so perfectly girly!

Most recently I've gotten my beads out again, and dusted them off. I think they missed me because I proceeded to make two sets of long 3-strand lariat necklaces. I don't have pictures of those yet. Hopefully in the next few days. And now I'm back to ornaments. The question is, what colors should I do this year's holiday ornament?

I did red and green last year, so I'll have to come up with something else. Red and gold maybe? I haven't done too much in red. Or maybe I'll just close my eyes and point to a color...

Decisions, decisions

Block Party!

Well, I finally successfully blocked crocheted pieces for the first time yesterday. First was this pink shawl. The yarn was so cheap it felt like stealing (79 cents each!). It was the promotional color from october, which I bought in mid-November. I picked up the only three skeins thay had, vowing to do something with it, just not knowing what.

So one day I was looking through patterns I had been collecting on my computer, trying to figure out if I had enough yarn for one of them. I did. and it was such an easy pattern that I could easily make it longer ot shorter, depending on how much yarn I had. So I got started. As is typical for me these days, the pattern quickly changed from what was printed to what I wanted.

About halfway through the pattern, the recipient changed from me, to my sister, as I drew her name for secret santa. Now I really enjoyed making it as it was no longer something I was doing for myself. I guess I'll save that keeper project for when I finally get some lace yarn.
So here is a close-up view. As I was unpinning it this morning I was thinking that the next time I do this pattern, I might try pinning the edging, and giving it a little breathing room. I noticed when it was dry that it looked somewhat cramped in comparison with the rest of the shawl. Sorry Ginger.

Here's the full view right after I was done pinning it.

And here's my daughter wearing it.

Here's how it fits on an adult.

This is a hat I made not too long ago. It's really cute, but the edging was a bit too crazy in the yarn's natural state, so I thought I'd try blocking just the edging, to get those ruffles under control.

And this is a scarf I made a while back. Now that it's finally blocked I can add the fringe and put it in my box of craft fair stuff. Or sell it on etsy. decisions, decisions...

This is the last piece I have to show, and I can't even show all of it, because it's a surprise. But I was so excited I just had to post it! I'll post the full picture after it's given.

By the way, the shawl is based on Refracted Light Shawl from http://www.universalyarn.com/

The hat is Betty from Kreamer Yarns

The scarf is original

The blue one, well, I'm not yet telling.

And all of a sudden, I have no crochet works-in-progress. Geez, what happened?

dreaming in yarn...

I have become a busy little bee in the past little while when it comes to crochet. I've finished 2 hats, almost finished a shawl, created a new shawl, tore it out, but not before writing down the pattern, started a scarf, and a bag, and somehow in the middle of all that, managed to keep dust and dishes under control. whew! I only wish my yarn would reproduce as fast as my dishes.

The new shawl, which is as yet unnamed, was actually loosely inspired by the Logwood Shawlette from crochetme.com (can you tell I like this site?) So after I got a few rows into it, I came to realise that the yarn the creator used, and the yarn I was using from my stash didn't match, nor did my yarn really work with the pattern (too stiff I think). So I took it out. Then I looked at the picture again, and thought to myself, how can I make this more...structured? and came up with this:

It's made up entirely of shells, v stitches, and chains, making it a very easy work up. The only down side? I didn't have enough yarn. So I wrote down the increase pattern and the first few rows so that I know what I'm doing (mostly because I've done it before), but I don't know about the rest of you people. It's a very rough workup so far, but if there's interest in the pattern, I can definitely get back to work on it, otherwise it will sit on my hard drive collecting what ever it is computer files collect, until I can justify the purchase of ever more yarn. Until, I will miss that shawl, I was really liking it.

So what did I do with the yarn? I balled it, then started work again. yeah, remember that scarf I mentioned before? This is the Queen Ann Lace Scarf from mypicot.com 's blog. It's very pretty. And so quick to work on too!

That's about it for my crochet adventures. I'll post pictures of the scarf and shawl later, when they're done. Well, the shawl might have to wait, seeing as though it's a surprise. I'll post it eventually...