And I'm back!

I don't stay down for long. It's too depressing. LoL! I woke up this morning to find that my darling, wonderful husband had gotten off work at 2:30 am and made a trip to the walmart in town to pick up some little presents because he knew I'd had a bad day and wanted to do something extra to make me smile. Hanging on the fridge door I found 2 cute little sun dresses for Hannah, in her size (he's so good!) one of which she immediately wanted to put on. On the counter was a playstation game for Jeremiah since we are nixing computer games due to the recent virus/spyware fiasco. A dozen roses! and book for me, the Catcher in the Rye. I've never actually read it but have always wanted to and he remembered that! And a HUGE Toblerone bar. Milk chocolate, honey and almonds...yum. Those Swiss man, they know what they are doing.

When he woke up he tried to help me put my nose ring back in which involved a lot of crying on my part and wanting to hold my nose still with tweezers on his part. Didn't work too well so I called the tattoo parlor and threw myself on their mercy. They said to come over, no big deal so after lunch the kids and I drove to Knoxville where Diantha sat in the car with the little kiddos and I went in. The girl that pierced it was there and is TOTALLY cool and very graceous. Apparently 5 other people in the last 2 days have come to her with the same problem. She thinks it's the time of year, allergies causing swelling, etc which makes a lot of sense since I know my allergies are out to kill me.


Before our little road trip I made Diantha, Josiah and Jeremiah help clean Jeremiah's room. It was SUCH a pig sty I wasn't brave enough to take a "before" picture but here are some after pics. I guess my "Tackle Tuesday" turned into a "Tackle Thursday" this week. You can't be on top of everything all the time. Tony and I want to rearrange his room because his air vent blows right on his bed and makes him cold, which is one reason we think he keeps coming to get in bed with us since he won't sleep with covers on. But we haven't figured out how to do it so clean is better than arranged for now.

I got 4 strips of fabric cut today and that's it for quilting. Bah! Maybe more tomorrow? Tony's working (praise God!!) so we won't be running everywhere.

After the visit to Alter Ego I took D and Josiah home to Mom's where we painted "kindles" (kiddie spindles) and buttons for her to use at a spindle demonstration for a local schools' Heritage Day tomorrow.

I made a spindle and a button look like a blood shot eye. Mom let me keep the spindle. On that note my CD spindle is A Perfect Circle cd so I'm taking spindling in a punk direction!

I am Eeyore

I am Eeyore today. You know, the chubby, gray, morose and downtrodden pessimistic donkey from Winnie the Pooh?

I am obviously not as strong a person as I originally thought. There is a reason I am not a military wife; I have no emotional stamina. When Tony worked 3rd shift for those almost 3 months I suffered from chronic migraines and panic attacks. He has worked 12 hour shifts every day this week, leaving before (or just as) the kids and I wake up and returning at bedtime. My kids have not slept the last 3 nights either. I am going to have a nervous breakdown. I have an emergency ciggy hidden in the cupboard but can't sneak away long enough to smoke it.--(As a side note here I quit smoking when I found out I was pregnant with Jeremiah and though it will be 4 years in October I still feel the need for an occasional smoke. I miss my soothing delicious habit, even if I only indulge about 3 times a year. I keep an "emergency" cigarette just because KNOWING it is there makes me feel better. I don't think I've smoked one of mine in 3 years cause Tony keeps finding them and smoking them for me.)

I took my nose ring out today. It came right out. I have spent 3 hours trying to get it back in. Now my nose is swollen and bleeding and I am sitting around with a small silver hooped earring in my face looking like Lenny Kravitz. I called my dear husband crying about it. He said he'd help me in the morning. I feel so stupid, how HARD is it to put a corkscrew nose ring in your face?? Apparently for all my other skills, this is one I don't posses. My sister says "Go to the tattoo parlor and have them put it back in for you." As if I don't feel stupid enough already, LoL!

I have been away from keyboard for 2 days because Spyware invaded my computer and I couldn't get to any websites except for the Panda software site which Mom pays for and let me use her ID to clean out my computer. I had 44 infected files. Thankfully now I am back, with a newly cleaned out, defragged and diskcleaned computer that is working much better than before.

I did manage to find ONE sewing machine needle but haven't had the chance to put it in the machine because I'm too busy being Eeyore and trying to put my nose ring back in. I made great progress on my mittens getting one of them totally finished (it is beautiful!) and the other finished all but the tip of the fingers/hand and the thumb and I ran out of yarn. Thankfully I have 60 yards of the yarn I spun as a single, so I can ply it with itself and have enough yarn to finish the mitten! I just haven't done it yet. Jeremiah informed me that he wants mittens--blue. It is 90 degrees outside and bugs are hitting my sliding glass door at an alarming rate as I type.

I pulled fabrics to make my dear friend Kelli a wedding quilt, but again haven't cut them up. Although my 3 yr old son thought they were a beautiful arrangement of fabric and started playing with one FQ. He kept telling me he was making a quilt for his secret pal. I told him not to cut up anything. SO he took my rotary cutter to it while I was in the bathroom. Then brought me the fabric and said "This ripped." So we got to have a lesson about disobeying and lying and breaking Mama's heart when she's having a bad day. : (

On another happier note my dear MIL picked me and the kiddos up this morning and took us to get Hannah's pictures taken. I had Jeremiah's done as a baby and again at 1 and 2 and so far haven't had Hannah's done at all. So we dressed her purdy and had them taken by Elvira Mistress of the Dark who apparently HAS NO TROUBLE CHANGING HER NOSE RING. Hannah refused to smile for all but 2 pictures (the lady must have taken 12) and kept looking at her with a "You are stupid." look that I get a lot. Pretty funny if you ask me.

Sorry for going on so, if you skimmed this post I don't blame you and I promise to pull myself together and try to have something interesting to share pictures of tomorrow! : ) Have a great night!

New listing and Mother's Day special

Not a lot going on today; today was a lay around (while Hannah TRASHED the house) and recover from the weekend day.

I did finally give in and join Twitter. Now what the heck is it? I'm told it's a good marketting tool. So there, I joined. You can follow me by clicking here: http://twitter.com/Hamncheezr or by clicking on the link in the sidebar on the right.

I also took new pics and relisted this beautiful Ruby Red handbag! Red isn't just for valentine's day! Spice up your summer wardrobe with a POP of color! This bag would look wonderful with a white outfit to keep you cool in the summer sun. It is the perfect size for toting all your essentials shopping, to the beach/pool, or anywhere you might go enjoying them beautiful warmer weather. Weather not warm where you are yet? Well by all means, thumb your nose at all that snow and carry it anyway!

Also from now until May 5th I am offering free shipping with an upgrade to priority mail--just in time for Mother's Day! Any of my purses or totes would make a wonderful, one of a kind gift for Mom (one she actually doesn't have yet!!). Check out all my items in my etsy shop: http://hamncheezr.etsy.com/

Four Roses

When I saw this block on my block a day calender I knew I had to make it for my Ellen Plum (Stephanie Plum's Mom) quilt! It's called Four Roses and was really easy to copy and applique, though I haven't done the machine zigzag stitch yet 'cause I JUST got home for the day. I think this totally fits her though because the books are always talking about her getting nervous or overwhelmed and going into the kitchen to knock back a tumbler of Four Roses.

I thought I had messed up the pattern for these mittens and it turns out that I had just skipped a page and was reading the wrong part of the pattern. At least I didn't keep on knitting. I put it down and waiting for Mom to take a look to see what I was missing. In the meantime I knitted some soft black merino around the opening on my shrug and finished it! Yay! It is DONE! Of course I was sitting around in the house without the a/c on when it was 90 degrees with a heavy knitted sweater on my lap. Then I had to try it on. Ooh, I can only imagine hot flashes LoL! I was wearing the wrong clothes to try this on and my blue bulky tank top totally clashed but I just had to see. Diantha snapped this one pic of me while I was rolling me eyes; really I'm not demented, just bad timing. I smiled for the next pic and she cut my head off. Ah well, ya win some, ya lose some.

I had made more progress on my mitten last night before I got the pattern confused. I'm almost up to the thumb. This yarn is making such a wonderful cloth, with the stitches being just slightly varied because the yarn is almost thick and thin in places. I tried to spin it very evenly and it paid off!

Tony finally got Mom's bike rewired and able to start! Now it just needs a new clutch assembly and a headlight and she'll be ready to ride. Over a year ago my brother Allen rode to work one very cold morning and took a curve too quickly, over a railroad track. Condensation from the weather caused the track to be slippery and the bike slid out from under him, turning the handle bars and breaking all the wiring. They have a small bike, a 250 that they use to "practice on" and Tony used it this afternoon to give Jeremiah his first ever motorcycle ride--around the yard. It's not legal to take him out on the road until his feet reach the back pegs.

After a day of playing in the yard with motorcycles we gave Jeremiah a buzz cut tonight, cutting off his very large mass of curls. I couldn't believe how much hair that kid had and how much cooler he instantly was! Tony got one too and now they match. : )

I just had to snap this picture of my very sleepy babies in the car on the way home.

Dam!

So we had the craft show today, which actually was a yard sale in the parking lot and inside the "community center" 10 vendors set up shop. 3 of us had handbags/totes and while none were like mine, mine barely registered a glance from the 30 people who stopped buy. 6 people sold jewelry, one couple had 1000lbs of fudge, another lotions and things. Mom sold NO yarn, felted or knitted items. But we did sell about $50 worth of my Dad's goat's nilk soaps and it was good practice setting up our booth so I supposed while a disappointment, not a total waste.

At least we were done by 1:30 and on the way back from Maryville got to cross a huge dam (I don't know the name of it) built across Watsbar Lake. Or maybe is seperates Watsbar from Tellico? I don't know, anyway it is huge. Mom drove around so I could take pics of the lake and the dam and this big propellor thing. I don't know if it is like the ones they use in the dam or if they unearthed it from the lake, but it was big and therefore photo worthy.

See this beautiful picture I took of a tree and grass, overlooking the lake. Look VERY closely and you can see a little bitty sail boat in the picture. The SECOND I snapped the pic, the sail boat which had been lazily sailing around the lake for a while suddenly capsized. Seriously, we watched it. It just went "plink," right over. I just have that kind of luck.

So we went back to Mom's to meet up with my dear hubby and son who were trying to rewire one of Mom's motorcycles. It was very warm today, mid 80s but the breeze was lovely and since the air wasn't on in Mom's house we kids threw down some coverlets in the yard and hung out. I started knitting my mittens with the gray yarn I spun. I am editing the pattern just a little, or at least I am planning on it. I added 4 extra stitches around to make it bigger and it looks as if I may have to add 1" to the length of the hand because I have big hands. This yarn is making the SOFTEST and FLUFFIEST mitten you have ever felt. I can't wait for winter to be able to wear them, LoL!

The kids laid around in their shorts and diapers and played well together, even managing not to eat grass! Afterward we all went over to church and now we are finally home having had a very long, and tiring--though nice day. I am going to sit here and watch the Smoking Gun Presents World's Dummest Daredevils on TV and knit some more on my mittens. Tomorrow I will take some blocks to Mom's to square up as we are going back to finish working on the bike. BUT probably I won't be able to share pics since they are for a secret. : )

Dollywood

No quilting today to report, except I square up 4 6" blocks this morning and I played with a bunch of fabric, just looking at it and putting it back in a box.

No, today my dear husband was off and we took a day trip to Dollywood! For those of you who don't know, Dollywood is an amusement park here East TN owned by Dolly Parton (I just love 9 to 5!). My grandparents bought us day passes for Christmas, which we turned in and upgraded to season passes and it cost us LESS for that than the original day passes. Go figure. Anyway, now we can go whenever we want for just the gas since I got a gold pass and parking is free. Jeremiah thinks we go just to ride the coal-powered old fashioned train they have that circles the park.

Jeremiah was finally tall enough today to ride all the water rides, which we'd never gotten to do before because he was too small or I was too pregnant or it was too cold. Actually he and Tony rode them while I waited around to take pictures with Hannah. This pic of Jeremiah is blurry because he was dancing about having just gone on the white-water rafting ride.

Then we all went down into the kiddie section they have where they even have rides Hannah can ride, but as a nervous Mama I rode behind them. How cool am I crammed into the duckies??? THAT cool! Jeremiah and I rode the kiddies rollercoaster which is actually pretty neat and then he said he wanted to go ride the big roller coasters. That's my boy! Sadly we didn't ride any big coasters today even thoug they have a superb wooden one, I hate going on rides by myself and one of us always has to sit with the kids. Next time we will take Diantha or Artemas and make them babysit, LOL!

When we had had as much fun as we could stand we headed over to Great American buffet which it turns out has been renamed Woodgrill Buffet so we were momentarily confused. But the food was good, even if a Wayne Newton wannabe had set up shop er, microphone in the middle of the resteraunt and they set us 2 tables away. Tony took a pic of me chowing down on some ribs; humor him, he thinks he's funny LOL! Gotta love a buffet with steak, bbq AND ribs on it.

Tomorrow is probably going to be a long day too with the craft show and probably church. Lord willing I will have lots of sales and maybe something quilty to report on!

Happy Birthday Shakespeare!

I got an e-mail today from Rachel who is Huggermugger on etsy and she informed me that she blogged about my Shakespeare bag in her blog today!

I love Shakespeare's works, which is one reason I made my Shakespeare bag. My favorite plays are The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing, though I enjoy Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet as much as the next person.

I thought I'd do a collection of Shakespeare inspired Etsy listings too. Here are some of my favorites!

Macbeth inspired sock yarn from christinamariepotter

A beautiful sterling silver ring by pocketfullofpoesy

I just LOVE this Twelfth Night book mark by immortallongings--it is SO beautiful!

This is the funniest pull for a chain I've ever seen, totally awesome! It's by FamousFanPulls

And lastly, but definitely not least is this great print by thedreamygiraffe

Feel free to browse around this great artists' shops and see all their other wonderful creations, and then when you are done...

Let's all have some CAKE!!

Hearts and Stars

I made up for my lack of block a day by doing 8 blocks today! Granted, they were little and simple applique--though not so simple really because my machine is giving me trouble. Again. Argh. I managed to get them done though! Diantha gave me a pair of jeans shorts she's outgrown to turn into another handbag and I started to try to sew the lining in it on her machine--kept breaking the thread. So I switched to my machine and it broke the needle. Sigh. I started to sew it in by hand, got abou 6 stitches done and decided it was too hard and looked like crap. I will either have to hang it up for the night before I get all mad or just wait a little while, try to find another machine needle and try again. Haven't decided yet.

Tony is working late tonight so it will be a good time to mess with the machine. This morning Jeremiah straight up told me, "Mama, I'm just gonna ignore you today." I let him know on no uncertain terms that he was not going to ignore me and he was like, "Okay" and we've had a good day. This boy, I swear! He is SO much like his dad in every way except that one--he gets that frank honesty from me. Hannah on the other hand is so like me in every way except she is sneaky (or tries to be) like Tony was/is. Funny!

My Dad (and Mom) have been making all-natural, handmade goat's milk soaps for about 12 years now. They are wonderful soaps, so soft and they are so good for your skin. I even just use the soap to shave with in the shower as it is more gentle to my skin and leaves my skin more smooth than shaving cream. They are the only soaps my son, who has really bad skin allergies, can use and we've used them on our babies since birth too--all the fragrances and scents. My Mom also has eczema very badly, with no other medical treatmenr able to help or cure it and using this soap exclusively has taken it away!

I say all this just to show you a picture for the label for his latest soap he's made for some local craft shows called "Grumpy's Back Porch Lard 'n' Lye Soap"--a nod to the classic lye soap people always associate with handmade soaps. It's a picture of Dad, looking demented...totally fits, I think. LOL! This soap and other many fine scents are available online through his etsy shop: Rossoaps ~ http://rossoaps.etsy.com

Mom says I should post pictures of my red knitted shrug again, in it's almost completed phase! I still need to pick up stitches around the edge of the opening and knit an inch or so of ribbing from some solid black merino I spun but as it is I could wear it if I wanted. It took 395 yards of very thick and thin handspun yarn to make, and I mean exactly that much. I have about 1" of tale of the yarn that I can tie in another knit and weave in. I wasn't sure I was gonna make it!

There's a Chicken in your Pants!

With a 3 year old son it seems I am never going to run out of blog fodder. Seriously. This morning Tony (my dh) was laying on the living room floor, playing with the kids for about an hour. He was wearing long lounge/pajama pants with Tony the Tiger all over them. About 30 minutes into play time Jeremiah started trying to put his hand up the leg of his pants, which Tony said felt weird and kept telling him to knock it off. Jeremiah kept saying "But Daddy, there is a CHICKEN in your pants!" This was a weird, Twilight zone, alternate reality conversation because Tony and I kept looking at each other like we were nuts? and telling Jeremiah to STOP putting his hands in Daddy's pants because there really wasn't a chicken in them. What the heck?

Fast forward about 15 minutes later, Jeremiah finally gives up and goes on to play something else. About 15 minutes after that Tony decides he has had enough fun on the floor and starts to stand up. Doing so makes his pants pull against him differently I guess, because he gets this weird look on his face. Then he sticks his hand down the BACK of his pants and pulls out a plastic fried chicken leg. He looks at me with a "I am so bewildered" look and says, "Well.... I guess there really was a chicken in my pants."

And Hannah has figured out how to log on to the Internet with my cell phone, something I don't know how to do. I caught her after she was connected a little over a minute so I am sure my phone bill just went up $10.

Onto other things! Today was "Tackle it Tuesday" and my tackle for today was LAUNDRY! It ought to be a 4 letter word. A bad 4 letter word. I did a rough estimate and came up with 13 loads of laundry wanting my attention. 2-3 of which I think are all outgrown needing to be sorted and boxed up. I forewent my nap with the kiddies today and got quite a lot accomplished in the hour they were both asleep. By 9pm I had done/sorted/put away 7-8 loads, cleaned the living room and vacuumed it and the hallway, cleaned out both kids' dressers for outgrown clothes and made dinner. I didn't do anything remotely quilty until that was over and then all I did was zigzag stitch around the blue bonnets on my cross block. FINALLY it is done! I have had whole quilts that didn't take me this long!

Even if today wasn't an uproariously productive quilting day, my hubby got to come home to a fairly clean house, a good dinner, clean clothes and happy kids! All in all, a good day I think.

Jeremiah's first story

I have been working on a block for 2, going on 3 days now. I'm claiming it for all three days (yesterday, today and tomorrow) since I just don't see myself finishing it tonight--though I may still get ambitious! When this last round of pals started I had a PLAN and my plan was to send my pal 12 quilt blocks so that she could put herself together a nice wallhanging for her house. I made all 12 blocks ahead of time, to make sure they all went together nicely and I planned to send them in sets of 4 over the 3 month pal round. The first package arrived just fine. The second package gotten eaten in the mail and the blocks lost forever.


So I am getting ready to mail my last package to her and I decided to remake one of the blocks lost last month since I had originally designed it especially for her! It figures, since when I made it I said "I never want to make this block again." LOL! I cut out the cross and ironed it in place last night and prepped the blue bonnets. Today I cut all of them out and ironed them in place. I managed to stitch around the cross and the green but once again I am having sewing machine problems. I didn't even get one blue bonnet stitched down before the machine (the second one I tried today) ate the block. I got fed up and left it alone. There is always tomorrow!


I did FINALLY manage to finish spinning (last night at 1:30am, er this morning) and plying (this morning at 10:30am) my driftwood yarn that will become, at some point over the summer, lovely cabled mittens for myself for next winter. I ended up with exactly 170 yards of a 2 ply yarn that is dk-heavy worsted weight, just what I was shooting for (most of it is dk-worsted). I also ended up with a little "pet" of a 58 yard single that is sock-thicker than sock weight, LoL! Probably I will ply it with itself to make 29 more yards of my yarn. Just not tonight. Yawn.


This afternoon when Jeremiah woke up from his nap we were laying on the bed for a few minutes since Hannah was still asleep and he said he was going to tell me a story. I said great! and he sat up and began....


"Once upon a time there was a little guy and he was just walkin' along and then he stopped to play checkers. He was really good and he won and he got a dark red hat and a dark blue ball for a prize! Then he looked around and he noticed that all the nuts and bolts and good food to eat were falling out of the trees, so he put down his ball and picked up a basket and helped pick up the nuts and bolts and good things to eat. Then the guy running the bowling told him to put the basket with the broken fruit out in the middle of the jungle with the other broken fruilt, for the bears. When he was done he went home and took off his hat and laid in his bed where he thought about everything he had done and then he fell asleep and had good dreams."

The story actually went on and on for about 10 minutes, but I missed a lot after that. The gist of it was what the guy did every day and then he went to bed everynight. It ended with "and then he went to bed for the night with a sore throat, but he ate one of those cough drop lolli pops and then he felt better and went to sleep."


I said, "Why was his throat sore? Did he mouth off and someone punched him in the neck?" Jeremiah looked at me out of the corner of his eye (SUCH a little Desiree look!) and said, "No."

I was blogged today!

We are having a lazy stay at home Sunday, having gone to chyrch and run our errands last night. It is a rainy, dark day and I just got an e-mail that brightened it right up!

Fellow CABteam member Krystal of Sol Sisters featured me on her blog's Promote a Sister Sunday !!

Thank you so much, I am awed and honored!!
Visit Krystal's etsy shop Sol Sisters for some beautiful, one-of-a-kind bags and accessories--like the cute little purse here on the left! Also be sure to search etsy.com with the tag "cabteam" to see a ton of great purses, bags and totes!

Not a purse!

I made a purse for my friend's daughter to tote her Bible (pens, notes, etc) back and forth to church in. One of her sons then said he needed one too. Back and forth they went with the "boys don't really carry purses" (...well, except in Europe but definitely not in Texas) argument. It was decided maybe it would solve it if I came up with a Bible cover which he could use to tote his Bible in.

After much procrastination, yesterday and today I've made this. It is a quilted cover that will fit his Bible, I hope. It has a "hidden" patch pocket in the lining, a small pocket on one flap for a pen or highlighter, a wider pocket on the other flap for whatever and on the front a zipper pocket that is the size of the entire front. It closes with a button and tab to the back and has 2 small handles--so that it doesn't look like a purse!! LoL!

I hope he will like it, I can't wait to send it to him. His Mama says he likes Under the Sea stuff.

For the Birds

We moved into our current home in March of 2006, so we just started our 3rd year here and are unduring, er...I mean enjoying our 3rd spring. Every spring for the last 3 years my husband has a war with the birds on an almost daily basis.

There will be a nice, sunny, peaceful atmosphere and then Tony will put on his slippers and boggin and walk out on to the porch for a morning smoke...and that's when it begins. The yelling, the waving of arms, the slamming of the grill lid, th raising of the grill lid, the puffing, the huffing, the muttering which lasts until he enters the house again shakinh his head and I always catch "..birds..." Basically it sums up to be that the local avian life LOVES my husband's grill. I don't understand because he cleans it obsessively before and after every use, but they still love it. They don't mess with any of our neighbors' grills. Despite Tony's best attempts over the years to foil them, they work around his little boobie traps and fill first the bottom of the grill with miscellanious crap and then the top of the grill (above the cooking rack) with hay from a neighboring cattle farm.

Usuaully about 3 times a week at the least Tony has to pull an almost-finished nest out of the grill (amid the muttering and arm waving) but this morning he discovered he wasn't quick enough this time. There, in the grill was a totally finished nest complete with 2 little light blue eggs. He came back in the house this morning and said, "Y'all may think I'm an ogre, but they win for now... I can't do it, there's eggs in there." ;-D

Today for my block I did a small checkerboard. I am making a Bible cover for my friend's son (he wanted a purse to carry it in, and boys in Texas just don't carry purses!). I got just a little bit farther on it before I quit for the night but not much.

I spent the vast majority of the day sitting in a chair obsessively knitting on my shrug. I've started to knit down the second sleeve and I'm about 2" down, so the end is near... probably not tomorrow near, but near. Then I will have to pick up the 6,120,374 stitches around the opening and knit some ribbing. Lookin' forward to that, let me tell you.

I did sit and play with Play-Doh that SOMEONE who loves me put in my son's Easter basket (not pointing any fingers MOM, what the?!) He's actually beeen really good with it...so far. I made a snowman (right) then he made a snowman (left), then Tony made an M&M (right) and Jeremiah made an M&M (left), then I made a bird's nest (right) and then Jeremiah made one and had me put a bird on it (left). Lots of fun! Then we put it all back in the containers. And yes, I really did make him do all that on butcher paper.