March 29, 2010

Craft Room V1.0

The craft room has finally reached a comfortable, user friendly state.  It is clean, fairly organized and ready to serve as playroom and home office.



Ok, so I've still got a table covered in random stuff, but that's pretty normal for my craft room.


I'm not sure I'm capable of keeping a desk top clean, so the home office will always be in a perpetual state of needing to be cleaned.  Fortunately, I can work among chaos and do regularly purge things from the top of my desk.


I will be starting the hunt for craft room friendly furniture now.  I'm thinking about a combination of a couple of banquet tables (which I have 2 of) and some comfy chairs.  Must have a good spot to sit and knit up here. Jocyln has already claimed her favorite spot for lounging in the craft room.


Jacy is more likely to be wandering or trying to get into what ever I might be working on at the time.  But when she sits by herself, it is usually on top of or near the heat register, since she just can't be too warm.


So that's it, clean enough to use and ready to be furnished.  Painting this room will wait until I put in more built in shelves and the like, but I'm happy with version 1 of my craft room.


March 19, 2010

Epic Projects

Last fall Jared Flood held classes at Loop in Philly.  A fellow SnB'er wanted to attend the Girasole class and I couldn't resist this ginormous lace concoction.  It truly is beautiful.  I knew when I started this it would be an on-again off-again project.  Making anything that is 5 feet in diameter out of lace weight yarn is going to take a while.  With that in mind I started my first multi-year knitting project.

Needless to say I started it during the class, finished the first chart and quickly but it aside to start my Christmas knitting.  Christmas knitting was extensive this past year, finally completed in February.  So I've picked up the Girasole again and gladly completed the second chart.


Trust me when I say, this is only the beginning.  There are 5 more charts, some of which are repeated.  I'm in love with this project, but enjoying the option of setting it aside to work on something else as well.

In fact, I've started my first real pair of socks.  They are done in a cool colorway called "Sis Boom Bah" from Scout's Swag.  No pictures of the actual sock project, but here's the yarn and needles waiting to begin transformation.


These socks will most likely be a gift, because I know someone who is going to love this colorway, even more than me, my Mom.  The pattern I'm using is Sinuosity, by KnittingNonStop.  Dawn is awesome, tons of fun, designs great patterns and just happens to be one of the local CKW (cleveland knits west) knitters.  So the fact that there is Sinuosity KAL (knit along) happening right now should come as no surprise.

This is the first time I've participated in a knit along.  They are cool since you have access to many other knitters who are working through the same pattern at the same time to ask questions.  Or in my case, learn how to cable with out cable needles from.  PKJewelry has been helping me with my cabling education.  I can now do knit twists, both left and right with out a cable needle!  Pam is also a lady of many talents.  I bought my awesome chocolate row counter shown in the Girasole photo from her etsy shop.

Ok, enough typing about knitting.  Its time to head to Eric's to make bacon crackers, praline bacon (sense a theme yet) and other tasty(not healthy) finger food to eat while watching OSU in the tourney tonight.

March 17, 2010

Ahh...the joys of homeownership

New House + New Home Buyer Credit = Taxes, Yay!!

Really, I am feeling well, no fever.  Just thrilled to find out that I did qualify for the New Home Buyer tax credit.  I was pretty sure that I wouldn't, but definitely had to ask my tax accountant to be sure I didn't miss out on any tax refund goodness.  Thanks for being the expert Jaimee, you are awesome!

If you want Jaimee's contact info, just let me know, she really is great, knowledgable, reasonably priced, and willing to do my taxes from all the way over in NJ.

Celebrated the good tax refund news with Corrie (from Cleveland Knits West) at Angelo's.  Hawaiian Pizza and Mr. Pibb, make a great celebratory lunch.  BTW, if you ever get to Lakewood, go to Angelo's, the pizza rocks (1/2 price when you eat in on Monday's), it has great atmosphere, and is a locally owned business.

In other good news, the weather continues to be spring like here in Cleveland.  Today's sunshine inspired me to trim my nasty car eating bush.  It sits right next to the driveway, OK until about 4 pm this afternoon, hung into the driveway and regulary tried to attack any car that came close.

Here's a view of the house from my driveway.  You can see the offending bush, well its branches at least, hanging out into the driveway.


Given the nice weather, I saw no reason why I shouldn't attempt to win back my driveway today.  The bush  before I trimmed it.

When me and the hedge trimmers were through, the bush had lost its ability to eat cars in the driveway.  I'm not sure I'll like the results of my trim job when the thing actually has leaves on it, but that remains to be seen.


Bonus: I had no problem backing my car into the driveway tonight since I didn't have to watch closely for the bush.

During the pre-purchase home inspection a few things were brought to my attention.  One, the fake green astro-turf like stuff on my front porch and steps should be removed.  This will help cut back on moisture build up in the crawl space below.  No problem, I don't care much for the stuff anyway.  Thanks to one of the more recent wind storms, part of the carpet started to pull itself from the concrete.  I was thrilled to find out that I could just pull up the rest of that piece and send it off with the trash yesterday.

Today, I moved the welcome mat to see if I could see a difference in the concrete, since the welcome mat had been holding in moisture, I could.



I'm going to venture out on a limb and say, that concrete is probably not supposed to look that it is shedding rocks.  I know that sanding (Fun with power tools  :) with the proper tool will remove the carpet glue from the concrete.  But I'm definitely curious what sanding will do to the spot that looks like it was patched, and certainly needs to be patched again!


The most disturbing part of this, is I'm actually looking forward to either borrowing or renting the correct equipment to sand concrete.  I'm sure that ear plugs, a face mask and gloves will be involved and I'm still quite thrilled to attack this project.

More to come soon...I've got a progress report for Epic Knitting Project #1 and hope to have pictures of Craft Room V1.0 to share before the end of the week.

March 11, 2010

Why I love living in the city

When I decided to walk to run my errands today I didn't expect to travel quite as far as I did.  I thought that Dollar General or Kmart would certainly have the colored printer paper I needed.  I was wrong.

After around 3.5 miles (estimated using a great mapping program called "Map my walk") of walking today I got some of what I expected to buy, some good finds, and no colored paper.  Fortunately I enjoyed my walk and now know that I can walk to Kmart, Kamm's Corners and the Westpark Library from my house no problem.  I don't foresee going to all 3 on the same trip next time though.

I do look forward to running more errands with my feet instead of my wheels.  It was nice to get outside and I know that if I keep this up, I will certainly see good results when swimsuit season arrives.  I hope that the weather here continues to cooperate.  Maybe I'll walk to get my groceries next shopping trip.  Giant Eagle is even closer to my house than Kamm's so it is certainly a viable option. 

Walking to get groceries and the like is something it took me a while to appreciate doing in college.  But without wheels living in downtown Milwaukee I had 3 options.

1. Use my feet
2. Ride the bus
3. Bum a ride

The bus came in handy sometimes.  But really who likes to have to act according to someone else's schedule; not me.  Bumming a ride was fine, but most of the friends I had in college preferred walking around anyway so the feet were used more often than not.

Now I really enjoy the idea tha I can walk places like Kmart, grocery store, library, etc.  Admittedly this is the first time I have done so since I moved to Westpark.  I blame the weather for that.  Now that I've done it, I feel more confident that when the weather is reasonable I will be walking more places.

Happy Walking!

March 08, 2010

I'm out and about this week as a Chocolatier

If you have time to stop by at "YWCA of Greater Cleveland Women's Leadership Conference" or "Diva Night in Medina" of these events, please do.  I'd love the company and each event has tons to offer.

I'll be wandering the Leadership Conference from around 11:30 am to 1:30 pm and then working the Dove Chocolate Discoveries booth, sharing samples and chatting it up with all the great conference attendees.

I'll be at Diva Night, with the Dove Chocolatier hat (well really an apron) all night.



See you there!

March 07, 2010

The Chocolate-Covered Sweet Life

For every $25 of chocolate purchased before March 26th you will earn a ticket for a spectacular gift basket worth over $75.  This basket will have everything you need to host a great Chocolate-Covered extravaganza.  It includes a variety of Dove Chocolate Discoveries products, entertaining guides and a gift certificate for $1 (for every $20 sold before March 26th) up to $50 in Dove Chocolate Discoveries product.

Just use the link above to choose your selection of Dove Chocolate Discoveries products.  Send me an email and the sweet life will arrive in your mail box in no time.

My challenge, your treats

So less than 30 days ago I joined the Dove Chocolate Discoveries team.  I feel like I'm starting to get my chocolatier feet under me.  I've got a challenge, sell $1000 of chocolate in 20 days.  My goal is to do this in 18 days, just to give myself a bit of breathing room.  If you help with the challenge, a chance at a spectacular SWEET treat will be headed your way in addition to all the great chocolate you order before March 25th!

Details on the SWEET surprise treat to follow.