Wrist warmers, a day off, and new knitting book

I finished a new set of fingerless gloves/wrist-warmers yesterday. They are made out of the turquoise "Red Heart" yarn that I could only find at Wal-Mart. And as you can see, I also got a new knitting book at JoAnne's today after having lunch with my mom. It has tutorials & patterns on knitting and crocheting.

The wrist warmers are surprisingly easy to make when I'm using the knitting loom. I think I'm finally getting a good groove down with it. I just have to count the stitches on the first glove in order to make the second one the same length.

The only issue I have with making them on the looms is that you can't make them tighter/closer knit like you could on needles. Especially with the "Red Heart" yarn, you can see your hand through the knit. It goes better when I use the "Lion Brand Homespun" yarn, -probably because of the fuzziness of the yarn. I bet it would be better if I used a thicker, "chunky" kind of yarn. Or I want to try knitting with double strands using both the Red Heart and Homespun together.

Anyway...my mom called at 6:00 or so this morning to let me know that she saw on the news that the school district I work for was closed. She's an aide at a different district, and hers was closed as well. I'm guessing because of the temperature and wind chill facor is why the schools were closed...so it wasn't really a "snow day", more of a "too darn cold" day. The funny thing was that the city schools were still open and parents were urged to "use their judgement", which is odd because the city schools are usually the ones to close at the drop of a hat because most of the kids walk to school.

I was glad of the day off though. I wasn't looking forward to the commute out to Irondequoit after everything that happened yesterday with the big 36-car-pileup accident on 390. But after driving out to meet my mom for lunch, I feel a little better and less tweaky about driving. The weather really wasn't that bad while I was out. A bit frigid, but sunny and blue skies, and it wasn't as crazy with windblown snow like yesterday.

I got another T-shirt remnant monster done today, but my camera battery was going dead while I was shooting the picture of the wrist warmers, so I'll post a picture of him when it charges.

Fabric Storage Baskets tutorial link

Thanks again to the Craftzine Blog for the links! Check out these cool Fabric storage baskets. I want to do these! As much as I love using baskets for storage, these would presumably be cheaper than buying baskets/bins.

Sorry I haven't posted any of my own stuff lately. I actually do have two new monsters that keep pestering me about when they're going to get their facetime in the blog. I suspect they may start holding me hostage soon if I don't meet their demands! I don't have to work tomorrow so I'll have some more time to be crafty, so I promise I'll get some of my own stuff up then! (I'm mostly blogging about this link because I'm on my lunch break at work and can't bookmark the page!)

Oh...this link too! Making cable knits on a loom! (I do most, if not all, of my knitting on knitting looms)

Crafty Christmas 2007

2008 is almost here! Then I'll actually have to be diligent in keeping up with this blog every week! Yes...every week...I'm not sure if I mentioned that I decided a while back that this blog will have to be weekly instead of daily.
But anyway...on to the crafty stuff...

My husband and I went to Cleaveland to spend Christmas with his family. We were there Sunday to Wednesday and I brought my Basket-O'-Crafts to keep myself occupied. I'm in a knitting phase right now, using the Knifty Knitter looms. I know how to knit with traditional knitting needles (I recently had my grandma teach me), but I prefer the knitting looms...plus I forgot how to cast on. I worked on a baby blanket I'm going to be giving to a friend's newborn baby boy, as well as disovered a simple, easy way to make fingerless "hobo" gloves.



The yarn used on the purple ones is the "Lion Brand Homespun" yarn (my favorite kind of "specialty" yarn). The other two were "Red Heart Super Saver" yarn (my favorite kind of "normal" yarn, besides the "Caron One Pound" yarn)


My sister-in-law gave me the Red Heart yarn. She crochets (quite beautifully) and had extra skeins lying around at her house so she gave me a big gift bag of it to me. She also gave us a blanket she'd been making. She yelled at my husband that "That's NOT for you! I made that for Kira!" but I'll share it with him...he's my loving hubby and what's mine is his...even though we both know I'll be using it more.


I got my nieces hooked on the Knifty Knitter looms. They saw me using one of mine and of course wanted to try it for themselves. I wish I'd have gotten them each one of those for Christmas like I was originally thinking, but I couldn't remember if their mother knits or crochets and I didn't want to step on her toes if she wanted to teach the girls to knit herself. But, like I said before, it turns out that she crochets, and she is actually intrigued by the looms herself. I'm the cool, inspiring, uber-crafty aunt.

The girls seemed to like the clothespin doll kits, but it was hard to gauge their reaction through all the rest of the gifts and flying wrapping paper and squealing. But I'm pretty sure they liked them. The older, 12-year-old one in particular is into sewing and fashion design. She was thrilled when her grandmother (my mother in law) gave her a plastic tote full of fabric and sewing materials.

I did make one sock monster, but I gave him away the day after I made him to my brother-in-law's girlfriend's son.

I'd given his sister a sock monster the last time I was out there this past summer. She calls it her "Socky" and I'm told that she absolutely loves it and sleeps with it every night. Awwwwww!