A Little Yarn On The Side

I have been to a fabric store WITHOUT going crazy!  Actually, I've been to two.  The morning started with tracking down Calisto and dropping her off at the vet's on my way to physical therapy.  I was worried she might have worms, and decided that even I have limits on my vacation, so thought she was best in the hands of professionals.  I grew up on a cattle ranch and have wormed horses and done all sorts of bizarre things, but Calisto has never been given medication of any sort outside her normal shots, and before risking life and limb to do it, I wanted to make sure it was necessary.  And I have been rewarded for my sins with 10 days of antibiotics to give her twice a day.  Because what's more fun than medicating one cat--why, medicating TWO cats. Not surprisingly, my back was was pretty wound up for therapy, so the massage was painful, but I finished up just when the stores were opening at 9:00, and decided to take the plunge anyway.  I had a "25...

As it turns out, even those who have been having a bad back week CAN jump out of bed in the morning with the proper motivation.  This turns out to be the noises of a cat scuffling with a "gift" it just caught for you.  And being the first day off a year-long spending ban didn't hurt either......... Luckily, Theo's gift was dead so I didn't have to practice my mousing this morning, and once I had coffee going I could tear into this: I had no idea how excited one could be about thread!  By 6:01 I had taken care of my "gift," poured coffee, and purchased my new lace ornaments, gotten them downloaded and saved,  then transferred to my embroidery card.  The last two are actually not new designs--they're from the ornament collection Andy gave me for Christmas last year, but I haven't made them yet because of the shortage of white thread.  So, they're "like new."  I'm rather proud of myself, as there was moment when I looked th...

.....and don't think the thought of staying up until midnight hasn't crossed my mind.  But it's been a bad back week, and where willpower gives up, Valium takes over......... I'm not sure exactly what I did, but the therapist thought that after the last couple weeks plus the don't-sit-like-this episode on Saturday, I might just need to let things calm down a bit.  We had a busy weekend, then Monday I literally spent all day canning 18 pints of tomato soup.  After a late dinner party on Sunday involving a little too much sitting, this was probably a factor.  However, I felt pretty good when I woke up on Tuesday, ran a couple errands, then was at the very back of a huge store when my back suddenly just HURT.  Literally, out of nowhere I could barely move--it was like being mugged by my own backside.  And, of course, because walking is so important to my therapy and general health, I had parked my blasted car in the farthest space in the parking lot....

"Finishing Friday" got scrapped this week for getting ready to have friends over last night--a very worthy cause indeed--but today I've got some crafting time before we go to a Halloween Seafood Boil tonight.  So, there are new mitten ornaments!  Can we tell how much I love the green and white mitten combo?  With these done, I have 70 ornaments left to go for the year.  Time for the sewing room! I'm still stuffing the cat ornaments, and have outlined a few more ornaments to work on,  so maybe I can get caught up today.  First thing though, during the whole 2-year back saga, I have spent an insane amount of time in pajamas, and my very favorite pajamas--homemade, even--developed a hole in the seat.  Do you mend things?  I've been getting better about it--especially when it's something I really like or will be really expensive to replace. I still had some scraps of fabric from making these, but as I didn't even attempt to make the r...

My jury term is over!  Admittedly, I wouldn't have really minded were it not for the "no knitting" rule and two and a half hours on a hard bench.  No one can be enthusiastic about civic duty when it requires one of THOSE physical therapy appointments that leaves one with a very tender backside.  Luckily, I can now make mitten ornaments while on Valium.  280 down, 85 to go! And..........   The year-long spending ban ends two weeks from today!!!!!!!!!!!!! There have been a couple exceptions, but none involving the big stuff--yarn, fabric, thread, notions.  I don't know if I'm more amazed or proud, but shocked would have to be in there as well. My crafting vacation begins in 2 weeks and 2 days, and there are a few things I need for my crafting spree.  The problem is, after a full year, I'm just not ready to be released in a fabric store on my own.  I don't think it would be pretty.  BUT I want to embroider some new ornaments, make mo...

The spending ban is almost over (October 31 at midnight, but who's counting?), and it's actually getting a bit harder.  I am SO close that it almost just seems silly that in two weeks it will be okay but it isn't now.  Yesterday we met a friend to go prowl antique and thrift stores, and I ran across I don't know if you've examined sewing books at any length, but the more recent ones aren't really very helpful.  I suppose they might be if you're a beginner, or sew very simple things, but I sew clothes.  While I would not dare to call myself an expert or even an intermediate, I have run into issues and questions that are just more advanced than I can find.  The sewing book--which helpfully is even a three ring binder that will stay open --was published in 1961 originally and updated in 1970, so it's for an era when people made more of their clothing.  I had placed 3 books on my wishlist on Amazon to order on November 1 to hopefully find this informatio...

My buy-nothing challenge started November 1, so I am a month away from getting to buy things.   YAY!!!!!!!!!!!! Not yarn, though.  In the Stashdown Cold Sheeping thread on Ravelry, one of our lovely members has created badges for each cold-sheeping milestone, now up to 1 year, 9 months.   The wonderful thing about these virtual badges is that I want those babies more than I want any yarn I have seen.  So, I won't be buying any yarn--probably best since I've knit so little of my stash up this year. I am, however, making a list.  I have been working on it all 11 months, really.  Little things I've noticed I didn't have--white baby rick rack, fusible webbing--things I have run out of--white machine embroidery thread--and things I'd like.  The last category gets a great deal of scrutiny, and many things have been moved off of the list because the original emotion is gone. Lots of things won't make the cut because they just aren't worth a one-year...

Feeling pretty brave, I decided to be a bit more daring with the new ornament design yesterday, and have now decided that either I don't care as much for white thread on these designs, or I am just not good enough with the applique scissors to do light-colored thread yet.  Considering I managed to draw blood with the blasted things yesterday, gross incompetence with the new scissors is certainly an issue.  I am sort of relieved to know that I actually prefer that these AREN'T in white, as running out of white embroidery thread has been one of my biggest concerns for the no-buying year. So, after dumping my scrap bin out and finding myself short on scrap pieces of satin in any color EXCEPT gold, I was inspired to experiment with color options with gold (see how nicely that works?)  And since dark thread covers my mistakes better than light, what could be better than black?  I know it's unusual for a Christmas decoration, but don't you just love how this looks?...

So, you know that buy-nothing goal of mine?  Um, yeah...... Out of morbid curiosity, I often browse Ebay looking to see how many embroidery machines like mine are up for sale.  If I can get parts for mine, I think mine could  last another 10 years or more--but the problem is that there's no telling how long they'll be available.  So, I keep an eye out for the embroidery cards and/or the reader/writer I use to transfer designs to my machine.  The last writable card I bought was in a clearance basket (though still insanely expensive considering how little support the old machines get), so you can see why I worry.  So, before we left for Indiana, there were several cards on Ebay.  Usually I don't bother with the ones with designs already on them, because they're still REALLY expensive and I'm not interested enough in the designs.  But there was an unused writable card which wasn't going for much, and a lace card with maybe a $10 bid.  I thou...

It's now been 7 months and one day since I bought any yarn, fabric, thread, or other craft supplies.  I'm sort of proud of myself--which I can't say very often when discussing the purchasing of yarn or fabric.  I have made two overall spending exceptions this year.  The first was the book for the Great Discussions group--technically the $20 covered the book and the dvd for the group, so I still view it more as a fee for the class than anything else.  The second exception is a new pair of sunglasses.  Mine broke about 5 years ago, which was bad enough, but now that I have new contacts and am wearing them more often (like, as I'm actually supposed to), and contacts tend to make eyes a bit more sensitive to light.  I did think about it for about a week, but I decided eye damage in pursuit of a spending ban was taking it a bit far even for me. And why I can't do moderation in any form:  as soon as I made one exception, I immediately wanted to go on a ...

Mother Nature was a week off, because we got our usual Easter weather (cold, rain, wind) yesterday.  While Theo chose to spend the day snoozing in a pillow fort, I spent most of the day in the sewing room.  I was inspired by the idea of a Victorian Christmas, so more pink ornaments!  And even more: As you can see, there was a problem with one of the icicles.  Some of you might recognize this as the sort of thing that lead to the long battle with the jerks at Holland's Sew Shoppe.  To anyone who ISN'T a complete jackass of a repair guy who blames everything on user error, this was a mid-design jump, which means the embroidery card is going bad.  I think my machine is one of the last to use these: which is how I transfer designs from the computer to the machine.  So far, it's just one design, so it might mean there's a defect where it wrote this design--in this case, number 11.  So I can still use it, but just won't embroider anything...

 In spite of the fact that I have fallen drastically behind in my ornament-making plans, for the record, these weren't just an attempt to make fast, quick ornaments in a desperate push to catch up.  Or at least, not entirely.  These exist because of this: Sulky embroidery spools like this hold 850 yards of thread.  Which is fine, except that every thread manufacturer uses a different type of spool.  I don't know if this one has a thick or thin center, so while I'm pretty sure there isn't enough thread left on the spool to make a snowflake, I don't actually know how much IS left.  Lace ornaments like this have to have matching thread in the bobbin as well, so I'm making the small ornaments with this so I can use it up without running out of thread in the middle of anything.  I do love the embroidered lace ornaments, but they are thread pigs.  So, there is a point to this BESIDES desperation.  I got the red ornaments blocked, and since ...