In honor of the Oscars last night...

Our Meatlocker Monday Man is Mr. Collin Firth! Congrats on winning Best Actor!!!

You learn something new every day...

I just realized that when you comment on blogger there is a link at the bottom of the page that says 'follow' this allows you to follow any replies made to the blog. See I'm used to LJ which automatically emails you after anyone comments on anything and I was wondering how the heck I would see if anyone made a reply to the comment I made. Going back and checking the post seemed a bit tedious. Just following the comments will make it much easier.

On other fronts, if you are into reading and if you love Jane Austen, I would highly recommend the Jane Austen Investigates by Stephanie Barron. Stephanie does an amazing job of mimicking the way Jane Austen writes. She does so well that it's easy to forget sometimes that Jane didn't write the 'diarie's these books are supposedly 'based' off of.

Proof I don't just sit around and look at pictures of pretty men all day long...

Ness's blanket - from my prospective while I'm working on it

It's now clocking in at 40" wide and 20" long. 

Happy President's Day

Maybe for President's day I should have chosen a President to feature for Meatlocker Monday... but let's be honest with each other; most of our Presidents haven't been all that attractive. Instead our Meatlocker Monday man is Channing Tatum, who I recently saw in The Eagle. Quite frankly I thought he did an amazing job in the movie, and he also looked quite drool worthy as a Roman.

Ice Yarns

I discovered a new online yarn shop today, completely by accident. I had gone on ebay and was looking around at the yarns available on there, and saw a brand that I didn't recognize. When I looked up the company it turned out that they had an online store, and they actually had really good prices! They are a wholesale company, so you have to buy a minimum order, but that's really not such a bad thing when most of my patterns require two or three skeins of the same color.

Check them out here: Ice Yarns

Warning: Plotting ahead...

Right now I'm on a Granny Stripe kick since I'm making that baby blanket. Last night an idea came to me: Granny Stripe purses. Of course, I don't think it would be a true granny stripe, since, if I did this the way I have it figured out in my head, you would be crocheting in the round - only it wouldn't be a granny square because it be bag shaped.

Hmmm... I shall have to mull over this some more and give it a shot.

*edit* Well, someone has beat me to it; Granny Stripe Boutique Bag from Tangled Happy. I plan to make mine bigger though!

And the Meatlocker Monday Man is...

...Actually someone I don't consider all that hot. Is he a good looking guy? Yes. An amazing actor? Yes. But I was told (by a male coworker no less! Who's straight!) that if I didn't feature this person in the Meatlocker he would pull my girl card. We can't have that happen now, can we?

So, to appease that male coworker (you know who you are) I give you Johnny Depp!

Are you happy now Mr Coworker? Seriously, I should take away your man card for suggesting him. I refuse to believe that you don't have one because you cook and clean :P

Nook!

When the Kindle first came out I swore up and down that I would not join the e-book revolution. E-books were not as cool as normal books in my opinion, because nothing compares to holding an actual book in your hand. Plus, all my books are much loved and favorite scenes are dog eared. You, I told myself, simply can't do that with an e-book.

And then I got my smart phone in August, and it had Kindle preloaded on to it. When we went to Vegas in September I forgot the book I had been reading at home, and ended up downloading a book to keep me entertained while my Fiance gambled (I wasn't in much of a gambling mood that day) I discovered that I really enjoyed the convience of ordering a book, having it show up like that *snaps fingers*, and not having to carry around a large paperbook in my purse because it was stored on my phone. I've also learned that I like to read while I work out, and it's SO much easier to read a book on an e-reader while running on a treadmill - instead of fumbling with pages, and having to situate your water bottle or cellphone to keep the book open, you just tap the screen. In addition to all of those reasons, the Fiance and I will be going on Honeymoon in Ireland, which means we'll have a very long flight, and not much carry on space for books. An e-reader also solves this problem.

You would think that I would go with the Kindle since it's cheaper and since I'm already familiar with how it works since it was included on my phone. I choose the Nook Color though; it, obviously, displays pictures much better, so I'll be able to entertain any future children with it, and if I download a cook book, or a crochet pattern book, the examples will look OH so much better. Plus it has the Lend Me feature where I can loan books to and borrow books from friends. The Kindle has something similar but I don't think you can borrow books from libraries like you can with the Nook* (I have yet to figure this feature out though!) Plus I can share bits from books with friends. The only drawback to the nook is that Barnes and Noble doesn't have as many free books available as Amazon - but Google Ebooks does, and I can easily transfer those over to the Nook (you can't do that with the Kindle*)

On top of all of that the Nook comes with games I can play like Chess and Sodoku, and I can surf the web on it and listen to Pandora. I am SUCH a happy girl right now!

Granny Stripes...

A friend at work is expecting a baby soon, and so I decided to make her a baby blanket. I've made one before that was a big granny square, but this time I wanted to do something different. Preferably something with stripes because I'm a big fan of them and I know my coworker is just as eccentric as I am, if not more, and would appreciate them too. However, I didn't want to do a ripple blanket, because, honestly, I'm a bit afraid of them. I could have done a simple blanket out of double crochet and just alternated the couple every couple of rows or so, but that would have been boring. I found the solution to my problem on the crochet blog, Attic24: Granny stripes!

The directions were a bit daunting at first because I am horrible at remembering what abbreviation means what stitch. Also, the author of Attic24 is from the UK, and they have different names for different stitches over there. (She posts a warning about that - something I didn't notice until my third read through of the pattern.) I decided to to a practice square, and to my surprise, the pattern actually turned out to be really easy! (Which I'm sure is the case with the ripple blanket as well)

I went a bit wider on the width of the blanket than I was originally planning to; I did a chain of 90 (for a granny stripe you're supposed to do the base chain in multiples of 3) but that didn't seem wide enough so I bumped the base chain up to 150 (I cannot find my tape measurer though, so I have no idea how long that actually is - other than a good length for a granny stripe scarf) If I make the length of the blanket 1.5 times the width, or maybe 2 times the width, it should last the soon-to-be-mininess for long time....

(Row 1 and row 2 are not impressive)

(If I had stopped there, it would have been the perfect scarf)

(It's getting bigger!)

On other fronts, another friend was hired in at a local theme park recently. He invited us to come and visit the company store with him - which was full of items that were out of season, or they had too much of, or made specifically for the company employees only. While there I found a tote bag that I put into use as my crochet bag as soon as I got home. So now my yarn and crochet hooks are all in one place (mostly) and not scattered around the love seat.

Meatlocker Monday - Part the third

This week I give you David Boreanaz. Back when I was a freshman in high school he was quite the heart throb - and he just keeps getting better as he gets older!

Fin!

Despite Connor insisting that I hold him while I was working - which isn't such a big deal while I'm crocheting, but a bit harder to manage when I'm adding finishing touches, like fringe - I got the Harry Potter scarf that I am making for a friend finished last night.

The fringe is not movie accurate, but I thought it looked better than the short dark fringe the patter said to use. 

It's a bit too long for me to get a picture of all of it - unless it's folded up - but it comes down to my hips, and because it's folded in half, it's pretty thick and oh so warm. I want to try to make the next one even wider. I have new Tunisian hooks coming that are a larger gauge and a bit longer than what I used with this one, so the fabric won't be as dense, and hopefully won't curl as much at the ends.  However, I'm also sorely tempted to knit the next one instead of doing tunisian crochet... but we'll see.

Next project: Granny Stripes!

No new news...

I had hoped to have a finished scarf to show you today (seriously, I am SO close! I just need to put fringe on one side and I'm done!) but one of our cats, Murphy, went missing yesterday so most of the night was spent looking for him and trying to calm our other cat, Connor, down. Thankfully Murphy showed back up in the wee hours of the morning today, so I should be able to complete the scarf tonight because I won't be stressed out wondering where our boy has gone.

In the mean time I direct you to Ruby Red Rose - purveyor of fine clutch purses (I want!) - and Jewel's Treasure Chest (she'll be making the necklaces for me and my bridesmaids for my wedding!) to goggle at pretties.