If you are looking for the Weaving In Ends Department, that department is closed. Thank goodness.

Today I caught up on some projects that have been sitting around nearly finished. I have a shoulder warmer (the blue tube), a textured triangle shawl (the pink triangle) (rav link here), and a cabled caplet (the light blue thing that is hard to see at the top of the picture) (rav link here). There’s a recently finished project on the table too, my January socks (from my pair of socks a month challenge).

Three snaps in a circle for me for getting things done today!

P.S. Did you happen to see Conan O’Brien’s final Tonight Show last Friday? I thought it was very well done though a little crazy at the end. He had the opportunity to be really bitter and negative, and bad mouth NBC, but he was classy and positive. This is a quote from my favorite moment of the show: “All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch. Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”

Today is my birthday! I’m not obsessed with my age but 35 does sound like a big number. I like to torment my parent’s and ask “do you believe you have a daughter that is 35 years old?” (insert evil laugh here)

This has been a great day. (Will be near perfect if the Blackhawks win tonight.) Bill took the day off work to spend some time with me. He took me to my allergy shot, dropped me at the hair salon while I got a cut and color. Then we went to lunch at The Garret for a burger and beer. There was a quick stop at Blockbuster to pick out a movie for the weekend (500 Days of Summer) and then home to relax and knit and watch the Blackhawks game. I got birthday phone calls from all the parents and lots of facebook happy birthdays! It’s not been too different from most Thursdays, but different enough to make me happy. Suffice it to say, I feel pampered, loved and special.

Green Planet Yarn made me feel super special a couple of weeks ago with their birthday sale program. You can go in one day during your birthday month and have the opportunity to save 20, 40 or 100% off your total purchase. I had my eyes on some Lorna’s Laces Worsted in Valentine and Spud and Chloe in grass for two sweaters. Then some other yarn caught my eye for a little capelet. It’s a decent amount of yarn that came up to a pretty hefty total, but then I picked out a 40% chip (!!!) and once I put in my Christmas money, it didn’t cost me very much out of pocket.

Today I’m working on a top down raglan sweater in the Valentine yarn. I’m very nervous about it because I have to modify the pattern for my size. I’m not an experienced sweater knitter but I have confidence in my math skills. It’s just such beautiful yarn I don’t want to wear out the fiber if I have to frog it. The beauty of a top down sweater is that I can try it on as I go. My other “issue” is that I agonized over which pattern to use. I went with the garter yoke cardi because it’s a simple silhouette that won’t compete with the multi color yarn. Fingers crossed that it fits well when I’m done.

Well, it’s time for some special birthday cupcakes from Sprinkles. 34 years later, I still get the same happy and excited look on my face when someone offers me cake.

This is a project I stitched up years ago, in 2004. I think I bought the cross stitch kit at the Walmart by Ocean City, MD to entertain me during a beach week with Bill’s parents. For whatever reason, I never got around to the finishing. I even had the fabric. But all things happen for a reason.

I was finally motivated to finish this project as a Christmas present for Gran. Gran is keeping Harrison (Bill’s cat) permanently. We miss him, but he’s good company for Gran and I think Harrison is happier being a single child. Plus, we do have visitation rights. Anyhoo, I finally had a reason to finish this project.

It’s the first cross stitch that I made into a pillow, and the first pillow that I did with piping. Lots of firsts. I think my piping skills have room for improvement, but I’m happy with how the project turned out. Very happy actually, and that’s saying a lot. Here’s another picture.

It was a fun project to work on, and I was happy to give it as a gift.

I lean towards no, but we’ll give it a shot. What brings this up you ask? Well, we bought my mother-in-law, Jeanne, the Yarn Harlot’s page-a-day calendar for Christmas. Jeanne is a knitter and we thought it a good gift. It’s not quite as overwhelming as a stitch-a-day kind of thing. Those are nice but that’s a lot of stitches to keep track of. Jeanne emailed me a tip she read from her calendar. The tip was to create your own sock of the month club from stash yarn and patterns you have queued up.

I’m going to interrupt myself and ask a question: Is my sharing this violation of some copyright or something? I prefer to think of it as unpaid advertising in that Jeanne really likes the calendar and if you enjoy tips like this, pick up the Yarn Harlot’s page-a-day calendar, available at Amazon or other fine retailers. Hopefully that has covered some bases that may or may not have needed covering.

So last night (see how exciting Saturday nights can be!) I pulled out my sock yarn and my sock patterns. Scary thing, I actually have enough yarn for 12 pairs of socks. That surprised me. In reality, I have 11 plus two on the needles. My January sock is going to be one of those WIPs. The other on the needles is a pair of knee socks. I also laid out another pair of knee socks but swapped that out for a pair of regular sized socks. In my mind, one pair of knee socks is about two pairs of regular socks knee. Thusly, knee socks are separate projects from this challenge. The rest of the yarn has been matched up with patterns. I have 6 “hard” pairs and 6 basic pairs. If all goes according to plan, by the end of the year I will have 12 pairs of completed socks.

This challenge seems, well, challenging. I don’t know if I’ve even completed 12 total projects in a year. Regardless, nothing ventured, nothing gained and this seems like a fun way to get some socks knit up. Wish me luck!

Over the summer, I found a dresser at a garage sale. It was in need of some serious TLC, but I saw potential. Fast forward three months or so, and I finally got around to working on it. I sanded it and primed it and painted it and then realized I hadn’t done a good job of sanding it. Or washing it before the priming. Back to the beginning; I resanded it. The top had some serious damage to it, lots of scratches and stuff etched into it. I thought the paint would fill in the scratches (lazy talk). This time around, I sanded the crap out of it. And then I really did a good job washing it. I re-primed and re-painted and this time I was very happy with the job. I used spray primer and paint to get a smooth finish, and I used glossy paint. My big splurge was the hardware which I got at restoration hardware. I looked at Home Depot, but wasn’t impressed. Anthropologie had/has some nice hardware, but RH had the look I was going for. I lined the drawers with wrapping paper from the Container Store. It can’t be seen, but if the drawers ever empty out some, it will be there. Bill installed the hardware for me, and my dresser was finally done. $25 for the dresser, around $25 for supplies (paint and sand paper, etc) and let’s say a bit more for the hardware. Not a bad investment for a pretty & very solid piece of furniture. Whatcha think?

I’m using the dresser in my craft studio for my sewing stuff. The top drawer is for my notions (zippers, ribbons, bias tape, purse handles, etc.). The second drawer (in the photo) holds he majority of my crafting fabric (as opposed to my garment fabric). The fourth drawer holds some of my more special garment fabric as well as some heavy weight fabrics. And the third drawer. Well, that’s the one drawer that is left. It will hold more crafting fabric, and I’m hoping there might be space for my buttons.

The folding of the fabric is quite tedious. Bill has been a treasure and helped me with some of the folding. And if there’s a good movie on, the folding goes quickly. I’m hoping that I can finish the third drawer today and be done with the project. That will be a big accomplishment!

I’ve been working on my craft room, trying to get stuff put away once and for all. I know I’ve said that before. I’m trying hard to get to the point where everything is away and tidy and I can concentrate on the projects. This is the closest I have been to that goal.

I hope that you have been enjoying the first four days of the new year! It feels pretty much like last year except for the underlying current of a fresh start and new opportunities. I’ve been giving my “goals” addition thought. There’s a few more things that I want to accomplish:

7. Finish at least 5 photo albums this year.

8. Organize my fabric stash.

9. Finish the curtains for the craft studio, living room, and master bedroom.

10. Refocus my efforts on my etsy shop. Figure out what I really want to do with it.

A couple of these are pretty specific, but I think that’s good. It will hopefully help me stay focused.

While I’ve been pondering my goals, I’ve been working on my textured shawl. It hit a speed bump as I got a little obsessed with the textured section and getting it symmetrical around the center stitch. It took me about a week, but I’ve finally got it worked out. This is a pretty mindless knit and perfect to work on while watching tv and doing laundry.

Speaking of laundry, I washed and folded nine loads today. For two people. And a few of the dog’s socks, but really, just for two people. I think that little munchkins come in, dance around in our clothes, and put them in the laundry hamper while we sleep. But five episodes of Heroes, two episodes of Chuck, the first period of a Blackhawk’s game from New Year’s Eve, and an episode of Rachel Ray made it go pretty quickly. Okay, it didn’t go quickly but it was pretty painless.