So much yarn, so little time…

Yesterday, I went and bought lots of yarn and saved tons of money doing it (as if I didn’t have enough yarn already and no time to knit it). A YARN SALE must be taken advantage of! My justification for this is that I'm making purchases for my children and hubby, not for me (yeah, right).

So here’s the scoop. Ruti’s Needlebed in Streetsville, Mecca for quilters and yarn enthusiasts, is having an anniversary sale and competition. It’s their 10th anniversary and Streetsville’s 150th. Ruthie’s got $10/bag of yarn! Most of these bags contain 10 balls each of good quality yarn. One exception was the Noro bag, which I seized without a second thought, which contained 5 balls in it. Still, $2/ball of Noro (stunned look of disbelief, mouth gaping open, heavy breathing, palpitations); no brainer! Just look at all the stuff I got!

She’s got other great deals on fabrics and yarns; it’s worth checking out.

There is a quilting competition and a knit purse competition. The prize for the purse competition is a $100 gift certificate for use in Ruti’s. Any entry submitted gets some sort of prize. The theme is “History Lives!” reflecting Streetsville’s anniversary celebration. I’m going to try and come up with a purse for submission by August 31 (deadline).

So much to knit, so little time…

Okay, this is really frustrating. It’s not like I haven’t been knitting, I have but it has to be top secret if I want to get my pattern(s?) published; that’s one of the conditions for submission. AAARGH! Of course, my pattern(s?) has to be accepted, too. No guarantees.

There; I got that out of my system, now I feel better (well, only minutely and only for a short amount of time). This is supposed to be primarily (though not exclusively) a knitting blog so I would really like to bring the focus back there at some point which means I might have to show some existing UFOs (unfinished objects) for a while interspersed with other crafts / activities.

This week-end, we finally had some nice weather with no risk of frost so I could plant some new plants and bulbs and attempt to clean up the yard. It finally looks like civilized people live here now.

What I was particularly excited about was putting up my new bird feeder with new pole to hang it on. Cardinals are rare to see so I was especially fortunate to get a pair this time. The male was eating some seeds on the patio that he had extracted from my new feeder. The female was a little farther off on the fence so I had to blow up the picture of her hence the slightly grainier appearance.

Now, for Something Completely Different

As the description under my blog title says, “a few other crafts thrown in for good measure”; this one is macramé.

My kids have me wrapped around their little finger. Anything they want Mommy to make, Mommy can do it (well almost – I had to decline the request for a knitted a Spider-Man outfit for Halloween because of the whole "day job" thing).

My daughter requested a bracelet be made from her seashell bracelet/necklace kit with a few other miscellaneous beads thrown in. My son got in on the beading action, too (I'm so proud of him). I did the macramé knotting. Notice my thrifty use of a cushion actually intended for bobbin lace making (I will get to that hobby one day, really I will; I have the tools and books and everything).

Why am I using a bandage to hold the macramé down? Because someone had me open a bandage for no good reason so rather than throw out the unused, now non-sterile bandage, I gave it a purpose. Sometimes, my thriftiness is a scary thing. The adhesive on the bandage is great to hold the other end of the work down and has been re-used several times already just for this purpose (no humans were injured to use the bandage).

I’m using the read bead at the end as a clasp. Ta da! The recipient is quite happy.