Fiber Fool

I need someone to test the new system now that it is a more humane time of day. I’ll be popping out to water aerobics shortly followed by a quick stop at the library. But, if we make it a contest that should work okay…

The first two orders via the blog store to order two or more sock patterns will get refunds and get their orders for free! Okay? Refunds will be made later this afternoon. I may e-mail you a few times to ask you some questions about how the process was for you.

Well, I’ve stayed up until the wee hours of the morning hoping and praying that the temperature outside would drop below 80 degrees. It isn’t looking very likely as it is 2:30 and we’re still bouncing between 81 and83 degrees. I’m guessing I need not say how miserable this is going to make the house tomorrow today. We’re actually still 82 degrees on the ground floor and 76 degrees in the basement :-( Gah! If the budget weren’t so tight I would normally pack up the laptop and hang out at a coffee shop with free wireless and AC. But that won’t really work. Not to mention poor Emma will need attending too as well.

If the weather service is to be believed (they were forecasting an overnight low of 64 degrees and are still saying that) we will have a nice break from the upper 90’s and low 100 degree temps Tuesday through Friday. I *really* hope they are right. I hate the heat induced lethargy and ennui!

Okay, enough bitching from me… All this waiting for the temps to drop means I have the knitting patterns moved to their new home(s). See that menu bar above, right below the header image? There is a like there entitled “Designedly, Kristi Fiber Shop.” If you click on that you can shop the downloadable sock patterns right now in the blog (or anytime). A navigation for the shopping section will pop up in the upper right of the sidebar (though IE keeps insisting on pushing that down to below the page content once you go into the info pages and I haven’t been able to crack that just yet).

You can also shop the patterns directly at the Payloadz e-store by going to http://store.payloadz.com/results.asp?m=39957 if you would prefer.
I have taken down the front page of the old shopping cart, but there were some orders placed on Sunday so I haven’t taken it all down just yet until I hear that those customers have successfully downloaded thier files. Links direct to items will still work until that happens, but orders placed through that system from here on out will be cancelled and refunded as this shopping cart will no longer interface with PayPal properly.

I will keep plugging away at adding the fiber tags and other things as they become available so just keep checking here and I’ll be sure to post as things are added.

This week should be good. Today marks the close of the purple month and tomorrow we will start the neutral month and the Colorado front range in August has an overabundance of neutral colors most of the time so it should be quite easy. There will also be some more knitting and spinning reports, so be sure to come back.

After I get some sleep I’ll do a final July PS wrap-up yet today!

Last year we used to gather at the home of several of our friends every Wednesday for a game night. We break into appropriately sized groups and play various board or card games. Often our games chosen were lesser known such as Chez Geek, Fluxx, Apples to Apples (gaining popularity now), or various Cheap Ass Games. Well, the group grew to crazy proportions and often included people who wished only to sit and play on their laptops and argue for their friends in games they weren’t actually playing so it went on hiatus.

This week, DH and I kind of brought it back. Mim had posted about playing this DIY card came, 1000 Blank White Cards, a few weeks ago and I sent the link around and it seemed many were interested. So, this Wednesday we had a 1KBWC night. Scimon, G, and T joined us for the inaugural game.

If you can’t tell from the sampling of the cards to the left there, we had a blast! Indeed, the game is much more about the playing and drawing than the actually winning. Surprisingly three of the six ended up with final point totals very near each other! While the drawing is a big part of it, you need no fancy drawing skills. You are often under a bit of time pressure to get a card made before your turn comes back around so no one is judging your drawing skills. We were also amazed by the number of ideas for cards that game to us by the time the game was over. We all enjoyed it so much we’ve set up another evening of play for next Wednesday.

Basically, you start with a deck of cards that are roughly 1/3 blank (unless it is your first round, in which case it is 2/3 blank and 1/3 cards that everyone made before the game begins). Each turn you pick a card from the deck and then play a card. If you can’t play a card you draw an extra and the game proceeds to the next player. You play until the draw pile is gone and someone can no longer play. Then you total up points of the cards played in front of you. Cards can be played on yourself, other playes, or on the table. You of course get to draw new cards if you have blanks in your hand and drawing good new cards to counteract cards already laid on the table is a good thing. At the end of the game you lay all the cards out and all the players chose a certain number of cards that they like and you keep those to use in the next game.

I’m looking forward to playing with a variety of people and developing a varied deck that contains cards from everyone we’ve played with!

Besides playing games I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading. I’ve been visiting the local library almost weekly. I think the heat has really dragged me down. I’m roasting and lethargic and sometime rather headachey so there has been a lot of reading going on. I’ve sort of abandoned the idea of reading books from my childhood. I’ve been much more drawn to the whodunits recently. Especially since I’ve found new and interesting mystery authors to read. There is just something about summer that means mystery reading to me.

I finished the second William Kent Krueger novel from the Cork O’Conner series, Boundary Waters. That was just as good as the first. As usual it was set near a native american reservation and casino in northeastern Minnesota near the Boundary Waters. There was a lot of outdoorsmanship to this book which I enjoyed since I have spent some time in that area of Minnesota. And, for anyone who has read his books, you know how he acknowledges the St. Claire Broiler all the time (and I believe set Devil’s Bed there)? My cousin has worked there for several years and I ate there once and there was a guy sitting there writing. I wonder if it was him?!?!?!?

I now have his third in the series up next, Purgatory Ridge, that I’ll be starting today.

I then read a more recent John Sandford (another Minnesota author), Broken Prey. This book has a detective for the state crime office working out of Minneapolis, but the majority of the action took place about an hour south of the metro area near Austin, Minnesota. It was kind of fun because we drove through that area on our trip a few weeks ago. I have been reading this series completely out of order though. My mom recommended a specific one from this series for me to see if I liked him. I don’t recall which Prey book it was, but it had something to do with art. Then when I went to the library to check this one out they were pretty sketchy on which ones were on the shelf and I didn’t find the first few of the series so I just drew this one at random.

As is usual for this series, this book dealt with a serial killer. I enjoyed it, though there were times where it seemed like it was a bit of a commercial as he was always naming things by their brand name - his Lexus Pick Up and his navigation system this and that. It seemed as though Sandford was getting kick backs from some companies. I do not know if it was true, but I could care less what make and model vehicle he is driving and whether or not he uses a navigation system or what type of cell phone he has. That said, I will certainly continue to read him. I would like to go back and start the series from the beginning though I think. I’ll probably put the first few on hold here in a few days time.

After Sandford I decided it was time to switch to a Colorado author. I had heard many good things about Diane Mott Davidson’s culinary mysteries but I had never heard that she was a Colorado author until a few ladies in my water aerobics and I started swapping authors and mystery series to read. So, I checked out her first two novels from the library last weekend and plowed through both this week. Catering to Nobody was obviously a first novel. Some of the elements of Goldy’s life were heavy handed and a bit overdone by the end of the book. But, I liked the touch of romance thrown in and the food of course is a fun element. I do dislike how they put the recipes in though. I wish they would insert them at the end of a chapter or even just put them in the back of the book like they do with Joanne Fluke. Here they often interrupt a sentence or a paragraph and I find that distracting. But, then I’m a reader who much prefers to put a book down between chapters.

Dying for Chocolate, the second Davidson novel featuring Goldy Bear the caterer was much improved. There are definitely strong elements of being a single divorced mother raising a tween boy alone and dealing with an abusive ex, but it wasn’t nearly as heavy handed as in the first book. I really liked the twists at the end of the book even though I saw them coming. Oh, and some of her descriptions of chocolate were amazing! I’ll definitely be continuing this series!

I am going to try to keep mixing all these series up. Partly because most of these more recent series are still in progress and I hate having read all the books in a series and awaiting the next installment. Plus, it is nice to mix up the series so you don’t get annoyed by an author’s idiosyncrasies or that.

I will likely be heading over to the library again tomorrow so if you have any other mystery series you recommend (they need not be Minnesota or Colorado authors) please leave me a comment as my mother and I both love finding new authors to read.

As is usual for me, I had ispiration for a handmade gift for SIL3’s birthday last Friday. Inspiration struck around 1pm or so I think and I had other things that needed wrapping up and then we ended up meeting for martini’s much sooner than I had expected so I wasn’t quite done (I was very, very close) when we left to meet her at Elliot’s so I told a white lie that I had forgotten her gift and didn’t remember until we were in the parking garage, LOL!

I was inspired by the Tiny Happy Shoulder Bag that Scout had made (Amanda made one recently too), but once again I needed to use stash, so I downsized it drastically and adjusted the shape a bit so that I could use coordinating fat quarters for the outer fabric. I think it turned out quite well. I’m actually proud of my sewing on this one, including the hand sewn finishing. This particular combination of fabrics produces a bit of a “Shabby Chic” feeling to me, which isn’t necessarily SIL3, but pink is very SIL3 and I think she’ll like it.

Since I was using fat quarters for the outer fabric I chose to iron on some interfacing (from the stash of course). It was a bit stiffer interfacing than I would recommend, but I do recommend using some if you aren’t using a heavier body fabric for the outside. It gives it some nice shape and body.

Since SIL3 hasn’t been over to pick up her gift yet I’ve started a little snap on cell phone case to match, though it has such a small circumference that it requires hand sewing so it isn’t done yet. Anyone have tips on hand sewing in a straight line around something round? My two ends of my sewing around the top didn’t meet so I’ve set it aside in frustration for the moment. Oh, and yes, I know you can remove part of the sewing machine, but this is a tiny circumference because she has a Razr so my machine just doesn’t get small enough for that.

I’m going to check with Tiny Happy to see if she minds my posting a PDF with directions for this (and the cell phone case) as long as I give her credit for the inspiration. So, hopefully next week sometime I’ll be able to post that here. Otherwise I’ll post a schematic and a link to her instructions on sewing it.

You’ll need two fat quarters for the outside and a full 1/4 yard of muslin or two more fat quarters for the lining to make both the purse and the cell phone case. Some medium weight interfacing (I recommend the iron on variety, but that may just be me), two buttons (~1.5 in and ~3/4″ for purse and cell phone case respectively) and a sew on snap (for cell phone case) as well.

We’ll have a guest at the house this weekend so I don’t know what, if anything will get accomplished, but I do have some things I would like to do this weekend… Have a great one everyone!