Fiber Fool

I sort of covered the blocking in Saturday’s August Break post. If you didn’t see it, I ended up pinning each point. I just couldn’t find a good place to thread the points together. It meant I procured 3 more boxes of T-pins, bringing my total to 5 (only 4 pictured as I didn’t need to dip into the 5th but only because the blocking kit included 20 pins).

I put the names into a spreadsheet in the order they were received, then used the random number generator to choose the winner - #12 Deb! I’ll send you a copy of the pattern when it is available to the public.

Okay, onto Monday Musings! Beginning of months are kind of crazy around here and even more so with wrapping up this design so it’ll be another somewhat brief one this week.

Crafty:

• I love this use of chalkboard paint - adornment on pots for plants so you can label the contents!
• Lots of great ideas from the archive of a fairly new-to-me blog, mostly for DIY jewelry, but also some good gift ideas as well.
• For you handspinners and designers or wanna be designers have you heard about the Hello Yarn/Southern Cross Fibre/Spunky Eclectic 4 Ounce Challenge?

Cooking:

• Some great Italian Ice ideas to help you keep your cool.
• Rodale had some great gift ideas from your garden in two different posts, most of them cooking/canning/preserving related. Even if you don’t have a garden a lot of these could be done using local produce/flowers etc. from your local farmer’s market!
• Peach Brown Betty from Cook’s Country via Cook’s Illustrated.

Photography:

• Check out this illustrated walk through of a photo shoot set-up! It is a great look into lighting and ways to save time for your subject!
• This way of simply tagging photos seems interesting and something I’ll have to try!
• Another great post from Photofocus - 5 things you can do in 6 hours to become a better photographer.

Humor:

• How Knitting Clubs and Bad Neighborhoods are Alike - I ran into a comment that both also have stashes!

Things to Think About:

• Would you patronize a coffeeshop that did not allow e-books or computers?
• Vampire Wire rants about file sharing - all her arguments can also be applied to knitting/crochet pattern, photography e-books, music files and pretty much any other downloadable product.

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No real progress to note on reading except another audiobook thanks to canning on Thursday evening - Cherry Cheesecake Murder by Joanne Fluke. I broke my usual rule and dove right into this one after the previous book because of the cliff hanger about Hannah’s personal life. Of course there was no real resolution in the next book on that matter, LOL! I’m now revisiting a series I haven’t read in quite some time with Miss Julie Stands Her Ground by Ann B. Ross. I’m kind of thinking I may have outgrown this series. We’ll see. I’m only ~1/3 of the way in I think. I listened to it during part of the shawl blocking process.

I also checked out a Booktown Mystery book from the library on Friday, but now that I’m about 1/2 done with it have discovered I accidentally skipped a book. I hate when that happens, but I suspect I’m far enough into this one that I should just continue. Though I’m totally flummoxed as to how it happened as I’m pretty good about consulting the series listing on LibraryThing.

I went to the library to pick up a fairly new canning title, Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Jams, Jellies, Pickles, Chutneys & More I had requested through ILL. I think I’ll post a real review of it in the next week or two. So far I’ve only skimmed the info and drooled over a few of the recipes.