Are you in need of a Martha moment?

Well, I have what you need. A knitting friend of mine is having a giveaway on her blog and this is just what I need to get my crafty side back in gear and ready for summer vacation!

Check it out & sign up, you could win yourself a copy of Martha's new book.

I am back from vacation!

Mom, the little guy, and I went to Wisconsin, Illinois, & Iowa on a short road trip this past week. We stopped at quilt and yarn stores. I put a serious dent in my yarn budget and got lots of goodies to show so sit back, get a cup of coffee, & enjoy.

Snagged these at the Fons & Porter store in Iowa.
The little guy picked out the two on the left.

These were purchased at Nancy's Notions in Beaver Dam, WI. The one on the left is flannel and the little guy picked it out. I fell in love with the cowboy print on the right. I wanted a yard of it but all they had was the pillowcase set so I got that instead.

A pincushion for my thumb when I'm using my sewing machine.
Purchased on our visit to the Amana Colonies in Iowa.

I had a gift card to the Cosmic Cow (a store here in town) so I got this bad boy for pennies! I am going to use it to make the center basket (see below pattern).

I loved the example they had in the store. This was purchased at a quilt store while at the Amana Colonies. I'm making the center one first. The basket on the right is for a cat. LOVE IT!

A good gift idea.

Just the right yarn for Brooklyn Tweed's Noro Striped Scarf.
It's next on my list to make.

Hand made leather purse straps and wooden buttons. Got these at a yarn store in Wisconsin. I'm on the search for the perfect bag to go with them. Suggestions welcomed!

Soon to be necklace. I'm looking for my leather cording.

Lined hat kit for the little guy. Purchased in Illinois.
I can't remember the store but I loved it.
I'll research it and make sure to pass it along.
The town was super cute!

Misti Alpaca for a pair of gloves for me. It's very soft. I love it!

Some Cherry Tree Hill purchased in Oregon, Ill. The lady that wound it turned it into a huge ball of barf. I had it re-wound at another store. It will become a pair of Monkey Socks for me. I didn't start it on vacation as planned due to the yarn getting 'sick'.

A cute notions bag. You can't see it but the end of the zipper is a felted ball.

My so called scarf. Super soft and the green is perfect for when I go to hubby's soccer games which means I HAD to purchase it. Really....there was NO choice!

Socks that I finished on day one of the trip.
Toe up, Lorna's Laces, size 0 needles. Very comfy.

Check out the short row heels. My first attempt.

Why Do I Love This So Much?

If this really happened, I now know my next vacation stop...



Thanks to Not an Artist for finding this one. Nice!

The Little Guy's FIRST Musical Concert

Today was hectic. The best way to end this type of day is with a little bit of music. Who better to listen to than my "Little Nut". Actually, I think he's supposed to be an acorn. Enjoy.

Getting his "top" pinned in place.

Sometimes you feel like a nut...

His first grade teacher. She's VERY nice!

His Music Teacher, also VERY nice.

He found us.

So stinkin' cute.

A little riddle for you

What goes snap and pokes you in the armpit just as you sit down to conference with your 6 year old son's first grade teacher?
















Give up?























Your UNDERWIRE of course! Talk about comedic timing. I can't make this stuff up...

He Can Dance if He Wants to...

Whelpers, the little guy isn't limited to singing and dancing in his room. We took him to the store and, with his allowance money, he purchased this:


Dad is trying to figure out how to install songs on it. It's not as easy to load as our I-Pods. We tried and the 250 songs turned out to be 25. Hmmmm. If this doesn't work, we may be springing for the real deal. Cross your fingers!

UPDATE!!! It works & he LOVES it! Good job Daddy.

What's on my mind?

I was hoping to post pictures of my new yarn order, alas, it hasn't arrived. Instead, I'll show you what I've been doing to keep me from focusing on my inability to remain patient and calm when what I really want to do is dance around excitedly hoping that helps bring my yarn to me sooner. (Trust me, NOBODY wants to see that.)

First off, a project that has been brought back to life (courtesy of yarn.com not having my desired yarn in stock...I'm not mad, as I probably would have let this project sit in a bag for another year.)

Shetland Shorty
for those on Ravelry



The next project I've been tinkering with is the 'Spiral Sock'. I told you about it the other day. Not much progress since then. It's more of a 'knit before bedtime' pair of socks.



I can't remember if I told you about this pair of socks. I know I mentioned it on Ravelry. It's my first attempt at toe up socks. These are on DPN size 0US. (the above are toe up, 2 at a time, on circs.) I'm loving the simplicity of these especially with the Lorna's Laces Flamingo Stripe yarn. VERY soft. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend giving this yarn a go.



Now, if we can only get my son to stop singing at himself in the mirror and finish CLEANING HIS ROOM, we will be able to leave the house and do some 'family stuff' outside today.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

To Read or Not to Read, That is the Question

I got this from a friends blog. I was shocked to hear that many adults have read only six books (approx.) from the list. Then I checked to see how I did. Yeah, where's the list for kindergarten books anyway?

I have read 18. Not great. However, I would like to add that I am reading the ENTIRE Chronicles Of Narnia series (which the list only mentioned 2) AND I have read ALL of the Harry Potter books. That should count for more than one I think, but hey, that's just me.

I am marking the ones I have read in BOLD.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - no
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupe
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I would like to see a list of children's books. I bet I would kick that list's butt...

Quick tell me something funny...

that does NOT have anything to do with the drain in my laundry room backing up. Seriously.