laughinglark's posterous

Cookies to the rescue!

Oatmeal_scotchies

 


This morning, I got up and tried to run the dishwasher, but the water intake was frozen. That's never happened before, but it is unusually cold today. I was thinking that I would have to wait until I could get some help pulling the thing out from under the counter, but thought maybe if I did some baking, I could get it to thaw. If it didn't work, at least we'd have cookies. The stove is only a few feet away from the dishwasher, on the same wall. It worked! I have clean dishes, and Oatmeal Scotchies too! After a few days of being snowbound, I guess it doesn't take much to make me happy!

Day 2, Emergency Mittens

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: K Larkin <laughinglark@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 5:25 PM
Subject: Day 2, Emergency Mittens
To: thingaday2011@posterous.com


After the snow was done here, we had 21 inches on the ground. I had to dig my hubby's van out while he slept. He is working insane amounts of overtime because of the storm. Yesterday, he was picked up, so between the storm and being plowed in, there was four or more feet of snow I had to get out of the way. I worked outside for about fifteen minutes, and soon found that my polar fleece gloves would not be adequate for the unusual cold we are having here. So, I rushed back inside and made todays thing!

The mittens are made from a fulled  100% wool sweater I had in my crafting stash. I lopped off the sleeves at the shoulders. Then I turned them inside out and made a Sharpie marker tracing of my hand, plus seam allowance. I used the existing seams from the sleeve as much as I could, to save time. I did not want to drag out my sewing machine and set it up, so I whip-stitched the cut edges together as quick as I could. This project took me a total of fifteen minutes, and my fingers stayed warm and dry during the rest of the shoveling. 

I'll have to make a nicer pair out of the body of the sweater soon. Fulled wool mittens are the best!


(download)

Thumbing my nose at winter

Marshmallow_peeps_and_easter_g

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: K Larkin <laughinglark@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:51 AM
Subject: Thumbing my nose at winter
To: thingaday2011@posterous.com


Hello Thing-a-Day folks! Nice to see you again, and to meet our new contributors. If the weather permits and I can be online, I'll try to be here every day this time around.

I am a new spinner, and this is  spun with dye sopper wool from The Sheep Shed Studio. Two yellow singles were plied together with some multicolored eyelash yarn from my stash. I wound the eyelash yarn onto a bobbin to add twist before plying. I'm calling this one "Marshmallow Peeps and Easter Grass". It's a bulky yarn. Due to the howling blizzard outside, I couldn't get a better picture. It's very springy. 

Thanks for the fun!

I have been a less than prolific poster this round, but I have looked forward to seeing yours each day. This has been a rough month. No one could ever have prepared us for how awful the last few weeks of lung cancer were going to be. My poor dad. He has made it though the month somehow, but it will be any day now. He woke up yesterday for a short time for the first time in days. My mom thinks that was him saying goodbye to her.

I've enjoyed reading, but just haven't been up to posting most days. I'm really enjoying crochet, which I learned during this year's TAD. I might become a crochet zealot! I don't think I would have tried it if I weren't casting about that day for a TAD project to make and post. I just wanted to see if I could do it. Now it's like therapy. It's a contemplative craft and seems to be just what I need with everything going on in my life at the moment. And thankfully, unlike most of my hobbies, it's pretty inexpensive. Here are a few little things that I made over the last couple of days. A couple of tawashi scrubbers and another amigurumi donut, this time with icing. The acrylic yarns work well for scrubbies, because scratchiness is what you need when washing dishes. They launder well, too. I know what will happen to all of my acrylic scraps now!

I made this chunky amethyst necklace a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get it posted. I usually make smaller or lacier bead work, so this was a fun departure from the norm for me. It's a bit heavy to wear, but I like it.

I also did this doodle with french curves for TAD. It's just that after being on the phone with mom about dad's status, I didn't feel like writing anything, so it was forgotten until now. I might add some watercolor to it, for fun.

I will eventually figure out how to stabilize my harmonica knitting loom and post about it in my blog. It's just on the back burner for now. I'm interested in making other wacky looms, too. I love gadgets for crafting, and the stranger, the better.

I hope I will see you all next year! Best of luck to all.


(download)

Good morning! I brought donuts!

Cherry_chip_donuts

This month has proved to be good for making new things, but not so good for getting them posted. I may have more time later on today to post some other projects I've done for TAD. One of our computers is down and probably needs to be replaced. I think it's the motherboard. Since this is a shared family computer, sometimes I can't get to it when I have time to write. I hope I can get this resolved before the end of the month, but it isn't likely because of the expense. I'll do the best I can to post when I'm able.

I have been crocheting for just a few days now, and I really, really like it! Yesterday, I felt brave enough to try a simple amigurumi project:
http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/80113AD.html?r=1#reviews
I ended up making two of them. Fun! This is Red Heart yarn in the "Cherry Chip" colorway. It's not so good for knitting hats or scarves because it feels scratchy, but I really like it for the amigurumi. I see more play foods in my future...

I learned how to crochet this morning!

First_single_crochet

I've been AWOL from the TAD for over a week because I caught a really bad cold. I've been making things, but mostly knitted scarves that were kind of boring to post about. I'll do my best to catch up now that I feel human again. I have to catch up on reading the posts here, too.

Every few years, I make an attempt to learn crochet. Sometimes from books, sometimes from DVDs. I was never able to really figure it out. What I did this morning was park in front of the computer and watch various youtubes until I got the hang of it. This is my first swatch. It has the same amount of stiches that it did in the first row. I'm proud of that. It took the internet to crack the code of crochet for me. Now I think I might be at the beginning of a new addiction.

I'll be back later in the day with another thing.

Freezing Frog Advisory

I am a master at garbled speech. Once I start saying something the wrong way, the harder I try to correct myself, the more I repeat my mistakes. All that I wanted to do was to tell my family that we had a freezing fog advisory, and that the trees were covered with fine frost as far as the eye can see. It was exceptionally lovely when I got up at dawn. But my mouth kept saying "freezing frog advisory", to everyone's amusement, mine included.

After a trip to the toy box,  I fixed things. Now there really was a freezing frog advisory. At least there was one in my back yard.

After my little son saw me put these photos up, he suggested that I really should make blankets for the frogs before I take them out in the ice again. He's right about that.

(download)

The zebra needed a blanket

Blanket_for_a_zebra

My three year old son has been asking me for several days now if I could make a little blanket for his favorite toy, the zebra, to wear on his back. He saw a colorful blanket on a horse when we drove past a local farm on a very cold day. I told him I could knit one for zebra if he wanted me to.

I planned on re-working the little harmonica loom, but today is really getting away from me, so I got out some size ten knitting needles and whipped this up for TAD. Next, he would like one for all of his horses and his elephant and his tiger. I know how to use up all those tiny balls of leftover acrylic yarn now!