first garage sale of 2010...

...one of my favorite seasons of the year has begun! you thrifters out there all know what I'm talking about (especially you, Ponder!)... it's the start of garage sale season! Yipeee! It's time to start scouting for those Friday garage sales I can hit on my way to work and to start carrying cash in small bills at all times :D

So, this is what I found today, not much, but it will do... 

The paint-by-numbers are not dated but are still cute. If nothing else, the oak frames are worth a $1 each! Then there is the milk glass vase with the cute blue and green mod flowers and next is a Shenango restaurant ware bowl with dark green stripes. Oh, and I also picked up a wool/cashmere sweater that I am going to attempt to unravel in order to reuse the yarn.

So, have you been to any garage sales yet this year?

flickr favorites...

1. Strawberry, 2. berry buttons, 3. Summer Strawberries Pincushion, 4. knitted strawberry

...sweet strawberries

inspired by:

1) the berry buttons above made by Red Canoe Designs for the Feeling Stitchy button swap and

2) all the news reports about the bumper strawberry crop, of which large amounts had to be tilled under due to market prices being lowerer than the costs to pick them all. Really, you couldn't open your farms to people to come in and pick the berries themselves or donate at least some of them to homeless shelters and food banks in the area? Oh well, who am I to judge?

Want to play along with flickr favorites? Stop by Artmind and add your own mosaic and check out all the others!

busy bee...

... I can't believe it's been a full week since my last post! So, what have I been up to?

-Flying to Columbus OH for work for a couple of days. It snowed our last night there (Thursday) and I took these somewhere between Columbus and Detroit the next morning

 

 

-Lounging around the house all weekend after I got back to Des Moines since I wasn't feeling well (sorry, no picture of that!)

-And when I was feeling like it, making stuff like these granny circle earrings after making various granny shapes (and I have a plan for the squares too)

-and this ruffled granny square dishcloth

This particular granny square was an experiment. I had seen a larger square in color quadrants made of smaller grannies and then sewn together. I wanted to see if there was a way to create the quadrants within one larger square but without having to re-start each color in every round. And I think it worked out great! Now, I'm sure someone else has thought of this long before me and who knows, there is probably a pattern out there, but this one I actually figured out on my own... and to be honest, I'm pretty proud of myself! :)

It looked really cool without the ruffled edge too, but I decided to add yellow to the outside since that was in the center. And then I thought: "Hey, maybe I can submit this to the Ruffle Your Stuff craft contest being held by Disney at rufflesandstuff!" There's a lot of really cute things being submitted, so you really should go check it out and/or submit your ruffles, if you haven't already!


Now tell me what you all have been up to in the last week?

flickr favorites...

... are all about colorful, circular crochet. So bright, lovely and inspirational!

1. Cushion in progress, 2. Chair pad, 3. African Flower blanket, 4. striped pouf

Would you like to play Flickr Favorites? Stop by ArtMind and submit your faves and/or view all of the other beautiful mosaics!

weekend recap...

...is actually for a week since I was off for the boys' Spring Break. We didn't get to go anywhere warmer, which was actually a good thing since hubby and youngest son both ended up being sick for at least three days. So, I crafted and crafted and crafted... 

First, I finished up the embroidered buttons for the swap.

Next, I took out the hems out of my pajama pants that Bernie shrunk (we pretty much split the housework, but he has been banned for doing my laundry - he dries everything on Hot...grrr).

Third, I made great headway of my squiggles trivet (sorry no pics but I'll take some when I've finished it).

Then I finished up six crocheted dish towel toppers that one of my friends at work 'hired' me to do.

 (Oh, and speaking of crafting jobs for my co-workers, A's SIL loved the two green and pink minky blankets I made! Whew!)

And my final crafting venture was to make a chain for a bead I re-discovered as I was cleaning off my craft desk. The bead is ceramic and I got it at a garage sale for $0.75! I decided to crochet a wide chain for it.

 

There were other goings-on, of course, like non-stop NCAA Tournament action and YES! UNI beat Kansas!! and as predicted, we woke up to 6" of this on Saturday morning

which has now all melted, thank goodness!

What did you do this weekend?

swap package sent...

...Rose confirmed today that she received my package yesterday and loved what I sent, so now I'm free to share! First, Rose and I were thinking along the same lines as the buttons I made were spring related too. She is from Seattle, which made me think of rainy things (we get a lot of rain here too) so I mixed it up with a little sunshine...

Here's a closer look

Part of the swap was to send chocolate and any other little goodies, so I included dark chocolate as Rose had requested, dark green bakers twine, four-pointed stars made with vintage fabrics and magnets in case she wanted to convert the buttons into magnets.

For the final wrappings, I decided to make envelopes out of kraft paper and washi tape

Again, Feeling Stitchy put together a wonderful swap and I'll be participating in any future ones for sure!! If you love to embroider or just enjoy looking at it, you should definitely check out their blog!

swap package received...

... from the Feeling Stitchy Embroidered Button Swap! Rose of craftymcgee is my wonderful partner and my package from her arrived today. I was anxiously waiting for it and almost blew the surprise for myself since Rose let me know earlier in the week that she was posting the pics of what she sent onto the Feeling Stitchy flickr pool and it took all of my will power to not peek. And I'm soooooo glad I waited! Here is the wrapped package and the contents:

I love all of it, but aside from the buttons, the embroidered chick badge is my favorite part! And chocolate and caramel are my favorite combination!

And here are the buttons in all of their beautiful Spring glory:

Aren't they pretty?! Rose, you did a wonderful job!! 

I'm so pleased and glad I participated in this swap - Feeling Stitchy did a great job putting it all together! I have pics of what I sent to Rose, but I'll wait to post them until I know she has received my package to her...

march madness...

...has begun! One thing you will learn about me is that I am a huge college football and basketball fan. One of my favorite parts about the winter holiday season is the all of the Bowl games. Then comes March and I'm pretty much out of commission while the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is on. I might not have watched a single game prior to the tournament, but it doesn't matter. I love the potential for big upsets by low seeds and the great match ups of closely seeded teams. Yesterday was not a disappointment!

Usually the state of Iowa has at least one team in the tourney and this year it is the University of Northern Iowa (UNI)- one of the three state schools. UNI beat UNLV in the last seconds with this three-point shot

source: Tony Guiterrez/AP

Their next opponent is Kansas, #1 team in the country. UNI has a slim chance of winning but I'll be cheering them on tomorrow anyways! Is there a team you're cheering for?

aahhh spring...

...is here- for today at least. In Iowa, you just never know what will happen with the weather! We very well could see more snow before May :(
But, for today, it's 61 degrees (Fahrenheit) and the warm sun is shining down. Even if it is only for a day or two, it's a nice reprieve from the cloudy, rainy 40s we've been experiencing...

There's green in the flower beds

and birds out in the sun

Well, I just made the mistake of looking at the seven day forecast and like I said, weather changes quickly around here... high of 35 degrees on Saturday with a chance of snow showers. mother nature can be such a tease...

word around the office...

...is that my mad crafting skills are for hire. Yes, I pimped myself out when I heard co-workers talking about baby shower gifts they were needing. So, my first job was to sew a baby blanket set for A. She wanted a small ribbon tag blanket and a matching and larger baby blanket and I sent her out with yardage amounts for fabric and ribbon...

The pink minky and celery green sateen were very pretty together. The only difficult part was sewing two 'opposite' fabrics together with my machine on the bigger blanket. So, I decided to hand-stitch the quilting lines and the entire binding, which took longer but was enjoyable (and would have been relaxing had I not cut it so close on the deadline). I'm off work this week to coincide with the boys' Spring Break, so I haven't heard if A's SIL liked the set or not- I'm kinda nervous... I think A wants me to crochet a baby afghan for her daughter and has some other 'jobs' for me, so I really hope the blankets were a hit.

And speaking of Spring Break, it's been joyous so far! Nothing big going on, just really glad I don't have to go to work... Bernie is off too so it's been a nice long weekend so far. Hoping to go overnight to Minneapolis this week so I can get to IKEA! I'm ashamed to confess that I've never been there and cannot wait...they better have at least one yard of every fabric that they carry!!

vintage swap: part 2...

... Tawnya has confirmed that she received my package so now I can show the items I sent to her. First, there were woodland creatures (the squirrel can be hung on the wall)

 

Pink Flamingo Pyrex

 
 

and embroidered linens, a hankie and feedsack pieces

 

 all wrapped up in boxes along with a folder of free embroidery patterns I found online and printed off

 I'm really glad I participated in this swap and can't wait for the next one! I do have a deadline coming for the Embroidered Button Swap, which I'm excited for too.

Well, we're off to Kansas City to spend the day with the family for Bernie's brother's birthday... have a great weekend!

vintage swap: part 1...

...the Vintage Swap was organized by Heather and I was soooo excited to open the package I received from my new friend Tawnya! Tawnya and I were a perfect match as we were both first-timers at swapping. Want to see all the vintage loveliness I received?

First, here's a picture of the whole kit and caboodle, including the super cute Christmas card she sent along. Which is totally fitting for me since we wrap the kids' friends and relatives gifts in Christmas paper all year long!

 

Next is wonderful vintage fabric and linens

 

And then a gorgeous embroidery piece... Tawnya saw that I had this digital stamp on my etsy favorites, bought it and embroidered it! As she said in her note 'not quite vintage, but a vintage art'...

 

And finally I received four vintage brown buttons, green and pink rick rack, a beautiful White Sewing Machine advertisement card and the cutest embroidered kitten doily!

 
 

So, a BIG Thank You to Tawnya for all the great vintage items! In Part 2 of the Vintage Swap, I'll share what I sent Tawnya but want to make sure she gets it first...

 

 

etsy treasury...

...one of my items was selected as an alternate to this vibrant, colorful treasury. I just love the blast of primary colors!