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...