We Interrupt This Broadcast.....

     Okay so technically all the Knit and Crochet Blog Week posts are interrupting my "normal" broadcasting posts.  I spent my weekend here in the city and I actually did some things!  Huzzah!  On Saturday the hubs and I went to a gun show.  I wont go into that too much because of the current political climate and all.  I want my blog to be fun and not make anyone angry.  All I'll say is we both had fun and learned some things.  Then we went to Texas Roadhouse (a steak restaurant chain) and pigged out on yummy cow.  On Sunday I got to do the shopping.  I picked up a skein of Lion Brand Fisherman's wool, in the natural colorway so I can do some more dying.  I plan to split it up into at least four skeins since its 400 something yards.  I just want to practice the whole dye, steam, cool assembly line thing.  I may do more than four skeins... hmm.

I picked that up at Wal-Mart.  For the most part I don't tend to get yarns there anymore, but I want the yardage more than nice stuff.  I have to say it did feel softer to me than it did previously.  I think its made in China now too, which is another turn off.  Later I went to A.C. Moore.  Its a chain craft store.  They sell pretty much everything you can imagine that would fall under the general term "craft."  I prefer it over Michaels, which is another chain I have access to here in the city.  Anywho, they had the Patons Angora Bamboo I picked up before, remember my third Whitecaps hat?  So I got some more since the Angora Bamboo has been discontinued.  I got two more skeins of Urban Grey and two skeins of Everglade.

I left one skein of gray, two more skeins of the green, two skeins of a dark maroon color and three skeins of fluorescent eye searing pink.  I nearly took the pink.  It may have been eye searing but it was pretty, and would have been good for some baby items.  So if you live in or near Syracuse, go quick to A.C. Moore on Erie Bvld and grab those other skeins.  I have two different dye lots in each of my colors.  (I should have looked at that when I was in the store, duh.)  One of the greens looks to be fuzzier than the others, so its probably older.  Oh well, I'll see what happens when I knit it up.  The yarn at A.C. Moore was just the side trip, the real reason I was there was for beading supplies.  Yup, I did it.  I got the tools to make stitch markers!  I made some too, as soon as I got home!  Can you tell I'm hooked already?

The three tools came as a set.  They are all basic but essential to beading.  The needle nose pliers and the round nose ones especially.  I got the box organizer thing too.  Its great.  Off to the left are the head pins and the 12mm jump rings.  I sort of organized the beads by color.... not really.  The big beads came on strings, they were on sale so I got six strings.  I had the clear glass seed beads, I bought them a while back thinking I would do beaded lace...  The dark orange seed beads I actually found, (at work on the floor as a bracelet) they're mine now and I'm putting them to good use.



There's a close up sort of...  So as soon as I got back I just went at it, willy nilly, with not much of an idea what I was doing.  It took a bit but I finally figured out how to make the ring under the jump ring look good.

These are the first few I did.  I don't really have the whole uniform length thing down yet or getting the wrap close to where the beads end.  I got better though as I went here look:

See how the rings actually look like rings and the length is a bit more even.  Funny story about why I have seed beads under the blue beads on the blue and silver ones.  The blue beads have a larger opening than the other beads.  When I was finishing the wraps on one the blue ones the bead came right off the bottom of my head pin...  I crammed it back on and then kinked up the head pin inside it so it would stay put.  So I've already made a design modification based on product testing ;)  I also found out that glass beads will shatter if you accidently squeeze them too hard with the needle nosed pliers...  (That's why there's only one seed bead at the top of that one black and silver marker...)  I've also learned that even when your in a rush to get to work, its very important to put made up markers away, because the cats will knock everything down and you will loose one of your "good" markers.... 'cause that totally didn't happen today....  (I'm just seriously hoping the marker bounced under something and one of them didn't eat it...  Yes, my cats are that dumb...)  Now I really want to get some more colors of seed beads, so I can change things up some more.  Also, I did do the combinations with somewhat of a concept in mind.  The black and gray ones with the silver bottom are supposed to be reminiscent of Jack once he goes silver and they switch to black BDUs. 

 The lavender/blue and silver ones are reminiscent of Samantha and her civilian outfits.

She tends to have a floral print kind of thing going on as well as the solid colors.  (Extra points for anyone who can name either of these two episodes ;) or at least narrow it down to season... no cheating.)  The turquoise and copper markers are reminiscent of Atlantis.

Seriously, I love this conference room, with the swiveling panels you walk through... if I ever get to be the boss someday and design my office space, this will be the conference room, complete with round table seating and total interconnectivity.

Okay, on to the rest of my weekend.  Yes, there's more.  We got some more mice yesterday too.  Hubbs likes to keep pet mice.  (I had some back in high school and I got him hooked, now the mice are "his")  Our last one died a few weeks ago.  Mice generally only live a year or so.  We tend to keep ours for over two years.  We're very careful to feed them a diet designed for mice/rats and avoid any and all sugars.  We got four females, they're still pretty little.  We were also able to get colored ones this time.  There is a solid brown one, her name is Desert Eagle.  There is a brown and white striped one, her name is Glock.  Then there are two white ones, their names are Smith and Wesson.  (Notice a theme...)  I named the last four after yarns so I guess we're even now.  I'll make an attempt to get pictures.  I also cooked yesterday, which I don't do as often as I should anymore.  I should have gotten pictures of that too.  It turned out pretty good and I really didn't remember what I was doing it had been so long.  Alright back to Knit Crochet Blog Week.  Enjoy.
Happy Crafting!
-Q