Pre-posting, Post posting?

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Posted by Crystal | Posted in Featured Sites, General, Knitting, Life, NaNoWriMo, Writing | Posted on 12-08-2009

I’ve been reading about building up several posts in advance, so that if an emergency happens I won’t have to worry about my blog for awhile. I tried writing three posts today, and it worked out… barely. I got to fighting with the 2nd post, and had to 6 or 7 drafts to get it worked out total. It was a scrap I’d put into an obscure corner of my computer, I remembered why I’d put it away at draft five. I’d already worked it out for the most part by then so finished it up anyway.

Hopefully I can build up quite a few posts so I have a bit of extra slack during NaNoWriMo.. I can’t believe it’s almost that time of year again, the time has gone by fast. I’m not quite sure if I’m going to do an all new story or just start a new file on my story from last year, as it’s only about 1/3rd of the way done. I’ll have to see how a couple of my rough ideas pan out first.

I ordered a set of interchangeable knitting needles from knit picks. I ordered the nickel plated ones here. I was tempted by the acrylic Zeyphr needles, but Mom was afraid that they’d shatter and said to wait on those until we see some reviews somewhere.

My friend Ali has set up her own blog over at http://alinicole.com/. Please go over and say Hello! :)

Take care :)

Of Storms, knitting, and cleaning

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Posted by Crystal | Posted in Knitting, Life, Sewing | Posted on 30-07-2009

I’m going to have to write this post out qick and get it up. There’s a bad thunderstorm bearing down on my house at the moment. There are tornado warnings, and watches popping up like crazy.

I’ve been working on knitting a hat, in the round, with double pointed needles (points on both ends). It’s been quite a challenge but I’m now on the last third of the pattern. What made it so hard is I made a series of mistakes from the start.

Used normal (worsted) weight yarn for a project that needed finger weight yarn (think about half the size or smaller of normal yarn). Which means that the 6 inch DPN are a bit too short, so I’m having to use clothes pins to clip the yarn to the needles… Rather silly looking, and annoying, but it’s less annoying than stitches coming loose because they came off the end of the needle… So be sure to check the weight of the yarn required.. (I’ve learned that the hard way).

Fortunately it’s turning out well anyway. It’s going to be an adult hat rather than a baby hat, because the thicker yarn makes it far too big to be a baby hat. But it all works out because my mom needed a new winter hat for when she goes on her walks to exercise, and she loves strawberries.

The hallway is coming along nicely, what’s left is mostly small bits and pieces to sort out. As well as figuring out where to put the crochet thread, and our bag of swimming stuff. The one major project left is just mainly time consuming. Sorting out the boxes of buttons by color. We have one box that is sorted already, so that one is done. We have several other containers of unsorted buttons.

The main problem right now is figuring out what to sore them in. We’ve considered beading boxes, quart jars, and old bird seed jugs. We’ll probably end up with a combination of jars, and bird seed jugs (we have quite a bit of both already). Hopefully it won’t take terribly long to do that. I’ll probably sort them out while watching TWiT during the week.

Sounds like the rain is picking up, so I’d better stop here so I have time to check the spelling before the lightning comes. Take care y’all.

Of Art and Ravelings.

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Posted by Crystal | Posted in Art, Crochet, General, Knitting, Status Updates, Technology | Posted on 24-04-2009

I’ve been drawing a lot more lately. Not anything that goes beyond sketchbook sketches. Lots, and lots, of sketches. If you want to see some of them you can go to my scrapbook on my deviantart account. Mostly random things, and Pokemon.  My skills at sketching are slowly improving, and it’s getting easier to judge the shape of things. Perspective is still hard though, and shading is as well. So more practice is still ahead. :)

The baby blanket I knitted is being put to good use. The baby that I knitted it for was born last weekend. I was looking back and noticed I didn’t post a link to the photo of it, so you can see the baby blanket here.

About a month ago I finally figured out how to crochet thanks to a video on YouTube.  I have a ripple blanket started, but I’ve ripped it out about 6 times.  Figuring out just how to do the decreases on the end of the rows took me awhile to figure out; I’m still not sure I have it correct.

In other exciting news I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase a  MSI wind. A MSI Wind is a small portable computer called a netbook. It is basicly the same as a laptop only smaller. It’s only 10 inches wide total. The keyboard is a good size, and I’ll hopefully do a lot of writing on my trip.  So you probably won’t even know that I’ve been gone, unless I write about something that happens.

I’ve gone back to playing my Nintendo DS lately. Focusing mainly on Pokemon Pearl. I had sat it, as well as Pokemon Diamond, aside for awhile after getting stuck just before the elite four in Diamond. The news of Pokemon Platinum being relised prodded me into trying them again. I’m being a lot more careful about how I build my team this time so that I hopefully don’t get stuck in the same spot… I’ll let y’all know how it goes.  :)

Take care, I hope y’all have a great weekend!