I love stress so much.  Especially the way it affects my body.  I have TMJ and lately my jaw has been killing me.  The last couple of days I haven't been able to eat without being in quite a lot of pain.  

I have been busy and I have a ton of things to do.  We are still working on the house.  The tiling is about half done and we are waiting for new appliances to be delivered.  I have about three large projects to work on for my sister's wedding that I would like to get done before I head to Wisconsin at the end of July.  All these things are contributing to my stress.  I'm trying to break it down and do little bits at a time.

Saffron has been with us for about a week and a half now.  She's a very good girl.  She is pretty well potty trained.  We have a crate lined with newspaper that she uses.  We can tell she is getting much more comfortable with us as she is crazy!  She runs around like a nut for about two hours at a time and then passes out.  Right now she is sleeping on the top of the back of the couch behind me.  She likes to sit back there and chew on my hair.  

I don't really have a whole lot else to say, just thought I would post a quick update.

Lots of news lately.  The bracelet that was featured in New Hampshire Magazine sold on Friday so that was good.  On Saturday morning, we were awoken by a phone call from the breeder I've been in touch with.  She called to ask us if we would like to visit a puppy.  Of course we did!  We are now the proud parents of a baby girl we named Saffron.  She gets to come home with us on June 16.  Because of her impending arrival, we are in overdrive working on getting the tiling done downstairs.  The last thing we need is a traumatized little doggie on our hands.  Jesus totally freaked when we put in the hardwoods, so Saffron is a great excuse to do the tile.  

Here she is with her daddy:

Patrick and I got home from Austin on Sunday.  It was a really good trip.  We ate lots of good food, did some shopping, checked out the National Wildflower Center (beautiful) and did a lot of walking!  I also got to indulge in the most decadent 3-hour spa treatment in the world.  I was basically a big pile of mush when it was over.  It consisted of a deep-tissue massage, facial, hand and foot massage, mud wrap, scalp massage and a vichy shower.  I highly recommend all of these things to everyone.  I did finish my first sock from my flat feet yarn while I was in Austin.  I used the Hedera pattern from Knitty.  I am about a quarter of the way through the second sock now.  It was great for the plane and for the hotel room.  

Now that I am back in NH I have been taking a break from knitting and have been crocheting.  I am part of a crochet-a-long on Ravelry which involves making a new 12-inch granny square every month.  I had only done the first two, so I have been catching up and am finishing up the May square right now.  I am using up scraps from all the baby items I made earlier this year.  I also have 6-inch squares (either knit or crochet) to make for a charity project I am working on through Ewe'll Love It!  I got the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Vol. 1 to learn new stitch patterns to make the squares.  The book is very beautifully done and if anyone is looking for a gift for me, there are three more volumes.  (hint hint)

I got a surprise yesterday.  My pink Fat Bottom Bag was featured on the Crochet Liberation Front's blog and labeled as "Hookalicious."  Looking at all the other projects that were featured on the blog, I am very honored to be in such amazing company!

Happy May Day!  New Hampshire Magazine has updated their site with the May issue so if you want to check out the article on Etsy along with a photo of my bracelet: look here.

Life is slowly tipping the scales from the bad over to the good.  My big news is that my Mah Jong Tile Bracelet was featured in an article on Etsy in the May issue of New Hampshire Magazine.  It's not on the newstand yet and the website is still showing the April issue, but I will be sure to post an update here.  I could scan my copy, but I have been too lazy.

The Souhegan Valley Chorus Spring concert is this Saturday.  The theme is "Broadway" and it should be a great concert.  If you are local and want to go, it is at Souhegan High School in Amherst, NH at 7:30pm.  Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children and senior citizens.

I really like singing in the choir, particular getting out of the house and meeting new people.  Lately, however, I have been having a conflict with another member of the group which is making it not so much fun anymore.  I really don't want to go into details here, but if things don't turn around with her, I might quit.  I'm at a point in my life where I know it is better for me to just get rid of the negative people in my life, particularly when they make me miserable and feel bad about myself.  

The other big news is that I finally finished my sweater!  It still ended up being a little big on me, but it is warm and cozy and that's the important part.

I have started working on my sister's wedding gift, which will not be posted on here any time soon.  Too bad so sad.  I am also working on my first pair of socks.  There was a special sock kit available at Ewe'll Love It! to benefit the Breast Cancer 3 Day Walk.  The yarn is beautiful: pink, brown and gray varigated.  Beverly, the owner of the shop designed the pattern.  The original pattern has two ribbons on the side, but I only did one repeat to keep the sock a little shorter.  I am almost done with the first one.  It is very exciting!

I also bought some really cool sock yarn called "Flat Feet" to bring along as a project when I go to Austin with Patrick in two weeks.  The yarn is machine knit into a flat and then handpainted.  You work directly from the flat which removes the need to wind the yarn into a ball and minimizes tangling.  I got these gorgeous Autumn-y colors that will match my sweater.

Time to go grocery shopping.  We have practically no food in our house.  Unless you count Jell-o and pretzels. . . 

I have returned home from my last minute trip to Wisconsin.  I got home on Tuesday and pretty much went straight to choir rehearsal.  The concert is in less than three weeks so there is a lot of work to be done!

The visit with my family was very nice, it is always unfortunate to get together with family at a funeral, but it was good to see everyone and I really needed their love and support.  I was able to be with my brother to celebrate his 30th birthday and I got to meet my brand-new niece, Autumn.  She's a beautiful and very sweet little girl.  She is also very strong!

My good news is that I am almost finished with the second sleeve of my sweater.  Once the sleeves are done, all I need to do is the neck and block the sleeves and then sew them on.  I might actually get to wear it before the weather gets too warm.  

It's been very windy lately.  Last night it felt like the wind would blow our house down.  Today I wished that the wind would blow me away.  I've been very sick with the flu for the past week and woke up to the news that my grandfather had passed away this morning.  I'll be heading to Wisconsin tomorrow armed with dramamine and hoping the stress of trying to get healthy and dealing with yet another loss in my life won't get me sick again. 

 

Patrick says we are due a cosmic dose of good karma any day now.  I'm waiting. . .

In other news, my sister-in-law had her baby boy on Saturday night and loved the blanket I made her.  Here's an in-process picture:

The pattern is called "The Curve of Pursuit" and is also the mathematical name of this design.  It represents four dogs chasing each other's tails around a field starting from the four corners.  If the dogs were to keep going, they would eventually crash in the middle.  I figured a mathematical pattern would be good for the geeky-ness that are my in-laws.  I found the pattern and the info about the mathematical concept on Woolly Thoughts.

Welcome to this edition of Craftastic Cribs!  Today we are going to take a look at the room in which I create many of my crafts.  
Here we have a general overview of my craft room.  This room is actually intended to be a formal sitting room in my house, but who the heck uses a formal sitting room.  The bookshelves were purchased at the unfinished wood store and were painstakingly stained and varnished by me and my friend Erica.  The shelves are home to our books, my yarn stash, gem stones, papercrafting supplies, photo albums, and many other random items of crafty significance.  My craft table was found in the clearance room of Ethan Allen for $199.  It is very heavy duty and was in perfect condition.  I still can't believe what a deal that was!  The table is very messy because it seems to be the place in the house where we throw random stuff and I haven't gotten around to cleaning it up.  Anyway, who has a clean craft room?  Also, check out the wicked awesome hardwood floor that I installed all by myself.  
Here we have my jewelry corner.  Here is where I keep all of my beads, wires, and other findings.  I have found the tool boxes to be the best place to keep all my beads and I have even labeled some of the drawers!  The white bike basket was given to me by Patrick to go on the front of my Harley.  Unfortunately, we had to remove it to pass inspection so it now is employed as an earring holder.
The next stop is where I keep the majority of my completed jewelry.  Basically I took a piece of plywood, covered it with several layers of quilt batting and some canvas fabric from an old tablecloth and embellished with some ribbon and voila a jewelry-hanging thingy!  I use T-pins to hold the jewelry in place.  I am working on a larger solution now that my inventory is growing and hope to have it up soon.
Our last stop on this craftastic tour is my kick-ass rubber stamp shelf.  Patrick and I built this for all my rubber stamps.  I have all my jewelry hanging below it.  Once I move my jewelry, I will be building another shelf to house the stamps that do not yet have a home.  

I hope you enjoyed this tour of my craft room.  Now everyone get out so I can get back to work!

Copper Bowl--Complete!

Copper Bowl--Complete!
Originally uploaded by coveykeating

Just as I promised. The copper bowl in all its glory. Patrick cut the base in half for me. Thanks sweetie! I spent almost two hours shaping it and getting it ready to solder to the bowl. My instructor and I soldered the whole thing in one shot which was awesome. I cleaned it up and waxed it to protect the patina and it now lives on one of our shelves. Yay!

So I went to knitting on Tuesday and showed Beverly (the LYS owner) my sweater sans sleeves.  It is WAAAAAY too big for me.  There is at least 10 extra inches around.  I am going to have to sew up the sides, make the sleeve holes smaller and rewrite the pattern for the sleeves.  Oh well, what ya gonna do?

I finished my bowl on Thursday.  It looks awesome, but I have been too lazy to take pictures.  Patrick cut half of the base off so it looks much neater now.  It still took me two hours to make the base fit to the bottom of the bowl close enough to solder the two pieces together.

The weather here is starting to get a little more spring-like.  The snow is starting to melt.  I can't wait for the weather to get warmer so I can get my Harley out.  It will definitely help save money on gas to ride instead of drive.  This weekend we need to clean out the basement and garage as I don't want a repeat of the post flooding mess we had last year.  Luckily, most of the stuff that needs to be cleaned up is going straight to Goodwill as it is left over from our garage sale.  Fun!

They say that when March comes in like a lamb it goes out like a lion.  What happens when March comes in like raging, psycho, insane bull?  I was over the snow two storms ago and we probably have several more in our future.  Lucky lucky us!  Our plow guy is making a mint off us this year!

In other news, I am almost done with my sweater!  I hope to have it done by the end of the upcoming week.  Lucky for me, winter is showing no sign of going away, so I will have plenty of time to wear it.  My metalsmithing class is going well.  It can be frustrating at times when things don't come out like I want them to.  I made a beautiful bowl and am working on a base.  I will be doing major reconstruction on the base as it doesn't look like I want and the soldered seam keeps splitting.  I should be able to fix it on Monday during open studio.  The bowl was completely handshaped using hammers.  My arm was very tired after two and a half hours of straight hammering.  I did a lot of cleaning up of the bowl on Thursday between bouts of wanting to scream and throw the base out the window.  

You can see the size of the bowl and the base in relation to my laptop.  I'll repost photos of the redone bowl base.  

Last night I went to Friday Night Knitting Club at Ewe'll Love It in Nashua.  It was a good time.  Erica's birthday is today so I baked cupcakes in her honor.  My new friend Holly also came and it was really good to get to see her again.  Next month's knitting club is going to be a cookie bake off.  Make way for the champion ladies!!!

I'm back!  The visit from my mom and sister went very well.  I did feel like a third wheel at times since they live so close together and spend so much time together, they have a lot of little "in" jokes.  We found a bridesmaid dress for Andrea's wedding after two marathon days of Diana trying to squeeze her ginormous breasts into sample sized gowns.  Here's the link to the dress.  The color is Ocean Blue.  It looks good with my pale pale skin and my red hair.  We also looked at paper for invitations.  Drea originally wanted to make them herself, but with all the work and the cost, we are figuring that it might be just as cost effective to buy them.  

I am still missing Jesus a lot.  He has been gone for a month now and my life is getting quite stressful.  Of course, I can't go into any of it here until things settle down and things are figured out.  We will probably get a puppy once our lives settle down and return to normal.  Once the snow melts would be easier too!

In craft news, I am still working on my sweater. 

 

I finished the back and am on the left front. 

I also started work on my sister-in-law's baby gift (Patrick's brother's wife).  She's due in April and I want to make sure it is done in time.  It is pretty involved and will take some time.  I wish I could link to some photos, but I want it to be a surprise just in case Teri is reading this.  I also need to start coming up with ideas for bridesmaid jewelry.

Just a quick question from the couch tonight.  Is it just me or is American Gladiators the most homo-erotic thing on TV right now?

I know it has been two weeks since I last wrote.  I have been working through my sadness in losing Jesus.  The house still seems empty without him.  I have taken to sitting on the couch with pillows on my side because it doesn't feel right with nothing there. 

 

In other news, both my best friend and my sister in law had babies this week.  Erica's son was born on Monday evening.  She had a little boy who is very beautiful and sweet.  Andrea, my sister-in-law had her daughter on Wednesday afternoon.  From her photos, she is a beautiful healthy little girl.  I haven't met her yet as my whole family lives in Wisconsin.  All the babies have taken my mind off my sadness, but in other ways, they have made me feel more sad and empty.  

As a gift for Erica, I made her a bracelet with the birthstones of everyone in her family.  It's not really a mother's bracelet, but more of a family bracelet.  It has garnet, amythyst, quartz (I didn't have diamond beads for April) and aquamarine.  It turned out very nice.  I had also made her a pair of mittens that I was making for her from yarn I got on sale at our LYS and finished them in time to bring them to her in the hospital.  

I am still working on my sweater.  Last night I bumped my elbow somehow and ended up pulling a couple rows of stitches off my needle.  After about an hour of messing around I figured that I can't fix it myself and will have to go in the the LYS on Tuesday to have the owner help me out. 

On Thursday I was supposed to start my Jewelry Making II class at the Sharon Arts Center, but it was cancelled because not enough people signed up.  Instead I am taking a metalsmithing class with the same instructor.  I think it will really help my metal shaping ability and will hopefully give me more jewelry inspiration.

My next big project is getting my house clean for the upcoming visit from my mom and sister.  

Just a quick entry to say that last night Jesus lost his fight against Congestive Heart Failure.  He was a wonderful little doggie and I will miss him with all my heart.

Yay!  I am done with knitting and crocheting for other people for now!  As my reward, I bought enough yarn to make myself a sweater.  The yarn is a beautiful rust color with little bits of yellow in the fiber.  The pattern is by Norah Gaughan.  A picture of the sweater is here.  I am about two inches into the back of the sweater.  I did have to pull it apart three times for dropped stitches and the like.  I went to the knitting lunch at the yarn store today and bought the UGLIEST yarn ever.  It called to me to make something fabulous from it.  It is varigated and sewn together with metallic thread.  I don't know how to describe it better than that.  Beverly, the shop owner, gave me a very strange look when I went to buy it.  I don't mind. 

Next up, I am going to try to get all my new jewelry onto Etsy.  I just have to photograph it.  I hate doing the photography.  It is such a pain in the butt.  I try to make a ton of stuff before I haul out my photo tent and lights to take pictures.  

On January 15, I am starting an advanced jewelry making class at the Sharon Arts Center.  I should be a lot of fun.  Among the new things I will be learning is setting faceted stones!  Can't wait to post photos of everything I'll be making.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!  The last week has been insane finishing up the last of the holiday crafting.  I also spent a lot of time at the post office shipping off the family's gifts.  Thank you post office employees!  We have been having crazy insane weather lately.  I think we have had more snow this month than we had in the last two years combined.  The snow is taller than Jesus, but he is a good boy and has no problem going out since we shoveled the grass for him.  Tomorrow we have been lucky enough to have lived with Jesus for two years.  

Currently crafting...I am working on another baby blanket for one of Patrick's co-workers who is expecting.  I got the Vanna's Choice Lion Brand yarn and it works up pretty nice.  I recently got my invitation to join Ravelry.com which is awesome!  I am so impressed by that site.  I was actually planning on starting some sort of journal to catalogue all of my projects.  Ravelry has all the tools to keep track of finished projects, wips, pattern books, and needles and hooks.  There are also lots of great forums and groups to join.  I highly recommend getting on the waiting list (I had to wait about three weeks to get the invite) if you knit, crochet or spin.  

Just a quick post tonight to announce that my first felting project worked.  I can't say what it is because it is a gift, but it is AWESOME!  I am so excited I just had to post about it here.  I crocheted, threw it in the washer with an old towel and magic.  It would have really sucked if it hadn't worked right as it took me two days to do the crocheting.  

I'll post pics after Christmas.  I will say that I took a couple of patterns from SNB: Happy Hooker and mixed them up a little bit to create a fabulous new item.

YAY!

If you knew me and saw me recently, you would know that my butt is much smaller (not really) because I've been working it off!  This year, because I haven't been working, I am making most of our Christmas gifts and am getting close to being finished.  Dollar-wise, we are spending less than $500 for all of our family and friends' gifts.  Usually we spend about two to three times that amount.  I am very happy with how everything is turning out.  I'll post more than a taste (see previous post) after the holidays are over.

Saturday night was my first performance with the Souhegan Valley Chorus and the Valleyaires at the Nashua Holiday Stroll.  Everything went well except for my out-of-tune "solo" during the Valleyaires performance of "Hang the Holly."

Our big concert is on December 9th at 7:30pm at Souhegan High School in Amherst.  Directions are available at the Souhegan Valley Chorus Website

I had my last knitting class on Thursday. Everyone graduated! The instructor said that she was very impressed with all the work we all did. Everyone in the class signed up for knitting with a teacher starting a week after Thanksgiving until the end of the year. I am going to make mittens. I am excited!

I am still hard at work making Christmas gifts for everyone. I finished my sister's and I am half finished with my brother's gift. I just finished my last craft swap on Craftster for a while. I had the very best partner. She sent me a great package. Especially this apron she made out of her husband's old jeans.



Thanks Jennyleigh!

Recently, I signed the Buy Handmade Pledge (see sidebar). I am very happy I did so. This year, as I tried to start making a living through my jewelry, I realized how many amazing craftspeople and artists are in this world who deserve our support. I am going to try to buy handmade for all the gifts that I don't actually make myself. Back to working my butt off!