Why? In short:

- they have stolen money out of my bank account (by doing something they *specifically* claimed was impossible) then wouldn’t give it back until I involved my bank

- they’ve cut off my phone service for not paying *someone else’s* bill, and even after it was proven that was the case they still wouldn’t reconnect it, and still wouldn’t even after we proved that it was, in fact, their fault that it was possible at all

- they’ve sold me a service that didn’t exist (which lead to me having to pay the cable company an extra hookup charge since they had to come to my house twice)

- and most recently they failed to fix a connection problem. For two weeks. They claim to have made 6 appointments for techs to check out the problem, but we only saw 2. Each of those techs “fixed” the problem, only to have service go back down within 24 hours. (They also both complained bitterly about working for Bell!)

So, what’s a gal to do during this internet outage? (Did I mention that the internet wasn’t working at work either because of a computer virus? *yanks out hair*) Well, I certainly didn’t plan any part of my wedding! (Whose idea was it to keep our notes about it in a Google document? Oh wait, that was me…)

I crocheted, naturally! I also loom-knit.

You all remember Mom’s sorority’s charity thing with the kids hats and scarves right?

Check it!

The plan is to fill a bin with these. The current count is 23 complete sets (I took this picture before finishing a few of them… all of those hats in front of the pile have matching scarves now, plus there is another set not pictured… and a blue hat I still need to make a matching scarf for…)

I also made quite a few dishcloths. And a crochet-on-the-double hat using Bernat Soft Boucle (that still needs sewing up), and blew through a few more balls of red on the Ladybug blanket. I’m woefully behind on motifs, but expect to see a rush of those soon, as I’m in another motif swap. ^_^

A possible conclusion from all of this might be that having no internet access can be really good for my crafting! Another conclusion might be that having no internet had the potential to drive me so crazy that I needed that many projects to distract myself with just to get through it…

*eye twitch*

Since the last episode of fantasticmio.com my laptop broke; it still works, it just doesn’t stay open! Just check out that hinge:

It was decided that I needed a new computer. Not wanting to bother with Windows Vista, and not willing to muddle through with the broken laptop, I got a netbook that runs XP.

We named it “Sprinkles”.

But that’s not why I haven’t blogged.

I turned 32 a few weeks ago. It was awesome.

That cake was decorated by my 8-year-old neice (she’s the one in yellow. You may remember her from the Breast Cancer walk post.) She’s been taking the Wilton cake decorating classes at Michaels. It was her idea. The lower age limit for the classes is 10, but they agreed to let her take the classes if an adult took it with her, so my Dad is also taking the classes. Word is that the only thing she’s having trouble with is making flowers with the Royal icing. Not because making flowers is difficult, but because the icing is so stiff that she can’t pipe it out of the bag properly. I hear her buttercream roses are beautiful, though!

Yes, that IS the basketweave technique.

For my birthday I received all sorts of wonderful things. A Cricut personal cutting machine, as well as a bunch of accessories for it; an iron which I intend to use for all manner of crafty purposes, including using in conjunction with the Cricut machine and some freezer paper to make amusing t-shirts; some clothes; tickets to see Riverdance (always a good show!); a really neat Halloween cross stitch my Mom made; and, of course, YARN!

More on the gifts in another post!

My birthday isn’t what held up the blog either.

What held up the blog is our fantastic news: we’re moving! Moving day is Sept 1, but we had to get the current place ready to show to potential renters, and what a job it was!

We packed up some clutter, threw a lot of stuff out (including the entire contents of the fridge when it died suddenly), and most traumatic: packed up the yarn! *sob* Most of my stash, which turns out to be at least twice as big as I thought it was, is now living at my parents’ house.

Evidence of our efforts:

Cleaning for the move made me late in sending out my packages in the two swaps I’m in, but they’re all out now, and half of my partners have received.

Whew!

I’m hoping to spend the next little while catching you up on the crafty things I’ve been doing and if I time it right, I can show you the motifs I made very soon! Here is one of my favourites I sent out:

Stay tuned until next time, same fantastic time, same fantastic channel! ^_-

These blankets are going to charity:

(I should get a better picture of that purple one made at the show before I send it off…)

I’m going to make these three bigger and give them as Christmas gifts:

These are Christmas presents, and I’m keeping them as is:

And this one is MINE:

My current main project is a gift for someone who reads this blog, and I really don’t want to give the surprise away if I can help it, so pictures and updates will be made on Ravelry (where you need an account to see it). Don’t worry, once the Big Day has come and gone, I’ll post all of the gory details. ^_^

Now that BOB is over, I find myself with my own crafting time again, so I’m waffling around trying to decide what to do. I’ve joined a couple of swaps, I still need to make the June square in the CAL, and I’ve been itching to just make my way through my growing collection of motif books and make at least one of everything.

Of course, there’s still Christmas coming, and various birthdays left to think about. I’ve been hoping that Bernat Satin would go on sale for the last several months, but I haven’t seen it. If you do, could you please let me know? I’m planning on buying a LOT of it, not only because I’ll need it for some gifts, but also because it’s my go-to yarn for worsted weight acrylic and I’m starting to run low. It’s soft, works up well, and the colours are pretty nice.

Anticipated projects: at least one more Snowflake afghan, maybe the Hawaiian Flower afghan, more 3-way Tunisian, lots of hats and scarves, some geeky afghans, and of course, Dad’s Christmas present.

My work situation has changed and I suddenly find myself with a good chunk of crochet time. That time can only be spent working on a pattern I know really well, and that doesn’t have any tricky colour changes. The project I’ve been working on lately has recently become too large to do while I do my job, so I need a replacement project. For now, I’m prepping some scarves (doing the base chain and first row at home on several), and I’m thinking of doing some granny squares. Any thoughts on what else might work? Basically, anything I don’t have to look at too much, that can easily be done a couple of stitches at a time.

Finally, check out this Spiral Granny Square I made: click here.

I took about a dozen pictures of this and not a single one caught the beautiful colours of this blanket. I suppose you’re all just going to have to come visit me at the show (and then buy this).

This blanket is also an excellent example of how wonderful that “no turning chain dc” technique is. Here is a close-up of the edge:

Isn’t that amazing? If I look really, really closely, I still have a hard time telling which stitches are real double crochets, and which are the no-turning-chain stitches.

I’ve found it to make working in the round a bit easier, too. In the past, I had always had problems figuring out which chain in the beginning chain was the one I needed to make a join in. Using this no-turning-chain method, it’s pretty obvious where the join goes.

If you haven’t tried out this technique already, I urge you to do it. You won’t regret it!

I just realized the other day that I never posted pictures of the motifs I received from craftADDchick here on the blog. I’ve put them under the cut (Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t read any further on this post, please!)

Please forgive the pictures; I took these on my scribe at work in a different way than usual…

This last picture has three motifs for my Dad’s Christmas present:

The piano represents his tuning mine while I was growing up, the Starfleet badge is for his love of Star Trek, and the maple leaf is for his passion for all things “Made In Canada” (the irony here being that craftADDchick, who made these, lives in the States. We won’t tell Dad. ^_-)

I love these motifs and I hope we do another swap like this again soon! It was fun to participate in it, and I don’t have nearly enough motifs to make a blanket out of them yet. In the mean time, I’ve signed up for the third round of the Granny’s Daughters swap.

This story popped into my head while I was at work yesterday. My boss looks a *lot* like Sylar from Heroes, so it wouldn’t be hard to find a large cardboard cut-out of him, but my boss isn’t the cause of my frustrations at work (one couldn’t hope for a cooler boss!). My frustrations are mostly with my work computer, specifically the crazy things the scanning software does sometimes. I won’t get into them, but anyone who has worked with any software ever can probably identify with how frustrating it can be!

On my commute home yesterday a Dilbert comic strip, running along the same lines, popped into my head. Given that it took me four hours of searching through the dilbert.com archives to find it, I’m not sure how I remembered it, exactly. Basically, Dilbert had a doll that looked like his boss sitting on top of his computer, and he’d smack it whenever the Pointy Haired Boss annoyed him. Again, my boss isn’t the problem, it’s the program!

Then it hit me! I needed an Abuse Cube. Something that would represent the software, with a different issue pictured on each side.

I started working on it as soon as I got home.

Take THAT!

More pictures of the cube and some motifs I received from one of my swap partners under the cut.

Before punching it:

Another angle:

Camera missing error!

More pictures here.

I finished making this at work today and showed it to a couple of co-workers. After telling them what it was for, I had to tear it away; I needed to take pictures for the blog before we let loose on it!

In other news, here are the motifs I received from MareMare in the Amazing Crochet Motif Swap (thumbnails are click-able)

Thank you MareMare, they’re beautiful!
(Please forgive how some of them seem a bit scrunched; the only spot of sunshine I could get today was on the road, and I was dodging cars that were driving on the wrong side. *shakes a fist*)

Haley’s Comet – from Crochet Stitch Motifs – 250 Stitches To Crochet, page 61:

Mediterranean Circle – from Crochet Stitch Motifs – 250 Stitches To Crochet, page 209:

Dream Weaver:

Flower Petal Dishcloth and Potholder:

Four round standard granny square (with Boa!) :

Tunisian Short Row Dishcloth:

Star To Star – from Crochet Stitch Motifs – 250 Stitches To Crochet, page 214:

She received her package today, so I can finally blog a bit about what I’ve been up to!

Snowflake II, from “Crochet Stitch Motifs: 250 Stitches to Crochet” p. 75

This one measured in (shortest way) 4.5 inches.

Dream Weaver square

8 inches

Summer Sun square

7.5 inches

Waldo’s Puzzle square

9.5 inches

The astute among you will notice that we’re now 4 motifs and 29.5 inches. The swap called for at least 5 motifs and at least 30 inches.

Naturally, I made this simple two-round granny square:

0.5 inches

Of course, craftADDchick is intending on using the motifs she receives to make a blanket, so I thought it best to send along another, more suitable motif:

Hawaiian Flower

3.5 inches

Someone might be getting a blanket of Hawaiian Flowers for Christmas this year… mum’s the word!

Here is the swap gallery if you want to see what everyone else got. ^_^

I’m hoping to get the next set of tutorials up tomorrow. In preparation, your homework is to go look at these examples of what not to make using what I’ve taught you.

For those looking for the next crochet tutorial, you’re in luck! I got new batteries for my camera! No tutorial tonight (ok, so you’re not THAT lucky), but there is one coming, and soon. Next up is “chain stitch”, followed by “single crochet”.

There was a question in the comments the other day asking about the no-turning chain thing. Can it be done in the round? Yes. I’ve done it a few times now, but only just tonight have I tried it in a plain yarn that shows what’s going on:

You can sort of see the knot at the top of the circle (at 12 o’clock). The not-a-turning-chain stitch is the one just to the left of the knot.

Not too shabby!

Yesterday I found out about a street festival that happens every year, literally a block away from my house. I’ve been living here for two years now and had no idea. Unbelievable!

I got to thinking about it, and I’m debating whether or not I want to get a table for it. The problem, as I see it, is that I seem to specialize in making blankets, scarves, and toques. That might be a hard sell in June in Toronto. There are a handful of things that might be appropriate that I can make, so I’ve been playing with that today (I’m off work today due to an extremely sore knee. Resting it has helped, but it still hurts a LOT!)

I’ve been experimenting researching different techniques.

Here is today’s result:

Big deal, right? It’s fun fur! No one is making things out of fun fur anymore! (Actually, it’s Bernat Eyelash. I got it on sale when the Zellers near me thought they were closing.)

But wait! Take a look at the back!

It’s a bit tricky to see in the picture (I’m stuck taking pictures of things placed artfully on the floor in front of my chair) but that picture shows the other side of a swatch of crochet-on-the-double with the novelty yarn on one side, and black Bernat Satin on the other.

I’m still working out how to get less of the eyelash yarn to show through to the plain side, but it’s quite a promising start!

And just in case my swap partners are stalking me checking out my blog, here’s a little preview for you:

*snickers*