On My Needles

It's been awhile since I've talked about my knitting. Towards the end of 2016 I regained some steam with my knitting and actually finished some stuff I had started earlier in the year and even started and finished a new item within 2 weeks!

Instead of talking about the past stuff I've knitted (and completed), I want to share what is currently on my needles.

After two years of knitting socks for my nephew for Christmas, this past year he had a new request. A scarf in neutral colors. My sister was visiting this past October when she delivered this information to me and since we were attending the NY Sheep and Wool Festival, I knew I needed to find the yarn to knit this for him.

I ended up purchasing a fingering weight gradient kit from Shelridge Farm. Living in a southern state, he didn't need anything worsted or heavier.

A few weeks later I cast on the scarf and dutifully knitted away on it. I made excellent progress, but due to a lack of proper brain function, I wasn't able to knit on it in December. Thus meaning I suck as an aunt and wasn't able to finish it in time for Christmas.

Alas, let's fast forward to this past week where I finally felt like a normal functioning human again and I finished adding the last two color changes to the scarf.

All that is left for me to do is bind off (so it's technically still on my needles) and weave in all the pesky little ends from the color changes. After that, it will get a little bath/blocking and will be on it's merry way to it's owner. I'm calling this a win because it's still winter so he should still get some use out of it!

I have another WIP on my needles and this time it's a pair of socks for me!

In November I was on a sock knitting roll and managed to finish two pairs. I wanted to keep the good sock knitting vibes rolling so I immediately picked out yarn from my stash (HauteKnitYarn Sparkle: Bumble Rumble) that had been fermenting for a couple of years and cast on the Blueberry Waffles Socks by Sandy Turner.

This is what the sock looked like on November 27th:

Compared to what it looks like today:

I am at the toe shaping and hope to get the second sock on my needles before the end of January. Totally doable!

Tell me what's on your knitting needles right now?

40 Book Challenge

It's a new year and that means a new reading challenge!

Ever since I joined Goodreads in 2011, I have participated in the yearly reading challenge. The goal has always been the same. Read 40 books in one year.

As someone who loves to read, 40 books isn't an unreasonable challenge. I've been known in the past to read a book in a matter of days.

Each year I set the challenge and at the end of the year I always fall short.

Here's a recap of the number of books I've read each year in the past:

2011: 37
2012: 37
2013: 36
2014: 32
2015: 24
2016: 37

Some would say,"Why don't you lower the number of books to read if you never make it?". Nope. That's not going to happen.

As you can see, I've come really close most years and honestly, I would of completed it last year if I hadn't spent the entire month of December with a lack of brain focus. I know that this goal is possible!

So here I am officially declaring my reading goal for 2017 will be to finish 40 books! I've already got one under my belt. Here's to the next 39 books!

Life Update - July Edition

Life Update bullet style!

Shana: 

• The night of July 12th, little one decided she was either extremely bored or extremely hungry because she ate a shoelace in the middle of the night. How do we know? She decided she must of been full after devouring 35" because we found 6" nicely chomped off by her bed and the rest was no where to be found. The other tell tell sign of her eating it was when she vomited 8" early Friday morning. To this day remaining 27" is still inside of her.
• If remaining shoelace doesn't appear by Friday, we have to schedule a sonogram with the vet as she may have a partial blockage. She will be given an additional 4 days to produce said shoelace or else she gets a belly shaving. I keep reminding her that!
• Last night, she played like she did before she ingested the shoelace. We are taking this as a positive sign that maybe said shoelace has vacated her small intestine and has now taken up residence in her large intestine just waiting for eviction.

Travel:

• I decided to take a little vacay to visit my family in Georgia this weekend. I will be doing laundry and packing like a madwoman tonight as I fly out tomorrow afternoon.
• Leaving hubby behind to look after our little one and assist with removal of shoelace if needed.
• I am hoping little one won't miss me too much or be mad at me when I return a week later. We shall see.
• Also looking forward to heading to Acadia National Park in Maine for a week in August.

Knitting:

• Still knitting away on those little socks I talked about a few weeks ago, here.
• Need to bind off the toe on Sock #1 so I can use the needles to finish Sock #2.
• Mission tonight before going to bed is finishing off Sock #1.
• Need to finish this pair before I leave Georgia next week as the recipient lives there and I can save the postage from having to mail them.
• Already have my next sock yarn balled up and ready to go.

Scrapbooking:

• I've completed a few more pages since my last layout update, here, which is one of four parts. I've done three more for my backpack album and one from adopting our little fur ball.
• I haven't completed any pages for the past week and a half as my thoughts and time have been consumed with little one and the shoelace ingestion.
• Looking forward to going to an actual scrapbooking store with my sister during my visit in GA. The price she has to pay by me assisting her with her craft room purging/organization. Of course I didn't have to twist her arm and after seeing pictures of the room situation, I think my price will have to go up.

Reading:

• Still plugging away on my reading goals for the year and have now finished 21 books of 40.
• I shared all the books I've read so far this year here.
• Loving that Goodreads is emailing me "Goodreads Deals" for purchasing books in genres I elected to receive deals for and so far have purchased several through these emails at $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 or free.
• For some reason the first five or six books I purchased, I got for free. Amazon must of been having a promotion that day. 

Exercise:

• Started running more consistently lately. Gotten myself up to running 2.5 miles without stopping. Starting over sucks.
• Need to start incorporating weight workouts again and even HIIT workouts.
• Started a Midori Notebook to keep track of all this. My thinking is that by finding a crafty way to record all of this will keep me motivated as I am physically writing all of my accomplishments down in this notebook.
• I've been hitting at least 10,000 steps a day almost every day this month.

Nutrition:

• Need to start meal planning again.
• Bought two new cookbooks to assist with my planning - "Oh She Glows Cookbook: 100 Vegan Recipes to Glow from the Inside Out" and "Deliciously Ella: 100+ Easy, Healthy and Delicious Plant Based, Gluten Free Recipes". I have quickly looked through them and they look promising.

That's it! Now tell me what you've been up to!

Reading More

As a young girl, I always had a bookshelf in my room filled with tons of books. My mother is an avid reader and I think she felt it was truly important for her children to always have books on hand to read.

I have very fond memories of going to the public library and obtaining my first library card. I remember enjoying spending so much time perusing all the books that I could potentially bring home.

While I always had books, and enjoyed looking at them, I remember the younger me taking forever to finish a book. I also remember as a teenager and having to read books for school was something I struggled with, not sure if it's because I was being told I had to read these books or if the subject just wasn't for me.

Fast froward to my twenties and all of sudden I became an avid reader and as time went by I couldn't get enough. I have been known to stay up way past my bedtime because I couldn't put a book down or even devouring a 1,000 page book in just under a week.

Since 2013, I have participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. My goal has always been to read 40 books and I have yet to hit it. The closest I came was in 2013.

2013: 36 books read
2014: 32 books read
2015: 24 books read

This year; however, I think I just may hit my goal.

For the first time in years, I am 50% to meeting my goal halfway through the year!

If you were to look at my bookshelf, you would see a wide variety of genres. I like to pick books that suit my mood. Sometimes I want funny or an easy young adult book to read. However, by far my favorite is a mystery/thriller. As a young girl, I had Hardy Boys and Agatha Christie books on my shelf. Some things never change.

Here's a peek at what I've read so far this year:

There is definitely a variety in here. If you want a good paranormal book read "The Piper", couldn't put it down. A good tear jerker, "Me Before You". A funny feel good book, "Big Girl Panties". Pyschological suspense, "Black Eyed Susans". Need a vampire fix, "Lover Reborn".

I am always looking for my next great read. Let me know what you recommend.

2013 Europe Backpacking Album - Part 4

Today may be the last of the layouts I completed immediately after taking Shimelle's "The Scrapbook Process" class, but there will be many more layout shares to come in the future. If you missed Parts 1 through 3, you can check them out here, here and here.

I'm sharing two layouts in the same post today, because while they are not a double page spread, I created them with each other in mind. I wanted to make sure they complimented each other as they will be facing pages in the album and of the same location.

For both layouts I used the My Mind's Eye "Hello World" collection and used a Bazzill cardstock for my background.

Layout #1 was based on this sketch.

I kept all my embellishing really simple. I'm loving that I have started using my roller stamps more in my layouts. I have a few that work really well with travel pages. As you can see I did some more floating embellishing and I felt adding the enamel dots to the stamping helped ground it towards my title. The floral chipboard is from the same collection as it the brad.

My journaling wouldn't show up on the floral background paper, so I added a journaling card. Even though it's a dark background, my writing is still legible. I added a couple of chipboard pieces on top of each other. Another brad, flair, geo tag and enamel dots bring it all together.

I turned to the 6x6 paper pad that I had for the collection and used both of the orange diagonal patterned paper pieces. After placing my photo on top of one piece, I randomly cut up the second piece and layered it all together until I liked it. Adding ink to all the edges helped make the layers stand out more.

After adding the orange paper layers to my photo, I felt it didn't stand out enough when I placed it on the background paper, so I added the mint patterned paper behind the photo/paper cluster and it helps your eye focus on the picture instead of it all blending in together.

Layout #2 is based on this sketch.

What can I say about this layout? I think I kinda love it. Even though I have quite a bit going on with my layering and embellishing, I think the photos still stand out.

I recently purchased the October Afternoon travel stamps and love, love, love how they look on the kraft cardstock. I think the stamping made perfect embellishments.

Even incorporated more of the roller stamping too!

Let's take a closer look at all the little details of this cluster.

I  can't get enough of the royal blue enamel pearls!

I used Kelly Purkey's grid rubber stamp on the same kraft cardstock as all my other stamping to give myself a place to journal. I didn't want to use a white pen on the background.

The Tim Holtz "Small Talk" phrase stickers didn't have a problem finding a home on this layout. 

So there you have it! I hope you have enjoyed taking a closer look with me at the 4 layouts I completed.

I can't wait to share additional layouts with you for this album. My hope is to have all of Barcelona completed by the end of August, if not sooner. I estimate I have about 12 more layouts to go in this section of the album.

As my husband said the other week, "For us only spending just over a day in Barcelona, there sure are a lot of layouts for it!" Why yes. Yes there are. And that's ok because stories are being told!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Happy 4th of July to all my American friends!

2013 Europe Backpacking Album - Part 3

Another day, another layout share! Today I'll be sharing the second layout I completed after finishing Shimelle's class "The Scrapbook Process". You can read Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed my previous posts.

The original inspiration for today's layout can be found here. Once again it's a scraplift, but this time I've embellished more than the original.

For this layout I used KaiserCraft's "Wanderlust" collection.

I used my Paper Smooches Pinked Circle Die cut set again. I just love how easily it adds texture to a layout, but also is a great base for building your embellishments.

I pulled out a couple of my Ali Edwards stamps sets.They are both from past Story Kits and I was thrilled to have finally used them. I made sure to stamp in each of the clusters.

The printed dictionary vellum I used is from DYI and even though the words have nothing to do with travel, I don't think it distracts you from the layout. In addition to the large matting piece, I made sure to include a little punched piece on top of each of the pinked circles.

I really love how the main cluster/journaling area turned out.

I incorporated wood veneer from My Mind's Eye "Hello World" collection. The "wood" geotags are from Studio Calico. The green washi tape from Kelly Purkey was the perfect color match.

I felt it was important to have arrows pointing back into the page since my journaling card had arrows pointing off the page. I managed to get my hands on the October Afternoon Daily Flash arrow chipboard the other week and I noticed how well the colors work with my travel layouts.

I'm not one who usually includes floating clustering, but since I did it in my last layout, it was quite easy to do on this one.

That's it. Another story has been told.

Please come back tomorrow where I will be sharing the last two layouts in this series of posts.

2013 Europe Backpacking Album - Part 2

Yesterday, I shared how Shimelle's latest class, "The Scrapbook Process" helped me toward completing more layouts for my 2013 Europe Backpacking album. If you missed it, Part 1 can be read here.

Today, I am happy to share the first of the four layouts I have completed so far.

The original inspiration for my first layout can be found here (Pinterest Link). It's from the Glitter Girl Adventure 75: Extra Large Lessons episode.

For the most part, this is a straight scraplift. While I think the original is more embellished than mine, I followed the same design and placement of my embellishments.

All paper used to create my layout is from the Carta Bella "Travel Stories" collection.

The top embellishment cluster is quite simple. I pulled out my Paper Smooches Pinked Circle Dies to punch three circles in varying sizes to spread throughout the layout.  The smallest one I used here. I topped this cluster off with stickers from Shimelle's "Starshine" collection. The geotag sticker came from the Carta Bella sticker sheet that came with the collection.

I noticed on the original layout that I happened to have the exact same wood veneer used so I thought "Why not?" and on the layout it went.

A tiny floating cluster on top of some washi.

The main cluster at the bottom of the page includes a journaling card from Amy Tangerine "Ready Set Go". The colors on the card didn't match my layout exactly, so I used the remainder of a small border sticker from the top cluster that I ended up cutting to cover up the bits of the card that totally didn't coordinate.

I laid my title out on top of the largest pinked circle. I used the gorgeous teal Fitzgerald Thickers and small alphas from Basic Grey to spell my title. I rummaged through Pink Paislee's "Atlas" ephemera pack and thought the acetate globe and was too cute not to use and it matched perfectly. Another geotag sticker landed in the middle of the globe. The camera and and banners also came from this collection and I placed them all on top of the last pinked circle I punched.

The final touch on the layout was stamping the date on an October Afternoon label.

If you have any questions about this layout, please let me know.

Tomorrow I'll be back to share the next layout!