APlourdeKnits

Tennessee

2010-06-02T06:58:00.001-06:00

I wanted to tell you all about my trip to Tennessee. It was GREAT!

Before I give you all the details about my trip I will provide you with a little back story as to how I know the wonderful people that I went to visit.
I met the Winemans (Wes and Rama) a long time ago, in fact, nearly 10 years ago.....WOW that doesn't seem right, but anyway.
A few years back when I was a sophomore in college I found myself looking for the perfect summer job. I knew I didn't want to go home to live with my parents for another summer and I needed to make some cash. After some searching around in papers I found an ad looking for someone to work at a brewery. I thought to myself that there could be nothing better, this would be the summer job that all of my friends wished they had. I drove down to Bar Harbor to find out more about this job. This is where I ended up, Atlantic Brewing Co. I walked in and enquired about the job. Mr. Wineman gave me an application and asked me a few questions. I think they were hesitant about hiring me since I was only 20 but I was determined to work at ABC.
To make a long story short, I got the job and Mr. Wineman became my boss. I ended up working at the brewery in the gift shop every summer until I finished college. Wes and I worked together for 3 years, the first year his wonderful wife Rama also worked with us. I couldn't imagine working with better people. After the 3rd year some circumstances came about and the Winemans ended up moving back to their home state of Tennessee.

I have wanted to visit TN for a while but the timing was never good. This year I made it happen.

I left Bangor this past Thursday at 7am and arrived in Tennesse around 3pm that afternoon. I was so excited to see my friends, it had been far too long. It was a very relaxing vacation, we roamed around the Tri Cities area visting a few places here and there and also consumed some of the best food and drink I have had in quite a while. I have to admit, Wes is probably the person who single handely turned me into a beer snob and with a little time and arm twisting would probably be able to turn me into a wine snob as well.

On my first full day of my trip we were BUSY! Wes and I started out by heading over to Bristol Motor Speedway. I am not into NASCAR and I barely know any ove the drivers names, but this is a sight that everyone should see! The place is HUGE it can hold somewhere around 165,000 people and if I remember correctly it is one of the largest or possibly the largest sporting arena in the world.
Next we went to Bay's Mountain Park, there are some really nice walking paths at this place and a few animals to see, including Wolves, Otters, Bobcat's and some Raptors.
After completing some errands we headed to Depot Street Brewing to taste some beer and fill a couple of Growlers so that we would have plenty of beverages to go with our Pizza on Saturday night.
That night we went to a wonderful resturant called Giuseppe, we had the best waitress ever and the food was amazing. I was SO FULL after that meal.

Day 2 was spent with Rama since Wes had to work. We started our day by heading to Starbucks to get Wes a coffee and then delivered it to him at the liquor store. We visited the farmers market, which I loved, and we also went to Warriors Park (I hope that the right name), where they hold FUNFEST, I would love to go to this sometime. That afternoon Wes' daughter came to visit and brought her little girl so that we could go to the pool. It was around 90 that day so the water in the pool felt great. We had pizza and the beer from Depot Street that night. We also got a chance to talk to Wes' son Matt on the phone (he lives in St. Croix, another destination I will have to visit at some point in my life).

Day 3 was probably the most exciting day. Both Wes and Rama had the day off we headed to Abingdon VA to go to a play at the Barter Theater, we saw ANNIE.
While we were there I won a prize. The tradition is to give a prize to the person who is visiting for the first time for the farthest distance. It was between me and some girls from Dallas TX. We all got a nice little momento, a coffee mug and some gift certificates. Turns out Bangor Maine is further away from Abingdon that Dallas Texas just incase anyone is wondering. Once Annie was over, we went across the street to the Martha Washington Hotel and had a lovely dinner.

The next morning I woke at 4am to catch a plane at 5:50 so that I could be on my way home. Overall it was a wonderful visit and I am very glad to have seen my friends, I miss them already and can't wait to go back again for another visit.

I hope you enjoy reading about my trip! I will be doing another post soon to show you all what my garden looks like, it has grown tremendously in the past couple of weeks.

Randomness

2010-05-25T12:05:00.000-06:00

I have not been knitting, not even a little bit. I haven't even as much as looked at a ball of yarn or a pattern in a few weeks now.
This is the time of year where I usually put up the knitting and start spending as much time as I can outside in the sun reading or working in the garden. Plus its just too hot to knit even in Maine.

There have also been a two major things and a few minor things that have been keeping me from my "normal" routine.

Major:

1. My little brother is scheduled for heart surgery this week. Tomorrow he will be enduring a 4 1/2 to 5 hour proceedure to replace a valve in his heart. I have volunteered to stay at home during this time to care for my parents 2 parrots and 2 dogs, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes well.

2. Providing that my brothers surgery goes as planned and there are no complications, I will be flying to Tennessee this Thursday to visit some dear friends whom I have not seen in a long time. I CAN'T EVEN WAIT! I have been planning this trip for a couple of months now and then all of a sudden the date has crept right up on me. I have barely started packing but I think I can manage to throw everything in my suitcase before Thursday morning. This is a solo trip so the upside is I don't have to worry about trying to make sure that my significant other and dog have thier stuff together.

Minor:

Dad and I have been putting a lot of time into our garden over the past couple of weekends. It looks AMAZING. I think it is probably the best garden we have had yet. We managed to get all the planting done last weekend and I think we are both pretty proud of it. I love telling people about the process that we have gone through to get it to where it is now, and I have been offering "tours" to friends so that I can brag about all the things we have done.
Here is what we have growing in our garden:
Potatoes (blue fingerling, red, and white)
Bush Beans
Brussels Sprouts
Broccoli
Cucumbers
Tomatoes (Big Boy and Roma)
Basil
Garlic
Lettuce
Swiss Chard
Carrots
Onions
Peppers (Bell and Banana)
Eggplant
Peas
Strawberrys
Sun Flowers

I have been reading up a storm!
Currently I am working on reading the Into the Wilderness Series by Sara Donati. If you like historical fiction, you will love these books. To date I have finished Into The Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore, next up Lake in the Clouds.

I also just finished up The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, which was a book that was chosen for my book club.

Today I have planned to start reading the current book club selection Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese.

Happy Knitting/Gardening/Reading!

Satisfaction by Humiliation

2010-04-12T13:17:00.000-06:00

I have been part of the Chihuahua Mix lovers group on Ravelry for a short while now and thought it would be nice to start a KAL (Knit-A-Long) for this group.

I put a message up on the board telling the members that I wanted the group to knit something for our furry friends. The moderator thought that was a good idea as well. I picked a nubmer of patterns and we decided on the pattern called To Humiliate the Dog. If you are not a member of Ravelry you can find this pattern on The Yarn Loving Couples Blog (see blogs I read), its in the free pattern section.

This is what I ended up with:

Becca really loves it I tell you, and by love I mean HATE. She trys to rip it off after about 3 seconds.

I think the only reason she let me cram the thing on her head and take photos was that she was feeling a bit under the weather. We found out on Saturday that Miss Becca has an infection. Shes on some antibiotics that make her belly upset.
She has been lounging around on the back of the couch in her favorite spot minding her own buisness and I sort of ambushed her.

But seriously, she looks so CUTE!

Happy Knitting!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2010-04-07T06:36:00.001-06:00

Since I am a "city dweller" and don't have a yard of my own I have been helping my dad with his garden's. My parents have a huge yard and there is nothing I love more than spending time out there digging around and planting things. We have been totally spoiled up here in Maine this Spring. The year started off with a nice mild winter and then before we knew it, it was 60 in February. This has made me really eager to get outside and get my hands dirty.

I have to give you a short history of the Plourde gardening effort before I can talk about this year. My dad has always had a garden of some sort for as long as I can remember, but I never remember really having a lot of fresh veggies around that he/we grew on our own. Things start off in the Spring moving along with a lot of gusto and then as the season progresses everyone seems to lose interest.

There are four of us in my family and it seems that Dad and I are the only two who can manage to keep up with the task eventhough the other two people love to reap the benefits of it. I compared this to the story of chicken little. You go around and try to get them to help out but they don't really want to, and then at the end of the summer when there are beautiful veggies to be had everyone wants to eat them but never bothered to help with the growing process. I digress....

Last year was the first year that we really put in a hard core effort to grow some things. After much deliberation Dad told me that he was game for anything when it comes to planting. I searched around the internet for gardening ideas and came across the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) technique. I bought the book by Mel Bartholomew and brought it out to my parents place. I could tell that dad was not convinced that it would work, but we went for it anyway. Dad built (3) 4'x4' raised beds, and (1) 4'x8' bed. Next we positioned them in the yard (mom actually helped me cut up the sod and remove it bfore putting the bed frames down) and filled them with Mel's Mix (a soil recipe from the SFG book).

(These are the raised beds, the big bed in the back has a fence for climbing veggies, and a number of strawberry plants.)

We planted seedlings and waited to see what would happen. I spent a lot of time at my parents house last summer checking on the veggies, pulling out weeds, and watching things grow. The result was AMAZING, we ended up with HUGE cherry tomatoe plants, a ton of summer squash, strawberries, carrots, beans, peppers, etc. Dad is a believer now, and he tells everyone about the SFG technique and how well it worked.

Now for this year....
For the past 2 weekends we have had beautiful weather with temperatures into the 70's. I have had the gardening itch like crazy but I have to keep telling myself that its still really early and to not get my hopes up.

For the first weekend Dad and I spent a whole Saturday cleaning up the yard and getting things ready. I raked out all of the flower beds and gave all the perennials room to sprout out of the ground. Last fall I planted some garlic and I also added some Crocus bulbs to our front flower garden, both are coming up nicely.

Garlic (all but 2 bulbs sprouted)

I thought these purple Crocus would be bigger but it turns out they are of the tiny version. The flowers are only about the size of a quarter, so cute!

The white crocus are normal size and also beautiful.

We also decided that we would like to try to fix up the original garden that was in place when my parents bought their house. Dad has tried to plant things in it every year but the soil is TERRIBLE, its mostly clay and rock hard. We planted potatoes and zucchini in there last year and they grew well but we decided that there needed to be a change.

This past weekend we measured off the garden and gave it a more uniform shape. We will be amending the soil with some vermiculite, compost, and loam to make it more airy and much easier for things to grow in. We also added in another big fence, partially to block the view of the neighbors (and to keep thier/our dogs from spending the day barking at eachother) but mostly so that we can grow pole beans and other tasty climbing things.

(There is my dad putting the staples in the last pole. The garden is 20'x16' which is a nice size that should be easy to manage.)

That is pretty much all for now, not bad for 2 Saturdays worth of work. I think we will be building another raised bed this year so that I can have a little Salsa Garden.

I will leave you with a couple of photos of the flower gardens.

This is a crop of paperwhites that come up every spring, they are all over the yard, but particulalry like to grow around this tree, these are some of my favorite flowers to cut and put into a vase. This photo isn't great but its our large flower bed that you drive past when you come up the driveway. Its filled with tulips, iris, crocus, daffodils, peonies, tiger lily, and my favorite Black Hollyhock's.

I am going to try to keep you updated with my gardening efforts since this is my second favortie hobby next to knitting.

HAPPY SPRING!

Finally...Photos

2010-04-06T06:02:00.001-06:00

I managed to get around to taking some photos of the things I have been knitting.

I have had this yarn forever, I bought it during an Eat.Sleep.Knit binge. It is Fleece Artist Sea Wool in the colorway Peacock. The pattern is Clapotis, which appears to be one of the most knitted patterns on Ravelry. I am about half done and I am really proud of this scarf so far. Stay tuned for the finished product.

These socks are my most recent FO. The pattern is from a book that I recieved for my birthday. The book is Knitting in The Round, which I mentioned in a previous post. The yarn I used is left over from one of my Six Kingdoms Yarn Club shipments. Its really lovely but a bit slipery. Also, as promised, a photo of the finished Kathy's Socks, which I have been calling Laugh Socks since that is the name of the colorway.

Now for some Monster action. Here is Sammie, Daphne and Delilah.

I made Sammie to keep Francis company in my office, but he got so caught up in all the books on my book shelf that he is still currently living at home. Technically he is supposed to be wearing socks to cover up those cutie monster feet but since its getting warmer outside he decided that he didn't need socks right now and that he wouldn't mind if I waited a while to make them for him.

Daphne and Delilah were made as a gift for my friends daughter on her 2nd birthday. They now reside in Marshfield Mass.

All the monsters I have made are from patterns designed by Rebecca Danger, the yarn I use for them is Vannas Choice.

Happy Knitting!

A Number of Things

2010-03-30T05:54:00.000-06:00

Once again its been over a month since I have posted anything on here. I just can't get the hang of blogging often. I always feel like I should have to have something to show on my posts.

I have been knitting quite a bit, but have no photos to show for it. I will have them soon, I promise. Once the rain stops and the sun comes back out so that I have good light for pictures. So far this month (incase anyone cares) we have had almost 5 inches of rain here in Bangor.

Currently on the needles I have my final 6 Kingdoms Yarn Club project. Its an adoreable lion named Reggie. I have finished his legs and arms but got stuck on the stomach so I have to frog and start over. Reggie still doesn't have a body, I put him on hold for a bit. Hopefully I will be able to work on him tonight. Once I am done grocery shopping and cooking dinner.

Last night I managed to finish my first pair of ankle socks. The pattern is from a great book that I recieved for my birthday entitled Knitting in the Round by Jeanne Stauffer. I may not have picked this book on my own but it turns out there are a lot of little things in there that I can't wait to make.

The Laugh socks are finished (the socks that my monster knit for me in the previous post). I think these are giong to become my favorite pair of socks.

I have been trying to work diligently to complete my goals for this year, and man is it going slowly. I feel like I haven't used up any yarn thus far. I have stuck to my guns though and have not bought any yarn. I have even visited a couple of yarn shops and still managed to resist the temptation!

I cleaned out/reorganized my knitting corner on Sunday and realized that I had some yarn that I had forgotten about. Its a beautiful tencel yarn from a local farm called End Of World Farm, I remember buying this yarn because it was on super sale at the LYS. I only have 2 skeins which equals about 526yard so I think I will be making a nice lace scarf with it.

Photos soon!

Happy Knitting

It's ALIVE

2010-02-01T11:34:00.001-07:00

Well Francis is finished. I had such a fun time making this monster, and posing him. At first I thought this was going to be a female Francis because of the purple color, but this Francis is a boy, as you can see he is wearing a tie, so that he can be dressed properly for the office.

I taught him how to knit ha ha ha

Happy Knitting!

I Feel Like Dr. Frankenstein

2010-01-29T12:14:00.002-07:00

I'm creating a MONSTER! Here are some progress photos of Francis. You can kind of see what I meant in the previous post about tye-dye yarn. Its varies from dark purple to very light purple (nearly white).

Here he is with his toothy grin! I'm very excited for Francis to be completed. All I have left is his ears and arms, and I will have to find some sort of a tie for him to wear around his neck. This will be my first full size monster. Up till now I have only made monster chunks, which are also very cute and addicting to knit. I already have plans to make Sammie or Maddox, or Daphne and Delilah (I just can't decide) for my next monster project.

Happy Knitting!

Knitosophy and Francis

2010-01-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

I currently have 2 knitting projects sitting on my coffee table. Apparently I can never have just one thing going on at a time.

This past Tuesday I decided that I would like to have a new pair of socks, I probably have 25 pairs of socks but whats one more right? Plus, only 3 pairs of the 25 are hand knit by me. I decided to make the socks using the pattern called Kathy's Socks. The pattern is from the 2009 knitting pattern a day calendar.
They yarn is called Knitosophy, its by Dream In Color. The colorway is Laugh.

Here are a couple of progress photos. I also have this project posted on Ravelry and I will be submitting it for the Eat Sleep Knit Sock-A-Long.

Unfortunately the pattern isn't showing up that well but hopefully as I knit a few more inches it will show up more.

I started my second project last night, I didn't particularly feel like working on socks. Its another monster! I decided to make Francis. She is one of Rebecca Danger's Monsters, and I must say when she is complete she will be living in my new office at work.

So far I have completed the body, but I need to add eyes and stuffing before I can close up Francis' head. I am using a semi varigated yarn, it actually looks more tye-dye to me. I will have progress photos soon.

Happy Knitting!

What Was Lost Has Now Been Found

2010-01-22T06:52:00.002-07:00

I got it back. My mojo that is. It took me a while but when I felt that small urge to knit I went for it. I decided that all I needed was a little instant gratification. I dug through my patterns and found the perfect thing. MONSTER CHUNKS! I set out to make one, and low and behold it was just the thing to bring back my desire to knit.

As for the fate of the little orange monster:

My boyfriend didn't like the monster chunk, he said he didn't like it staring at him, so he stuck it in a houseplant. I then decided that the plant was not a great place for a monster chunk to live, since they need lots of space to dance around.
The little monster now resides at the best place to dance, the YMCA. He is living on my brothers desk, keeping him company as he works. I'm thinking he might need a few more friends.

Currently I'm working on a baby blanket for a friend and I have also started my latest pattern from the Unique Sheep 6 Kingdoms Club. The blanket is going much faster than the other project (which is lace) but both are keeping me interested.

On a side note, I will no longer be selling hats at the Mad Hatter in the Bangor Mall :0( Unfortunately they are closing. So for now I will be taking orders for hats until I can find another place to sell them at. Maybe I should just think about getting a booth at a craft show? Anyone have any tips about craft shows?

Happy Knitting!

Help Me Find My Mojo

2010-01-07T06:43:00.007-07:00

This is going to be a fairly short post since I am having knitting block (my version of writers block).

First I wanted to post some pictures of Christmas gifts that I knitted since I couldn't post them before, due to blog lurking relatives and friends.

Wine Cozy: For Jessamine with wine of course

Stethoscope Cover: For my Brother

Simple Scarf: For one of the girls at work (I never got photos of the others)

Bellas Mittens for Emma:

Dog Walker Mitten: For Gram

French Press Slippers: For Auntie and BF's Mom

Fingerless Mitts: For Annie

Now I have to talk for a short minute about this knitting funk I am in.

All of a sudden, after the holidays came to a close, I have barely been able to pick up my needles. Not to mention the fact that I haven't touched my spinning wheel in months. I don't understand how I got in this rut, I'm pretty sure that I knitted nearly every day of 2009 and I was hoping this year would be the same. So far though, I think I have probably only knit for about 4 hours this year, BORING.

Its going to be really hard to complete my 2010 goals (see previous post) if I can't seem to get the mojo to knit. I even have projects that I am working on that I am getting paid for that I can't seem to finish.

How do I get out of this rut?

Any good suggestions would be appreciated............

Happy Knitting

NEW YEAR CHALLENGE

2009-12-11T07:36:00.003-07:00

Since I can't post photos of the knitted Christmas gifts that I have been working on until after Christmas. I would like to talk about the Challenge I have given to myself for the up coming year.

I have seen knitters challenge themselves in the past and fail but I am determined. I also know that at this time of year many people make promises to themselves that go uncompleted but again I am DETERMINED to follow through.

I know there are people out there with gigantic stashes of yarn fiber and other crafty things that fill whole rooms or multiple rooms. I'm not that kind of person. Don't get me wrong, I love yarn and fiber just as much as the next person, and maybe sometimes more than the next person, but my personality does not allow me to have that much "stuff".
I once though I had a large apartment, probably before my boyfriend moved and, and before we got our little dog. A time when all the space was devoted solely to me and my things.
Now, I'm beginning to think that our space is not quite big enough. When my mind starts thinking this way I usually go into minimalist mode and start freaking out about where I am going to put everything and how I can get rid of all the things I don't really need.

Last night I was looking around at my knitting baskets and my fiber basket and realized they are quite full/over flowing. Some of this is lazyness on my part because I keep throwing yarn in the baskets that should go back to its home upstairs.
The knitting baskets downstairs are supposed to be for "daily use". I keep WIP's in them and soon to be WIP's (aka new skeins of yarn that I'm just not quite ready to put in the bin upstairs). As for the fiber basket I have fiber from the Common Ground Fair that I haven't touched yet that looks up at me, each time I walk by,longing to become yarn at some point. I also have fiber that was purchased much before that which is half spun and needs to be finished soon.

So my challenge to myself is:

1. GET ORGANIZED

2. Finish all current WIPS (things that have been hibernating in my closet for some time)

3. Spin up all the fiber that I have (approximately 10-15oz.) before purchasing any more.

4. Make 15-20 hats for the Mad Hatter ASAP so that I won't have to worry about them for a while, unless I get a special order.

5. Complete all projects for the Unique Sheep Yarn Club (I have successfully completed 1 project so far which means I have 3 others to make and 2 more on the way).

6. STASHDOWN as much as possible, I really, really, do not need to buy any yarn. I should learn to make due with what I have, istead of running off to the store to buy something different.

A side note on the stashdown which will become my mantra: If I use up what I have instead of going out and buying more I will have extra money.

Extra Money = Extra Cash To Pay Off Bills (namely my junk car and student loans since I successfully paid off both my credit cards!)

Paid Off Bills = Money That Can Be Saved For Large Purchases

Large Purchase = House for Amanda, Mr. Bobcat and Becca

All in all I don't think this is a hard challenge and I really think I can stick to my guns and work toward the ultimate goal of saving money for a house.

WISH ME LUCK!

Happy Knitting

Tis the Season For Sweaters

2009-11-03T07:28:00.003-07:00

I love kniting sweaters, but sometimes they can take forever to knit up, and sometimes I feel like I may be in over my head.

Recently I knitted up a sweater for myself called Buttony. The reason for the name, it has 12 buttons.

The sweater I made for myself, I have not had the chance to get a photo of yet. (Note to self, have Chris take a photo of me in my buttony sweater for the blog). I made it in a dark green worsted weight yarn, that has been discontinued. This was my first top down sweater, I love it!

So anyway, I wore the sweater to work one day and everyone loved it. Our building maintenance manager saw it and thought it was really nice.

I told him I made it. He asked if I could make one like it for his significant other for Christmas. He also asked me to make a sweater for him. The whole time I was thinking what the hell have I gotten myself into, why cant I ever say no?

I have been planning to do something nice for him for a while though since he gives me hockey tickets all the time to Maine games.

I knew it would be a big project to take on, especially since its getting to be holiday time and I wanted to get some knitting done for family members, plus I still need to make hats occasionally for The Mad Hatter.

But anyway, I obliged and I made both the sweaters, in record time. It took me about 6-8 weeks to make both.

The pattern I used for the man's sweater is called Curse Your Boyfriend. Which eludes to the mysterious sweater curse. If you don't know about it, Google it, it even has its own Wiki page.

For the other sweater I made Buttony. I used Miss Babs Yowza Whatta Skein in colorway Roasted Pumpkin for this sweater. It came out beautiful. Also, since I try to do something good for the environment every now and then, I used buttons made from Recycled Cotton, they were perfect. I do wish my photo quality was better though.

This is Luc's sweater. The pattern in the center I took from a celtic scarf pattern.

I hope you all enjoy! Happy Knitting!

Teenie Weenie Hats

2009-08-27T11:47:00.008-06:00

I have been trying to find a way to generate a bit of extra cash using my knitting skills. Every so often an opportunity comes up for me to sell something or other. I wanted to let you all know what I have been up to and share a couple of photos.

About a month ago a good friend of mine asked me to make a hat for a baby shower that she was attending. She asked if the hat could be a bee hat since the mom to be is a bee keeper.

This is the bee that I made. Sitting next to my coffee cup to show how teenie it is.

Everyone loved it!

In the mean time the same friend who asked me to make the hat got the word out to a friend of hers (who owns a childrens clothing store) that I could knit these little bitty hats.

When the word got back to me of the opportunity to sell some of my creations I jumped at it. I made a few bee hats and a couple of plain hats with varigated yarn.

I also made this hat:

My goal is to make mostly novelty hats, I have a lot of ideas for hats that mimic various fruits and vegetables and hats that have random animal ears on them.

All of the hats will be the same size (generally for newborns or baby's that are a couple of months old) but, I will only be making 1 or 2 of each so that not too many people have the same thing. Unfortunately I do not have any patterns for these hats to share with you. I usually just get an idea in my head and then test it out, if it comes out bad I frog it and start over. If you are really interested in how I made the hats I can give general directions, but you will mostly have to wing it.

The hats are being sold in Maine at the Bangor Mall in a little shop called The Mad Hatter.

I will post more pictures as I produce more hats. I am glad to share these Teenie Weenie Hats with you.

I have added a few more hat photos to the blog. The Topsy Turvy Flower Hat I made quite a while ago for a special little girl on her first birthday. The others I have made in the last few months.

Also, please check out the Ryan J. Moore Photography Blog!

Ryan is one of my oldest friends, he e-mailed me a while ago and asked if I could make him a hat with teddy bear ears for his photo shoots. I ended up making him 3 hats, this morning when I checked his blog one of the hats appeared in a recent photo shoot! Its too darn cute!

Strawberry

Jack-O-Lantern

Topsy Turvy Flower

Peach

Going Green

2009-05-12T08:07:00.002-06:00

I have joined the Six Kingdoms Yarn Club and am patiently waiting for the arrival of my first package. I will periodically post updates with the projects and goodies from the club and also put the FO's on Ravelry.

This yarn club also has a side theme based on 'being green'. The first contest was to comment on the Clubs blog about the things that you do at home to be green. That is where I got the inspiration for this post.

As I put up my comment and started writing down all the things that I do at home to be environmentally friendly, I realized that I do a lot more than I though. I will admit that my actions may seem a little crazy but I didn't start doing these things all at once and it has taken me a while to get where I am now. I also feel like I'm not really doing that much and I would be very easy for anyone to do the things that I do, it just takes some time to get use to.

Most of my green efforts started showing up after I moved out of my parents house, and started my new job as an environmental technician. As I have probably mentioned in the past, I live with my boyfriend who is about as far from 'green' as you can get, but hes getting much better and probably doesn't even realize all of the green things hes doing.

The first effort I put forth was to practice the 3 R's. We recycle our tin cans, bottles (in Maine you get $.05 back if you return your containers that require a deposit), plastics, and cardboard. I read the news paper online to cut down on paper waste. I also recently learned that you can spin news print and other papers with a drop spindle, so I have been saving the colored pages for that. I reuse Ziploc bags as long as they have not had raw meat in them and I reuse tinfoil whenever possible. I bring my own coffee cup wherever I go so that I don't have to get a paper or Styrofoam one, and I have a Brita water pitcher in my refrigerator that I use to fill up my water bottles so that we don't have to buy bottled water. I have more than enough Nalgene/Sigg/Sport bottles.

Secondly, we have a worm bin that we compost nearly all of our kitchen scraps, vacuum cleaner stuffs, floor sweepings, dead plant leaves, etc. I also use the non colored news paper as bedding for the worms. I think the worms have been my favorite pets so far, I don't have to go out and buy extra food for them, I don't have to walk them or clean up after them, they don't need any maintenance or have to visit a vet, and they don't make any noise. This really helps reduce the amount of trash leaving our apartment, even with 3 people living there we only have about 1 bag of trash per week or less. My ultimate goal would be to get 1 bag per month but I would have to work really hard for that and do a lot of training with the other residents of the apartment to achieve that goal.

When it comes to food, I do shop at the local grocery store but I also try to visit the local farmers markets and farm stands as much as possible during the growing season. Its a short season here in Maine but defiantly worth going out to get fresh veggies. I have a small container garden on my deck as well that provides enough for us to have salads regularly throughout the summer and early fall.

At the grocery store I try to buy products that come in containers that can be reused or recycled with the least amount of packaging. IF (and that is a big IF), we buy paper products like paper towels, napkins, paper plates, they are all recycled materials. The bathroom tissue that we purchase is also made from recycled paper, the brand we use is Earth First.
When we are done with the paper items they are fed to the worms, guests may think its weird but that's just how I roll (I would like to say we here but the boyfriend would just throw them away if I didn't tell him to put them in the worm bin every time). One thing that I need to work on, and have not been very successful at, is bringing my own bags to the grocery store. I reuse the plastic shopping bags to knit with, but I have an over abundance of them now so I really need to spend the money to buy a few of the reusable shopping bags and just start using them.

To save on electricity and reduce my/our carbon footprint I unplug appliances when they are not in use and our other electronics (computer, tv, vhs, dvd, playsation) are plugged into power strips so that they can be turned off when not in use and they don't cause a phantom loading issue. I also make sure to go around and unplug any cell phone chargers that are randomly left sticking out of the wall, drawing energy for no reason. We use energy efficient bulbs in all of our lights. Our apartment has a kerosene heater that we only use during the very cold months, it is temperature controlled so I set it to a lower temperature when we are sleeping or not at home. Starting in April and until we can't stand it any more in the fall the heater remains off and unplugged. We also have electric hot water which really is a pain! I take quick showers and I am a huge advocate of the old saying "save water, shower with a friend", this really keeps the electricity bill down. I also try to hold off on washing dishes until we have a good amount, that way I'm not filling the sink a bunch of times to wash a few dishes. So far my most expensive electricity bill has only been $96 which I think is fantastic.

I think I have covered everything but I would like to hear from any readers as well, its always fun to hear about the things that others are doing to be friendly to the environment.

Happy Monday

2009-04-27T11:45:00.009-06:00

This past weekend was a little crazy but I did manage to get some time to take some pictures of things that I promised I would post photos of.

Why was my weekend crazy you may ask.

Friday night was pretty calm, my boyfriend and I went out to dinner and then headed to the movie store so that we could have a quite night in. We rented the Wrestler, and Slumdog Millionaire. Of course we had to watch the wrestler first, and it turned out to be a bit better than I thought it was going to be. I have not made it all the way through Slumdog yet because I am not good at watchimg movies and I always fall alseep, goal for tonight is to finish the movie.

Saturday was kind of a wasted day. I did a 5 mile walk for MS, with two friends of mine, but lately I have been having these wierd reoccuring migraines that decide to show up any time that I exercise so after the walk my head was pounding and I didnt really have the energy to do much. I ended up heading over to my parents house to do some laundry and get some advice from my mother about the headache issue. After chatting with her I now have an appointment to see both my regular doctor and my eye doctor so that I can get this problem solved.

Now for Sunday, but first a little background info. My boyfriend and I decieded a while back that we definately needed some new things for the apartment, we chose 2 items that we absolutely needed. 1st a new tv, the old 20 inch tv wasnt cutting it and with the switch over to HD tv coming very soon we decided that a new tv would be a high priority. The second thing we decided we needed was some new furniture. The chair and couch that we had were both from college days and they have pretty much lived thier life. We made a deal that my boyfriend would purchase the tv and I would buy the furniture. So, a little over a month ago we went shopping and Chris purchased our new 42" flat screen plasma television. Yesterday we went furniture shopping. We checked out 3 places and ended up coming home with a dark brown leather recliner from the first place that we went to, the second place we visited had absolutely nothing that we were interested in, and at the thrid place I bought a love seat and a sofa. I am very happy with my purchases and I think they will last us a long time.

On top of all that I managed to get around to taking some photos.

Here is my new baby. As I explained in the post before this, its an Ashford Traveller and I love her, stay tuned for more photos. She still is nameless but I'm sure it will come to me. So far I have spun some BFL from Maine Woods Fiber, a bit of wool and silk that I got from the DiA swap, a bit of Lornas Laces fiber in the colorway Daffodil, and currently on my wheel is some dark chocolate brown Alpaca.

This is my first handspun attempt. All of this fiber is from the starter kit I bought from Maine Woods Fiber on etsy.com. The first skein is 2ply, one of the plys I spun with my drop spindle, the other with the wheel and they were plyed together on the wheel. The other two skeins are singles that I made with my drop spindle.

The darker green is the first skein I made and its pretty hard to see but it came out decent for my first go at spinning.

Peace and Happy Knitting!

Amanda

Too Long Without An Update

2009-04-15T13:02:00.007-06:00

WOW! Its been a long time. I have been so busy doing crafty things that I haven't had much time for blogging. Needless to say my Ravelry page and my Blog have suffered.

What have I been up to?

First off the Dragonfly in Amber Swap is nearing and end. I recieved my swap goodies from my spoiler and boy was I supprised. The gifts I got were beautiful.

The book is not from the Diana Gabaldon Series but there is reference to one of her characters in "Into the Wilderness" hence the reason for recieving this book. The buttons have little scottish thistles painted on them to go with the theme of the book. I also recieved some silk for spinning (another thing that I have been doing a lot of lately), and the beautiful hand made stitch markers.

Some other things I recieved were BEAUTIFUL hand spun yarn, made by my spoiler, a hand knitted pence jug, and cocolate chip cookies MY ULTIMATE favorite! I will have a picture of the hand spun but the only one I have right now just does not do it justice. If you visit my ravelry page (aplourde) you can see all of these items in my projects page.

Secondly, I have started going to a local spinning guild once per month, I have met the nicest ladies there and I have become a fiber addict! My knitting has suffered. Its gotten so bad that after 2 months of spindling (which I love and was getting pretty good at) I decieded to go out and buy a spinning wheel.

Just last week I brought home my new baby an Ashford Traveller. Don't worry, like any proud mother I will post pictures of her. She still does not have a name but I am sure it will come to me eventually.

I have successfully created 3 small skeins of hand spun and I am so proud of myself. IT's by no means perfect and is pretty lumpy but I feel very accomplished.

The roving that I used to make the yarn is from Maine Woods Yarn and Fiber. They have a little shop on etsy.com that you can check out. I also orderd some fiber from Sonny and Shear, which should arrive by the end of the week.

I also took it upon myself to buy 3lbs of un-cleaned Alpaca fiber in a lovely chocolate brown color from an animal named Maja. I have ever so slowly been going through the process of picking and cleaning said fiber and I had a feeling it would take forever but luckilly its not wool. Apparently wool is very hard to clean because of all the lanolin you have to wash it in very hot water a number of times to get the grease out. Last Saturday I spent a whole day at one of my newly found fiber addicts houses cleaning a bit of my fiber and learning the process. Its very fun and I can hardly wait for the finished product. Thanks Nicole I had a GREAT TIME!

Finally I have been doing some gardening, or preparing to garden. I have seedlings galore at my apartment waiting patiently for the temperature to increase so that they can go out doors. I have also been helping my parents prepare for thier first square foot garden attempt. I am so excited! I highly recommend the square foot gardening method. For a great reference I suggest The All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.

This years crop should produce the following: Tomatoes (roma, cherry, and heirloom), cucumbers (lemon, and regular), bush beans, egg plants, bell peppers (in carnival mix, and green), sweet peppers, carrotts, parsnips, watermelon, cantulope, summer and winter squash, acorn squash, zucchini, basil, chives, sage, oregano, and last but not least some flowers (dahlias, bachelors buttons, petunias, coleus, morning glories, moss rose, and cypress vine).

I Must Be Dreaming

2009-01-16T08:00:00.003-07:00

Ravlery is taking over my life. I am completely ADDICTED and I hope I stay that way. I have been making new friends and sharing ideas and tips about a lot of things that I love.
Also, I have joined many groups including the Diana Gabaldon Outlander group. Through this group I will be participating in the DiA swap and I CAN'T WAIT! The Outlander books were my most favorite series ever next to HP and Twilight that is.

Last weekend I worked desperately to finish up some of my projects from the pile of WIP's. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn for most of the projects that I was working on and couldn't tear myself away from the needles long enough to go to the store and get more yarn.

I also forgot to mention that I recieved the Pattern-A-Day calendar for christmas. I LOVE IT! I am going to try to make all of the projects since most of them are small quick items. So far I have made the soap sack, and I am working on the Guitar Man socks. I hope to post photos of these things.

Goals for the weekend:
-Go to the store and get yarn to finish WIP's
-Take Photos of projects to post for all to see.

One final note, I have been pondering the idea of starting my own yarn shop......this is the reason that I must be dreaming. With the economy the way it is, I don't know that I would ever be able to get this off the ground. Maybe yarn shops are only meant for those of us who have spent years in the coorporate world or at other taxing jobs and have finally had enough. I have only been out of school for a few years now. I also have considered possibly creating the yarn store as an online buisness, that way I could do it as a part time venture. If anyone out there has any suggestions, or helpful words by way of constructive criticism I would love to have a chat.

I hope everyone is staying warm and enjoying the winter!

KnittingKnittingKnitting

2009-01-08T11:28:00.006-07:00

Lately (well in the last month or so) I have caught a serious knitting bug. I recieved some yarn for Christmas (see Knitting Basket below) and I started knitting everything in sight. I have many different types of yarn in my basket. Anything from acrylic Red Heart to Fleece Artist Sea Wool. Center yarn is the Caron Bamboo. Next to it on the right is the sea wool. I will be taking another picture of that so that you can see how beautiful it really is. The pink varigated is Red Heart.

The picture above is a dragon sweater that I have been working for a friend of mine's daughter. Needless to say I have 1 arm and the hood to go and then the spikes down the back, i ran out of yarn. (Note to self: must make trip to AC Moore to get more yarn for project).

The afghan may or may not get finished before 6 Kingdoms starts. This project was given to me by my grandmother. She got it from another friend who can no longer see well enough to knit. I have been working on it here and there and I have about 2 out of 7 panels done. I know I will love the blanket when its done, however the panels just get too repetitive and boring for me. This is one reason that i have so many projects going on i get bored too easily. I guess that is a Pisces thing.

Next on the roster. This is the Knitting Hush Hush. I decied that since i hate wearing nighites but i loved the pattern i would just turn it into a tanktop. I have completed about 90% of the project to date. This is also the project that I have been working on the most in the past couple of weeks. I will post a finished picture of all of my projects as they are done. I also am on ravelry as aplourde and my projects will all apper on there as well.

Finally the Plastic bag Bag. I made my yarn out of hannaford bags. This project is also about 95% done. All i need to do is make the handles or a strap or some thing that I can use to cary the bag around. I will be lining this with some random material also so that it has more of a finished handbag look.

This project was finishe. However......it is a sweater that i made for my mother. Little did i know while making said sweater that the arms were going to come out as long as they did. I believe i may have made the arms to fit me. Moms arms are much shorter. So now I have the task of removing said arms and re-knitting them so that they fit mom. I have decided to put this off till last, she may not get the sweater back until next winter.......who knows.

Now I want to talk about Ravelry for a minute. I LOVE RAVELRY! It may possibly be the best thing to ever happen to knitters and crocheters. The website is very well organized and there are many many many patterns/groups/forums and wonderful people that make up the community.

New Addiction

2008-12-18T07:35:00.005-07:00

I first want to tell you all about my new addiction. There is a little website called eatsleepknit.com if you love hand dyed and hand painted yarns you will become very fond of this website. They also have knitting accessories and clubs to join.

By follwoing the button link above you can visit eatsleepknit.com and if you order something it will help me to recieve gifts/etc. from them as well.

Also I have joined the yarn marathon and have completed my first mile. I wanted to show off my badges.

Finally I have joined the Six Kingdoms yarn club and I CAN NOT WAIT for that to start.
One last thing.....I may have ordered 4 new skeins of yarn today. I hope that they arrive soon so i can start some new projects.

2008-12-08T09:40:00.004-07:00

So I havent posted anything since i started this blog. Honeslty I havent given it much attention. I'm also pretty sure that nobody has ever read my blog to date, but reguardless i will keep on posting so that some day someone can get some entertainment out of this.

What have I been up to lately?

Being that it is Holiday time i have been working diligently to get all of my Christmas shopping done, whether or not funds allow for it. Normally, since i am a knitter i try to make my friends and family something nice and warm for Christmas . Unfortunatley my needles have been at a stand still this year and I have many projects overflowing my knitting basket that are unfinished. I have recently joined a yarn club which starts in May so i have promised myself that i would finish all of the pending projects before then so that i have nothing holding me back when the packages start arriving at my door from yarn club.

This is the first year that I have had an apartment to decorate. So, much to my wonderful boyfriends dismay, all of the every day decorations have been packed in a box and the spaces that they once filled are now covered with snowmen of all shapes and sizes. This is also the first year that I have had a Christmas tree to decorate.

I am looking forward to spending the holiday season with friends and family. I am also looking forward to some snow so that i can possibly get back on my skis this year.

I don't have much more right now but I do hope to get some photos up on here at some point and to start keeping a more updated blog.

Very New and Slow To Start

2008-08-26T11:41:00.001-06:00

Hi All,

This is my very first post on this blog thing that seems to be so popular among my friends and family. The initial reason for creating an account was so that I could view my friends blogs (still haven't exactly figured out how to navigate through the page to do that yet). Currently I have only blogged on my Myspace page but I thought this would be a nice way for me to keep people updated on my hobbys, and other intrests.
I suspect that my page will be quite boring for a while but I hope to become more familiar with what I am doing and hopefully be able to make something interesting of it.

So here goes nothing.....

I would like to first let you all in on a little bit about me. I am a small town girl who likes to keep things simple. I hate drama and messes. At times I am a bit of a neat freak. I love the outdoors and exploring. I also love taking pictures everywhere I go (hopefully I will be able to figure out how to post some one here in the future). One of my favorite things to do is knit, its not just for grandmas. I also enjoy spending time with my friends and family and having good laughs and great food.
My background: I grew up in Millinocket Maine and graduated from Stearns High School, from there I went to college at the University of Maine at Machias and graduated in the spring of 2006 with a Bachelors Degree in Science, I concentrated in Marine Biology.
After graduating from college I moved home with my parents for about a year so that I could save up some money and find a job. During my time at college my parents had moved to Levant which was pretty helpful to me since it was close to Bangor where I could easly find work.
The first job I held after graduation was for Americorps. It was a six month position in which I helped out the Bangor Area Stormwater Group with thier public outreach and education. Basically I spent 6 months visiting schools and educating childeren of all ages about stormwater. As my term with Americorps ended I began looking for something else, the stormwater group was looking for interns to help out with a stormdrain and outfall mapping project, i stayed on with them and worked for another 4 months walking around bangor with a great group of guys mapping all of the storm drains in Bangor. That job began coming to a close and I was on the search for another job. Low and behold the storm water group came to the rescue again, one of the members said that the bangor international airport was looking for an environmental technician, i applied and within 2 weeks I had a job, a real job! I have been working at the airport for over a year now and I love it, the people are great and I have gained much experience.
Other than work I am spending my time puttering around my apartment, knitting, gardening, and hanging out with friends.
I think i will end this conversation for now and hopefully be back soon to write some more. Maybe I will even have someone who has actually checked out my page.