The Crochet Diaries Entry 1

I started crocheting almost three years ago.  My preoccupation with the craft, along with a succession of senior year, grad school, and job hunting, has taken me away from blogging, but now that I have some more free time I'm ready to start back up again.  To help me keep on track, I am beginning a crochet diary with this post.

I mainly make afghans because there are so many different types and they take longer to make, meaning I'm busier longer.  Also, they're easy to donate, which is what I usually do, mostly for Project Linus and the PND Auction. Sometimes I make gifts for others, which is what my current project is.

A friend of mine from high school had a baby girl last December and I am finally getting around to making her a blanket. I found this one and in addition to being easy and quick it is also incredibly cute!  I liked the neutral mix Monica used, but at JoAnn Fabrics I found this adorable variegated pink and couldn't resist.

Jiffy Variegated, Weight: 5, Color: Rose Spray

I then mixed it with this minty green and an off-white, butter cream color.

Patons Beehive Baby Chunky, Weight: 5, Color: Quicker Clover; Caron Simply Soft, Weight: 4, Color: Off White

Here's what I've got after 31 rows.

I was a little worried that the mix looked like pickle and pimento loaf or something, but I think I was just staring at it up close for too long.

I bought 3 skeins of the pink and green, but only one of the butter cream because the pattern only called for 3 skeins of each color 200+ yards each, but it isn't enough.  I'm going to have to go back and get another set of skeins because I'm about half way through and have run out of almost all of them.

Review: Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere

Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere by Lauren Leto

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book made me feel like a bad English major. I only recognized about half of the authors and titles that Leto mentions (one bit of advice is to keep paper and pen with you to take notes on all the books she references). It might be the fact that the vast majority of the books are "contemporary literature" and I haven't really read "literature" published in the last 50 years or so. My literary education focused on eras before modernism, probably because I like a linear plot and I am not apologizing for that.

It's just that after reading Judging a Book by Its Lover, I feel that there is so much I missed and now have seriously make up for lost time. However, I've gotten used to reading fun books, or commercial genre fiction (lots of paranormal fiction at the moment), so I'm out of practice with that kind of reading. I've been meaning to stop reading such fluffy books (usually with quite a bit of sex), and start on books that really make me think, but again I place some blame on my English and liberal arts classes for the sheer amount of reading they forced me to do. After all that scholarly reading I just wanted to turn my mind off, and thus fluff books and tv took over.

So I will make a resolution to start reading books that make me think. I'll start slowly and intersperse them with other types of reading as I have wanted to get back into more epic fantasy and there are quite a few nonfiction books that I think look interesting. Let's see how this goes.

On other notes Leto is pithy and acerbic at times while warm and touching at others. I'm sure that her insights into the authors and books would be more meaningful if I had read more of them, but at the same time she is often a little too critical for my taste.



View all my reviews

DIY: Pinterest Halloween Costume

I'm assuming that most of you know what Pinterest is (Hello, to all my fellow Pinners!), if you don't it's a treasure trove of ideas about crafts, recipes, awesome photos, tributes to the bastions of geekdom, and anything else you could possibly think of; basically, it's one of the biggest time sucks on the Internet. Anyhoo, remember a couple of years ago when a lot of people dressed up as Facebook walls? Well, this year I decided to create the next generation of the costume and be Pinterest for Halloween.

The Finished Product

Here's how I did it.

Supplies you will need: white T-shirt, iron-on transfer paper ($20 at Joann's), and fabric paint. 

Step 1: Choose the pins you want from Pinterest. I used the "Snipping Tool" feature on Windows 7 to get the Pins I wanted. 

Step 2: Copy the snipped pins on a Microsoft Publisher document (I used Publisher because it doesn't have the set formatting that Word does) and printed them out, using my regular old inkjet printer, on the transfer paper following the included directions (make sure you flip the images so that they print out as mirror images [it's "flip horizontal on Publisher], otherwise your Pins will be backwards on the shirt). I used the whole package of paper 10 sheets total with 4 pictures on each sheet. 

Step 3: Cut out the Pins, so that extra paper doesn't get transferred as well and look like an odd border. 

Step 4: Dry arrange the Pins on the t-shirt so that you know the layout before you move onto the ironing step. I also used a Disappearing Ink marker so that I knew exactly where I placed them.

Step 5: Following the given instructions, iron the pins onto the t-shirt as you prearranged. After ironing for the prescribed amount of time (15-20 seconds), peel off the back of the transfer paper and discard.

I did use a stencil. I'm not that great at drawing.

Step 6: Using fabric paint, paint the Pinterst logo onto the t-shirt. I could have used another iron-transfer, but I wanted the logo to be very vibrant and the transfers aren't.

Then, voila! Just add red pants (mine are Old Navy Rockstar Cords), red accessories (headband, earrings, and nail polish for me), and you're done. Ready to impress your friends at the Halloween party.

Here it is again.

Happy Pinning!