Sarabeedesigns yarn...in love.

Sara is just the sweetest thing. We did a trade...she has a soap addiction, I have a yarn addiction. We were meant to trade. She adores her soaps, and well...I am insanely crazy over the yarn I love it so much I have kept whats left of a skein of handpainted boucle in my purse with a hook at all times in case I get stuck someplace I have to wait...then I can make waiting WAY more enjoyable by working with her beaurtifully colored all cotton yarn. YUM!

She also has t shirt yarn and I made this cool recycled t shirt yarn dishcloth which is a lil extra scrubby. I like it. I am not able to do dishes the old fashioned way anymore due to my disabilities but when I do need to scrub out a pan quick this baby does a GREAT job and I am not leaning over the sink for ages cause it cleans so darn good. Check out Saras recycled t shirt yarn and save the planet !

She also makes the prettiest handpainted spindles on the planet. No doubt! Check out her spindles if your into spinning. This one is handpainted lilies....LOVE IT!

But wait this started out with me telling you about her making a blog post about me! Yeah she made a blog post...I get to thinking about her and that yarn and you see what happens I forget about everything and just want you guys to see it! LOL

So if ya got a minute swing by her shop and see whatcha like. Sara is super sweet, and also a proud member of my street team. So if your in Kentucky PLEASE buy goods local and check out my street team to start your shopping off right by helping your neighbors here in Kentucky. The economy can be strengthened by buying handmade, and even more b y buying local. Ok off my soap box (not intended as a pun but it sure is funny aint it?)

My snow day

Here is an amazing picture of the snow. I stepped farther out on the front porch to take more pictures this time. I got some good ones. This stuff sure is pretty but it sure has caused a lot of trouble here. See the ice all over the power line...yeah thats bad.












So after freezing my butt off taking pictures I decided to finish up lunch. I started some Chicken for the savages made with Simmons Creek Chicken rub. MMmmmm It sure smelled awesome! You can see it here its the greasy stuff toward the bottom of the plate, and the red stuff is my much sought after taters made with that good Simmons creek Pork rub. I gave the recipe for these taters in a previous post

I will let you in on how I made the chicken which was met with rave reviews by the way. I put some vegetable oil in a pan (obviously) and I added some dried onion...about a teaspoon then I added in some of the chicken rub, 2 teaspoons full, when the oil was hot. I fried the spices JUST a little bit then I turned down the heat and added the cut up chicken breast. Keep in mind you dont want to fry spices more than a couple of seconds they DO burn, ask me how I know this...This is a method you use when making curry, and I wanted to make a bit of a curry but not full blown curry if that makes sense...it dont but anyhoo.. Fry the chicken in this spice and grease mixture till its done, then serve as you wish, with grease or without. Hubs prefers to practically drink the grease so I let him have it LOL. I plan on doing something different with the spices next time I get my hands on chicken. For now I have a squash for me and Maylee to eat tomorrow and I am gonna use some more of these spices on that. Maylee LOVES this stuff! Those taters are one thing I could get down her while she was sick last week. not too many but enough to keep her going. I was thankful to have something on hand she would eat.

So after we ate taters and greasy chicken and some mac and cheese, I started back to work on my pants here. They are FINALLY finished. I worked ALL day on these Maylee just wont let me get too much done at once, bless her heart.

These are corduroy, even the plaid fabric os corduroy, but the orb in the picture is NOT corduroy. he is a friendly fellow that likes to hang around. Interesting how I been getting so many orbs lately. Almost every time I take pictures around here I get at least one orb now.



Here you can see up close the pockets, and the embroidery. yeah I broke out the embroidery machine last night. It wont sew for shit but it still embroiders great! I picked a paisley to put on these pants. I went thru thousands of designs before I picked this one. i felt like it suited the project. Of course I did it in red to go with the red and purple theme we got going here. I love these colors so much. They are so bright and happy!
I sewed a purple and a red button on the pockets. I like to make the pockets fancy, so I did these with buttons rather than lace and stuff...lace just isnt the thing for this project. Maybe the next one! LOL

So in between being able to work on my pants, I spun some yarn. Maylee lets me spin yarn just fine so we did a lot of that today. I am working on this white wool right now. I have mixed in some pink with it too. its gonna be real interesting to see how it comes out in a project. I would spin one long piece of white, then attach a long piece of pink and alternate like that. This should be interesting!









Here is my ball of bamboo and wool all plyed and ready to crochet into something cool. I wish I had more! This little ball wont do much but it will make a nice trim for something I hope.

I am gonna try to spin up some more bamboo soon. Its a challenge, and it goes a lot slower than wool cause you really cant draft it, you have to kinda draft as you go, but its fun!






yes thats Tyler with an icicle in his mouth like a piece of straw LOL He is so cute.

So that was my snow day today. I hope you enjoyed it! Bye from Kentucky for now

Bag Crocheted from recycled grocery bags tutorial

I was picked to be the provider of stuff for February's Contest on behalf of my Street Team. So I put together this super cool bag of soapy goodness.

the bag is one I made from plastic grocery bags. I crocheted them all with a big fat "Q" hook. The bottom of the basket is tighter. I spun those plastic strips and then crocheted it. I wish I had got a picture of it, darn!








I have filled the basket with all kinds of wonderful things. 6 oz of laundry soap, and 4 bars of soap. 3 soaps are designer scents, and one Rose scent. Rose is a good one lots of people like it so I figured it would be a good pick.


You can still get in on this months contest featuring a gorgeous pair of earrings made by Kim Ries of Creative Eye Studios
Check her out! her work is incredible! The contest ends on January 31 so you better get your butt over there and enter to win now!


I wanted to tell you guys how I made this bag in hopes that you too can keep some of these things from getting on the sides of the street and stuff...they are everywhere like a plague! They can be so useful its really a shame to see them hit the trash. So now your gonna learn how to make them into reusable bags that will last ages to carry groceries in or just to put anything in!

First get you about 25 or 30 plastic grocery bags...lay them flat, this is the hard part. you have to fold in that side crease so that the bottom part lays flat, the handle part dont really matter its the body we are after, so get it as flat as you can.

You can pile 3 or 4 bags on top of each other just to cut your time down.

Cut the very bottoms off the bags, try real hard to not cut too high into the bag cause this is the part we want to preserve.

Once you get the ends cut off then you can cut your strips. Cut them 2 or 3 inches wide, try to stay the same width but its not necessary. you get a more interesting finished product if its not perfect.

Once you have processed all your bags like this you can start putting them together like in this tutorial here I am giving basically the same directions as in this tutorial just with no pictures cause I was too lazy to take any LOL She shows how to loop the pieces together better than I can ddescribe it.

Once you get a long striong of looped pieces you can get out your spindle and spin it to make a chunky yarn you can use with an "N" hook or you can leave it as is in the rough and get out your "Q" hook and go to town!

I made this bag by crocheting a circle using single crochets as big as I wanted the bottom and then I started making big triple crochets...I would chain 3 then count over 2 stitches and make a triple crochet..that gives this bag that netted look.

For making the handle I just did a chain as long as I wanted the handle to be and put in a row of single crochets in each chain space. you may have a different way you want to do the handle and thats great!

You can use this yarn to make more than bags too. i am thinking a whole line of "trash couture" fashion here. Skirts, headbands, hats, baby booties. All you would have to do is cut your yarn strips thinner to make a thinner plarn and you could even do a baby weight plarn!

So get out the crochet hook and make you some plarn! Have fun!

Felted soap and more

Ahhh the bamboo....I spin on it when I get time and this is what I got so far. After it falling off my spindle and spending over an hour to get it would into this ball I am gonna spin up some wool for a more realxing spin then ply these two together and see what I get. I dont know how many yards is here I know its not much though...oh its so shiny and soft....yum.







Tyler has been wanting to felt soap ever since Minde sent me hers. So i led Tyler step by step last night thru the dying process with kool aid so he could make a soap as a special request from Beautifulsoaps who has some really exotic scents you should check her out for real. But the Lovely miss Heather wanted a nice bar of felted Basil And Lime soap so Tyler hooked her up right!







This is the finished soap after its dried and stuff. Tyler is here swinging the soap in a piece of pantyhose LOL He liked that part a little too much...please note the sweet baby in the backgroun hard at work on hacking into NASA computers from our laptop....




In other exciting news, I have been named the Marketing Committee leader of my street team YAY! So I am gonna have to market the crap out of us and I think I am pretty good at pimping art LOL So please dont forget about the contest going on right now all you have to do to win is leave a comment, and next month the prize will be something from me, I am still trying to figure out what to offer...I may offer some legwarmers and soap I am not quite sure yet...So wish me luck in my new job, I have never been the leader of anything except my own imagination so this should be fun...I am already demanding people email me coffee and donuts and assigning slave jobs hehehehe

Bamboo and Wool Oh MY!

My wool.
From the bag
to the pot of hot kool aid dye
to finally being drafted and ready for lovin'





I love my wool.I used a LOT of kool aid for this wool. I used 9 pink lemonades, and 1 cherry and 1 yellow lemonade to get this hot pink color. I dyed about 8 ounces of wool like this. I have a massive pile of it by my sewing machineLOL.




I also have Bamboo! The picture here is me loving the bamboo...yes...love...the...bamboo....ahhhh...sooo soft....

OK I am done.

I am not gonna dye the bamboo I am mixing with the pink. I am gonna do a pink and white stripe/swirl yarn and I was gonna try out holding the two together and spinning all at one...yeah. Thats NOT working. The bamboo is a very challenging spin, so I am going to try ....(insert dramatic music) PLYING! I have already spun up some bamboo here on my spindle. I am doing SOOO good with drafting it too. I am so proud! I am having to draft as I go along because the bamboo dont stick together like wool. The fibers seem to be kinda like my hair, fine and silky! So I peel off a small section of it and just pull the fibers apart to the desired thin-ness as I go along spinning. Its slow but boy is it fun! You can see all the shiny goodness that is the bamboo in the pictures...isnt it nice!

I have a few yards of bamboo on my spindle now, and when i am done with that I will spin some of the wool and then try out the plying thing...should be interesting! I will let you know how it goes! Thanks again to Suespins for the awesome bamboo fiber and the quick shipping. I was about to hyperventilate when I seen the package yesterday I was so happy!

My handspun wool shawl

This thing turned out so pretty, and also a lot shorter than I intended! I had 8 oz of wool dyed as you could see in my last post, and it really didnt make enough yarn to do much...but I am still happy, but the next time I want to make a big project I may spun a pound or more of wool for it LOL


And yes those are orbs in the picture. Yes I realize one is situated over my uterus, yes I am freaking out.



Anywhoo, the shawl is trimmed in this neato magenta colored fuzzy sparkly stuff I had stashed. I wanted it to have a trim and this worked well. I have it tied together in the front with a piece of that yarn, kinda lame, yes. I intend to put a nice button on here soon.



This is the back, I couldnt get a good picture of the back cause Justin was very un co-operative with me in taking pictures this night LOL





Here is the best picture Justin got but you can really see close up what it looks like. I made some boo-boos on it so its not perfect, but I love it all the same. I used a great big "Q" hook and a triple crochet stitch thru the whole thing. I wanted it to be big and open, lacy looking.

I love my kool aid dyed wool!!!

Next challenge is BAMBOO! I ordered a pound of it from Suespins on Etsy
And it should be getting here any day cause she was so awesome and shipped it so fast! I will post all my adventures with bamboo soon!

Kool Aid Dyed Some More Wool

I mentioned I bought some more wool from copperpot, well I HAD to dye it. I was thinking a nice pink and blue...like cotton candy, the Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade Kool-Aid is such a gorgeous color, and I had some pink lemonade Kool-aid that is a nice bubblegum pink...yeah thats what I was THINKING about doing what comes out of the bowl is different because my stupid a$$ forgot that pink+ blue = purple!
This is the drafted wool after dying. Its still got some pink and some blue spots but overall its this real nice purple. I am NOT complaining by no means about the color, its just...I really wanted cotton candy! (throws self in the floor crying)
It has spun up so nice...I am getting better at this drafting thing...thats where you take the roving and split it into really thin sections to be spun. At first I didnt realize that drafting was a necessary thing....but my yarn was cool anyways, but this is even better. This is my second try at spinning and dying plain wool and I am happy as I can be! The resulting yarn is no thicker than worsted weight yarn you get from a store and the thin parts arent SO thin...its mostly the same thickness all the way thru but there are some spots thicker than others...I am not sure if this is Kosher or not, I see lots of pretty yarn on etsy with this "defect" and it looks very pleasing to my eyes so I am gonna just not worry about it. I LOVE the way it looks! I like it so much better than store bought yarn. I will ALWAYS spin my own yarn. I just love it! I am thinking I will try to make a sweater out of this for Maylee...Kathleens sweater has inspired me!

Maylees New sweater

I wanted a sweater for Maylee for this winter cause it is SOOO cold here in Kentucky, at least I think it is, all I know is my fingers are numb right now LOL. But this super nice lady Kathleen, made Maylee a sweater and its the fanciest sweater in the universe I swear!

Oh and Kathleen happens to sell some really cool trims and stuff on ebay check her out if your in the market for trims and lace


Maylee trying to get the soap curing hehehe






Isnt she precious?!



I LOVE this sweater and it fits her so good!


Her skirt was from a trade I did with Danielle of pixypatch who makes hippie patchwork clothing and accessories

Its hemp and I love hemp, so Maylee has her cool hemp skirt, bloomers I made for her, and the sweater made with love by Kathleen. She is one loved baby here!


Oh and thats NOT a cigarette she is packing around its a straw. Its super hard to get pictures of her lately cause she runs from the camera so I didnt bother making her furious by taking away her straw...at least its not her onion...

My new hat I crocheted with tutorial

In celebration of my love of patchwork I have decided to make a hat from scraps of yarn, and some yarns I had full skeins of, but most was scraps. This hat turned out so freaking cool I think I may make some to put on etsy. If I try really super hard to get time I can make one in one night. I can crochet anywhere which is a good thing.








here you can see the side of the hat..I made the toop of this just kinda cut off, I didnt round it it ended up being kinda square ya know?? It looks so cool like that, really unique.

I made this pattern myself of course, and I will share a bit here how I did it:

I chained enough so that the chain fit around my head when I stretched it, then I made a single crochet in every chain, then I made half double crochets in the next row and every row thereafter. All I did was make one row out of one yarn and then I slip stitched that row and added a new yarn for the next row, after the slip stitch make a chain and then start putting half double crochets in each loop going around. I did do some increases after about the 4th row. I would only increase each row by one until I got the hat tall enough. You have to keep trying it on often once it gets so big so that you dont make it too tall. The increases are so the hat gets that square look at the top, and ends up being bigger at the top than at the bottom.




here you see the hat just laying flat so you get an idea of how its supposed to look when its done.

The ONLY problem I have with this hat is it ended up looking funky where I would start a new row, and it ended up haveing more of a slat outward where I joined the rows too, maybe I wasnt careful and put a stitch in the slip stitch which your not suppsed to do...I dunno. i thought about making the hat in two pieces but then it wouldnt look the way I wanted it to and it would be more work, so i will just be more careful making the next one so I dont accidentally increse at the join.

I considered putting one on Etsy. What do you guys think? Would you buy something this funky? How much would you pay?? I dont think crocheted goods sell very well on etsy but this is really unique and I am seriously thinking about adding them to my collection. I love crocheting and wish i could make more stuff. I am thinking about making a skirt for Maylee thats got this same theme...just a bunch of different yarns put together. She would be too cute in it!

Oh and I just ordered some more wool from Copperpot and hope to have it by the end of this week. I am stocked up on Kool-Aid and ready to do some serious dying!