A few months ago I bought some of those boxed biter biscuits for Boo because he had such a difficult time with his teeth. They were a bust, he had it less than 3 minutes before he bit through it and had a huge chunk in his mouth. He didn’t have enough teeth to finish it off, so I had to fish it out and get rid of it. Fast-forward to today when I think, the “interwebs” must have a recipe for me. I looked at several, but didn’t have ingredients for all of them, so I tried the one I found here. A nice healthy option, I made mine with 100% whole wheat, freshly ground by my brother-in-law and strawberry puree because I didn’t have any interesting extract flavors I felt comfortable using. I baked them for a while, so that they would be extra crunchy, just shy of burning them. After 25 minutes, he’s still gnawing on it without breaking it. He wouldn’t even let me have it to change him, I did supervise closely though, to make sure he didn’t choke. And best of all, these aren’t sticky like the store bought ones, so he’s got a few breadcrumbs hanging around but not gross sticky everywhere.

I had a busy week on the crafting home-front. I finished up cloth diapers for Boo. He now has 25 homemade ones and 6 purchased ones. I’m using the purchased ones for overnight as they seem a bit more absorbent. I may make more, I need to get the too-small diapers out of rotation and have two or three days at home to evaluate the quantity. I have plenty of fabric to make conservatively 15-20 more. I can’t see needing anywhere near that many. I’d like to save the fabric to make smaller or larger sizes in the event we need other sizes. The ones I made have hook and loop closures so that it grows with Boo, hopefully to as big as he needs.

I won a contest from The Counting Sheep Farm. I get a surprise box along with some superwash fiber I ordered. I’ve been participating in a stash down contest. Please don’t ask why I am buying more fiber while I am stashing down, I just am. I wanted some sock yarn and I don’t want to spin wool that I have to hand wash, so I saw she had some superwash on sale. The only contest is to challenge ourselves to knit/spin from the stash. We earn points that we can redeem in the store for a percentage of one item or several depending on the number of points we redeem. I added points this week by wrestling with my works in progress. Along the way Rachel, of Counting Sheep, offers mini-contests where we can earn coolie prizes. Stay tuned for pictures of what’s in my goodie box. To participate in the stash down for points and win any contests you must be a member of Ravelry and join the group for Counting Sheep Farm.

I finished a dishcloth that had been on the needles because I ran out of yarn. I finally found the yarn and reunited it with the dishcloth. I’ve made a bunch of these garterlac dishcloths. Feel free to search the archives for more. It’s a neat looking dishcloth that let’s one practice enterlac easily without fear of messing up “good” yarn.

I also finished my first handspun project, a hedgehog. I spin the brown belly and creamy paws. There is actually one strand of homespun brown knit with one strand of fun fur, but it’s difficult to see in the pictures. There are no eyes or nose because Boo is too small to have those pieces on his toys. He seems to like to grab at the fun fur, much the same as he grabs at the furbabies in the house. At least with the hedgehog he’s not hurting anyone.

My 2lb ball of Shetland wool and current bobbin, it takes a long time to spin as thin as I am. I need them as thin as I can so that when I ply two or three thickness together I won’t end up with a 5 inch thick yarn.

I have successfully completed another Nov. 30 posts in 30 days. I have learned some valuable lessons and managed not to blog about the 30 posts in 30 days as any of my Nov. posts. Well, mission accomplished by the skin of my teeth no thanks to my webhost going down for several hours just as I was finishing my post. This week has been lousy for my satisifaction rating with goods and services.

I have a bunch of new Gerber vinyl diaper covers that were given to me proceed to degrade with each use. I have received a note back from the customer service people at Gerber saying that if I send the product into them I will receive replacement/refund. That’s possible for three of them, but the others were thrown away one at a time as the holes developed, which means people purchased gifts for us that we basically threw away. Why is our society so disposable? Why, oh why, has it taken me this long to get our cloth diaper supply up and running? Well, procrastination and unscheduled abdominal surgery at the end of September, but mostly the first and only a little of the second.

I tried to order prints from webshot.com, which by the way I will never recommend to anyone and will not attempt to use them again. It took me most of the day but I uploaded a bit over 460MB of data to their site before the colossal fail. They had a nice coupon deal wherein I could receive 100 free prints, I had 150 I wanted to order. Apparently, despite the fact that it is still plastered all over their site at 1AM EST, you can’t actually use the coupon. That, however, was not my problem because I didn’t try to order them on Dec 1. It was still Nov 30 when I was ordering but the clock switched as I clicked to pay for my order. My order suddenly when from $13.45 to over $20. I deleted my cart, my pics and sent a complaint email as well as a request to delete my account.

Maybe Dec 1 will be better, it really can’t be worse. To end on a positive note, my MIL (mom-in-law) came over this morning and hung out with Boo so I could work on my Christmas project. After I found the iron I misplaced, I spent an hour and a half in the morning and a few minutes in the evening working so that I am 37.5% completed which is to say, well, I’m working on it.

I will not be late this year.
I will not be late this year.
I will not be late this year.
I will not be . . .

A long while ago, I found a site that challenged readers to make a list of 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days, if you search for posts here with the 101 in 1001 tags or use your favorite search engine, you’ll find it. I jumped on board and am almost half way through my 1001 days. I have made some progress, which is exciting and had to remove some things from the list that are no longer relevant or impossible to complete at this point. While I am fairly certain that I will be fortunate to complete 60 or more of the 101 things, I have learned how to make a more feasible list in May of 2011 if I choose to try this again.

Art/Craft
12. Purchase or make a drop spindle (9/2008 made 2), spin at least 6 oz. of pre-dyed fiber & knit into socks
18. Finish R2D2 hat, write instructions (11/2008)
21. Frog Homespun blanket and reuse yarn to make hoodie (2009)
22. Stamp cards to use for special occasions: have 20 in reserve – 10/20 (11/2009)
26. Calculate yards or number of projects in stash, get to work (this is in constant progress which would be finished if I would stop adding to the list and stash)

Education/Self-Development
1. Play guitar on worship team (requires learning to play guitar) no longer on the worship team, need new task

Health
2. Lose enough weight to fall into healthy BMI and keep it off (I do have an exact number for a goal weight) (in process)
4. Kayak at least 15 times each year as often as possible

Literature
1. Read/listen to 15 Classics (1 every other month) – in progress
2. Re-read Wheel of Time, creating personal encyclopedia to track characters/plots – 5.5 of 11 reread
3. Read 10 biographies from individuals who dedicated their lives to societal change (1 every 3 months) – in progress
4. Join a book club: IRL or virtual (2/2009)
5. Write a review for each book read as a result of this 101 in 1001 list – in progress

Organization/De-Clutter
13. Basement organize boxes into smallest floor area possible, maximize work area: accomplished when there is room to host video game night with friends or craft session (summer/fall 2009)
15. Sort teaching boxes, condense by at least one box (summer/fall 2009)

Random
1. Rediscover natural hair color, no dyes until 100% natural again (fall 2009)
2. Go to the beach at least once a year: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
3. Commit 9 random acts of kindness without receiving/accepting/admitting credit (in process 2 out of 9)

I like to check my site statistics every now and again to see how people arrived here. Sometimes I can’t understand how his/her search engine directed them here and other times I can. I hope he/she was greatly entertained if the search was a bit errant in sending the traffic here. I present a random assortment of phrases that landed many people here:

• writing prompts generator software
• prompt generator
• random writing prompt generator
• christmas prompt generator
• writing prompt generator
• tigerheart club
• books by janette walls
• the glass castle book club
• curious case of benjamin button
• the shack book club questions
• the shack book club guide
• bookclub reviews of the shack
• the shack bookclub review
• schacht matchless spinning wheel
• best travel spinning wheel
• suzie spinning wheel
• louet s51 dt
• lime and violet cant listen I admit, I don’t completely understand why the poor person was directed here for this one, the l&v part-yes, the can’t listen part-no
• alan dart finished knitting projects
• alan dart patterns
• spinning wheels have to go round
• tessellating fish pattern
• tessellated fish pattern
• yarn traverse pattern software I admit, I have no idea why the poor person was directed here for this one.

I listen to a podcast, CraftyPod, where I heard about One Pretty Thing, a huge collection of diy crafts the author finds. It feels like a gigantic bookmark that I don’t have to use my favorite search engine to find. I’ve only been reading it for a few days, but found this craft intriguing. It’s a tutorial for turning the plastic grocery bags into stronger, reusable bags by melting several together using parchment paper and an iron. These bags were even customized with words to indicate which bag contained veggies, milk, ice cream, bread, and more. The site, So You Think You’re Crafty, is a 10 week challenge in which 10 preselected crafters compete to design a craft on a given topic, see this blog for more details.

While I find these bags absolutely adorable, what crafter wouldn’t?, I am a bit concerned on several fronts. The first-melting plastic bags together can’t be good for the lungs. Is it better for the environment to put them in the landfill or melt them together and try to reuse them for a period of time? I’m aware that in some areas the plastic bags can be returned to the stores to be recycled or recycled at the local country recycle program so would this project be helpful or harmful? The second-I have worked hard to accumulate resuable bags, some of which will wear out eventually, but as of today have a long life in front of them. To have enough plastic bags to do this craft would require that I use more bags from the store, which would in effect tell the store that I support their use of the plastic bags, which I don’t.

So, does anyone have a gas mask and any extra plastic bags to donate?

I love books. I have loved books since I was young. I can’t remember not loving books, I can’t even remember my first book that’s how many books I love. I have sung the praises of visiting the library as a child to check out my limit of books every Saturday. If you live in Michigan, check out melcat to see if your local library participates. If your library doesn’t participate, ask the librarian why not. If you don’t live in Michigan, see what your state has that would be similar. I love sitting at home and searching the database for books to request from far off libraries or ones just down the road, interlibrary loan is wonderful. I have requested books for knitting, book club, biographies, home birth, many whims and fancies and of late-spinning.

I love that at the time I searched I found 19 different books on the topic of spinning that I wanted to check out and could order then without leaving the couch. Last week, 4 books came in for me, my library had 3 on spinning, and today another 10 arrived. While I will not be able to read all of them word for word by the time they are due, I will be able to evaluate the copies to see if it would be an excellent addition to my spinning resources. The final cut will most likely be renewed just to be sure. Some of the books are out of print, so I will have to settle for used books and in some cases retired out of a library.

I made my list using various online sites that recommended books here and there. I also searched melcat for handspinning once I found that tag in common. I am doing a single elimination process. If I look at book and don’t see how I will use it or it has information that another book already has, off the list it goes. If it has new information or combines information from two or more other books, on the list it goes.

So far it’s a tentative list but here are four possibilities:

• Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning
• The Spinner’s Encyclopedia by Enid Anderson
• The craft of hand spinning by Eileen Chadwick
• The Complete Spinning Book by Candace Crockett

The first one I’m fairly certain of wanting, the second is a reference book rather than a cover-to-cover read. The last two are rather redundant, so I don’t need or want both, but I don’t know which is better at this point. I’m hoping that after borrowing the rest, it will be clear.

I had hoped to go to White Cloud today and join in the spinning fun that occurs most Monday afternoons. Unfortunately, we were not able to, so we stayed home and had some spinning practice. Here is the bobbin yesterday and today:

As you can see, it’s a little more even and a little more full. I’m spinning rather fine yarn, so it will take me a while to fill two bobbins. I’ve decided to drop down one gear and spin a tad slower. My wheel was sucking the fiber in quite quickly and as a result, I lost hold a few times and had to fish it out again.