Can I stop being insane today?

Work work work. I feel like all I have been doing lately is working on pre-ordered items. My to sew pile keeps getting higher as I finish products. I am grateful to have orders come in, but right now my daughter is teething and very needy.

She is getting her year molars in. She is 100% clingy and whiny and and any remenents of my sanity is gone. When she is feeling good (ie when the Tylenol kicks in) she becomes the baby that wants to take over the world or destroy it at the same time.

Anyone who has seen my daughter go into hypermode knows what I am talking about. She races about like she just had a bunch of sugar, crawling everywhere, throwing toys and being very mischevious & cute.

Then in a split second she becomes whiny, clingy and won't let you leave the room If you are in the same room, she needs to be on your lap or hip as if her life depended on it . She claws her way up your leg and burries her nails into your shoulder in anticipation you may put her down.

Today I hope to get a break from it all. She is going in daycare for 4 hours. I need to get my sanity back.

How to make a Crochet Hook Roll Up

Being a crochet enthusiast, I set out to make a stylish crochet hook roll up that will keep my crochet hooks safe and not misplaced. I also thought that it would be nice to have my scissors in the same place, so I am not always looking for them together. This small crochet roll up is small enough to toss in your bag so you can crochet on the go.

Here is how I made it with photos:

You will need:

Two compliment fabrics- one for the exterior and interior

Cut two 12x8 inch pieces from the exerior fabric

Cut one 12x8 inch piece from the interior fabric

cut one 11x7 inch piece of fusible interfacing

18 inches of complimentary ribbon or bias tape for closure

Thread

Before you start it is a good idea to prewash all fabric and press all wrinkles out. In my demo, the floral print is the exterior print and the pink is the interior and the tie-closure.

Take one of the 12x8 pieces of exterior fabric and fold it in half and press it. This will become the pocket for your crochet hooks.

Next, take your fusible interfacing and iron it on to the wrong side of the exterior print. Follow the directions for the fusible interfacing.

After you put the interfacing on, you will take your folded piece of exterior fabric and line the unfinished edges with the bottom unfinished edge of the interior fabric. The folded edge of the exterior fabric will be in the middle of the interior fabric and the unfinished will all line up. You will pin to mark where the crochet hooks will go. For mine, I left a 2 inch space on one side for the scissors to be placed, then I marked 1 inch over for each crochet hook. This allowed room for 10 hooks. If you want to alter the spacing to fit more hooks, you may.

After all the pining was done, I sewed a straight line down from the top of the folded edge of the pocket to the bottom unfinished edge. I would recommend reverse stitching to improve the strength and durablility of your Hook Roll.

After the spacing was complete, you move on to attaching the interior of the hook roll to the exterior. You will sew an invisible seam for the hook roll.

Place the right sides of the interior/pocket and exterior fabric together I begin pinning by placing my tie closure. Fold your ribbon or bias tape in half. Then attach the tie closure where the folded pocket begins in the center of the hook roll. Be sure to put your loose ends of tie closure inside the the hook roll, don't dangle it outside where you plan to sew.

Pin all around the outside. Sew a 1/4 inch seam around the outside raw edges of the hook roll. Be sure to leave a inche opening in the seam. This opening will allow you to turn your Hook Roll insdie out, leaving an invisible seam.

Here is where I left an opening in the seam. I recommend not leaving the opening near the bottom where the hooks are going to placed in a pocket OR near where the tie closure is sewn in. Put the opening on the top of the hook roll.

Next you will turn the insides out. Be sure to turn all the corners outward as well. Once this is done, you will use a slip stitch to finish the hoook roll. If you need help with a slip stitch see this video

The finished product will look like this with the crochet hooks in it.

To roll the Hook Roll, you will fold the excess fabric on the top down like so. This helps keep the crochet hooks from falling out. And roll the end without the tie closure towards the end with the tie closure. Tie and you are set !

To purchase a hook roll or other crochet items, please check out my shop The Tangled Skein.

The last day for the Nursing Cover giveaway

Is Friday so go check out the blog- as I am giving a way a nursing cover to one lucky commenter!

Waves of Rainbow

Thank you all for commenting and giving me words of support yesterday. I was feeling sad and down and needed to hear it was okay.

I just finished a new crochet baby afghan. I am soo proud of myself. This thing seemed to take forever because I had to stop after each color and add the next. It was quite time consuming but looks fabulous!!!

Here Jasmine is helping model. I hope the sun comes out today so I can get better photos!

I am going to be listing it in my crochet shop: http://www.thetangledskein.etsy.com/

It hurts

I know this may sound bizarre to alot of women who may not be part of the military life. It may sound bizarre to those that are married to the military too.

It hurts when he calls.

Yes, I am grateful.

Yes I am happy he is safe and in sound mind.

Yes I am happy he tells me he loves us and misses us and wants to come home.

But everytime he calls it is another reminder that he isn't coming home for a while. It hurts to know that it isn't just another day at work. Its a year long seperation not by choice. Hearing him with a 5 sec delay and then having him leave to tend to an emergency only makes my fears surface.

He calls in the morning almost every other day. Yes, I know I should count my blessings but it brings the reality to the forefront.

I cope by being in denial. I cope by thinking he is just off in training and not off to war. When he calls my auto pilot gets turned off. I stop being in denial and have to face the true emotions of war.


Lets pray he never stops calling....

To dye or not to dye

So I recently got several inches cut of from my hair. It is now an angled bob with the front longer than the back. Now I have to decide whether I want to dye my hair a lighter shade for the summer, do hi-lights or just keep it as is? Please give me some direction, I am hair -challenged.

Brand new bag completed!

I finished another military purse! I hope she likes it! This one I think I will name Roxy Knoxy. Her hubby is airforce- so that is the uniform used.

What do you think? The outside of the bag has her last name embroidered on it

Inside there are two smaller pockets and one large on. Magnetic clasp.

www.mybraggbags.etsy.com

Simon and Seaforts oh lala

What can I not say about Simons? A pal and I seem to frequently dine at this wonderful restaurant in Anchorage. FABULOUS! fabulously pricey too... but ya gotta treat yourself right?


It overlooks Cook Inlet in downtown Anchorage, Alaska. Wonderful service.... Wonderful mohitos... oh and their Halibut Cheeks are to die for-- soaked in some asiago sauce over mashed potatos. YUMmmmm


Funny things happen when hot momma dress themselves up and look fabulous. They get carded. Here is the funniess. My friend Kelsey was told her id was fake. The girl said it was flimsy and tried to snap it in half. Kelsey was like, um no thats my drivers license.... see the hallogram. The girl still was bending it back and forth saying it wasn't thick enough for a drivers license and she was going to have to get her manager.


Kelsey whipped out her military id and gave a look to the lady like "haha showed you, now bring me my mohito!"


So yeah, we drank half the mohitos before realizing they were not the ones we orders, so she replaced them for free! woohoo!


Here we are looking so fly. Thats Cook Inlet behind us. im on the left and Kelsey is on the right and that is our Alaska Halibut Cheek dinner and the mohitos:

Yarn Giveaway !

Check out this yarn giveaway over on stardustshoes blog.

She is giving away not one, but two skeins of lovelyBerroco Seduce #4330 in Earth Stone.

Click here to enter.

Getting pumped!

So everything seems to be falling into place. I have a new endeavor that I have been working on behind the scenes of my other two online businesses. I have been making military handbags.

They seem to be really popular and I am consistently getting orders! woohoo! But now am at a crossroads. Do I want to go legit and put my stuff online? They are all custom made and take time. It is not like I make a product and sell it, I make demo bags and photo them for custom orders.

Anyway, the reason why I am happy is because a third battalion just asked me to fundraise with them by selling the bags! Woohoo!!!

wowzer

So my Sunday and Monday went by so quickly. It was a whirlwind.

At dinner at Red Robin with some friends my friend went into labor!!!!!! I have known her since we moved to Alaska and when she told me she was having a baby she was so elated. Sunday nite she was craving a Whiskey BBQ burger and forced me to go to Red Robin. I swear, it was like she knew just how to convince me I needed to eat out for dinner.

At dinner she was having contractions. In denial , she swore they were Braxton Hicks. Nah, cmon my bud and I knew better. So we ate dinner as she clutched her abdomin. She finally called the hospital and they told her to go in. Without a beat, Kelsey and I went into go mode taking charge and telling Sarah what we were going to do to help. I took her toddler while Kelsey decided to take her to the hospital.

So before we leave, we make sure its okay to leave her car at Red Robin. The manager comes over and tries to do small talk telling Sarah to make sure to have the kids first birthday at Red Robin. Seriously, cmon guy she is in labor!

Oh Kelsey and I didn't forget out milkshakes to go either. hehe.

Sarah called me around 11pm and tells me they are releasing her and she will be by to pick up her daughter. Next Txt I get is from Kelsey saying they are taking her to ther OR for c-section.

After getting through the nite with a toddler who wanted to snuggle all nite and my toddler who was jealous, we heard the good news that Baby Alister was born! yay!!!! Kelsey helped with the delivery and blogged about it here.

Alister Reekie was born on the same day two years later, as his only sister. Daddy is proud he only has to remember one birthday for both. Daddy Cody was able to fly in and see his son hours after his birth.

The day Alister was born I also had to help my other friend whose family suffered a terrible loss. She lives about 45 mins away and needed a ride to the airport- about 1.5 hours from her house. I offered to help prior to all the labor and delivery. So , with the two kids, we drove around for 4 hours on monday playing taxi. If you have kids you know that makes them cranky.....

Very tough and exhausting 24 hours, but the good news at the end of the day, I got a phone call from Scott. He is doing well and is safe over there!

Fake hair for babies

So my daughter has hardly any hair for her age. There are these headbands you can put on your child to make him/her have hair. no lie- its a headband with fake hair on it.

For $29.95 that is a rip off. My daughter would grab it and yank it off in a nanosecond and proceed to chew on the hair.

Where do people come up with this stuff?
http://www.babybangshairband.com/index2.php

How to place ads on Project Wonderful

I have gotten many questions about placing ads on Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful is a website that links advertisers to websites in need of advertising. Its like an Ebay for the advertising world.


You can find Project Wonderful at http://www.projectwonderful.com/

In order to place bids on ad space you need to have $5.00 in your account. You can paypal the money to Project Wonderful. Ad space starts as low as pennies for a day. Very affordable!

When you enter the site, you want to sign up and confirm your account. You need to do this prior to placing any ads.

After you confirm your account, you can upload your ads. You can make text ads or graphic ads. Your ads can be animated or not. The sky is the limit. There are many options for the size of your ads as well.

Once you have signed to your account you may upload your ads. On the top left corner, click "My ads". A screen will pop up looking like this:

On this screen you have varying options for the size of you advertisement. Make sure your advertisement fits inside these parameters or your advertsment will be pixelated. Project Wonderful does not resize ads to fix the boxes. You are not limited in how many advertisements you can upload. However, the sites you bid on may only allow one type of ad size. You can not put a banner size ad in a square ad space.

Once you have choosen your ad size, the next screen will prompt you to ad the link to the page you wish to advertise for. Type in the link to your homepage. Make sure it is accurate! The second box asks for the text your cursor will show to the page. For my Artfire shop, I put "Jemz Artfire Shop". You can be formal with your text or cutesy. "Take me there" "Going Shopping" are some cute ones. You will last title your ad.

Next step is to upload your ad. You must choose what type of rating/content it is. Some ads if they are explicit will not be placed on certain sites.

Once you have uploaded your ads, you can bid on the sites that will have your advertisement placed on them. Let the bidding begin!! Go to "place new bid" in the top left corner. This screen will pop up:

This is the search screen for Project Wonderful. On the left you choose which ad spots you want to search for based on size. The next column is for the Catagory of the ad space. So which genre site do you wish to target. For Jemz- I sell Baby items, so I click "Parenting & Kids". I generally don't go to the third column to filter the results- but you can explore that if you would like.

The next button will take you to your results. Let me explain how to read this page, as it may be confusing for some. Your screen will look like this:

The second column shows you what size ad space is available (banner, square, etc.)

The third column is the site that has advertising through Project Wonderful. Click the hyperlink under the name to view the website.

Under publisher- this is simply the sellers profile name This name may not be the same name as the site that is selling the ad space.

The next two columns are one of the more important columns to look at. It is how I discerne whether I want to put my ad on that page. The current page views and average page views. This shows you how much traffic goes to the site. The more traffic=more potential visitors to your site.

You may also want to see if there site receives consistent traffic by viewing the trends. The views for today may be high if they are running a special blog or giveaway. But if the graph shows consistent visitors, then the site has traction and is a great site to place an ad.

The next column shows you the price for the current bid. Generally the more traction the site has, the higher the bids. Project Wonderful allows the highest bidder to get the ad space. This is the column to look at to see if you can afford an ad on the site. Bids prices are per day. You DO NOT pay for however many clicks your ad gets. This per day payment of advertisment prevents fraud (ie someone clicking your ad a gazillion times to make money for the host site). I LOVE the per day rate - which is why I think Project Wonderful is Wonderful !

If you click the last column where it says more details, you can get more details about the potential ad space. It tells you information about the site, the current ads on the site. People who refer traffic to this site. Where in the world the visitors come from. Graphs to show traffic.

Check this page out prior to placing bids. I encourage you to understand the sites before putting your money into an ad on that site.

If you like the site and want to place a bid, click "place bid". These screens below will pop up. One is the top half, the other is the bottom half when you scroll down.

Choose the ad you wish to run. You must place a maximum bid (which you can go back and raise if needed). When you bid, you can put a time frame on how long your bid is active. The default is 30 days. You may also put a cap on how much money you are interested in paying for ad space. This way you don't have a bid for $5.00 a day for 30 days. You can cap your bid for $50.00 and have your ad up for 10 days. However, if you lose out, you can increase your bid for that ad space. If you don't rebid, and someone elses ad expires, your ad may be placed in that spot if it has not expired.

If you are still confused, please check out this link:

https://www.projectwonderful.com/aboutauctions.php

Addies Hat Part 1

One of my buddies enlisted me to crochet her a cap. She was unsure which color combo she would like more, so I told her I would crochet both. Here is the first one. Its black and pink. Hope ya like!

The Tangled Skein

The day that keeps giving me hell

Yah its been a bad day.





Bad in the sense that my daughter still is vomiting 6 days after our intial ER visit for a high fever, vomiting and a febrile seizure. Still sick, and the doctors just continue to say its a nasty virus and they can't do anything for poor dehydrated bug. Yeah, love military health care.





Then, lets see, last nite in the dark and ice of my driveway- I backed the tow hitch of my Suburban into my garage door. After pounding on the steel door for a half hour, I gave up trying to fix it and called a garage repair guy. In 5 minutes he fixed it and charged $85.00 WHAT!



Oh and theres more.....





My Suburban which I only drive once a week as its a gas hog-- I drove yesterday into town to go to a fabulous pizza house called the Mooses Tooth with some girls of mine. Well I parked next to a little Yellow VW bug. This morning, guess what I find on my car. Yellow paint scraping my black paint off the right rear of my car. Yup, their mirror put two scratchs all on the side of my car. A hit and run. I got an estimate to repair and my deductable is $500 and they want $425 to repair two straight , almost key marks on my car.





So, then just to top off my day. My wonderful daughter decides to grab my glasses for the umpteenth time. So they snap and break. My only pair of glasses. So I am blind as a bat. Seriously , my nick name in middle school was Mole if that gives you any idea of how bad my eyesight is. No appointments for three weeks at teh military eye doctor.



FABULOUS. Anyone else wanna share their worst day experiances?





I did photograph a new item. An Awesome Newsboy Cap in Eggplant:

The Tangled Skein

New group I belong to

Hi everyone! Over on Artfire I have started a new group just for moms. Artfire Cafemom Team! We already are rocking over 100 members strong in less then a week. We have some pretty talented ladies in our group. Please go check out our new blog for the Artfire team:

www.artfirecafemomteam.blogspot.com

Artfire

I love it. I joined and became verified. It is the new and better version of Etsy. A place to sell your handmade items.

There are so many talented, crafty people on Artfire. The staff is awesome. They answer my questions immediately. There is no relisting items, and the searches pull up randomly. So your items never get burried by people relisting every day.

Best part, you can list 1 item or 1,000 items and its only $7.00 a month.

Jimminy Cricket! Go sign up now- whatcha waiting for?

http://www.jazzyjemz.artfire.com/