Oh My!

Okay, so I've been remis in posting to the blog.  But here's some eye-candy of what I've been up to.

This is a shawl that I made for my friend Lila .. she is a sweet sweet person and I wanted to bless her with this.  I pray that she loves it!

The above shawl, and the baby afghan below are both made with the lemonade stitch (crochet).  I love the texture in this stitch.  It's a great one for using up all the redheart yarn I have!

Below is a bag I made from some Cotton yarn which I would normally make dishcloths with.  I used two skeins of "key lime" color, and then lined the bag in a pink cotton fabric.  I haven't actually used this yet, but I love how pretty it is!  I made up the pattern as I went.

 I found this little bag pattern on the internet.  I printed out the pattern 2 pages to 1 printed page, so this bag is 1/4 the size of the fullsize pattern.  I think they are cute! :)  The pocket is probably not really very useful in this size bag, but I coudl see the full size bag being very useful!  Perhaps even as a grocery bag?  You can find the pattern at allpeoplequilt.com.  It's called "grab bag".

 This following doily is actually a washcloth pattern.  I used a hemp/cotton/modal yarn and a smaller hook, and it's quite attractive I think. The pattern is from maggie's free crochet.  There are a lot of great patterns on that website.

And below is inspired by a very special blogger. :)    I finally made my first Capri-Sun pouch bag! :)  What do you think?  The handles are some old hem binding that I had laying around.  Recycling and Using UP ! :)

I can't find the website right now for sure, but I think it's myrecycledbags.com .  Although I can't find her capri sun posts right now and that website looks different then I remember.   *pause while I do some searching*

I found it!  http://textiles4you.blogspot.com/   This is the place I found the capri bags and lots of other great recyling projects.  I love all of her ideas.  So, check out both links! :)

This little guy has been tweeting outside (just outside.. as in a few inches !)  of my dining room window.  I believe he is calling for his wife :).  She's come to check out the birdhouse we have mounted on our window.  Last year a house sparrow made the nest, and we didn't clean it out, and this guy (could be the same one?) came and they've been checking it out.  I am hoping they will move in and have eggs for us to watch.  That would be really something if we could watch some eggs hatching.

The thing that's been keeping me busy is that my dh got a job in Mequon, WI (just north of Milwaukee) and so we are goign to be moving from Iowa to Wisconsin (probably Belgium area) in the next few months.  I am hoping sooner rather than later as he is there working already and I'm here with the boys so that ds2 can finish school and I can get the house and yard cleaned up for sale.  We could use prayers if you care to offer them for us, as this is very stressful on all sides and ... well .. just s... yes.. anyway .. .

Hopefully I'll be able to post more. 

So I'm really not good at this blogging business.

I had great hopes that I could share on this blog and actually contribute something interesting, but it seems I'm not contributing anything! lol.

I will share a quick picture from our recent trip to NY & CT.



This was taken before we left Iowa .. but I really like it. The mosquitos were eating us alive, so I didn't polish it as much as I would have liked, but I think it's still pretty neat.

A Terrific Spice Rack !

Over the weekend, I re-found a guy that I adore! Well, actually, I adore his work and his ingenuity. Let me start at the beginning ....

A few years ago, we were at the Science Center of Iowa and I saw a display of inventions. I believe the focus was on patents originating in Iowa or something like that. In this display was a marvelous spice rack that was versatile and fit the containers that you would buy at the store. There was no transferring of the spices to the pre-set pre-sized containers to fit into the rack. I could buy a normal spice from the grocery store and snap it in place in this rotating rack. I wrote down all the information they had on this inventor, and I ended up ordering this beautiful spice rack.

I loved this rack. It was very nearly perfect. I still use it. However, the one draw back was that it would not hold the little Tone's spice containers. So, my little ones had to stay in the drawer, laying on their side so that I could see the labels.

This past weekend, there was a display set up at the Craft Show on the Indianola Square. They had a rotating spice rack that was even better then the one I had, and it was specifically designed to be able to accomodate those little spice containers that were hiding out in my drawer. I started talking to this gentleman and he was the exact same man that I had purchased my first spice rack from! His name is Alan Thompson from Kelley, Iowa, and he sells these spice racks. His company is called "SpiceRax of Iowa". click here to visit his website.

Here is the spice rack that I purchased this weekend, already filled to the brim. I really should have purchased the one size bigger then this, with an extra row on top.

The only thing that I may suggest to improve this is to make the top wooden piece a bit taller so that I can pick it up from this. My fingers are just a tad too big to comfortably lift it when it's filled to the top like this. He also talked about a model that's coming out that will be even more versatile, allowing each row of this to spin so that you can fit a taller container right next to a shorter container.
I absolutely love these racks, and haven't been able to find any others that even come close to them.

Balloon Classic

We went to the Balloon Classic in Indianola on Saturday evening. Man, was it populated! :) It took close to an hour to drive the 2-3 miles from our house to the balloon field! A lot of stop and go, more stop then go actually, all because people would go into the right hand lane and try to get in front of the people who were trying to follow the basic rules and stay in one lane.

Below are my favorite pictures from the evening.