Knitting in Class . . .

So I had my first day of Doula Training yesterday. Day 2 today. I'm sure I will write more about it once I've digested a little bit (maybe even a spin-off blog? since it's not exactly crafty). But there was one moment yesterday that was actually craft related.

As an ice-breaker sort of thing, we were paired up with different people in the class and had to find 3 things that we had in common. Then with another person and had to find 3 MORE things we had in common. Then with a group of people and find 2 things we had in common, etc. etc. So I was paired with this one girl, and we were chatting, and she asked, "ok, what do you like to do for fun," and I, of course, said knitting. And she had just learned how this year, so we were chatting about that. When we came back together as a group, the instructor asked what we had found out, and we said that we both knit, and this is what the instructor said:

"Oh! That's wonderful! I knit too! And, in fact, if you want to knit during class, that's fine, I love it. I wish I could knit while teaching. This week has been crazy. It's the first week of the semester, and with all the changes, people swapping classes, I'm in withdrawal . . ."

She showed us one of her knitted Uteruses.

Keyboard Crafts

Keyboard Pillows

Keyboard Wristlette

Enter Key Door Matt

S'More Keyboard

Organizing: Putting Away In Plain Sight, Part 2

Please refer to my earlier post here for clarification on my love of fabric bins -- it is extensive. But moving on . . .

This week, HOW TO use cereal boxes as storage without looking like a preschooler and/or hoarder.

While you have now learned of my love of fabric bins, it may help to remind yourself of my love of yarn. It is also extensive. I LOVE yarn. I would like to clarify that I am not a "yarn snob"; I define "yarn snob" as someone who 1) knows the difference between alpaca, merino, and llama by blind smell-test; 2) cares about the difference; and 3) would never be caught dead in the vicinity of Red Heart Yarn and/or a Michaels store. Now, some yarn snobs are lovely people, I'm sure, and probably got their start on acrylic yarn like the rest of us. I just don't have the time or budget for their kind of stash. That being said, I will tell you of MY love of yarn . . . every color ever! For some reason, I forget that yarn comes in every color imaginable. For example, on a recent trip to Michaels (I do not hide my love of Michaels, and often schedule dates with my girlfriends that center around the newly opened uptown store) I had only two things on my list -- Ninja Turtle Green yarn and Candy Melts. I turned the corner to the yarn aisle, and I swear, I had a tiny little orgasm. Vanna's Choice, my preferred brand, had expanded its section to include not just the basic colors, but now multi-prints, one that may or may not have been the exact shade I wanted in my nursery. Due to my stupid, grown-up budget however, I put down the perfect, orgasmic color, gathered by Ninja Turtle Green ("olive"), and walked away. And died a little inside.

As you can imagine, I have not always been so disciplined, and my stash has grown and grown. According to my Ravelry stash, I have 101 different varieties (102, if you count the new Olive from last weekend). I have gone through a great deal lately, with my Alphabet Blanket project, and I've been careful to only buy new yarn when I need it for a specific project (stay tuned for the reasoning behind "Ninja Turtle Green"). The main reason for this is that I was running out of places to put all this yarn, and promised myself I'd use up a majority before buying more.

When we moved into the new apartment, the yarn ended up in piles in the 2nd bedroom. Now that that bedroom will soon be renamed "the baby's room", the yarn had to to go. Also, in an on-going attempt to make it look like grown-ups live in our apartment, I needed to plan for how to store/display this yarn in an organized fashion. Cue the cereal boxes!!!

. . . the what?

What's the easiest way to get a lot of boxes? Marry someone who eats a lot of cereal (it also helps if the only thing you can keep down/don't mind coming back up during your many many weeks of morning sickness is Chocolate Cheerios). How do you make these boxes look good? A trip to Party City will suffice.

HOW TO:  Turn Cereal Boxes into a Pretty Storage System

1) Start with the thing you want to store and a few month's worth of assorted cereal boxes of various sizes. You'll want a few large (big ol' box of Plain Cheerios) and a few small (not sure if the Chocolate Cheerios only come in smaller boxes, or if I just refused to succumb to the desire to by like 64oz of breakfast chocolate).

Thing I need to store: Yarn

My cereal of choice

2) Gather Materials

• Cereal boxes, flattened
• Various rolls of wrapping paper, perhaps in complementary patterns or colors
• Tape
• Scissors
• Ruler (optional, depending on your degree of anal-ness)

3) Cut cereal boxes into desired shape. You may wish to create Magazine Files, where you would cut the sides diagonally. I just cut each box in half, creating smaller rectangular boxes. Tape up top and bottom flaps to close the boxes on one end.

4) Cover with wrapping paper as you would a present, folding the end of the paper down into the open side of the box.

Tip: If the folded edge of the paper will be showing on your shelf, and you do not have good "invisible" scotch tape, roll the tape the put it on the inside of your folded edge.

You can also use glue or a tape roller, which may seal the edge more completely.

This will keep the edge clean and less present-looking.

5) Repeat with all boxes in various papers. Stuff with stuff. Admire.

Encyclopedia of Mollie: A

I came across a recent post from Shannanigans, titled "Encyclopedia of Moi: Volume A".
Her goal: every two weeks write one Letter volume, and by the end of  year, she'll have a whole encyclopedia about her. How cute! Imma do it!

The Encyclopedia of Mollie

Agnosticism:

"The view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysicalclaims—is unknown or unknowable. Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions. In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the similarities or differences between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief" (Wikipedia).
It's taken a long time, but I think I have settled on my answer to the "great question" . . . Whatever. Seriously. Whatever you think, whatever works for you, whatever floats your boat. And you have no idea how much that BOTHERS PEOPLE!!!! Because, really, who am I to say what happens to YOU when you die -- I don't know you, I don't know your God. My thought is that it's just as insulting for me to tell you what I think will happen to YOU as it is for YOU to tell ME what will happen to ME (did you follow that?). It's like in politics: what right does a senator or the president have to tell me what I can do with my body? It's not HIS body, is it? So, what right do I have to tell someone else what to do with their soul? So, my thought is that the answers are truly unknowable, because I'm not you and you're not me, so how could I possibly know what happens to your soul, and therefore everyone's soul? If I can't know what happens to your soul, it's likely that something different happens to everyone's soul. So if you think you're going to heaven, you'll go to heaven; if you think you're going to be worm food, you'll be worm food; if you think you'll come back, you'll come back. It's just simpler that way. No one gets mad, everyone gets what they want.

Amazed:

I do enjoy being amazed by things. I used to write letters to my friend from college -- the only person to whom I write hand-written letters. I often "do the numbers" in these letters, e.g. "Number of times went to gym: 3; number of mochas consumed this week: 2, down from 6, which is good." I sometimes would include an item such as "Number of times amazed by my kids" ("my kids" being the kids for whom I nannied the year between college and grad school). I loved being astounded by them (another great A word), and I found that it made my days better when I stopped to notice it. I try to take a moment be amazed every day, thought I don't write it down as much as I should. For example, today I am amazed that my baby is supposedly the size of an eggplant, and amazed that my body has somehow found room for said eggplant, because I can't wrap my head around where it's finding the space (I try NOT to think about how it's pushing my other organs out of the way, because that's just a little too weird). What will amaze me tomorrow? . . .

Amazon.com:

I seriously don't buy anything without first checking Amazon.com. I'd say it's in the top 10 greatest inventions of the last century. It's like going to the mall, without dealing with people. And you're allowed to take things with you from store to store and compare, and then leave your shopping cart there, full of stuff, until you're ready to come back and pay for it.
Recent example of how Amazon is the greatest: last week C and I were in Best Buy, picking up our new TV (Merry Christmas from Dad!), and he says to me, "Oh, we need a few HDMI cables. Like a 3' and a 6'." So while he waited for the guy to bring out the TV and put it in the car, I wandered over to the electronics section to find the cables. I was astounded by how expensive they were! $30-$50 for the 3' cable! Up to $90 for the 6'! That can't be right!!! So I whip out my trusty iPhone, which happens to hold my trusty Amazon.com App. (Mrs. Kinne knows the joy I find in my Amazon.com App. For some reason, every time we get together, I tell her all about it, forgetting that I've already told her all about it. She's a good sport though, and often pretends to be hearing it for the first time.) So I look up HDMI cables, and see them on sale for between $5 and $10. I even look up the fancy, name-brand ones, and still they're under $20. I go back up to the front of the store and ask C, "Do we need these in order to use this TV today?" "No," he says. "We're buying them on Amazon," I say. C is not surprised.
I also have an Amazon.com VISA credit card, which gives me poinst towards Amazon gift cards. This year I had a stroke of good luck, in that I paid all my bills and paid for my new bed on my Amazon card, had like $100 in gift cards, and didn't buy anyone their Christmas presents on Amazon. So I had the gift cards all to myself when I birthday rolled around. Free Wii Fit for Mollie! Happy Birthday to ME!
It is also coming in quite handy as I do my baby registry. Babies R Us may be the leader in all things baby, but their website sucks. I mean SUCKS!!!! It doesn't tell you things like the size of the nipple that comes with this bottle, or "here are the things that you need to buy along with this crib". Amazon does. So, sorry to all the traditional people who like to go into stores and buy things and watch me open them at baby showers; a lot of the good stuff is on the Amazon list.

Amigurumi (みぐるみ):

"The Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll. Amigurumi are typically animals, but can include artistic renderings or inanimate objects endowed with anthropomorphic features" (Wikipedia).

I've just started to "officially" learn to make these, though I've been known to knit caricatures of some famous people.

    

But Amis are just so adorable! They're all round and wide-eyed! I started with animals . . .

  

. . . and hope to work my way up to real characters and people. I think my nursery could use some hand-made pooh.

Archer:

Ok, I really don't want to love this show as much as I do. It's so crass. No, it's more than crass. It's downright put-my-head-in-my-hands-and-pray-for-forgiveness-for-laughing-at-something-so-inappropriate FUNNY!

Favorite Quote:
"She doesn't let me wear a condom!"
"WHY DON'T YOU WEAR A VASECTOMY?"

"Don't you want grandkids someday?"
"Well, if I did, I'd just scrape all your previous mishaps into a big pile and knit a onesie for it."


Volume B -->

Organizing: Putting Away In Plain Sight

So I love love love fabric bins. Like with a passion. My amazon wish list is full of them. I would have been satisfied if all I got for Christmas had been bins.

That being said, I refuse to buy them at full price. They can be like $10 or $12 for one bin! Ridiculous! So I always check out the clearance shelf at Target or Michaels, because sometimes you can get ugly ones for half off. I have a few mis-matched ones storing some yarn at the moment, but in my heart I really want the good ones. But until I win the lottery, I have to fake it.

Enter the cardboard box. After Christmas, my birthday, a few home-improvement purchases from Amazon, and the discovery of PetFoodDirect (a month of dog food delivered to my door, and automatic redelivery every month, so little Gipper will never again run out of supper!), I found myself with several medium-sized cardboard boxes taking up space in my living room. While they did come in handy while painting -- 1) holding all the painting stuff like tape, drop clothes, Spackle, etc., and 2) storing stuff from the shelves while said shelves were being painted -- the time has come, thank Jebus, to put that stuff back on the shelves. However, in an attempt to 1) make it look like grown-ups, and not college kids, live in our apartment, and 2) prepare of baby-proofing, I want to "store" as much as possible, i.e. have it out and available, but contained and not piled somewhere. Things like stationary, art supplies, and extra printer paper need to be somewhere, but these things can be precarious when stacked on a shelf (and all our shelves are in reach of toddler hands). Things like computer System Discs need to be stored somewhere, but our closet space inventory is better used for Christmas decorations.

So . . . Enter the Craftiness!

1) Start with your Box of Crap. In this case, computer games and system discs.

2) Gather materials:

• Non-Denominational wrapping paper (i.e. non-Christmas/Birthday/Holiday, preferably a color or pattern that matches the room)
• Tape
• Scissors

• Puppies/Kitties/Babies who will get in the way (optional)

3) Wrap the box as you would a present, except also wrap the flaps at the top. 

  

4) Print a label and tape it to the edge that will face out.

5) Place on shelf and admire.

6) Congratulate self on not spending $12 on a fabric bin, even though you still really want one.

Notes: cheap wrapping paper will tear, so this is not a permanent storage solution, but more of a "until I find something better" plan. Spend the $12 on good paper and cover 10 boxes.

Next week . . . the Cereal Box/Magazine File:

BOOTIES!!!

AHH!!!! BOOTIES!!!

New craft

Best Birthday present . . .

(plus it's a "Project Runway" edition, which is just brilliant)

Now I need some easy patterns, since I actually don't know how to use a sewing machine.