Things are going well

I have to say that despite my back being flakier than a croissant, meaning I never know when I will be able to move or I will get stuck, things are going very well.

Teri Has finished her L1 orientation. She has even been teaching Microsoft Word a bit of Latin. She has acquired a mentor and is keeping pace with her reading. I think that this has been an overall great week for Teri.

Eric managed to make it through the first week of school with out missing a day, and has come home very happy both days. Our school district believes in easing the kids into the school year slowly by always starting on a Thursday.

I have managed to get a lot of knitting done and have almost finished another blanket. I hope that this blanket will be the second one I finish this week. I will be showing my work at a small festival hosted by a local pre-school Sunday evening. It will be nice to have some feed back on my work. I hope that I come home with less than I leave with.

John and I managed to find time for a date yesterday. We went to the 10 am showing of District 9, the CMG was fantastic, it was worth going to just for the CMG. Then off to lunch at Micha's one of our favorite restaurants on the south side of town.

We saw more movies today. Eric and I saw The Time Travelers Wife and John saw GI Joe, when we came home we had an Amazon rental, She is Just Not That into You. John said that GI Joe was good and would have like to see it in 3-D. the other 2 movies were fair.

Please have a wonderful day, and may your to do list take a break for the weekend.

Teri

This is Teri's last weekend at home before she heads off to law school Tuesday. I have been knitting and crocheting like crazy so she will have a touch of home when she is gone. I know that this is totally irrational but the knitting will continue and I will mail what I don't finish by Tuesday morning. She is also moving to a colder climate and I will be able to knit sweaters for her( but only if I use super wash as per Teri), something that she did not need much of in Tucson.

I will not have a completely empty nest,Eric is still at home, but as daughters go, I think I got the best daughter possible. The house will lack just a little spark when she leaves and it will be a long time till winter break. I will miss our long talks into the evening after the guys went to bed, those can never be replaced or duplicated. I feel so lucky that she included me in her life so much and valued my opinion.

We got a taste of the empty nest when Teri went to England for a semester, but we knew that she was going to be home for at least a year when she got home. This time is different. We know that she will come home for visits and we will visit her if Eric's health permits. But it is just not the same. After law school she will study for the bar and enter the work force, vacations and visits will become shorter.

I am very happy that we prepared her well for life on her own. Teri has been packing all week and has her first shopping list with coupons complete. Teri went through a rite of passage today and got her own Safeway Discount Card, this seems to be a rite of passage among Teri and her friends. For someone who went through the rites of passages in the late 70's this seems like a strange ritual, but it is so new millennium.

I am going to enjoy every last minute I can with Teri and try not to cry on Tuesday morning.

Another Bake Sale

The Young Adults at the JCC Camp Taglit will be holding another bake sale tomorrow from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm. For those of you who would like to help, please stop by the JCC and buy some lemonade or baked goods, or just make a donation. The Special Needs Young Adults are raising money for the Hope Animal Shelter in Tucson.

The campers will also be collecting the following items Trader Joe's Wet dog and cat food, Feline Pine Cat Litter, Flat sheets, Blankets, Bath Rugs, hard dog toys, mice for the cats, brushes, combs and love gloves, small kitten size litter boxes and of course cash.

You will also find and even larger basket of hand knit and crocheted items than last time, my husband John loves to get hand knit items out of the house. Everything in the basket will also go to help the Hope Animal Shelter. So If you are on a diet this is a good way to help these great kids raise money for a good cause. Did I mention that you can also start your holiday shopping early this way.

The JCC is located at the corner of River and Dodge. As long as you are stopping by for the fund raiser, take a tour and see what the center has to offer you and your family. It is a great place for family center activities we have been members for 15 years.

Have a wonderful day everyone.

Just Wondering....

After lunch out we dropped John off at the house and went to Bookman's. If you are ever in Arizona this is a place that you have to go to, they have 3 stores in Tucson, 1 in Flagstaff and some in Phoenix. They have everything the heart could desire and always have "new" things. Bookman's has used books and magazines, a great kids section in all the stores, odds and ends and even a rare book section. Bookman's is the largest used book seller in Arizona and we have store credit to burn so I let the kids go wild. Eric and Teri pick out some new to them music. and I found a cute little green jar with strawberries on top that I am going to clean up and stuff to the brim with scrbies for my Art Fire shop tomorrow. Time to make a lot of scrubies. Teri agreed with me that this will make a nice gift when it is finished.

When we went to Michael's to find more stuffing for Teri's mogo I just had to look at the price of the yarn. I did show great restraint and did not bring any more home. After surfing through various shops it leaves me a little perplexed as to how someone can offer items for sale in their shops for less than it would cost me to buy the yarn.

Teri and I had a discussion on economics on the way home. We debated if the average crafter values their time, yes I know that I will never make minimum wage selling handmade items, but is it necessary to sell at a loss to have sales? As a stay at home mom I know that I am worth a lot of money for the work that I do that is unpaid, it is just part of the job and making the world a better place. On the other hand as a small business owner I know that I can not stay in business if I sell things for less then they cost to make. I also have to include overhead expenses and I would like to make a little money to help Teri out with grad school expenses. There are plenty of places to buy cheap, but if you want locally handmade it is going to cost more, I can't compete with Walmart, Target, Kohl's or the local dollar store.

Please leave your comments on this, I want to know if I am the only one who feels this way.

Felted totes, befrore and after

Two more of my Stash Buster projects are shown below. The challenge is to see how many one of a kind items I can make just using the yarn from my yarn stash. I'll let you know when I have paired my yarn down enough to move more of it back in to the house from storage :)

My friend Candy suggested that maybe I should show the before and after of a felt purse or tote bag. So since I just finished 2 new felted bags on Friday and I finally have time to blog, here goes.

The first step is to knit a bag from 100 % wool, that has not been treated in the super wash process. The bag is knit on larger knitting needles using a worsted weight yarn. This takes between 30 and 35 hours to knit one tote bag, The tote bags are rather funny to see at this stage. I am 5'4" and the purple bag is almost as tall as I am. The orange bag was taller than I was so the picture is taken as it lays on the floor.

Then I put the tote bags in zippered pillow cases and washed them on a long cycle twice using very hot water at the lowest water setting. The section that was about 3 feet long is now barely 11 inches long. This makes a nice sturdy bag for your small projects or for an evening out. I usualy hang the bags outside to dry, because of Tucson's low humidity. However, these bags had to dry in the house because we had a rare rainy day on Friday.

After they're dry, I trim up any odd bits that don't seem to fit the style of the tote bags. Then they are ready to be photographed to list on my Art Fire shop Handmade~by~Sheri.

Please visit http://www.artfire.com/users/Handmade~by~Sheri to purchase these or any of my one of a kind hand knit items. Thank you for supporting the hand made movement.