From Rain to Hope

I swear it is.  If you haven’t yet visited Etsy.com, you should. I would say it is like eBay for crafty people, except there are no auctions or craziness and the fee structure for selling items is simple and logical.  I could spend all day browsing.  In fact, I may spend a bit too much time on there.  I’ve been purchasing a few too many things lately.  As shown in my last post, I purchased 2 gauge rules and since then I’ve procured three more items from sellers on Etsy.

The first:

Winking Owls Zippy Pouch

An extremely cute Zippy Pouch from Piecesofkandee@Etsy.  The winking owls are great and it is backed with red corduroy.  I am a bit crazy about owls.  My love of owls had faded some over the years, but as soon as I saw Clash of the Titans again a few months ago and watched Bubo, the mechanical owl, my love was fully renewed!

Next on my list of purchases is related to something else near and dear to my heart.

Pokey Little Puppy Magnets

Pokey Little Puppy magnets!!!   I might have to name the Pokey Little Puppy as my favorite book ever.  These magnets were made from actual pages of the book.  They were purchased from LittleMommaErin@Etsy.

Last, but certainly not least is this:

Silver Maple Nostepinde

I know.  It looks a bit… questionable, if you will.  Let me explain what it is for those that might not know.  It’s a nostepinde (also spelled as nostepinne).  What is a nostepinde? It is a tool used to manually wind a center-pull yarn ball.  Why the funny name?  It’s Scandinavian.  I don’t really know much about the history, but I figure these things have been around a good, long while.  If you want to know how it works, feel free to go to the same place I learned about them: Fiber Fool’s Nostipinne Tutorial.  It’s a very good tutorial and has lots of pictures and a video.  Anyway, back to my nostepinde… It’s from Craftiness@Etsy.  It’s made from Silver Maple and is extremely pretty.   I haven’t used it yet, but I know it’ll be great.

As you can see, a great variety of all things crafty can be found at Etsy.   Now I better get away from this computer before I start shopping again!

Have you ever made yourself a lunch so yummy you felt the need to photograph it?  Probably not, but  today my lunch looked so yummy I had to snap a picture before digging in.

Mmmm.... Lunch!

It sure was tasty.   The recipe can be found here.  I don’t change much from the recipe.  I think I use more onions and use dried dill instead of fresh.  Oh, and I use cheddar cheese.  Of course, if you have more than 3 people to feed, you might need to double the recipe.  It says it serves six, but never has come close to that when I cook it.  Probably because we all eat way more than we should.

I’ve had some cool stuff arrive in the mail lately.   I ordered my interchangeable circular needles and they arrived the other day.

Denise Interchangeable Needles

They are nice.  I haven’t knit with them much yet, but it’ll be nice to always have the size I need, when I need it.

I’ve also just received some gauge rulers I ordered.  They are handmade out of bamboo.

Too Cute Gauge Rulers!

I found them on Etsy after seeing some that another knitter had.  She doesn’t have many in stock right now, but her shop is karatstix.etsy.com.

As for knitting progress, I’m not really putting a dent in any of my current WIP (works in progress).  I’m getting the most progress done on a U-Neck Tunic.

U-Neck Tunic, cast on

I’m excited about it and so far it’s knitting up really easily.  Hopefully it will turn out well.  I’ll be totally dejected if it doesn’t fit.  I already had to start over because it was way to big the first time.  Here is how far I’ve gotten so far:

U-Neck Tunic, progress