Wow!

Now, I will start this with a disclaimer that I am not necessarily endorsing tattooing with this post (especially you Audrey - when you are old enough to read this), that said...

Isn't this an amazing tat! I can't wait to see it when it is done. I saw this on my favorite crafting blog.

Knitting Notions Wishlist

Well, in my last post on knitting I said that I wasn't so much a notions type of gal, but then as part of the swap I am in, I was reading lots of the other participants blogs and I realized I am in fact a notions gal. Here are some I would love to have (and will probably slowly acquire with the weekly 40% off coupons from Michaels).

The lovely yarn cutting pendant - truthfully, I could see myself actually wearing this on travel, just so that it is handy at all times.

The somewhat sassy, somewhat piratey t-shirt - does that qualify as a notion?

The new knitpics straights in the longer lengths - any size will do, I use them all.

This list will grow I am sure as time allows.

Cool Book List

I found this list on Ally's blog and thought it was a fun idea.

The Big Read is an National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE .

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I faired okay 28/100. Interesting many of my favs are on this list (11/100). Notably Jane Austen did quite well with no less than 4 books - go Jane!

How did everyone else do? My guess is that of my friends and family Mary H will take first place, followed by my Mom and William, then Wendi, Desiree and Mary M. I also bet I am at the bottom of my well read friends list.

New Swap

I really enjoy making dishcloths, sad but true. So I really love the online dishcloth swaps because I get to send them to people who I know will be excited about getting them.

I just signed up for the "All Hallows Eve Dishcloth Exchange". This should be fun. I am also in a Christmas dishcloth exchange right now on swapbot. The swapbot exchanges are fun because they are usually simpler than the blog exchanges. It is nice to have so many options. Thanks to all the hosts out there, who are nice enough to set these fun things in motion.

They are back!!

Yesterday Liz called me on her way into the office to see if I wanted anything from Starbux. I told her I would meet her there and off I went, thinking maybe it was an iced coffee day - but as soon as I got there and saw the sign indicating that the delicious Pumpkin Spice Latte had returned, I knew that was the drink for me. I forgot how good those drinks are. They are a little on the sweet side, so I only let myself have a drink or four a season, but each time I savor every drop. Delicious. I think I might try to do my own pumpkin spice latte at home this morning - and I am definitely adding a little cardamom and some fresh ground nutmeg. Yum, I am making my own mouth water at the very thought.

All Hallows Eve Dishcloth Exchange Questionaire

Knotting Yarn
1. Do you knit or crochet? For how long?
I knit and crochet. I have been knitting for a couple of years now and that is my primary yarn hobby. I have been crocheting on and off since I was about 9 and my grandma Gigi taught me.

2. What sort of needles or hooks do you enjoy using the most? Are there some you've been dying to try out and haven't?
I mostly use wooden needles. I have noticed the metal needles hurt my hands, if I use them for too long. I love longer wooden needles and I can't wait to get my hands on the new harmony long needles at KnitPicks.

3. What kind of projects do you most enjoy? Small things you can take with you, or big complex ones that are just gorgeous when they're done? I enjoy small things that I can take with me, I love doing dishcloths because of the quick sense of accomplishment and the fact that they are so usable. I also have a couple of bigger projects in the works - a sweater for my daughter and a couple of other gifts, that I don't want to disclose in case the recipients read this. :)

4. List one pattern for a dishcloth that you love to make, or just tell us about one you've made or received that you loved. I love the Mason Dixon Knitting dishcloth reloaded. I especially love it in bright colors and/or varigated yarns. I also did (designed seems a little strong) a 5 star variation on that theme, that I really love because it lays perfectly flat, but still has a lot of interest.

5. What are your 'must have' notions? Are there any notions you need or can never have enough of? Any that might make you cry if you owned more? I don't really have many knitting notions outside of needles and yarn and my ipod counter. I can't even think of anything I am missing, but am certainly open to surprises.

Petting Yarn
6. What are your favorite yarns to work with? Any you hate or are allergic to? I really love cashmere - don't we all. But to stick within my budget, I use a lot of cotton and I love the cotton blends with other natural fibers - like the cotton linen blend or the cotton modal blends. I really don't like to work with acrylic. It just seems like a waste of work.

7. What colors do you like to use in projects? Any we'd never catch on your needles? I love all colors, the deep and intense ones, the bright and the subdued earthy tones. My current needles have a Christmas varigation and some solid greens. I tend to gravitate towards beautiful greens and reds even when I am not working on Christmas stuff.

8. Any cottons you'd like to try you can't find by you, or just haven't gotten around to getting? I would love to try some new cotton blends with other natural fibers to see how they hold up.

Halloween, Fall, and General Stuff
9. Do you like to use bar soap or shower gel more? What kinds of scents do you love? What kind do you hate? I am definitely a bar soap type of gal. I love clean scents - we use nothing but handmade bars in our bathrooms and as our kitchen soap. I do not care for pachuolli, vanilla or really floral scents.

10. What's more 'Halloweeny' - Ghosts, Pumpkins, or Witches? Witches!!

11. What's your favorite Treat to get? Sweet or Salty? Anything you're allergic to or just hate? I love dark chocolate and I love it with a bit of a salty nut. My absolute favorite - in case my spoiler happens to be from Hawaii is dark chocolate covered macadamian nuts. I just can't seem to find them around these parts very often.

12. What was your favorite Halloween Costume as a kid? As an adult?? As a kid, my favorite costume was to be rainbow witch - yep I made it up. My mom made me all kinds of variations on the theme with everything from a flower power skirt to a large cape. As an adult, I still dress up every year for Halloween as a witch, though now I go for the classic black to either take my daughter trick or treating or to pass out candy.

13. Are you on Ravelry? What's your ID? Yes I am on Ravelry and my ID is "madame" - quel suprise. :)

14. Anything else you'd like to be sure your pal knows? I like unusual shaped dishcloth patterns, if you happen to know how to make something clever like that. I would love a copy of your pattern to try it myself.

Cozy Fun

Because I like cozies so much, I may just have to knit a set of these for any and all of my drinking relatives. I think this could be the perfect gift for my bro for Xmas? :) I saw this on Lime & Violet's blog, in case you are actually curious.