I Work Out...

I decided to get a workout in before I try to hit it hard again starting next week. My big goal is to flatten my stomach and build up strength in my legs so I can tackle hills this summer on my bike. I'm not a dieter and don't intend to be, so the improvements will all have to come from working out. I figure I'll still get ahead, though.

I don't go to a gym because I prefer to make a fool of myself in the privacy of my own home. My workouts consist of spinning, and Jillian Michael's Six Week Six Pack and Killer Buns and Thighs. I have a few other DVD's I throw in once in a while. It seems to be working. I'm not planning on ending up stick thin, though, just improved.

Book I'm reading: Just got The Hobbit from the library, starting it tonight.
Afghan Round: 65
Current amigurumi: Dinosaur still
Workouts: Abs and spinning today

Another year....

Another try at blogging. Let's just face it, I am blog commitment-phobic. I think it's because I tried so hard to be like other blogs before, and failed miserably! I'm not going to do that anymore. Since I don't really have many followers/readers (thanks to those who are sticking with me!), I figure these will just be my musings to the great unknown. What I foresee (should I stick with this, because anyone that knows me knows I have a short attention span), are posts about crafting projects I'm working on, mostly crochet, fitness, music, movies, and books. Hopefully this will be come more interesting the more I keep up with it. If not, I'll try, try again.

I'm currently working on an epic afghan for my sister and relaunching my Etsy shop bigger and better than before. I have lots of new ideas that sprang from a recent commission I received from a lady I work with. So here are stats I'll share weekly, or whenever I post anyway:

Book I'm reading: Alison Wonderland
Afghan Round: 62
Current amigurumi: Dinosaur
Workouts this week: Zilch

My "To-Read" List

On my immediate "to-read" list after I get done reading...

The Athena Project is...

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Weetzie Bat (Thanks for the tip MissIndie!)

Finish reading Anna Karenina. I started, but stopped when I read The Deathly Hallows.

I have lots more books on my Kindle, but I have to start somewhere.

It's the little things....

Some of my Grandma's mini dishes......
Itty bitty cup, a miniture among minitures

Just because it's small too...

Book Worm

Some extras to make up for last week....

Photo of the Day

I'm going to try something new with the blog for a bit. I'm not committing to a 365 project, but I figure I'll take some baby steps and see what happens. Stay tuned for more pictures (and not just project pictures either).

New Product Line - Wall Hangings

A long time ago, before I discovered amigurumi, Iused to crochet picture afghans intarsia style. When thinking about different products for my shop, my mind went back to those days. I figured the hat and scarf market is fully saturated and I didn't think I could add anything new to it. But the awesome thing about pictures is I can put my own stamp on them. Like art, they are unique to my style. That makes me really excited. So the two snowmen above are now available in the shop. Look for more snowmen in the future as well as other designs. I hope you like them as much as I do!

P. S. I can also get pictures off my camera again. Hopefully that will mean more blog posts!

Start Your Engines!

Where I've been the past week....

The Nascar race in Kansas City! Yes, I like Nascar. It's one of my favorite sports, actually. I have way more pictures from the weekend that what I have here. I'm glad I got that new camera before I went. It was very worth it. We also decided to drive down ourselves instead of taking a bus tour this year. A very good decision! We could eat where we wanted, go to the track where we wanted, go shopping if we wanted to. Plus, it was much easier to drive in Kansas City (outer edge anyway) than I thought it would be. Coming from a smaller town and rural state, I was a bit scared.

One of the nights, we ate at a restaurant called T-Rex. It is geared more towards children, but it was one of the coolest restaurants I've eaten at. Outside, they have a ginormous dinosaur skeleton. Inside, they have all kinds of theme rooms. We ate in the Shark room with a really big octopus as the main attraction. There were also Aquarium, Ice, Sequoia, and Fern rooms. It was quite the experience! I thought about bringing my camera, but thought that might be overkill.

Unfortunately, I also brought home a cold with me. Once I recover from it, I'll get racing (hehe, pun totally intended) on some new things for the shop.

New Seasons

The new seasons start for television shows this week. I'll have to start scheduling in my sewing and projects around the shows I watch:

Monday - Maybe Hawaii 5-0. I'm not sure though, since I have quite a few other shows I watch
Tuesday - NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles
Wednesday - Mythbusters and Dinner: Impossible (I don't know when the new seasons for these two start.)
Thursday - The Big Bang Theory and Project Runway

So basically, if I'm going to sew or work on something I have to focus on, I'll only have the weekend and Monday and Friday. At least I can crochet and watch TV, so all is not lost.

Happy Weekend!

Aren't you relieved it's the weekend? They can't come fast enough and go by before you know it. Oh well, such is life. Do you have any big plans this weekend? I'm going to a sidewalk art and craft festival. I hope the weather will be nice. I've gone when it was pouring before, so anything would be better than that.

I'm also planning on buying a purse pattern. I've decided it would just be more fun to use a pattern to make the purses instead of figuring out my own, for the moment anyway. Then I might finally be able to use some really awesome fabric I bought a couple years ago!

Inspiration: Agatha Christie

(Pictures via WeHeartIt)

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a bookworm. Some of the best books I've read are Agatha Christie books. She is the queen of mystery novels. I love trying to figure out the mystery. I'm usually wrong, but it's fun to try. What I really like about the books is the time period in which they are written, pretty much from the 20s to the 40s. My imagination runs wild on how life was back then.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes!

As I'm sure you noticed, fall is on it's way! I hate to see summer go, but what can you do? I hate to admit it, but I really don't mind fall that much. Up here, it doesn't seem to last long before the snow starts flying! (Not that I like snow....)


Speaking of fall, I've updated my shop with some autumn duckies, such as the hunter duckie above. I also added a scarecrow duckie and pumpkin duckie. Go check them out!

Another thing that has changed is my hair color, as of yesterday. It used to be light to medium brown, now it is medium reddish brown. I like it! My natural hair color is so drab, in my opinion.

I'm still working on sewing the shirt. I've been crocheting to update my shop, though, so it's been a bit on hold.

Next items up......safari duckie and sumo duckie!

The Magical World of Sewing Knits

Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert at this as I just started sewing knits. Just want to save you some heartache, time, and trouble!


I've been inspired by the amazing custom T-shirts and other jersey clothing I have been seeing on Etsy and in stores in general. But since I'm trying to save money (and most shops do not make clothing in my size), I decided to give customizing a T-shirt a try. How hard can it be, right? What a wake up call! The first stripe I sewed was just fine, nice and smooth. (Probably because it was on heavier jersey and ribbing.) Then, I tried to sew that stripe onto a tissue weight T-shirt I spent a day ripping apart. It was so frustrating! The seam was rippled, puckered, and just looked terrible. So I got to rip it out again and again while I was trying things that I thought would fix it.


I did my due diligence and tried to find some tips on sewing knits online. It seemed like sewing knits must be some magical talent you're born with because I couldn't find hardly any tips or directions on how to sew a smooth seam on knit fabric. I did find a couple good tips, but mostly, it's all been trial and error (and help from Mom). So to save you from having to rip out seam after seam, here are some tips I learned the hard way.


* Buy ball point needles for your machine. The ball point will push through the knit instead of punching a hole in it.



* Use a stretch stitch on your machine. I've been using what my machine calls a stretch straight stitch. It's pretty much a version of the zig-zag stitch.


* Don't stretch the fabric by pulling it through your machine. Instead, let your feed dogs do their job to guide the fabric through. I usually just guide it to keep it straight (or straight-ish in my case).


* My #1 tip is to use tear away stabilizer! It does wonders for sewing a smooth, non-rippled, non-puckering seam. I haven't even had to adjust my stitch length or width when using it. But I would stay away from the sticky backed tear away stabilizer. It's a huge pain to pull off and tear away after you're done sewing. You're going to pin the seam together anyway.

* Finally, sew test swatches first. If you're anything like me, they seem like a waste of time. But wouldn't you rather just throw the swatch away instead of spending hours ripping out seams?

I hope these tips help! I'll be sure to let you know if I find out any others as I sew!

Goals

I couldn't really think of a super amazing topic to write about today (tomorrow's will be better), so I thought I'd share some of my goals with you. Plus, I hear it's better to write down your goals anyway.

* Blog more often and on a regular basis
* Include more of my own pictures in the blog posts (this one will be hard since I tend not to think too highly of my pictures. This will give me a chance to work on them!)
* Non-blog related: Increase the inventory in my Etsy shop to 40 or so by Christmas shopping season.

Those are mostly the goals I can think of blog and shop related. Of course, I have a few other personal goals. But the world doesn't need to know what they are. Watch for a post tomorrow where you can learn from my trials & errors/mistakes.

Now to crochet some before I read and go to bed. Back to work tomorrow after having last week off.

Shop Update!

While on their photoshoot, the camo monkey, rainbow bunny, and purple bear decided to take some time for a tea party.

The amigurumi above are just a sampling of new items in the shop update for today. In total, there are four new bears, three new bunnies, and three new monkeys, plus the penguin listed earlier in the week. My shop finally looks a little more respectable!

In other news, I got my new car yesterday! I love it. Though the trunk is smaller than I thought it was going to be. And now I feel broke. Due to that reason, I've had to resort to inexpensive ways of entertaining myself, like sewing seams, and then ripping them out! The sewing knits isn't going quite as planned. Oh well, live and learn and then try, try again!

Deconstruction!

I started working on a new project for myself. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably know what that it is. I've been seeing all these awesome custom T-shirts on Etsy. However, most are too small for me (I'm not a big girl, but I'm not super skinny either). So, I'm going to sharpen my sewing skills and make some for myself. First, I found a T-shirt that fits well. Next, I ripped it apart so I can make a pattern. (Which is quite theraputic.) Here's what I have so far!

Tomorrow, I'll make my pattern, then start cutting and sewing! I will post an "after" picture after it's done. After that, watch for a step-by-step blog post, if you want to do it yourself. Unless I fail miserably, then it may be awhile. :D

Shop update: I already listed a new penguin in my shop tonight. The rest of the bunnies, bears, and monkeys will be posted this week.

Blog Love

As you've no doubt noticed, I've fallen off the proverbial blogging horse. But I've gotten back on and will try to stay on longer than last time. Anyway, moving on.



If you're in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area, you should come and see me at Cute as a Button Children's Expo (and mommy's too) at the Washington Pavilion on Saturday, August 21. I have lots of new items that aren't in my Etsy shop. Such as.....





I will also have a couple other new items available as well as old favorites (such as a variety of duckies). I'm pretty excited. This is the first big craft show/expo that I've taken part in. I'll see how it turns out. Whatever doesn't sell at the expo will be part of a shop update the week after. I'll let you know when that's coming. Stay tuned! (Or if I sell out, I'll let you know when I restock the shop.)



Things I'm loving right now:



Sherlock Holmes - The books and the movie. I love it when the movie quotes directly from the books. "Data, data, data. I cannot make bricks without clay." Fun fact: Spock quotes Sherlock Holmes in the new Star Trek movie.



Florence + The Machine - I'm a little slow to this one. My favorite songs are Hurricane Drunk and Blinding. For some reason, some of the songs seem like they should be in a movie set in New York. No idea why.



Willy Wonka Dark Chocolate Domes - They are so addictive! You can't eat just one. Trust me, I've tried. It's impossible.

I Heart ITunes

I have a huge music collection. I love music and discovering new bands. It used to be really hard to do that when I was in high school. A new music magazine I used to subscribe to helped feed my addiction. However, I used to be hesitant to spend my hard earned money on a CD I may not like. Or, I couldn't find the music I was looking for at Best Buy or Walmart or Target.

Not too long after I started college, I discovered Itunes. Some would say that was my downfall. I think it was one of my greatest discoveries. If it weren't for Itunes, I wouldn't know half of the bands I do, or have half of the music. This seems kind of a delayed post considering how long I've been using Itunes and how long it's been around. I just thought of it this weekend when I was considering a few albums I could never find here in South Dakota. I decided to sing its praises. (But you won't find that on Itunes. :P )

On an unrelated note, I just listed the above purse in my Etsy shop. I think it's a cute party purse. It has a beaded handle and a satin bow as well as a gold speckled lining. It's a smaller purse, so it probably can't fit all of your loot, but it will fit your party essentials.

The next purse I'm going to make is a medium sized purse. It has some funky fabric. Hopefully, I'll be able to list it by the end of the week. I'm moving slow this week!

Pet Christmas Pictures

I would never want to be a pet photographer. It was quite a job this weekend taking Christmas pictures of Dinky for my Christmas cards. My sister and I took around 160 pictures to end up with three good ones.

I bought the cute sweater above at Target. I thought it would be good for pictures because he always acts like he's in a straitjacket when I put clothes on him. I figured he wouldn't move around. Instead, he acted sad and depressed. So we took it off and kind of put it on him like a bib. That didn't work either. So after quite a few more pictures, the picture below is one of the three options I'll send in my Christmas cards.

I think it turned out cute enough. I'll have to figure out something else next year.

Christmas Tree, Oh, Christmas Tree...

I finally have decorations outside.... And inside too. As you can tell, the picture above is my Christmas tree. You can't really tell by the picture, but it's a blue tinsel tree. I love it! I'm a sucker for anything colorful and sparkly.

As far as the decorations outside go, I don't have an electrical outlet outside. So other years I was never able to put any lights out. My mom found some battery powered Christmas decorations this year. This year I have three lit up peppermint decorations. I also have a "candy cane" (which is really a shepherd's hook to hold the battery pack) and I wrapped the pot holder hanging on my house with tinsel too. It probably looks a little ghetto, but it's not Scrooge-like anymore! (I would post pictures, but in reality, it's pretty pathetic.)