The Fritz Project

Good Sunday afternoon!  I hope your weekend has been pleasant.

On Friday afternoon, Lamar & I visited one of the local animal shelters to 'play with the dogs less fortunate than mine' as I like to say.  Whenever you go to an animal shelter, the dogs have their "please adopt me" faces ready. Anywho, on this particular trip, we met a number of adorable dogs ready to be adopted.

Click for Petfinder Website

The point of this post is a dog that is not pictured.  His name was Fritz & the attendant said he had been sitting in the same corner for 3 days.  He was scared of everything & everyone. She climbed into the corral with him & tried to coax him out of the corner... he didn't move... just crouched there with his huge scared eyes.  Sadly, because of his immense fear, they determined that he wasn't fit to be adopted. So he was taken off of the adoption list & scheduled to be put to sleep. :-( When the attendant told us what was going to happen to Fritz, she got teary eyed... I can only imagine how hard it must be to work with these dogs everyday & then have to put one down for any reason... let alone because it's so fearful. 

I know... sad story... I cried for a while because I wished there was something I could've done for the little guy.  So I've decided that while I couldn't do anything for Fritz, I can do something for the rest of the dogs hoping for homes.

The Fritz Project is a donation project.  I am going to make blankets for the shelter dogs- crochet, knit, sewn.  All handmade. All donated to the animal shelter here in Huntsville.

The beginning of the first Fritz blanket.

Kiva is my own shelter dog. Give pet adoption a try. It's very rewarding!

If you'd like to join in, you are quite welcome to come spread a little puppy love!

Stargazing... Bust

Sadly, our plan to watch the Lyrid shower was a bust due to complete & utter cloud cover -_-  So instead of watching Mother Nature's awesomeness, I worked on my striped granny squares. I decided to finish all of the blocks for the rest of the afghan instead of piecing it together a row at a time.  After 2 episodes of Breakout Kings & most of a skein of green yarn... I'm done for tonight.  Tomorrow I'll finish the 3 grannies needing the green stripe & put the last cream stripe on all of them.  This afghan will be completed very soon!

15 grannies in the works...

Good night :)

Hump Day

It seems that I'm getting more & more annoyed with being at work today... I'm trying to be productive & get all these tasks done, but as soon as I start making headway on one thing 2 more jump on the list... le'sigh... It's really a shame that I want to take a break already & I've only been here for an hour 15 mins. 

So I'm taking a secret blogging break. The kind where whenever the powers that be come back into the office I hit that good ol' -alt/tab- to pretend that I've been working on this travel itinerary all along. *shrug*

I decided to do the 'photo an hour' today. The biggest challenge I foresee is not having 7 pictures of my desk or computer... oh and I'm going to try not to be frustrated at the fact that I can't seem to EVER upload a photo from my phone in this office!!! grrr... oh well.

Speaking of uploading photos... I just got instagram on my phone a few days ago ::cheers from the android market:: I'm using it as inspiration to photograph more. I am slowly finding users to follow & one of them is Meredith of OneSheepishGirl. (check out her blog, it's lovely) Today she yarn bombed her desk in her media class & it has totally inspired me to actually do it. I've been wanting to yarn bomb something but never really put much thought into it. But now, I've decided to bomb my favorite OU bench. (there use to be the most awesome tree next to it, but sadly it was cut down...) I'm going to bomb my bench ^.^ There will be pictures of this endeavor!

I feel so much better now :)

Update!

Sad News: My computer is going on week 2 of being in the shop after a sad tumble off my bed :( Hopefully it'll be back to my antsy fingers soon.
Not so Sad News: I'm blogging from work... this is highly frowned upon... *shrug, oh well*
Good News: This last weekend was 'Alumni Weekend' for Oakwood University & I got to see my family.
Great News: My mom is staying an extra day! Yay me!!!

Alumni Weekend is always a lot of fun.  Spending time with family, seeing classmates from college, & watching for the outrageous church outfits girls manage to put together.  The final alumni weekend activity is a block party where you can browse booths. Sadly, my favorite booth (a bookseller) wasn't present this year :/ I once got a signed copy of a Nikki Giovanni collection of poems from him, I was psyched. :)

Anywho... I'm glad to have experienced another homecoming! Now it's back to work... le'sigh...

Dress: thrifted - leggings: walmart - belt: borrowed from roommate - bag: handmade granny strip tote
Hair: day 4 of a twist out

This dress has got to be one of my favorite warm weather pieces to wear. Its quite comfy & relaxed. I just wish it was a smidge longer so I wouldn't have to wear leggings with it.  I plan to make a pattern from this piece & reproduce it. We'll see how that goes ^.^

For All the Thrifters :)

For all the thrifters, crocheters, & knitters... For all the crafters & recyclers... For all the music makers & all the dreamers of dreams... :)

Good Things: 26th Birthday

Yesterday was my 26th birthday, and it was a very pleasant day. Here's my list. :)

• Roses & a birthday card from church coworkers

• Jewelry music box from Lamar
• Raggedy Ann doll from Lamar

• Lots of doggie cuddles :)

• Afternoon naps
• Bones marathon
• Polka-dot wrapping paper

• Crochet works in progress
• Birthday cheesecake made by Lamar
• Reading crafty blogs
• Deep conditioning
• Craft project planning
• Gifted bags from strangers (This girl came in the office Wednesday & I told her I liked her bag. She thanked me & said that when she gets a new one I can have it. I thought she was just being nice, but today she came in & gave it to me ^.^ How nice!)
  

Little Dirty Thrift Store

Cherie & I took a therapeutic trip to the thrift store yesterday afternoon. Normally we go to the main store in our area 'Thrift Mart,' but this time we went to Break Free Thrift Store aka Little Dirty Thrift Store. It's really dusty & dark & filled to overflowing with thrifty goodness.


[Miss Super Reader was so excited about finding these two books. "They are my hearts," she said.]


[I don't know if you have ever felt eel skin, but it is the weirdest thing I have touched thus far... Plus some lady in the store said if you put your credit cards in an eel skin bag they will get demagnetized because of the charge of the skin... interesting.]


[Tag from the bag.]


[Our thrifting haul.]

These were our thriftings of the day. All of this cost us a whopping $2! Two sewing patterns, 3 books, a bow-tie, a mug, & 5 crochet hooks... the cashier looked at everything & told me $2, I looked at her like "huh what?" Then handed over my money & promptly left lest she decide to charge more. So yay for the little dirty thrift store!

Fingers at work... I love this.

 creating something from a ball of yarn…

On my hook...

Currently filling an order for a child size scarf. If you can't tell in the photo, the black parts are horizontally ribbed & the red letter is flat. I like the change in texture, but I did have a couple hiccups with forgetting to rib the little black sections. So there was a bit of frogging & re-stitching. But the letter is done now & I have about 2 feet left of black to do on it. I think I'm going to put another couple of red stripes at the end, but I haven't decided yet. I hope the little boy likes it when he gets it. My goal is to have it completed by Friday & mailed off no later than Monday.  Ok, enough of the talk, here is the progress shot:

About 13" of kid-sized scarf.

Light Box

I finished my light box last night. ^.^ Yay me!

Anywho, it turned out really nicely. I picked up a piece of white & a piece of grey poster board for the backgrounds. This way I have a choice on what background I would like in my photos.  I was actually tempted to buy a random bright color like pink or orange... but I decided to keep it rather tame for this first attempt. I can tell that it is going to be really nice for our product photos for the Pins&Needles shop. The box I used was about 2'x1.5' roughly... so I'm seriously considering making a bigger one. But for the time being, this first one will be fine.  Here's an example of a photo taken in the light box:

Family Strip Hat

I think the lighting came out really good- not too bright. I will definitely be using this light box a lot. And it was very inexpensive: the box was free; the tape & hot glue were already in the house; and all I had to buy were 2 poster boards & a wooden dowel. Those small purchases cost me about $3.65. Not bad to get a professional looking photo result. Dusts off shoulders!

On my hooks

Crocheting at Lamar's intramural basketball game :)

It's a striped beanie. The pattern was really easy to work up. I finished it while watching his team play their first game. Sadly, they didn't win. Better luck next time. (shakes cheerleader pom-poms)

(peek-a-boo tattoo ^.^)

Last progress pic & modifications made to the boy beanie pattern found in "Stitch-n-B*tch Crochet: The Happy Hooker."

I had my hair in a twist out today & it fit over it. That's really good, especially since its hard to fit all of my hair under a hat these days. I like the finished product & I'm going to make myself another one in more 'everyday' colors.