Oh the Shock!

It's only been a couple of days since my last post and I'm posting again....scary isn't it! How crazy is it that when I first typed shock in my post title it came out Sock! I can be silly from time to time. Now this is where I digress, please excuse me for one moment.

Dear Charities of the World,

It has come to my attention that you now feel the need to Spam peoples mailboxes. No I'm not talking about email boxes, I'm talking regular postal mailboxes. There hasn't been a day that went by in the last two months (with the exception of Sunday since mail isn't delivered on Sundays) that I haven't received a thick envelope filled with crap and a note begging me to send you money. You will not receive money from me. If I decide to donate my money to a worthy cause (and yes I do frequently) I will most likely pay for it via that charities website or stopping by to pay locally. One of my favorite charities is my local animal shelter so they get a nice chunk of money from me every year. Animals can't help themselves like humans can.
Here's a fabulous tip for you, please listen it might do your non profit organization some good, stop mailing crap out to people. I do not need to be enticed by calendars, mailing labels, Christmas cards, etc. I have 4, repeat 4, 2009 wall calendars and enough mailing labels to last me for the next 85 years, as for all the Christmas cards, well they are now being put to use by my kids. They draw and scribble on them before they are thrown in the recycle bin. These things cost money! Save that money to put towards the people who need it, you know, those people you are asking money to help....what a shock! For all of you who are mailing me pennies and nickles in the envelopes....stop, every damn penny counts so stop throwing money away by putting it in an envelope in the hopes that the person receiving the envelope will donate money to your cause. Uh, Hello, it's a penny, do you really think that's going to entice people to give you $20, 50, or even $5 in this economy? Your organizations need to take a hard look at their marketing plans. Are you getting enough donations to justify the costs? How many people would donate to you every year regardless of if you mailed them junk? I would be happy with a single letter explaining your cause, an envelope for me to mail money back to you (I understand that not everyone has easy or any access to the internet) and a website address, if you don't have a website I highly recommend that you get one.
By you mailing me crap, you have lost an individual who would have most likely give some money to your organization. Maybe it's time to rethink the way you advertise.

Thank you,
Luvs2knit Household

I feel much better. Alright, now back to our kinda sorta regularly scheduled blog post.

I've managed to stay busy even through the head cold, NyQuil haze. One bottle of NyQuil later I am now feeling better. The cold is still lingering but it's been diminished to a minor nuisance. The test knit is on hold awaiting some design changes so I've been working on my own stuff.

Kaity's Cowl is now finished.

The pattern is Darkside Cowl (Ravelry)....sorry, couldn't find a non Ravelry link. The yarn is Plymouth Galway Paint to match the mittens I made a little while back. The only mod I made to the pattern was to cut one pattern repeat out since it was being used to go around Kaity's scrawny neck. She loves it and has requested more. I do believe that this cowl is going to work a lot better for her then any scarf I could ever make. Thanks for the idea Colleen. If you wouldn't have made one for your kiddo, I would have never thought to make one for my own.

Of course we must now make a matching hat to go with the cowl and mittens.

Would you expect anything else. One must accessorize! Kaity's fat head won't fit into the hat I made her last year so it's been passed down to Bree who has been playing with it. She puts it on her head and tells me she's going to work....goofy kid! :) The pattern is doubleknitski (Ravelry) (non Ravelry). I'm using the Plymouth Galway Paint for the outside and the inside is being lined with The Unique Sheep Foot Prints which was also used for Kaity's inner mittens.

I have acquired a few things since my last post. What, me, buy yarn.....never! Ok, so you all know me better then that. Sometimes you just can't help passing up yarn.

I was at my local Michaels a week ago and this flew into my basket.

The Peppermint Mocha Twist made me do it. It's all Shawn's fault! Since he was off for Veteran's Day we decided to head over to B&N for a coffee and books. I can't go to B&N without making a trip into Michaels since it's only a couple of stores down. Plus hubbs like Michaels too....aren't I a lucky gal! Anyway, all the yarn was on sale which was oh so tempting and I found the sock yarn. Yup, Michaels has finally gotten sock yarn....woot! Well at least my Michaels has it. Here they are carrying Patons Kroy and Stretch. I hope they get in Lion Brand and Red Hearts too. I like having easy access to afford hard wearing sock yarns. Since Ben Franklin Crafts here in town is going out of business that leaves only the two very tiny LYSs. Both stores are great but they have a very limited selection of stuff.

Mmmmmmmmmalabrigo sock yarn!

As if you guys could honestly expect me to pass that up. Plus I had a $25 credit at TLE to use. Malabrigo + $25 credit = Luvs2knit getting some sock yarn. Yes it's worth the hype. This stuff is seriously soft!

Yarntini Varigated

My friend Sue was destashing this and I just couldn't pass it up. I test knit this for Woolgirl and fell in love with the pattern and the yarn. It made me sad to know that I wasn't going to keep the sock. Now I get to make a pair of my own. I don't think it will be long before this yarn is on my needles.

Books, must buy books.

I had some credits through my book club that allowed me to buy these for less then $5 each. Can't complain about that. Each book has more then one pattern that I'd like to make so I think it was worth the money.

I do have a baby blanket to show you all. Well, I'm not done with it but I did start it the other day and now have enough progress to show you. Unfortunately today is extremely overcast making it very difficult to get a decent picture. So the baby blanket will be in the next post along with a few other purchases.

You may also notice that my pictures are different. I'm using Flickr to post my pics on the blog now instead of using Typepad's photo uploader for two reasons:

A) Some jerk (this is not what I would call them when not in polite company) has stolen my photos and blog posts to put on their Spam site which incidentally is really hard to fight. What's the point of Copyright laws if we aren't going to enforce them. So I'm trying to make it a little more difficult. I'm not sure if this will deter them or not but it's worth a try.

B) The Typepad photo uploader thing is so slow. Now if only Typepad would put a little button in so I can add my Flickr photos without having to copy and paste each one. Sad part is, copying & pasting the html code is still faster then the upload tool.

Happy Crafting!