These are a few of my favorite things

I had planned to have a piratical project for today's post, but we had a bit of a laundry crisis that took up the majority of my day... alas
SO instead today I have new shiny things to show you. For my birthday my mother made me a bag to keep my growing yarn collection in (I have become a yarn junkie, I really have) and a roll case for my hooks, which is awesome because I purchased a whole set of hooks and had nothing to keep them organized.
 Pictures!

the fabric came from my grandmother's stock and I find it charming *pet the kitties*

unfortunately my gorgeous Morgan's Mane crochet hook is too long to fit in the roll, so it gets a zebra striped box to itself

And recently a friend who was moving fed my yarn addiction and gave me some. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but it's pretty!

As always (ish) I'm ending with the next Spartan this is number 11 (only 289 to go WOOHOO!) he belongs to a former coworker of mine, Kevin, my coffee ninja from working at the Coffee Beanery in NY, also my favorite person to work with while I was working there. I have so cleverly named the Spartan Kevin, after his (eventual) owner. This little guy is also holding a wee coffee to-go cup (because I couldn't resist) we never will get away from coffee, no matter how hard we try. lol

 THIS... IS... COFFEE!

Hope you like it because I had fun making it!

In Heaven There is No Beer

That's why we drink it here
And when we're all gone from here
Our friends will be drinking all the beer

You may have noticed I mention beer quite a bit in this blog, it's not because I'm an alcoholic. I barely drink actually, but when I do I really do (my parents taught me never to do a half assed job at anything. Thanks mom, thanks dad, love you!) And it doesn't hurt that my boyfriend is a home brewer and thus there is much talk of this tasty adult beverage.

So in home brewing you use what is called a Carboy, basically it is a 5 gallon glass bottle. These things get heavy when they are full of beer in the making. We have seen things called a Carboy Caddy, it is a bit of webbing and some buckles that give you handles to lift the Carboy with (very handy, if you ask me... get it? Handles...handy... *ahem*) So I set out to make one, because the ones we saw at the store are not the bestest ever and I knew I could improve it.

And so I did.

I started with 5 yards of webbing, 2 buckles, and the handles off of an old workout band

The very first thing I did (after measuring everything) was burn the ends of the webbing to keep it from fraying while I worked on it and for the life of the caddy.

(yes, my nails are blue. Very blue, in fact. It's to off set the magenta hair)

Then I made the bands that went around the carboy.

getting the length right was a pain in the @$$, the buckles are flat and didn't like buckling snugly around the curve of the Carboy.
Then came the cross straps. I figured it would be stronger if it was 1 solid piece of webbing; after playing with it for a good long while I got it to lay like I wanted and pinned everything down, ran it through my sewing machine and it was solid. Somehow between picking it up off the floor and sewing it a strap got twisted, after much swearing and saying of unladylike words I picked the stitches out and tried again (I should mention it is approaching 11pm at this point and normally I have a 9 or 10pm cut off for sewing, but I wanted to get this done)

Then it was time to figure out where the straps overlapped to mark and sew them down. After I tried twice to get the first strap sewn down properly and failing both times I called it for the evening (I have a 2 rip rule, if I have to rip out stitches twice on one part of a project, it's time to be done with that project for the evening) and finished it the next day.

For the sake of getting this post up today (although late in the day) I am going to not finish Spartan #10 before posting, but I will be editing the post tomorrow, adding a picture of the first double digit Spartan. He is almost finished

That's all for now, g'night!

***EDIT***
Here he is ladies and gentlemen! Spartan number 10, the first double digit, putting me at 1/30th of the way finished (it is an encouraging thing...no really it is...) Delios with Heroic Wind action (trademark Sir Daniel Raptus)

proof that he's #10

Good night my dears!

Do Or Do Not, There Is No Try

I've always loved this line, it has a lot of weight behind it
Yoda was wise indeed.

Since I have been saying "next week I'll have a Spartan" for several weeks now... I give you Spartan #9!
His name is Enia (pronounced like enya; points to the person who figures out what it means) he is nothing spectacular, no fun stories about making him other than it took me too long because of lack of time to work on him (and he did get to go to work with me) but here he is!

Now in relation to the title (there is a connection I swear) I am occasionally contacted by people to make things, usually odd things, because my business card says "Costumes" on it, so people think I can make ANYTHING (which is generally true, but I might look at what you want, laugh a little, then tell you no... Seriously Capt. Kitty wanted a scary scary thing...) So this one guy contacted me about making a Luke Skywalker costume.
This specific costume...

which doesn't look hard until you start zooming in on the costume and you realize what kind of detail there is in it...
I did a bit of research and found the perfect base pattern and with a little tweeking and manipulating I made a damn fine replica (if I do say so my self... and I do)

I wish I could remember the guy's name, he was really sweet and thanked me a lot for my work and told me how much he loved it. I kind of feel bad that I have no idea what his name was...hmmm, I'm sure I have it somewhere.

In other news, I have decided to make my post day Sunday. It will give me all week to craft and write the post so that I might actually be able to get them out early in the day instead of right before bed or (like this one) a day late.
This will begin on the 24th, not this Sunday (I'm not a slacker I swear...besides, you're getting a post on Friday, you don't get one Sunday too, that's just not how it works)

See you next Sunday!

Beer stole my time

I really don't have anything worth posting about today, so I'm just going to ramble on a bit until I get enough words on the page to pretend it's a post.

I did not get a Spartan done for you today, I'm sorry, but beer stole my time this past weekend, so it's not my fault. Blame my boyfriend for buying tasty beer.
I do have nifty crafty things to talk about. As a birthday gift my friend Lynette took me crafty stuff shopping, so I could pick out what I wanted. I got my first "practical" crochet pattern book (I can't wait to try out quite a few of the patterns) it has sweaters and hats and hand warmers, seriously squeeful about starting a pair of hand warmers, I also got some wonderful, soft, green yarn to make said hand warmers. Love it!

oh yea! Yesterday I picked up a commission, nothing exciting, just hemming some pants and making rice filled bags that have something to do with hunting (I really don't know what, but something)

well I think I'm going to go crochet and fume about my day.
I'll have something better next week