

![]() |
| they like to hang around with their mini-pumpkin pal |


![]() |
| they like to hang around with their mini-pumpkin pal |



...Why yes, blog post titles like that do contribute to my wildly successful romantic life.
But seriously. When I'm having a rough day, nothing cheers me up like those two lovely, soft, cuddlies. I came across YoSpun on etsy recently, and I'm completely obsessed with her yarns.



They just look so cozy. It's so sweet how she ties the skeins with ribbon, and her photography is gorgeous-- just an amazing fiber artist.
As for the the other half of the yarn-and-cat duo, my cat jumped in my lap tonight after I'd had a lousy, upset day and purred like crazy. And she let me and my mom squish her ears flat so that she looked like a fuzzy little seal. Awwww.
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This is being added to the first skein and made into a hooded scarf. I have the hood part of it done, now I just need to knit the ends. It kind of makes me feel like Link from the Legend of Zelda games, and being something of a nerd, I'm really happy about that.
The other yarn that I got is my favorite yarn ever (thus far): Louisa Harding Willow Tweed. I had some left over from a scarf (which I just realized I never posted pictures of... those will be up later in the week), and so the Field of Flowers blanket started.

Aren't they so sweet? They remind me of little pastries or something. One of the things I love about this yarn is that all of the colorways have a similar tone, so any combination of them looks beautiful. I'm so excited to see how the new colors look as flowers!
I hope your day was just as lovely!
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♥look what made their way into my etsy shop! ♥
yay, mug cozies! there are some new button bobby pin sets, too
more mug cozies will be available in the next few days, too.

I came across a pattern for a crocheted flower about a year ago, and it was everything I look for in a crocheted flower (yes, I do have criteria for that). It's not too cartoon-ish looking, it's not part of a granny square, it only takes a few minutes to make one... I really, really wanted to make a blanket of them, a blanket that I could take with me when I have my first real non-school apartment, and maybe even my little dream-cottage, eventually. But it always seemed like a project that was too big-- each flower is only an inch and a half in diameter, and I'd like to have a blanket be the same size as my comforter-- 86"x86". As much as it pains me to actually do the math, that means I'd have to crochet 3,268 flowers. Which is crazy! It would take too much time, and too much yarn, and...
...and I have ten flowers done. Only 3,258 to go!

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I've been pondering this question all day, and I've had a hard time coming up with an answer. For the most part, I do share the beliefs of my family and friends. If anything, I think I have a bit more of a propensity to think the very best of people. Which isn't always a good thing. It isn't something I do intentionally, so I'm not sure it counts as a belief, but I'm kind of okay with it even if it doesn't always lead to the best results. When Bryce sent me three adorable little cards, one of the things that she wrote in them was that she admired my willingness to be vulnerable to other people and to the world in general. That sentiment kind of took me by surprise, because I'm an extremely private person, but maybe a willingness toward vulnerability comes from refusing to be cynical. So although I don't consider my friends and family to be cynical, let's go ahead and call that my belief.
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...and on a completely unrelated note, I made a mug cozy. It's to keep my fingers from getting burned when I'm too impatient to wait for my tea to cool before I take it somewhere.
also, I just thought they were really cute and wanted to make one regardless of whether it served any practical purpose.
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It's starting to look and feel like spring again!
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I recently finished two of these grocery bags, to use when I go back to school. The pattern is from The Adventures of Cassie, a really neat blog. I found the pattern through Ravelry. I know it doesn't look that big, but after I'd finished my first bag, I tested it out, and put in two cans of spaghettios, two cans of cat food, a can of baby corn, a box of trash bags, and a cannister of oatmeal, and the bag wasn't nearly full. The pattern was easy to follow, too. I want to make another before I go back to school, and that should give me plenty of room to carry everything. Yay!
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I also made a little turtle for my brother, from Ana Paula Rimoli's book, Amigurumi Two: Crocheted Toys for Me and You and Baby Too! I'm so happy with how it came out. I gave it to my brother today and he really liked it. 

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And, currently, (during my two hours and forty-five minutes of free time per day while watching Mary Tyler Moore on Hulu) I am working on a red beret with a bow. The pattern is by CreativeYarn, the same person who wrote the pattern for the three-strand headbands. Her patterns are so cute, I want to make as many of them as I can. I read in the comments to the pattern that some people have had problems with their berets coming out too big, but I wanted mine to be a little roomier than the one she shows, and I have kind of a big head and do my best to have big hair, I decided to go up one hook size, to an H. It looks, so far, like it will be just the right size and have just the right amount of floppiness.


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I also recently finished a Halloween costume I was commissioned to make, but I'm not going to post any pictures of that until the client says it's alright, because I don't know if he wants to keep it a surprise until Halloween. Either way.. suffice it to say that while sewing glitter dot fabric was irritating enough to make me crazy, the result is soooo gorgeous.... I'm thrilled with how it turned out, and I hope my client likes it just as much as I do.
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Lastly, a family friend was cleaning out some closets, and I ended up with three very neat things.
A long ivory lace skirt, which I'm not going to alter at all. However, I need to fiure out what I'm going to wear under it, because as it is now it's very sheer.

A long, green and beige plaid jumper dress. I'm going to shorten this quite a bit, and take the button tabs off the front, so that it's a cute dress to wear over tights.

Third, a jumpsuit that ha a zipper up the front for about a foot, then has two strange flaps that would appear to cross over in the front, but which apparently have no way of staying closed. This is the more ambitious redesign. I'm going to take out the crotch seam of the pants and turn the bottom into a skirt, then add buttons along the side of the flap in the middle so that they stay closed.
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I need to make a thrift store run for crafting material for my dorm room... I need to find some pretty vintage plates and glasses.
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Until next time!

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The first thing we did was go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I'd already heard that some significant changes had been made in the transition from the book to the movie, so I was prepared. But... eh, maybe I just love the books too much to see past them, but I thought that the translation to the screen was rather poorly done. Or, rather, to someone who hadn't read the books, it would be an fun, entertaining movie, with lots of action of both the dueling and kissing varieties. But Marissa and I concurred that for readers of the Harry Potter series, it was confusing as to why important things, like the origins of the various Horcruxes, and the whole mystery of who the Half-Blood Prince actually was, were given very little importance and screen-time, while scenes that did not occur in the book, and as far as I could tell had little to no relevance, like a dizzyingly-shot attack on the Burrow, were added. Overall, I would give it two and a half stars out of five.
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More and more crochet has been creeping into my life! Well, not so much creeping as bashing down the door and throwing a party. In any event, I have been prolific. I joined Ravelry, an online knit and crochet community, and a pattern search turned up a super-pretty headband pattern from CreativeYarn. She has a lot of really cute patterns, I'm going to make the red bow beret pretty soon, too. But anyway, I took some yarn and this crochet pattern to Marissa's house with me, and made 5 during my stay.
This was the first one I made, and I later made 2 in black (one of which went to Marissa), one in eggplant purple, and one in yellow. It was a really fun, easy pattern, and a good way to transition into making something other than amigurumi. I made them mostly while watching Marissa play video games, which sounds lame, but I really, really like watching people play them. I am terrible at anything that involves a lot of complicated button-pushing combinations myself, so I enjoy getting the experience of the game without requiring any skills in that area.
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On Friday, my second day at Marissa's, we visited Knoebel's Amusement Park. It was incredibly fun! I'd never been there before, and I was very pleasantly surprised. There's no admission fee, just inexpensive tickets for rides. We went on the wooden roller coasters and water rides. There was much yelling and general hysteria. We also went in the Haunted Mansion. The plan was for both of us to yell ridiculous exclamations in our very convincing old lady voices.... however, one of us remembered what a complete baby she is about anything remotely scary and curled into a ball with her eyes closed and her hands over her ears from the moment we entered the ride to when we were outside again, and did not utter a sound the entire time. Here's a hint: it wasn't Marissa. The great thing about Knoebel's, though, is that it's a fairly small amusement park, so we were able to go in at 11:15 a.m., go on all the rides we wanted as many times as we wanted for about $13, and we were out by 2 p.m, and the longest line we waited in was maybe fifteen minutes. My personal favorite moment of the day was when we were riding this flume-type thing, except with less thrill-ride and more sit-in-a-boat-and-get-soaked, which was called the Sklooosh. It was our second time on it, and there were only two other kids with us in this, like, 12 person boat, and after we'd gone down the hill and been drenched, Marissa turned around to them and exclaimed, "Good Skloooshing!" We'll definitely be returning.
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Saturday, was the day I was scheduled to go home. We had something very important to accomplish before we could leave, though! Namely... Lord of the Rings cupcakes. Marissa had wanted to make cupcakes before I came to visit, then she had the idea of having them be in an LotR theme, and how could I say no to something like that? Without further ado...








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We got stuck in traffic on the way back to the town where I live (not to mention that we missed our exit twice), and therefore had to find a way to pass the time. For about half an hour, this consisted of playing Highway I Spy, where one of us would yell, "I spy something... GREEN!" The other would ask," Is it the GRASS?!" "YES!!!" And so on, about the sky, any car passing us, signs, the yellow lines on the highway... Marissa and I found this incredibly amusing; I think anyone else in the car would have killed us after about the first ten minutes. We did get bored eventually, though, and we needed a new game. So, it was time for the ever-popular "Kill, Marry, Shputz." No, the original last word is not 'shputz.' But neither of us are a big fan of the word it stands for, and... who could pass up the opportunity to say 'shputz' over and over? For those of you who don't know, this is a game where three individuals are chosen, and then the two players have to choose which of the people (in our case men... or at least males, as some of them did not actually exist) they would kill, which they would marry, and which they would.... shputz. Here are a few of the more amusing rounds of the game. The letters stand for each action.
Potentials Julie's Answer Marissa's Answer
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I think I'm going to try to start blogging every day, or every other day, so that I don't do these massive twice-a-month blogs. I still have crochet projects, sewing stuff, music reviews ,and general what's-going-on-in-my-life stuff, but it's going to wait until next time so this doesn't turn into an intimidatingly large entry. But, in case you want up to the minute information on my life, I've joined Twitter. I'm at http://twitter.com/julie_rose_sews. It's really exciting, I think today I tweeted about cat-sitting and having a peanut butter and jelly for lunch. But my background on my page is super-cute.
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Next time: crochet projects, new etsy favorites, handmade dorm decor, and more!