This is just some fun yarn I spun thick on purpose.  I'll try to remember to put what it was turned into tomorrow.

I didn't really tell anyone that I was starting a blog even my husband (he knows all my opinions anyway).  I did put it on my Ravelry page but that was it. Because of this it amuses me that anyone is even looking at this at this blog and I even got someone looking from outside the U.S.  I hope they don't think I'm too whiny or boring.

Tomorrow is the first of October and that means NerdWars will be starting.  NerdWars is a game that I play on Ravelry.  The way it goes is that everyone picks a team that represents a "nerdery." For example that is team Epic (for RPG games like D&D or WOW), team Hypothesis (for since and discovery things) or team Ranger (for the world of Babylon 5).  Pretty much if there is something you like you can find a group for you.  Starting tomorrow there will be challenges given out that you can complete before the 28th.  Some examples of the challenges are something to do with water or inspired by a painting.  If you don't complete it it's ok but you are just encouraged to do your best.  I'm on the Shady Cels team that includes anything comic related (anime, manga, comics, cartoons, web comics etc.)  Tonight at midnight east coast time (well technically that's tomorrow) the challenges will come out so I'm trying to get things cleaned up so I have free needles, hooks and spindles to make things.  I'm excited and I will be plying today to try to finish the yarn.  If I do finish that I want to make a couple of swatches for a sweater.  Today is a podcast day.  I checked to see if any new ones were out but because I checked so early nothing was out so I will be listening to a podcast that I'm trying to catch up on.

As far as exercise I am having issues.  I know this is a first world whine because other wise I would wouldn't be so big.  I live in a place where there are only two ways to walk, (since walking is my primary source of exercise) one goes through the neighborhood and the other leads toward a very busy road (55 mph).  So I drop the kids off at the bus stop and take a walk through the neighborhood Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  A couple of months ago either some new people moved in or they got a new dog.   It seems to be some sort of black German Shepherd.  There is no fence on this yard and the dog is chained to the side of the house.  Now the dog does not seem to be harmed in any way but it has the mistaken idea that I want to bother it's property.  It has run at me  a couple of times till it reaches the end of it's chain.  It's pretty creepy to have big dog run at you.  I was concerned that if the dog got off the lead it would do it's best to take a chunk out of me.  I asked some friends and they suggested pepper spray but said I should ask what size was legal to carry.  I called the sheriff and they said any size is fine but if the wind is blowing the wrong way you are in trouble (which I knew).  He said to not walk where the dog was.  I told him that I was walking that way to avoid the busy road and not cause traffic problems.  He suggested the local golf course.  I said I had been avoiding it because I thought it was private property.  He said it is but it's also open to the public so as long as I'm only going toward the club house it was ok.  So I have been trying that and it's no fun.  Going through the neighborhood was fun because I saw all sorts of wild life and it was much more relaxing.  The way I've been waling now is very gravely and so much more traffic.  Walking toward the sun even with sunglasses makes visibility difficult. I tried the golf course but I didn't like it.  I felt like any minute someone was going to come and say "why are you here?"  There is so much traffic and it just doesn't seem safer.  I cam up with the brilliant idea to walk toward to golf course than turn around and walk some in the neighborhood but not as far as the dog.  I was feeling proud of myself and jut looking ahead.  Once I turned I did something I know better than to do.  I started to day dream because I was away from the dog.  I heard a noise softly in the grass so I turned to look thinking it was a squirrel or bird.  It was a dog.  It had the square boxer face but not as big as a boxer.  It had a collar but noting attached to it and was just walking calmly toward me.  I made a startled noise and it stopped like a pointer with it's leg bent and it's little docked tail sticking strait up.  I walked sideways to get away and it just stood there.  I got out my phone but I didn't know who I could call.  I have been jumpy so far today.  I have to figure out something else to do. My heart got a work out today even if my legs didn't.

Here is my first attempt at a crochet sock.  It was for my daughter and was a bit big at the time, now are they are to small.

I think I will try to write Monday to Friday and if I end up writing something on the weekend that's bonus. 

I know the picture has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about but I'll get that straightened up eventually.  I know you can tell from my picture on my Nerdy post that I'm a big girl.  That dress does make me look a little bigger than I am.  I am morbidly obese and I'm working (slowly) to change that.  Not so much the obsess part but the morbid part.  I haven't lost any weight but I haven't gained any in two years so that is a feat in itself.  I was doing well but fell down hard for my daughter's birthday.  I'll get back on track next week.  I just wanted to point out I know I'm fat and that don't need any comments trying to "help" me.  I may update on that as well depending on my mood. 

Oh my goodness today just got away from me.  I'll try to write a bit before bed.  I just wanted to make sure that people know that I'm not just trying to make my husband work and just sit home and eat bonbons.  I worked as a cashier for about 15 years, almost 10 years in one place.  When we moved here my husbands job was 30 min. away and we only have one car.  When we lived in Rockford both of our jobs and home were all within 10 min so we just traded the car a lot.  I've only been home for about 3 1/2 years and I'm sure when my son is in middle school and my daughter is in high school I will go back to work because they will be able to stay home for a wile by themselves.  My problem is that all the jobs I qualify for (cashier or stocker) I hate and the things I love don't always have jobs for.  If there was a perfect job for me it would be getting paid for what I volunteer to do now.  I work in the school and staple and make copies for some of the teachers.  I would love to be a gofer (gofor?) for the teachers and get paid for it but that is not a job that is available (maybe some day in the future).  I wouldn't mind selling my crafts (I know that is a hot topic for some crafters) but I need to work on some organizational skills.  My third favorite job would be to finish my doula (a birth helper) training have that as my job.  I didn't finish because I have to have my children be able to stay home by themselves.  I may write tomorrow but I'll start with my updates next week.

Here is some crochet jewelry I tried to do.  It's made from wire and beads.  I like the look but it's stiff so not fun to wear.

So today's topic is: What I do all day.  I'm a stay at home mom right now but both my kids are in school.  I wasn't always a SAHM and I will have to work out side the home again at some point.  I know I'm lucky and I probably take advantage of it too much but since I have the time I'm going to use it.  What I do is rotate between WOW, podcasts and Kdrama.  I'll have a day for each and split my time between one of those and house work.  For example if I listen to/ watch a podcast for an hour I spend the next hour working on housework.  I could probably do a better on the house but the built in timers (of a show ending) help me not sit on my butt all day (I am also very careful to play WOW for only an hour).  If I didn't break up the tasks I'd either be overwhelmed by what I need to do with the house or I would sit in front of the TV all day and get nothing done.  It feels like a good compromise for me.  What this blog will probably end up being is something along the lines of "this is what I watched/played yesterday." Wile I do these activities I also craft.  When I play WOW I don't craft much.  If I have a long flight or have to scan the auction house I do something but being a mage I don't have very long flights most of the time.  If I do craft it's  something really simple that can be picked up and put down easily like spinning or an easy crochet project (granny square).  If it's my podcast day I usually do something more complicated unless I need something finished on a deadline.   Since I can just listen I can concentrate on something that is harder for me which at this time is usually knitting.  If it's my Kdrama day I usually spin because I don't really have to look at my hands and can read the subtitles.  So in addition to "this is what I did," I will also be saying "this is what I'm working on." Partially to keep me on track and to see my progress and partially because it's fun to show off.  I need to craft faster because I want to make all the things. :) I want to post pictures of finished object but in progress too sometimes.  If any of you are out there are better at the crafts (or the nerdery) than I am you can help me perfect it.  I have a couple of thing that I that I still want to say but once those are out of my system then the posts should get shorter. 

Time for nerdery, yeah! Now just a note on being a nerd.  Everyone's definition is different.  I know a mom who is really into football and thinks its very nerdy of her 9 year old son to like Minecraft.  I don't think so since it is very popular right now but everyone is different.  Also once you get involved in a group you find the people who are way more hard core than you.  For me I grew up very conservatively and was not allowed to watch much TV so I read.  This is probably not very nerdy but at the time it was since my friends and classmates watched shows I couldn't or had NESs.  When I went to high school I got into Star Trek (next gen.).  My best friend and I would watch it together and had a lot of fun.  I also really enjoyed Tetris on the computer in the computer lab at school. I didn't do many other nerdy things till college and specifically with my future husband.  I wanted to find out about the things he liked and he was into computer games.  I played Quake with him but I was never very good.  He introduced me to quite a few games and I would mostly cheer him because I just wasn't very good at the games.  In out first year of marriage I got in a car accident and broke my arm.  Since we lived kind of far out and had only one car I was stuck in the house for about two weeks.  I borrowed a lot of VHS tapes (remember those?) from friends and watched lots of movies.  One friend accidentally mixed up the tapes and sent one with anime on it (Guyver and Fist of the North Star).  I was intrigued.  I felt like I was missing something in the story and wanted to see more.  I didn't know where to get it then (remember this was when the internet was still a little new and AOL was all the rage) so I kind of had to put that on the back burner.  When we moved to Rockford my husband had heard of a group and wanted to join.  It was the SCA.  For those of you that don't know the SCA stands for "Society for Creative Anachronism".  It is a re-enactment group for the years 6-1600 a.d. It is not LARP (live action roll playing).  They are very different.  I had a lot of fun there.  I could bust out my sewing skills and I even learned to spin.  There was also a girl there who loved anime and let us borrow the entire series of Trigun.  If I hadn't already fallen in love with anime that did it.  I loved seeing the sweeping arc of the whole story.  With her help and Adult Swim I found more anime and haven't looked back since.  Now there are people who know a lot more about it but I do know a bit and enjoy both anime and manga (in English I can't read Japanese at this time).  Now with anime there is a big subtitled vs. dubbed debate.  I don't care.  If I can get the series and it's only one way or the other I'll take it.  I'd rather watch and enjoy it that say "oh that's not good enough but because it's dubbed" or what ever.  As far as what I like? Trigun was my first so it will always have a special place in my heart, I love (most) of the studio Ghibli movies especially now that I have children, and at this minute I am enjoying Free! but I could have a new favorite any day. If you are on Ravelry and look at my past ravatars (yes it's a word) you can see some of my favorite characters. So now we have re-enactment and anime with a little touch of gaming now and then.  Then my husband discovered World of Warcraft.  We didn't start till Burning Crusade and my husband was in a hardcore raiding guild but I am more of a casual player.  (He has at least 10 level 90s I have 1). I enjoy that you don't really have to hit a score to move on and there is so much to explore.  There is also a Ravelry guild too.  Yarn and gaming what could be better?  I still read but not as much (crafting took most of my reading time).  I enjoy Dr. Who but have only seen the 10th Dr. of the recent series.  My favorite is the 7th.  I still enjoy some Star Trek (I've seen Star Wars as well) but my favorite space show is Firefly ( I thought about naming my daughter Kaylee).  I would love to go to a convention, comic or anime.  Very recently I have gotten into Kdrama and Kpop (K is for Korea).  My favorite drama so far is "Flower Boy Next Door" (I also like Fabulous Boys but that is Taiwanese).  I hope you consider this nerdy enough.   I'm not a huge gamer or good at math but I am a bit eccentric.  If you have any questions about what I have talked about let me know.

Here is a baby blanket I made.  It's just a giant granny square.  I think my sister got this one.  I've been working on my photography skills since then. 

Ok now for the fun stuff, my craftiness.  I feel like I was always a crafty person.  I like to take stringy or flat things and make them into something useful.  My dad's mom was a craft instructor in the Chicago park district and knew how to do so many thing.  Knitting, crochet, painting, millinery and more.  My other grandma took apart my grandpa's pea coat to make coats for her daughters.  Between the two I think it may be a bit genetic. :) When I was about 10 I visited my paternal grandma and she gave me some cheap plastic needles and a hook and taught me knit and crochet.    I broke the needles in the car on the way home but tried to keep the crochet up. Sadly my mom, as smart as she is (she does calculus for fun) is not crafty and couldn't really help me.  I remember making friendship bracelets with embroidery floss and selling them to the kids in the neighborhood for .25. I remember getting some fabric samples from somewhere and trying to sew them together to make a Barbie blanket.  I tried to make a baby doll dress too, by tracing around the doll but forgot to account for the width of the doll.  When I was in fifth grade or so we got some sewing lessons from a lady at church who used to be a home ec. teacher.  I like sewing but the prep and the ironing weren't fun.  I didn't do many crafts in high school but when I went to college a couple of the girls were learning to crochet so I picked it up again.  The internet was still new then so I learned mostly from books I got from the library and a couple of people saying "why don't you try it this way?"  I took to it like a duck to water.  Well sort of.  Now when I look back at pictures of how I was holding the hook or the projects and cringe.  The first craft book I purchased was "Vanna's Afghans A to Z".  For a wile in college and our first few years being married I worked at Jo-Ann's.  I enjoyed being around so many creative people and things (also the discount and knowing about the sales).  When I got married I made my flower girls' dresses and did a lot of the decorations myself.  I started making tons of baby blankets in the one big granny square style (I hate joining so it worked).  I had a hard time finding garment crochet patterns that didn't look stiff and dated so I made more blankets.  I tried to pick up knitting again but I just couldn't figure out how to make it work and figured I would just be a crocheter. We (my husband and I) joined a reenactment group (more on that in nerdery) and since you can't prove crochet for that time period I decided to start spinning (I sewed for that too).  I bought a kit from Ebay and started to see what I could do.  The yarn was blue and poorly dyed because it came off all over my hands and the spindle.  The spindle was a heaver bottom whorl and I pre drafted. It turned out chunky and even thought I pre drafted I found myself fixing it even thinner.  I never learned park and draft as is usually suggested and it still turns out ok.  I eventually figured out how to use a top whorl but I find it "more fiddly" than the bottom whorl. About three years ago I discovered Ravelry (I'm Galdriel on there) and  my world opened up.  There were so many patterns and they didn't all look old.  There were people who didn't look down on crochet and groups of people who like the things I do.  I tried to pick up knitting again and I got the knit stitch but I couldn't for the life of me figure out purl. Someone on Rav., when I complained about it, suggested continental knitting.  It worked!  I'm not a good knitter by any means (yet) but I can actually do it.  I still do some sewing but I don't like all the prep work (washing fabric, ironing, etc.).  I also own a small triangle loom but I don't use it much.   So now my house is full of yarn and some fabric and I enjoy it.  This was a long explanation of my crafting but it was fun to reminisce.  If you have any questions let me know.  :)

I was practicing adding pictures.  This is one of the oldest pictures I have of anything I made.  This is a scarf al rolled up.  I spun the yarn then crocheted it.  Sadly it got left in the car for a long time and a bug ate a hole in it.  Anyway I was planning on talking more about me (go figure).  I am just going to say some facts about my life and talk about my crafting and nerdiness (is that a real word?) later.  So here are the facts about me so you can stalk me. lol  I was born in 1975 in Seattle and moved to Chicago when I was 9 months old.  My parents, jokingly, told me not to go back or I would disown them for ever leaving.  When I say Chicago I mean in the city not a suburb.  I went to private school and was home schooled for a wile for most of grade school.  I went to public school for 8th grade and high school.  I went to private school for college and ran out of money and never finished.  I got married in 1998 and moved to Rockford, Il shortly there after.  I have two children, a girl in 2003 and a boy in 2006.  About three years ago we moved to what is called the "Quad Cites." There are more than four cities but the name stuck. It's on the Iowa/ Illinois border so there are some cities on both sides of the river.  So that kind of brings us up to today.  Kind of a boring post but it's a start.

Hi, I'm Sarah.  I want to start blogging again because I have so many thought rolling around in my head.  I have no plans at this time if it will be on a schedule or just when my brain gets on some topic or other.  I'll make more an "about me" post later but right now I'll just give you an overview.  I think of myself as: crafty, nerdy and a mom (not necessarily in that order) so if those things are not interesting to you this is not the blog for you.  Thank you for reading this far, good by.  Now that they are gone I'll expand a bit.  I do want to talk mostly about crafts (crochet, knitting and spinning specifically) with some nerd thrown in on the side.  I am a mom but I don't plan to pepper this with kid stories but it will come up frequently.  I'm sure I'm not going to say anything different than so many others but at least it will get out of my head.  Also I am terrible at spelling and grammar (sorry), I will do my best.  Blogger is new to me so it may be a wile before I add pictures or play with any features.  I hope to see you around again.