Summer has officially begun for me, I have been on vacation for four days now.  So far, I have made this watermelon necklace, which I am actually happy with:

This necklace was made with glass chips and random black beads.  I kept it simple this time, it's just a long necklace with no clasp.  It was really refreshing to make a necklace and not have to worry about the stupid clasp, which I find to be the most irritating part of jewelry making.

Second, I made a necklace from red coral chips and hexagons, red seed beads, and I think turquoise chips, which i could be wrong about. 

I am also knitting a sweater for the baby next door, for the winter.  I am knitting this sucker in 94 degree weather.  I thought I'd be a crazy knitter all summer, but with the heat, not so much.

Also, I had previously decided I was going to watch the 100 greatest movies of all time.  Now, the list is not looking too exciting either.  Probably because I started with Ben-Hur, number 100 on the list.  I think I need a different list!!!

It's been a while since I've had time to blog.  I have finished a few projects.  I made an ascot from the Vickie Howell Love yarn in Mulder and Scully. This yarn is freakin' fabulous.  In fact, it kind of has changed my whole entire philosophy of yarn.  I didn't even know I had a philosophy of yarn, but since knitting this ascot:

I now realize that every other yarn is crappy :(  The yarn is a very soft bamboo and silk, I believe.  So once i finished the ascot, I began working on a top, which I don't have a picture of yet, and I hate the yarn. It's the opposite of this wonderful yarn. But I bought three skeins of it and I'm kind of near the end of the back piece, so I guess I am plodding on with it.  The whole shirt knitting is kind of a story for another blog.  Well, it;s just slow going and I don't have patience for it.

While I've been not blogging, I've gotten a million household and work related tasks done.  The school year ends this Friday, and I am READY!!! I have all kinds of projects lined up, knitting, a painting, scrapbooking, jewelry, crochet, and I joined Netflix and have a cue all ready.  I am fired up!!!!!!  My cousin and I are calling this the Super Crafty Cinematic Summer.  We are setting the goal of watching the top 100 movies of all time.  I don't think we will get that done this summer. 

One last thing, I knitted up these cute booties for my little neighbor Ian. His feet are too big to fit into his socks!!!

Now I am going to see if the Penguins still have a chance for the Stanley Cup. Go Pens!

Let me start off with a big WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I ordered some yarn from the Vickie Howell collection and it came today! I'm so excited! Look how pretty!

Monday I got her Knit Aid book in the mail. It looks like an excellent reference book.  I'm teaching t****eople to knit, so I'm probably going to make them buy this book.  Plus it has really adorable illustrations and a lot of knitting and first-aid puns, which is awesome!

On to my FOs.  Well, really only one.  I finished my socks!  I think I fudged the toe grafting because all my stitches slid off the needles on one of them, so I really hope they don't unravel.  Here's visual aids:

As you can see, once again, Rocco is involved.  He is a sock thief with ninja like skills, so I have to keep these socks in a safe place.

That reminds me, one difficulty I had while making these is that my cat would get into my bag (which I tied up real good) and drag my yarn all over the room.  She also chewed through the yarn so I had to start a new piece in the middle.  As I said in my last post, I was knitting from a pattern in "Knitting Circles Around Socks", which uses the two circular needle technique to knit both socks at the same time.  While I found the technique easy, I think I would have gone a lot faster kntting on DPNs, since I spent a lot of time moving yarn from one side to the other, and sliding stitches from the cables to the needles and vice versa.  Although, when I was done knitting, both socks were done and the same size.  They fit really nicely too! I'm proud of them. :)

And finally, in my productivity flip out, I came across fusing plastic shopping bags on the internet, so I thought I would give it a try.  I think I found it on www.craftzine.com but I'm not sure, since I've been flying through websites like I never saw the Internet before lately.  Anyhoo, if you've never heard of this, it's basically cutting up plastic shopping bags, layering them, and then ironing them between pieces of paper.  What happens is the layers fuse together and make a waterproof fabric.  I've seen tote bags sewn out of them, for one example.  I would like to make a lunchbag.  Anyhow, apparently this is something you need to really mess around with to get the technique just right.  I have two swatches that I am happy with, but a lot of bubbly, wrinkly messes.  I plan to continue this experiment.

Tonite I'm taking a break from knitting, because I did some gardening and I've probably got blisters now.  But, on the bright side, I was able to work on some jewelry.  First, I fixed this capri shell necklace I made a while ago.  It keeps coming apart.  Here's a picture, then I'll tell you the problem:

The problem is that I connected the shells with jump rings, and either jump rings just don't work well, or I am unable to actually close them well.  Rather than readjusting the jump ring that was a problem, I just put a new one in.  Who knows if that will stay.  Any suggestions on keeping jump rings together?

The second thing I am working on is putting a coating of sealant on this dyed necklace I made forever ago.  The only time I ever wore it the blue dye was all over my neck.  So I found this DesignaSeal Gloss that hopefully will solve the problem from FireMountainGems.