The Heathen Housewife

Reason #1,437 why I love my readers. You all came through for me on the photo wall thingie that I did a horrible job describing. We have two winners.

Winner Number one is Candy in California. Candy did not give me the link to the site I had originally described, but she gave me something better – the Ikea version of what I want to make, which is probably about the same price only pre-packaged and with instructions for my husband, who will eventually be installing it if I am very very lucky. We went to Ikea today and picked it up, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Candy, e-mail me with your choice of the prizes listed below, and your address, and then you can start waiting by the mailbox.

Winner Number two is “Not Supergirl”. She sent me back to the actual site that gave me the idea. Any idea how I got there in the first place? I’m kind of curious now, because this guy is in the Twin Cities area, so it could have been a local site that pointed me his way. Anyway, please send me an e-mail with your real name and address and which of the following prizes you prefer. Maybe both of you should give me a first and second choice, and whomever e-mails first gets their first choice if there is a conflict.

Here are the prizes. Everybody gets some yummy chocolate, unless you indicate that you don’t want it. I have two lots of yarn that came from the estate of my friend Julie who died in July of 2005. She was my best friend in the world, and I want this yarn to go to a good home where someone will use it. If you don’t really want this yarn, don’t take it – I’ll give you a different prize.

Choice #1 is five balls of Fantasi by Marks & Kattens. This is really bobbly textured yarn, 47% Wool, 47% Acrylic, 6% Polyester. Ball band says 2 sts/inch, and 25 meters per ball. There is enough here to make a baby sweater, which would be very cute, or a scarf (I think that’s what Julie intended for it) or to trim some other garment. I made a swatch with it, and it is very cute knit up. Now that I think about it, there may be a sixth ball around here somewhere – I’ll have to dig around. My only problem with it is that I like knitting with smooth wools, and I’ve made a vow to myself to only knit with things that really make me happy from now on. Too much yarn and too little time and all.

Choice #2 is four balls of Jelli Beenz by Plymouth Yarn. I think you could get a small baby sweater out of this, or you could use it for some other child’s project like a hat and mittens, or a scarf. This would have worked nicely for that Red Scarf project everyone was doing for charity. It’s 75% Acrylic and 25% Wool, and washable. 4.5 sts/inch. 107 yards per ball. There is nothing at all wrong with this yarn either, just not my favorite kind of colors.

If neither of those appeal to you, I’d be happy to send half a dozen of my blankie closeup note cards, or if you have a project that you would like to take a closeup picture of and send to me, I’ll print up some note cards special for you.

Yay! Speaking of contests, I have yet to announce the rest of the prizes for the birthday-month contest that’s still open. There is some more yarn in the stash begging to be given away to a good home. If you haven’t commented on the Contest entry yet, it’s going to be open till my birthday on Thursday.

Okay, back to the Ikea trip. I love Ikea. I love eating lunch in their cafeteria – those meat balls are awful, but so tasty with the nasty fake gravy and the lingonberry preserves. Julie saw the childcare area with the ball pit and wanted to go play in there, and since it was a quiet Monday afternoon and there were only a few kids in there I let her. She had a blast, and I only wish I had had my camera with me. She didn’t want to leave when I came back to pick her up 45 minutes later. I promised her I’d take her back and let her play another day.

Here’s what I scored:

A package of Deka wire curtain rod and clips – shorter and lighter weight than the other package that I bought. But a lot cheaper, too, so if this one works where I want it, I’ll be taking the other ones back.

A package of Dignitet wire curtain rod and ends, and a couple of packages of the clips that go with it. I thought I might need the extra length available with this one, but the hardware for the ends is a lot bigger and might be unsightly, and might put the wire too far away from the wall. The Deka hardware looks a bit better suited to this purpose.

Of course, there is no way I can go into Ikea, especially with an hour of time with only one child attached to me, without finding some other crap junk important necessary stuff to bring home.

I can’t find the item page on their web site, but it is pictured at the top of this page, but I got a french press big enough for when I have guests over during the day. My french press that Joe gave me for Christmas a few years ago holds only one cup, which is great for me in the morning, but this new one was only $12, and can serve probably three or four.

I got a 6-pack of the Kalas plastic cups for only $1.49 – I’ve been meaning to pick these up for months now. I’ve also been meaning to pick up some of the Kalas plastic plates, but they never seem to have them in stock when I’m there. Julie is ready to practice using regular cups more – actually long overdue – I’m still making her use sippy cups most of the time at home, and she can’t really go to Kindergarten still drinking from a sippy cup with a valve all the time, can she?

Go ahead and laugh at me – I bought an egg slicer because it was only $1.50 or something, and we do eat hard boiled eggs sometimes. I thought Julie would get a kick out of it because she loves watching me use the apple slicer.

Gah – I can’t find a picture of this other thing, but it’s one of those round mesh things that hangs from the ceiling with shelves to stick you stuffed animals in. It’s either going in the nursery or the basement to help control the overflow of stuffed animals our kids own. People, please stop giving my kids stuffies. They are cute, they are cuddly, and they end up all over my freakin’ house!

There may have been a couple of other items as well. At least I managed to avoid the chocolate in the grocery section. Only because I already have awesome chocolate here at home and I know I will be eating chocolate cake in a couple of days.

Now, it’s blankie time. For those who have asked lately, there is a whole tutorial on the blankie in the archives of my blog. If you scroll down far enough, there are links to it over on the right hand side of the main page.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.