2 posts tagged “swapping”

Just wanted to remind everyone, in case they were interested. Signup ends tomorrow, May 25th! I'll be assigning partners on the 26th.

Here are some links for ideas. Go to my crochet and knitting links page if you want more links:
Knitting Pattern Central
Crochet Pattern Central

I've got this thing against bacteria. I know, I'm all about letting your immune system toughen itself up, but I cannot stand the thought of sponges and dishclothes being used for more than one day. What can I say, I'm a bit OCD that way. So I bought a giant cone of kitchen cotten and began making my own. I've had such fun with it, I've decided to host a swap for them.

I'm hosting my first swap over at Swapbot! I've been having so much fun over there, (so much so, that I've neglected blogging, sorry!) and wanted to host my own swap.

The swap will be for dishclothes, dishtowels, washclothes and scrubbies. Knitted, crocheted, sewn, whatever, they must be handcrafted.

Sign-up ends May 25th, just in time for some crafting over the long weekend. I'll try to assign partners ASAP so that you can get right on it while you're waiting for your brats and burgers to grill while the TV's blaring the Indy 500! Yay Hoosiers! Mail-out isn't until June 15th 30th, which gives you 3 5 weeks to craft your little heart out.

Anywhoo, here's the requirements:

I have recently become addicted to making and using hand-crocheted dish scrubbers, dishclothes and washclothes. I love all the fun patterns that are out there, lots of them are even for free. They can be crocheted, knitted, or even sew. But please, make sure that they can actually be used for their intended purpose. Who needs an extra-special mohair/angora scrubbie? Not me!

These items must be hand-crafted. Cotton and nylon are usually good choices, but I saw one where someone had put wool in the center of the scrubbie and it felted up nicely to clean really well. I leave it to your discretion with the exception of no fun fur! Please!

You will have two partners. You must make one set  to send to each partner.

Sets will contain any combination of two items from the following list:
-one (1) dish scrubbie
-one (1) dishtowel
-one (1) dishcloth (at least 6" x 6")
-one (1) washcloth (at least 4" x 4")

This swap is international as well. Please remember to give international senders adequate time for their packages to arrive, especially as this package will probably not be a flat envie.

Ratings of 4.5 or higher only. If you're a newbie, join one of the newbie swaps like Gram's Button Box's Fast Turnaround, Jessica Fancy!'s Weekend Newbie Swap #3, or Kimmie's Ratings Booster to get yourself some ratings. Newbies will need to have a FULLY filled out profile AND contact me to join. I'll be watching ratings closely and will ban those whose ratings drop close to the signup time.

Join in the fun! If you don't have an account over at swap-bot, get one, it's free!

Do you like to get mail? No, not junk mail, bills or those other boring and/or environmentally unfriendly bits of paper that your friendly postal-person hand delivers into your mailbox? I do! So the idea of a modern penpal but with gifty stuff and changing partners seemed like great fun.

I am wary of swapping because I tend to get excited and sign up for way too many swaps, then freak out at all the work I have to do. I thought I learned my lesson so many years ago during my scrapbooking phase. But I could not resist the siren call of Swapbot. Clued in through the superfabuloso Sister Diane of the Portland flock of the Church of Craft and her most wondrous podcast, the Craftypod, I had been eyeballing the fun other bloggers seemed to be having showing off their new goodies brought to them by the good ole USPS. By the way, if you don't already listen to the Craftypod, but like crafting, talking about crafting, looking at crafts and craftbooks, or heck, have ever made a macrame owl at summer camp somewhere, then you so need to be listening to Sister Diane!

So I held my breath and signed up. Oh, the wonderful swaps going on! I immediately signed up for Lots of Mail: Cheap and Easy, a quick swap to get my feet wet. Then, I signed up for a goodie bottle swap. I had much fun doing my goodie bottle for my partner. Yes, I basically filled a pop bottle with fun stuff, stuck stamps on it and sent it on it's merry way. Here it is without it's mailing label.

goodie bottle swap

Total fun! The Lots of Mail swap has is now going on in it's fourth incarnation. If you want to join, better hurry, sign-up closes on May 3rd. It was loads of fun doing round three, and so I went ahead and signed up for round four. Basically, there are 5 themes, and you get 5 partners to send envelopes. You send each partner a different theme but it should fit in a basic envie. It's international, so how fun to get mail from overseas! Here's what I sent!

swap-bot cheap n easy mail #3

If you're curious about the themes, click on the pic to see the notes over at flickr. I also joined a tea swap. How fun is that? I got three really great envelopes just jam-packed with tea, one all the way from Portugal. I really love it! Don't you wish you had some right now?

tea-rama

Oh, and of course, my old love, crochet. Couldn't leave that one out, so I joined a granny square swap. How fun! I only had to do six squares for this swap, but I'll definitely join again so I can eventually have myself a little lapghan. I'd never really done a plain granny square before, so this is fun. Just for Ss & Gs (sh*ts and giggles for those don't know me well) I did one in a green camo with bright orange accents. That was totally awesome. Now I want to make a camouflage afghan. How funny would that be?

my grannies

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cake and crocheted squares I received

It's been a rather hectic past couple of weeks. So in the above pic, you can see a bit of the lemon cake I baked myself as consolation. Yes. It's for myself because no one in this dang house will eat cake. The reason for the stress is that A had her birthday party last Friday. If you thought it might be fun to get 25 first graders and a handful of preschoolers together for a big bowling bash, well, think again! Actually, it was fun, but just a bit stressful. Of course, being the complete idiot that I am, was unhappy with the bakery cakes that I looked at ordering. They just didn't scream bowling to me. So I had to go and do it myself. And six tubs of fluffy white icing later, it's done. Not pretty, but done. It took six to get the chocolate layer, yellow layer and the fresh strawberries to all stick together. It turned out quite tall, though. But man, were those kids ever hyper after eating that cake. Thank goodness it was Cozmic bowling, so it was dark and the cake looked much more fabulous there than it did under the bright unforgiving flourescent lights of my kitchen.

bowling pin cake

So have I recovered yet? Not completely, but I'm getting there. I still need to tidy up, finish packing the winter clothes, and get caught up on the 145 blogs that Bloglines says are updated with unread posts. See ya later!