National Crafting Month

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard by now about the earthquake in Japan.  I hate how useless disasters like that make me feel.  Maureen Johnson, though, isn't being useless.  Check out her blog, and think about donating. ShelterBox seems, to me, to be a brilliant idea!  If you're like me, trying to figure out some way to help from halfway across the globe, this could be your answer.

Now, on to my own stuff...

Did you know that this month is National Craft Month?  That's what the big sign at JoAnn's told me yesterday, and I'm pretty psyched about it.  If you haven't gathered from my other posts, I'm a big crafter.  BIG.  So it stands to reason that I should have BIG plans for this month.

So far, I've finished Otter's sweater, made her a card to go with it, a birthday card for Tanya, two back-up birthday cards, SIX bridal shower cards, three general cards, worked on Mum's cross-stitched Christmas stocking (for next year!), finished a dishcloth, and finished three more squares for my picnic blanket.  And we're not even halfway through the month.

My goal in this National Craft Month is to finish up at least one of my other outstanding projects.  I'm thinking the picnic blanket will get targeted, if only because I want to go on a picnic before it gets too hot out.  Of course, the Hufflepuff scarf is another good candidate.  Once one of those is finished, I'll move on to the next round of baby gifts (do people ever stop breeding??).

And, of course, I'll still be reading and writing.

Speaking of reading, I'm still working my way through Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire.  Today, when I sat down to open the book at lunch (because that's still when I do most of my reading), I realized that I'm almost done.  It still doesn't feel like I've actually made any progress, if that makes sense.  There was a lot of the story that was presented as dreams/memories, and I think that's why I feel like I'm still waiting for the story to get going.  It's not dragging - I just feel like I'm waiting to get to the conflict, but the number of pages left makes me feel like I should expect the resolution soon.  Once I'm finished, I'll be able to give you a better impression.  I hope.

And speaking of writing, I sat down to continue editing "Happily Ever After" and realized that I need to just start over.  But that's not a bad thing!  The first draft let me get everything out.  Now, I can start working on the story using the characters as I knew them by the end.  Wish me luck!

Random free stuff!

Apologies for missing my post yesterday - it was a crazy day, and I ended up being out super-late. However, today's post might make up for it!

Yesterday, one of the ladies at work gave me a bottle of wine as a thank-you for helping her with an uber-project (started on Jan 3, finished on Wednesday!). It was really sweet of her, and totally unexpected. Then another one of the ladies came in and dropped off a book for me. It was a book of knitting patterns, and it was a 'just because' thing - she saw it and thought of me.

That totally rocked! I love random free stuff!

And I'll be that a lot of you like random free stuff, too! So today, I'm gonna pay it forward and give away random free stuff. If you comment on today's post before midnight next Saturday (February 5th), you'll be entered in a draw for a $20 Barnes & Noble gift card!

How's it going to work?  Next weekend, after midnight on Saturday, I'll use a random number generator to pick from the comments on this post.  I'll announce the winner here, and then I'll email you to figure out the details of how to get your prize to you.  Sound good?  I hope so!

Happy commenting!