Reviews

8 Gift Ideas for Knitters, and What You Should Not Buy Without Actionable Intel

After spending an inordinate amount of time shopping online yesterday, I was ready to hit the ground running today and spend some money locally. Not 15 minutes after dropping the kids off, the school called and Bean is sick again…sigh. We had to take her to the ER a couple of weeks ago, so the fact that she is sick again so soon is frustrating.

Anyway, if I can’t get my Christmas shopping on, I can have a cocktail and give you some gift ideas for the knitter or fiber enthusiast in your life:

  1. A yarn club subscription. I recently posted about my love of Yarnbox, but there are dozens of suppliers to choose from. This makes a great gift because most knitters are yarn-obsessed and who doesn’t like a treat in the mail? These can be on the more expensive side, but they are definitely a thoughtful gift that all but the Grinchiest knitter will love.2. Knitter’s Pride Knit Blockers. These things are the bomb, and most knitters would love it set or two. They help save time and create more even edges. I have a set, and I swear by them. Good prices too for a mid-range gift. I think one set will set you back about 25 bucks.3. Cute knitting-themed shirts or mugs. These can be easy stocking stuffers, or a super-affordable gift if you are in a situation where you need to spend under a certain amount, like an office gift exchange. You can find these at places like Knit Picks, Café Press, and Etsy.4. Cute stitch markers. I go through a lot of stitch markers, and I am always in need of more. Etsy is definitely the place to look for a fun selection, and you will be supporting handcrafters as well. These are usually affordable, and can be a great individual gift or an add-on.5. A handmade yarn bowl. Again, Etsy would be the place to look for these. They come in so many styles, which means you can find one to fit even the most eccentric knitter’s personality. 6. Personalized tags for knitters. I love adding a personal touch to my gift knitting (for those who have not been booted off the knit-worthy island), and these are not something that most people will splurge on consistently. As a southern girl, I love all things personalized and would monogram alllllllll the things if my expendable income allowed such.7. Along those lines, these types of knitting tags offer a cute way to alert people of the fiber content and washing instructions. Mighty handy, and again, just not something many knitters have lying around.8. As always, a gift certificate to your local yarn store is never a miss. If you don’t have a local yarn store in your area, look at online options, especially hand-dyers. Just avoid certificates to big-box stores because their selection is rather limited for a real fiber enthusiast.

Now, for the cautionary part. Most knitters always have their eye on new needle sets, knitting bags, spinning wheels, yarn kits, or other high-dollar accessories. Trust me, every knitter out there has a wish list in the back of their minds. However, like most people who are passionate about our hobby, we are also VERY PICKY about our core tools. While these make great gifts if they are on your knitter’s wish list, you need to be sure that you know exactly what they want while shopping. For example, I cannot stand knitting with bamboo needles, so brand new expensive set of bamboo interchangeable needles would totally miss the mark. So, if you can get your hands on intel about what they specifically want, go for it! Otherwise, play it safe. If you do want to invest in a big-ticket wish list item, you want to be sure that it’s right, which makes you awesome-sauce!

**Remember, these ideas are mine and mine alone. No one pays me or gives me crap, because I’m just not that cool. There’s no links or affiliate business going on up in here. Also, if you do see an ad on my blog, that’s from WordPress, not me and I have no control over that deal**

 

Yarnbox Versus Knitcrate–Which One I Like and Why

******UPDATE MARCH 2018*******

Hey Y’all. I am going to leave the below post as is, but I wanted to update and let you know that, unfortunately, I have become unhappy with the direction Yarnbox has taken over the past few months and am cancelling my subscription. There’s been a lot of changes in the company (under newer management), their practices, customer interactions, and Ravelry community culture. They also have consistent logistical problems with the site and shipping. I’m not going to go into particulars, but there is extensive discussions about these issues in a few Ravelry groups. My decision to cancel comes from the recent trend of populating new boxes with their overstock from previous months or their other subscriptions. I wanted to update you, because if you are researching a yarn club treat for yourself, I can no longer recommend Yarnbox at this time. I hope they get past the hiccups they are experiencing. In the meantime, I may reconsider giving Knitcrate another try, but if you have a yarn subscription you’d recommend, I’d love to hear about it. Remember, my opinions are my own, no one pays me or gives me free stuff, and I got no skin in the yarn business game. I just want to update you that, for now, me and Yarnbox are breaking up.

So, earlier this year, the husband and the Heathens gifted me a 3-month subscription to Yarnbox, which is a monthly box subscription for knitters/crocheters. I love yarn, and I love getting packages, so this was the absolute perfect gift. After my three months was up, I wanted to branch out and see if other subscriptions were just as satisfying, so I gave Knitcrate a try for a couple of months. Ultimately, I cancelled that one and went back to Yarnbox.

(Note, I subscribe to Yarnbox classic, and since cancelling my Knitcrate, they have changed their plans so my old subscription would now be considered the Artisan crate, which looks like it has come down in price since then.)

So, what’s the appeal of a yarn subscription? I get to try new yarns that are not typically at my LYS, and discover something new every month. However, before I go into why I favor the Yarnbox, here’s the points of comparison I started with because all of us fiber geeks are as diverse in preference as it gets:

The Yarn–I want to see quality and quantity for the price, and I think Yarnbox wins out (see below). I like variety as well. Yarnbox lets you set some preferences about colors, yarn weights, etc., so you can better tailor what you will get to your taste. For example, you can say “never send me brown yarn,” if you have a hate on for brown. To my knowledge, Knitcrate does not let you set any preferences, but this could have changed since I cancelled. I believe both boxes sell any leftovers so you can snag an extra hank if you love something and want a bigger project’s worth of yarn.

Patterns–Both boxes come with a couple of patterns. For some, this is part of the value, but not for me. I am super picky about patterns, and I don’t waste time knitting a pattern I’m lukewarm about. Ravelry is my playground when it comes to pattern hunting. If you place a big emphasis on the patterns that come in these boxes, you should check out their respective groups on Ravelry to get a feel for them.

Extras–Knitcrate Artisan came with a small extra or two each month. Yarnbox typically does not, though they did include a Soak sample (wool wash) in last month’s box.

Cost/Value–They are about the same (now, not when I had Knitcrate), though Yarnbox offers discounts for pre-purchased subscriptions, rather than month-to-month, but this is immaterial to me since I do month-to-month.

So, let’s take a look at some of my Yarnboxes:

These are just a few, but each month, I feel like I’m getting introduced to new yarns, new companies, and the quality and yardage for the cost is great. I’ve only been disappointed one month out of about seven, but that was more about my personal taste. Also, I get lots of colors but never anything I hate.

My first month of Knitcrate came with a cute keychain charm, a wooden llama needle gauge, and here was the yarn:

Don’t let the picture fool you, these are pretty small hanks, though they are of good quality, (for comparison, this Knitcrate provided 340 yards of sport weight yarn, while the above Yarnbox with the purple Sugar Bush Bliss was 525 yards of sport weight ). Also, they come from a very well-known company with wide distribution. The next month seemed more promising with two bigger hanks and…scissors. But dear lort, the color:

Trust me, it’s a lot brighter than the picture looks, and just not me. However, I was happy with the quality and discovering a new yarn brand that wasn’t such a big player, so it definitely was more of what I expected than the first month.

So, after a couple of months, I realized I was underwhelmed by my Knitcrates. I think the notions idea is cute, but in reality, it’s stuff I don’t need. I have 25 pairs of scissors and about 10 needle gauges (especially since all my interchangeable needles have one included). I’d rather put those dollars toward more yarn than on the chance of really redundant accessories.

Remember, patterns are not on my priority list, so both boxes are equal in that aspect. What sealed the deal was the chance that I would be paying for yarn that was just too far outside of my preferences. Also, at the time, my Knitcrate Artisan was about 10 bucks more a month than my Yarnbox, but I think they have since lowered the price, so take that for what it’s worth.

Ultimately, I think Yarnbox appeals to me because I feel like I get great new yarns, learn about new companies/indie operations, and I get to have some preferences while maintaining the surprise. So, take my opinion with a grain of salt, and I’m going to get back to my knitting.

***The usual disclaimer: Neither of these companies know me, because I’m just not that cool. My opinions here are all my own, and nobody gave me free stuff, or solicited my blog, or promised me a cameo in the next Kanye video. I just like talking about yarn…and food…and my abject hate for warm weather in November.***

 

Things I’m Into This Week

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We are deep in the heart of Mardi Gras season, which means lots of crawfish, parades, and King Cakes. When I’m not overindulging, I’m enjoying time with family and friends, making memories and celebrating everything good about my neck of the woods.

In the meantime, here’s a round up of the things I’m into this week, which are clearly food related given my current climate:

Watching: A Chef’s Life. I guess I am late to this PBS gem, but I now binge watch it on the weekends. The combination of a character-driven documentary that still focuses on southern food culture is like crack for peeps like me. If you need some inspiration for your own garden, this show also delivers on that front. Bonus: It’s free to watch online via PBS.

Reading: Speaking of which, I’m reading Deep Run Roots by Vivian Howard, the chef in the aforementioned show. This cookbook is an opus, and I love every page. I found it after hearing about the documentary, and it’s one of the most well-executed cookbooks I’ve seen in a long time. However, I will give the disclaimer that it’s more of a 40/60 balance between recipes for home cooks and wannabe chef/foodies, so flip through it before you buy. I’m really particular about the cookbooks I will drop cash on (versus online spelunking for recipes), so I understand if this brick isn’t for everyone.

Listening: I’ve gone down the podcast rabbit hole, and I was probably last to know about The Sporkful. I come from a family that talks about our next meal while we are eating the current cuisine, so I appreciate a podcast that constantly looks at food and culture with the same obsessive eye that we do.

So there ya have it. A snippet of my indulgence for your foodie pleasure. Back to the kitchen, and that leftover piece of King Cake.

**Disclaimer–This post was not sponsored in any way, and none of these people know who I am. I’m not that cool, dude, just tunnel-vision afflicted.**

Knife Projectiles, Subway Tile and Lessons About Manufacturers’ Intended Use

So, I have a knife problem. Other than a giant knife block of my fancy-schmancy knives, I also have several miscellaneous knives floating around my kitchen that I refuse to part with. A while ago, I posted about this magnetic strip, which I like, and seemed to be a great solution for us. However, that little strip has become a big problem. You see, my tiny kitchen has one really great feature about the walls: awesome subway tile, straight to the ceiling.

And I love that tile. The magnetic strip is supposed to be screwed into the wall, but I absolutely will not try to screw into the tile. When I first got the magnetic strip, I resolved the issue by mounting it with Command adhesive picture-hanging strips (which, by the way is NOT a recommended use for that product).

Three years and three brutally hot Louisiana summers later, the adhesive solution is failing big-time. The magnetic strip randomly falls off the wall, turning it into a deadly projectile. Now that Bean is crawling around, I can’t have knife bombs falling from the sky. That would be bad.

A friend of mind heard my plight and sent me a little surprise gift:

This is the Knife Dock. It fits in the kitchen drawer and will hold knives of all different sizes, in any arrangement I want.

(yep, I had to play with it for a minute)

And just like that, the knife-bomb problem was solved. I’m able to keep the knives easily accessible, arrange them exactly how I like and I don’t have to worry about them getting damaged from floating loosely around the drawer. Apparently, Knife Dock also makes a larger, deluxe model, and I may just consider getting that one too, and evicting the knife block off the counter.

If only storing the Heathens’ tsunami of toys was so easy…

Getting My $6 Worth

When it comes to time management and organization for my family, I’ve tried just about everything. Planners inevitably end up lost in the black hole that is my purse…if I ever remember to carry a purse in the first place. I’ve also tried computer programs, but the time and effort of booting up my laptop so dang often was just too much for me. Typing on my iPhone is torture, so handy apps weren’t helpful either, and don’t get me started on why kids don’t mix well with wipe-off boards. I finally realized that for me, any organizing plan that required too much time or effort on my part is doomed for failure.

But alas, I am also a sucker and an impulse buyer. When I saw this magnetic notepad at Target:

I tossed it in the shopping cart, thinking that it might be useful for the upcoming school year. It’s made by Mead, and apparently, it’s part of a new line of products called Organizher. Goony as it sounds, this has been the best $6 I’ve spent in ages. Obviously, the front has a weekly schedule with room for all the family members and their events, as well as the week’s meals. Little did I know then that the back looks like this:

So, here’s why it works for me. Our breakfast/dining room is command central our house. It’s where we eat meals, do homework and it’s basically the nexus of our home life. In this room, we have a corkboard on the wall, where I keep the Heathens’ homework lists and other important information. Since I bought this $6 notepad, we’ve developed a routine that takes less than five minutes a week, but has saved my sanity for the back-to-school rush. Here’s how it works:

On Sunday, I jot down everything that I know is going on that week, as well as the meals. I then tear off the sheet and stick it up on the corkboard. In the meantime, I pull down last week’s sheet, and use the back as a shopping list for this week’s meals.

Yes, this is so easy, it’s stupid. But, for someone that has struggled with just how much supposedly helpful organizational tools complicate my life, it’s nice to find something that is simple and flexible.

So, yeah, I’m bragging about my $6 notepad. But I’ve had a week with no missed assignments, meetings or annoying repeats of “what’s for dinner?”

It doesn’t take much to make me happy these days, but I’m ok with that.

 

**As always, all reviews on my blog are unsponsored. Mead doesn’t know me and I don’t know them. I just like passing along when I actually get some bang for my buck**

 

Just So You Know

JC Penney is offering FREE haircuts for kids through the entire month of August. After selling my soul for the cost of school clothes, shoes, and supplies (remember the $20 pens and the lime notebook?), free haircuts were a much-needed blessing. My poor scraggly boys no longer look like they got beat in their heads with a weed-whacker.

If your kid could use a little sprucing up for the new school year, a free haircut is definitely the way to go.

Just make sure to tip your stylist…you don’t want to be a tacky, classless floozy, now do you?

Six Weeks Old and the Two Baby Products I Couldn’t live Without

Bean is six weeks old today!

After spending a fortune on baby stuff, we’re getting an idea of what we love, what was a waste of money and what we couldn’t live without.

Let me tell ya a little bit about this:

This was the best $15 I spent. When I first bought this timer gadget, my husband looked at me like I was an insane waster of money. After all, we have iPhones and they do everything, right? However, unlocking our password-protected iPhones and waiting for apps to load takes time…precious seconds we don’t have when juggling a newborn. I admit, this gadget is so ridiculously simple in concept that it seems unnecessary. But, as our entire family will tell you, I now live with the Itzbeen timer. This thing was a lifesaver in the hospital. I could keep track, at a glance, of how long it had been since Bean ate, since we changed her diaper and even since I had my pain medication. When I was recovering from surgery, this was my mental back-up when pain and sleep deprivation clouded my brain. Six weeks later, I still use this 24/7.There’s no fiddling or fussing. I just push the appropriate button, and the timer for that particular activity resets so, two sleep deprived hours later, I know how long it’s been. I don’t have to use up valuable post-partum brain power doing the math or trying to remember when I last fed her, changed her, or gave her medicine. It even has a flashlight so I’m able to find the pacifier at night without waking her up. Also, my husband can instantly see where we are at in Bean’s schedule. If she’s crying and I’m in the shower, he can check the timer and know instantly whether she’s hungry or just fussy. So yeah, it was $15 well spent.

As for baby carriers, I researched, over-analyzed, and finally bought both the Moby:

And the Ergo:

They both had top ratings and awesome reviews, and I assumed we would use them both. Sadly, the Moby was a disaster for us. My husband and I tried to figure it out, read the instructions repeatedly, and watched the videos online. Even with extensive practice, we just could never finagle it. Bean was always so awkwardly positioned that we spent the entire time checking and adjusting her. Also, the Moby was too much of a pain in the rear to use. After dragging the tails through the Target parking lot as I tried to put it on, I finally conceded that the Moby just wasn’t for us. Even if we had been able to figure it out, I don’t think that the layers of heavy fabric are practical for the hot, humid Louisiana weather.

The Ergo, however, is the BEST. Either my husband or I use it every day. It’s a piece of cake to get on and off, and to get Bean in and out of. I use it when we shop, go to the library and just about everywhere else. My husband often calms a fussy Bean by strapping on the Ergo and walking laps around our house. Our Ergo was an investment, but six weeks later, I would buy it again in a heartbeat.

So, that’s the skinny on our first round of baby products. The jury is still out on the rest of Bean’s stuff, but I’ll let ya know.

A Good Book I Read…

Last week, we took the Heathens to the local library so that G-Man could select a biography for his upcoming book report. While we were there, I perused the cookbook section for some fresh ideas. I love my Kindle, but when it comes to cookbooks, I need the real thing. Why? Well, I guess it has to do with my mom. When I hijack her cookbooks, I always find the recipes I’m looking for by finding the dirtiest pages in the book. When I was looking for the brownie recipe in a cookbook that had several, I only needed to find the page that was the most stained and smudged with her fingerprints. Cookbooks in our family are a microcosm of our history, and the spotted, splattered pages are sometimes as memory-evoking as the food itself.

When it comes to new cookbooks, the library is the perfect place to “try before you buy,” so I usually grab five or six to preview for their potential. On this particular trip, I stumbled across this book:

 

What I didn’t know at the time was that this book is far more than a collection of recipes; it’s a virtual manifesto in support of revitalizing family dinners. It includes research, essays, games and an encyclopedic collection of information that not only supports the importance of family dinners, but also gives the reader a tool box for starting or reinstating their own family dinner traditions.

Family dinner is a subject that is near to my heart, because I grew up in a home in which we gathered around the table every night. I was blessed with a stay-at-home mom, who also happened to be a fabulous cook, and an ironic combination of southern lady and quiet liberal. We ate at the table together, which was always set with cloth placemats (though we did use paper napkins…my mom is a saint, not a masochist). Setting the table was one of my first chores as a child, and to this day, it’s my favorite part of planning a meal, because it’s one thing in life that is entirely within my control.

It wasn’t until I was moving into my first apartment that I began to realize the impact those dinners had on me. Family dinner was security, sharing and the place where we learned about manners and conversation. Even as a dirt-poor college student, my priority for my first apartment was a dinner table, which my grandmother bought for me. My husband and I used it well, even if our meal was just cooked chicken and Pasta-Roni. We hosted our classmates with regularity, always at the table we had set with our dollar-store placemats. Our friends came, we cooked and we all recaptured that sense of familial normality we often missed in our wild college days. I spent that semester driving up my mother’s phone bill with collect calls, so she could walk me through the cooking basics. My husband and I still cherish those memories, because they helped us grow as a couple, and fortify the values we wanted to develop in our future family.

Before I went back to work, I continued with the traditions my parents instilled in me. I cooked (sometimes poorly) and we ate at the table…even if dinner resembled warzone with two picky toddlers. When our house burned down, we spent more time deciding on a new kitchen table than anything else…and as soon as the insurance check cleared, my husband ordered my 20 favorite cookbooks because he knew that was the quickest way to help us feel normal.

When I became a working mom, I got a big, fat dose of reality. Getting dinner on the table after working all day, while juggling the kids, house and everything else, suddenly became a Herculean effort. We ate out more often, relied on convenience foods and somewhere along the way, I lost my joy of cooking. I very easily fell into a rut, and found our nights to be more about getting caught up on our to-do list than enjoying each other. We still had family dinners, but I think I was always in too much of a hurry to truly engage in them the way I should have.

Now that I’m back at home, I am slowly working to recapture the quality of our family dinners, even when my fussy newborn has other plans. This book definitely inspired me to get back on track, and I highly recommend it for anyone that needs a little encouragement to come back to the table as a family.

My Prescioussss…Version 2.0

This is what my husband got me for Christmas:

Yep, it’s a Kindle Fire, and I love it.

Since I have my pretty-pink-laptop, I was not really in the market for anything as fancy as iPad, though it sure did look cool. First, iPads were a smidgen out of our budget, and even if they weren’t, the only thing I’d be using one for is reading, music and surfing the internet for brain-rotting entertainment on-the-go. Anything more complicated than that is a job for the laptop, because I am the nerd who still needs the keyboard and mouse in order to function anything close to efficiently. Therefore, I didn’t think that paying more for a small tablet than I actually did for the laptop was reasonable, especially since I’d be using it in a more limited way. So, up until Christmas, I had resigned myself to lugging the laptop or burning through enough data on my iPhone to keep AT&T afloat for the next decade.

Thanks to my awesome husband, however, I now have the Kindle Fire, and the data plan on my iPhone is no longer on life support. I can read my books, waste time on the internet and even watch the shows on Netflix I’m embarrassed to admit I watch. The added bonus is that all my stuff from my second generation Kindle transferred right over, so my digital library remains intact.

Amazon didn’t even need to make one in pink…my guys know that if they touch the Kindle, they’ll draw back a nub.

Nobody touches my Prescioussss….

How ‘Bout No?

With heat and humidity creeping back into our weather, I had hoped to do a little something with my hair that didn’t involve cutting or perpetual ponytails.

My poor hair is a freak-show. Up until I had kids, it was super-straight, and could not hold a curl to save its’ life. Back in the 80’s, my mom even had my hair permed, only to have the curl fall out not three days later. However, after I had the heathens, a few sections of my hair developed these bizarre, errant waves that can’t even truly be classified as waves…I’d describe them more as a spastic bend here and there. As a result, I have to style my hair (when I’m ambitious enough to do so) with either a flat iron or a large-barrel curling iron. Otherwise, I look like a scruffy, wreck of a woman.

I saw this product at my local Target and snatched it up:

And let’s just say, DANG!! I wish I had read the reviews on Amazon first!!!!! Not only does this stuff smell like the worst chemical spill you could ever imagine, that gosh-awful smell stuck around for days. Every time my hair got wet, I smelled noxious, and our poor bathroom still seems toxic. I swear, people around me probably thought I had fallen into a tub of flea-dip. Even using this product, I still (as per the instructions) had to flat-iron my hair, which made me wonder why I suffered through a chemical nightmare if I was still stuck with all the work of styling anyway. If anything, my hair felt drier, messier and more unruly than ever. It certainly was not smoother, shinier or faster to style, as the product advertised.

So, in my humble opinion, avoid Garnier’s Blow Dry Perfector. Unless you are really ready for a drastic hair-cut, that is.