Selling HandKnit Items

At the time of this post’s conception,  I’m getting ready for a yard sale with some friends from work. Besides the massive amount of stuff we cleared out of our apartment, I’m also going to try to sell some of my hand knit items.

The plan is to lay them out and sell each at $5.00. To some, this may seem really cheap. Others probably wouldn’t spend a dollar on a hand knit item much less five.

I listed a bunch of stuff on Etsy, but only sold one thing, which I hear is fairly normal for Etsy newbies.  I could have relisted, I just got lazy. I’ll probably post things in the future as I make them, but we’ll see.  I’m getting rid of a lot of yarn at this sale and am now down to just two totes of the better yarn I have in my stash.  

I have some really cute stuff. I have some pretty scarves, nice hats, and even a pair of hand knit fingerless gloves I’m going to let go of. Not all of it is functional. Some of it is just to look pretty. Some of it is…in my opinion…complete junk.  I wasn’t even going to put it in the sale, but Jon made a good point.

You never know what people will find appealing.

It’s all going in, and then maybe I’ll have a better idea of what people like to buy.  What doesn’t sell will make great gifts and beyond that…I guess I’d better start preparing my own line of winter fashion.

Old Journals

Last weekend, Jon and I tackled our apartment full force with de-cluttering and cleaning. In two and a half days we managed to create more room, add curtains to our living room and get rid of all kinds of stuff that was taking up space. Yay for productivity.

One of the boxes we went through contained all my old journals. I haven’t handwritten anything in a journal in a few years, not since right after I moved to Oklahoma.  Online journaling and blogging have sort of filled that space. But I’ve kept my old ones out of a deep sense of sentimentality and the thought that someday I may want to go back and revisit my younger years.

I started keeping a journal in 3^rd grade. My first journal says “Diary” on the front, has a puffy plastic cover and a lock for which I’ve long since lost the key.  I’m not sure if everyone else does this, but I make a distinction between a diary and a journal.  Diaries always seem to put limits on your writing:  Here are five lines…tell me about your day. A journal, on the other hand, gives you lots of free pages to write. I always had to use a journal…I was too long winded and angsty throughout junior high and high school to limit myself.

We cracked open my 3^rd grade journal for the heck of it, and I laughed so hard I cried. Jon laughed, my mom…when I finally shared it with her…and my friends laughed. Because the writings of 3^rd grade Amanda were hilarious.  They contained important things, like nicknames my classmates had for each other and the fact that my team (I was “red”) lost a basketball game. My favorite was probably the rant I did about my sister, which I intro’d with “I could probably write a whole page of bad stuff about my sister”  (if you’re reading this, Sister, sorry! I was only 8!) I then laid it out in business plan format.

“I could just give in and play with my sister. Complication: She would want me to keep playing with her even when if I didn’t want to.”

I’m proud of my younger self’s grasp of punctuation.

This was the only journal I opened. Maybe some time in the future I’ll look at some of my later ones, but I remember a lot of the bad stuff and I don’t know if, even knocking on the door of 32, I’m ready to relive some of it. I know there’s good stuff in there too…stuff that will give me warm fuzzies and take me back to an easier time.  

I think I’ll leave them packed away for now and read them the next time we clean the apartment.

In the Kitchen: Bubble Pizza

It seems like I posted this before, but I had a request for the recipe so I didn’t think it could hurt to share it again.

The original recipe can be found here

I love bubble pizza, though when I talk about it, I think people confuse it with bubble tea (which I’ve never had). I’m not a fan of a lot of veggies, so Jon and I just claim half each. I get meat on my side and he throws some mushrooms and olives on his.

The biscuit crust gives it a really good taste, and I found out this past week that it makes good leftovers. Unfortunately, I did come across a small part of biscuit that hadn’t baked, and I have a really hard time with raw biscuit dough. This doesn’t normally happen to us, though.

In the past, we’ve also substituted ground turkey for the ground beef. It’s one of those easy recipes that you can mix and match ingredients to make it more or less healthy.

Let me know if you make this one and what you think!

Writing: Self Promotion - Creative Writing Edition

In order to manage my time a little more effectively, I'm already abandoning the Saturday and Sunday editions of this blog. This isn't to say I won't still be doing self promotion and sharing, but I'm just going to schedule them into the regular 3 day a week schedule.

Jon and I are doing some hardcore cleaning and purging of the junk in our house, and while going through some old notebooks, I found copies of the literary publication from college. "The Blurb" took art and writing from LSSU students and published them twice a year. A few weeks ago, my mom requested that I publish one of the short stories that had been published in The Blurb on AC so she could share it with some work friends.

I went ahead and republished the short story and two poems.

The Memorial - A woman goes through the motions of a having a memorial for her husband. It doesn't sound like much, but my mom requested it and it's not a bad story. I did make some changes from the original draft, but the point is the same.

Women's World - Though I don't think it was my original intention, this poem is pretty sapphic and saturated in lesbianism. However, I think it talks more to new experiences and the intense, uncomfortable feelings chance encounters can invoke. No matter which way you take it, I think this is some good writing.

Porn Industry - I don't have an issue with adult films. I do, in fact, think they have a valid niche in society. But I don't glamorize them the way some people do. This poem was meant to be a humorous take on what really goes on behind the scenes.

Goodreads: A Kiss in Time

A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the second book by Alex Flinn that I've read, the first being "Beastly," which I wanted to read before I saw the movie (I still haven't seen the movie, but I liked the book).

In this remake of "Sleeping Beauty," Flinn's heroine, Princess Talia of Euphrasia, is an unhappy teenager who's been sheltered her whole life in an effort to keep her away from the dreaded spindle that will cause her and her kingdom to fall into a deep sleep. On her 16th birthday, in her quest for the perfect dress, she comes upon an old lady who...you guessed it...tricks her into touching a spindle.

Three hundred years later, while playing hooky from his European tour group, Jack finds the princess and kisses her awake. Jack is a teenage slacker who's parents have planned much of his life for him, so it's a shock to his system when he's thrown into the king's dungeon. Talia rescues him under the condition that he take her with him back to Florida.

The story is simple and sweet, and the retelling was well done. Talia and Jack both grow and develop as do most of the side characters, like Jack's parents and sister. One thing I particularly like about this book is that Flinn doesn't make her characters fall in love and spend eternity by each other's side. While this is acceptable (if somewhat unrealistic) in historical adult romance, I often find it annoying when the characters are only teenagers. Flinn avoids that trap while still allowing for the romantic element in the story.

A good book and a definite recommendation.



View all my reviews

In the Kitchen: Chili Dog Casserole

Before you gag, you should know that this recipe was actually really good! Not everyone likes hot dogs, but you could substitute sausages or turkey dogs too.

The basic recipe with reader tips can be found here.

I modified it by mixing ketchup and spicy brown mustard into the lower layer of chili and adding some cheese and chili in the tortillas before rolling them up. I would recommend using a good sized casserole dish and maybe getting a third can of chili. We also put some corn chips on the dish to give it some crunch.

I'm not a fan of beans, but we got the bean chili and I didn't really care that much. The whole meal cost about five dollars since we got everything but the cheese at Aldi and the cheese we got on sale at Hy-Vee.

If you've ever had Sonic's Frito Chili wrap, this is very similar, only with a hot dog in the center.

If you try this, comment and let me know how you liked it and what, if any, modifications you made.

The Relevance of Puppets

Avenue Q made it to our little corner of the world a couple weeks ago, so Jon and I splurged on tickets. I couldn't pass up the opportunity considering this is one of the few productions on my "must see" list.

In junior high/high school, I had a love affair with the music from "Les Miserables," "Phantom of the Opera," "Cats," and "Miss Saigon." I got to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" on stage in Detroit and...haters gonna hate...got to see a scantily clad Donnie Osmond in the flesh (though I had little appreciation for it at the time).

While I still like listening to the music, and I'd go see "Les Miz" or "Phantom" in a heartbeat if it came to the area, many of the things I liked then lack relevance for me. "Avenue Q," on the other hand, was all sorts of relevant to my life. I hated that feeling of being out of college, yet not in a career and having no idea what the heck I was going to do. I've been broke (still am at times), I've been lonely, I've found comfort in the internet (though maybe not in the same way Trekkie Monster finds comfort in the internet),  and I've had that feeling that I'm "less" because I failed to live up to someone's expectations.

While the play is done in good, raunchy fun, it also makes valid points about life, and even though I'm past alot of the angst reflected in the show, it still reminded me that I'm not alone in what I went through and what I still sometimes go through. Alot of people have those times, and they don't really stop once you're out of your 20s.

Hard times come and go, and "Avenue Q" reminds us that the things we're going through are really and truly "just for now."