I’ll try not to get too mushy but my eye candy today is this shot I posted

yesterday up on Flickr that has a lot to do with what I want to say.

So many people and their furry friends donated to help cover Phoebe’s vet bills it just warms my heart. I love this community so much it’s crazy. These blogs are so much more than just journals and our knitting ia so much more than just a craft because it brings us all together. I mean look at what we can do when we work together? Isn’t it amazing? I truly thank each and every one of you for donating to this cause. It didn’t even matter if you only donated $5.00 because it really is all about the thought that counts. Keep an eye on Mel’s blog for updates. He told me yesterday that Phoebe had her pelvic fracture set and she was doing great. Now that sure made me happy.

I used the random number generator to pick a person who donated to the cause and the winner is AllyB! You have won a $30.00 gift certificate to Scout’ Swag. You can buy some swag or have a skein of yarn dyed for you. Just check out the gallery and let me know if that’s what you want. I will send that to you right now! Congratulations!

Thank you all again so much for helping out. You all just rock. I know that Mel and Phoebe and Phoebe’s family thank you and your furry ones too. Have a great weekend!

Phoebe’s mom actually called overnight to talk to me and let me know how much everyone’s support meant to them. They’re hoping to get her home tomorrow, and I will be posting an update. I need to see where numbers are this morning, but totals are handily over $5000 at this point, mostly in donations of $25 or less. I am totally blown away.

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I want to thank everyone so far who has donated money to Phoebe. Look at her. Is she not the cutest girly???

Go to Mel’s blog to read the latest on sweet Phoebe and her family. And again, in the event that any donations were to exceed Phoebe’s expenses, they would remain in the pet assistance fund for the next case to come along. My contest goes until Friday so keep them coming if you want to try and win some swag.

Here are the calendars for January! As always Cynthia and I love to know which one/s you like so let us know. I guess we didn’t get our act together to make a real calendar. There’s always next year! Just click the image to get the size to download to use as a wallpaper.

happy hizKNITS!

some days I wonder

the remains of the day

We were asked to do one with the calendar on the other side for a Mac so here you go!

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Do you guys know how much you rock? Go read the update on Phoebe on Mel’s blog!!!

I know it’s just a few days after Christmas and all of the craziness of the Holiday season, but if you love animals and want to help a friend of mine out, I would appreciate a bit of your time. Probably a lot of you know Mel, if not, you should. (maybe you saw him at Rhinebeck??) I was originally introduced to him by Norma when the Wonder-dog (aka the moron) Gus ate some rib bones. Mel lives in Maine with his partner David where he is a Veterinarian. He just posted about a dog named Phoebe that was hit by a snowmobile while being walked by his owner last Friday night and he is collecting donations to help pay for the vet bills. Phoebe was seriously injured when hit by a snowmobiler who was illegally on their property and will need extensive treatment. Mel himself has already written off over $700.00 of the bill of his own fees for this family in order to help out Phoebe. And listen, I’m not trying to make anyone feel badly if they can’t or don’t want to donate towards this cause. I know how amazing my knitting/crochet friends are when it comes time to help a person out in need. I’m just putting it out there to my fellow pet lovers if you want to donate a few dollars towards this cause. On two different occasions Mel helped me with Gus when he was sick and I would simply like to show him my thanks. Mel is such an amazing person and want to show him how much I appreciate him. From Mel’s blog:

To that end, I’ve created the donation button below if anyone would like to help out. This simply goes into my Paypal account and I will, in turn, transfer funds to the pet assistance fund here at the clinic, since we don’t currently have any mechanism for direct donation set up aside from people coming in and making one. In the event that any donations were to exceed Phoebe’s expenses, they would remain in the pet assistance fund for the next case to come along. There is no tax write-off for this, no particular reward other than helping out a family and dog in need, but I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. And I will thank you for it.

How about you leave me a comment if you donate and I will randomly select one person to win a little swag from the shop? I know how much y’all like swaggy goodness and a little bribery never hurt anyone right? So to those that have a few extra dollars and would like to help out, I thank you in advance. I will leave this up until Friday and for Friday’s Eye Candy I will announce the winner. Thank you!! Happy New Year too!

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First I want you to see two new items I put up in the shop today. I absolutely love this new swag! Check out these sockblocker keychains that come with a teeny sock pattern and these totally cute kitchener dogtags in pink and black.

I love getting new stuff in the shop. Okay. What you’ve been waiting for. I want to thank everyone again for all of the fantastic links. I am definitely inspired to knit something! The problem is narrowing it down now. If you can believe that. I decided there was a tie between two people for inspiring me to knit something. The inspiration winners are….. solmama and Lori! I have never seen the Headigan pattern from Red Lipstick that solmama linked me to and it’s totally adorable! I’ve already shown it to a bunch of people who agree with me that it’s super fun. I’ve already bought the pattern. Lori linked me to the Maine Morning Mitts by Clara Parks, which I haven’t seen either. I wanted to knit something like that for T. and these are perfect. I haven’t decided on the Maine Mitts or Dashing from Knitty. I was on the phone with Amy the other day and she reminded me of those too. But really, there were so many great ideas it was hard to decide on which ones were truly going to get my butt knitting.

Because there was such a great response I wanted to use the random number generator to pick a few other winners. I decided I’ll send out three other smaller prizes to the following peeps.

Congratulations to……

Rebekka

Shannon

&

Phara!

I just need you to each send me your shipping address to my scoutj at scoutj dot com. I will get the prizes out within the next week. So look for them after the first week in January. Thank you all again for playing. And now I leave you with a little roving pr0n. Yummmm.

rub a dub dub there’s fiber in ma tub!

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To those that celebrate Christmas!

Somehow I didn’t realize that Monday night AND Christmas Eve was the same day so I will announce the winners tomorrow. (Wednesday) I am still looking through all of the comments. There are some really fantastic links and I’ve had so much fun looking through all of them. Thank you all for taking the time to comment. I now need to go get ready to go to our friends’ house for dinner. Take care everyone!

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*** You still have two days to comment and have a chance at winning some cool swag! Also, if you haven’t looked through these comments you really must. There are some absolutely fabulous links in the 126 comments that have been left. I already have a few favorites….and no I’m not going to tell! But man, grab a cuppa and sit and check out these links. Don’t blame me if your Ravelry queue doubles!***

Is this thing on? *tap tap tap* Hi! Remember me? How are you? Me? I’m hanging in there. Lots going on and I’m feeling super depressed about the fact that I’m totally not elbow deep into any sort of knitting. I am completely uninspired. I’ve knit a few scarves and that’s it. So I come to you my friends. Spread the word because I want a huge response for this contest. I need help. I need inspiration. I get to look around blogland every once in a while but not enough to find out what the hottest knits are right now. I’ve seen a few things but want to know from you what you are loving right now. Or something that is in your queue that looks super cool. That’s the contest! You need to inspire me to knit something. I don’t want a garment. I want something fun and not too crazy complicated. It can be a bit of a challenge but nothing too scary since my kids are home after today for two weeks and we know what that’s like. (Charlotte’s Web is probably not a good idea) But come on. I want links/pictures/patterns to what you’ve seen or knit recently that is a must-knit. There will be multiple prizes!! I will give a prize to the person who finds me something I actually want to knit as well as pick a few other names randomly just for commenting. The prizes will be a surprise. It could be a book, yarn, swag…..you’ll just have to wait and see! I will have this contest go until Monday night at 8:00pm MST. Then I’ll announce the winner on Christmas Eve. So let me see some patterns!!! What do I absolutely have to knit?

And how about a little Eye Candy Friday collage? Here are a few images from the past few weeks. I’ve been having lots of fun with the Christmas lights.

Now let the contest commence! I can’t wait to see what you find for me.

Also, I will make one final run at 5:30 to the Post Office if you are still wanting something from the shop. Priority mail is 2-3 days so there is still a good chance to get something before Christmas! Obviously I can’t promise anything…..but it should get there if you live in the US!

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First of all, school started this week. I now, officially have two kids in elementary school. Here is a little collage of the week. You can see Supergirl with Carole’s Viv. They had the best day ever yesterday.

When I asked Supergirl how her day was, she held up both hands in the *rock on* sign and yelled, “IT ROCKED!” OKay then!

Next up. Have you donated to Ravelry? Huh? If you are a member and haven’t donated what in the world are you waiting for? Hellloooooo! Did you know that Jess and Casey BOTH quit their jobs to work on this? Obviously once it gets out of beta and they have advertisers they won’t need donations like this, but I just wanted to do something for them if I could. I told them the Jewish mama in me worries about them living on Ramen noodles and I would ask everyone to donate if they haven’t already donated. Pretty please with Ramen on top do it? For every person who donates $5.00 I will put your name into a hat and will pick one to win a skein of yarn of your choice from the gallery. For each $5.00 you put in I will add your name in again! Let’s say you have until Sunday night at 8:00pm to do this. (you can email me at scoutjatscoutjdotcom and let me know the amount if you don’t want to post it here too. I will keep a list. I will ask Jess/andor/Casey to help me verify donations too. I mean look at their baby Bob. They need to feed him too! Click the picture to go donate. I’ll wait for you to come back.

Okay done?! Scooby snack for you! Even if it’s just a dollar it will help. I think that’s like 3 packages of Ramen!!! But seriously, if you are a member you know how amazing this place is. Please go support them. Thank you! I love you! Jess and Casey thank you too. Oh yeah, so does Bob! (Note - this was completely my idea and the only involvement Jess and Casey had was in giving me the go ahead to do it!)

A few of you have nominated me for a Rockin’ Blogger award so I’m going to finally be a good girl and pick my 5. Since I’m not really a girl, (too old!) I hope it’s okay that I grabbed one of these other ones from Oh, The Joys because I have to say I liked hers better than the original one because it can be for a guy too. So here are my 5. If I pick you, you’re tagged.

1. John

2. Aaryn

3. Symeon/Pippikneesocks

4. Bev

5. Carole

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The only person to guess the correct number was Theresa. The correct number was 89. Some of you are nutso! I dye a few hundred skeins each month but this month I’ve tried to limit it with the three weeks of company. In the contest rules I said you could not go over so there were four others who guessed 88. The other winner, picked by Supergirl, is Limedragon! Can you two please send me your addresses and I will mail off your new skeins of Kill Bill. The bad-ass powers shall become yours within 2-3 days!Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone for playing. I think I need to do contests more often.

For anyone who missed it last time, my Knitty Gritty show airs today at 2:00pm EST on the DIY Network. If you want to laugh at me for being the biggest dork ever, set your Tivo’s and check it out. Seriously!

Just a reminder that I’m not going to be taking any new yarn orders until July 1st. I have to get this Indie Swag out and a bunch of other orders before I can take on anything more. Plus, one of my best friends is coming down for the weekend from Steamboat Springs to meet me for the night in Santa Fe which means I lose two more days this weekend to dyeing. I won’t complain about this though since just the two of us are staying at Hotel Santa Fe for the night. I forsee cocktails by the pool and adult coversation for a good solid 24 hours without anyone needing anything from me except for maybe another drink order. Maybe I’ll be able to also sleep past 5:15am which is when the boy woke me up this morning. Isn’t that lovely!? /sarcasm.

Off to fill out the dye board for the day. It’s been so hot I don’t know how long I can actually stay outside working today. Dyeing yarn in 100° weather is not a lot of fun. I’m off. Time to fuel up on caffeine and git going.

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**The contest is over! There was ONE person who got the number right and four others who guessed the next closest number. I will use the random name generator for the second skein and announce the two winners in the morning!**

Thanks to Natalie’s comment in my post the other day I decided it was time for a new colorway. I give you - Kill Bill. Inspired by this image.

And one more to see the yarn in a little bit different light.

Click either/both images to see the bigger sizes.

Thank you Amy for the top picture. She helped me take the picture and come up with the contest. Amy rocks if I haven’t already said it. Tomorrow we get to have a dyeing party. Otherwise known as, Amy will help me work. Suckah! This yarn will be available in the shop July 1st.

Here is the contest. Guess how many skeins of yarn I have to dye in the next two weeks and win a skein of this new colorway. This total number includes the Indie Swag yarn too. The two closest people without going over or the two who get the number right win a skein of the yarn. If more than two get the right answer then I’ll do the random number generator thingy. Make sense? You have until Wednesday at 8:00pm MST to comment. Only one guess per person.

Ready? Go. You know you want the first ever skein of Kill Bill. It will bring you magical powers. Bad-ass powers!

Revenge is sweet,

The Black Mamba

**I see that Sweet Georgia has a Kill Bill as well but seeing as mine looks quite a bit different I’m going to keep the name.**

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