Sometimes it pays to complain...

I left some feedback on WalMart's website the other night about the plaid fabric that I'd bought that had been cut badly...

Surprised the hell out of me when the department manager for the Fabric dept at WalMart called me this morning (at the buttcrack of dawn! 7:45am!!!) Talked to her for a few minutes and explained what happened, she apologized and told me I'd have a giftcard waiting for me at the Customer Service desk... Went up there this afternoon and they gave me a $25 gift card!!! (whoohoo!!!) I think the fabric that I had was probably $2 worth... (several 1/4yd pieces)

Not a bad deal...especially since she told me on the phone that it was going to be a $20 giftcard...I kept my mouth shut when the lady from the Cash Office told the Customer Service casher how much to give me... (inside I was doing a happy dance)

So, after much consulting with my dad...I gave him the $25 giftcard, and then we took the Star Wars Trilogy dvd set back for the cash, and we went and got a 1gb SD memory card for my new PDA... Now I have a halfway decent mp3 player.

My dad used the WalMart giftcard this afternoon and bought himself a couple more of the shirts that we'd bought him for Christmas.

I thought that was pretty cool. Worked for WalMart for a bit, and never really cared much for their business practices...but at least they tried to do something to make up for the problems I had...I never thought they'd give me a $25 gift card tho..

A few Christmas pictures

Here's a few pictures of my tree...

And here's my mom...holding my dad's stocking (both my mom and I have fairly empty stockings...dad's not real good at buying stocking stuffers)

Mmmm! dinner was yummy!

Just got done with the pork ribs...they were tasty! The jalapeno cornbread was even tastier...the chili is going to be dinner for tomorrow...along with leftover ribs.

just opened up the present that my friend Don sent me...it was the almost perfect gift (no, not a Hobby Lobby gift card, but exactly just what else what I wanted) The first season of The Magnificent Seven tv show on DVD. I'm going to be camped out in front of my tv for the rest of the night now. :)

time to finish wrapping (bagging) up the presents. Then I can sit, watch Mag7 and crochet. Perfect.

Is dinner ready yet?

I'm still starving to death, and now my aunt Sid has put the idea of cornbread into my head. I have jalapeno cornbread mix in the pantry...and garlic butter in the fridgerator...and and and....I'm STARVING!!!!

*checking directions on cornbread mix*

I think I'll wait till after I pick up my parents from church and see if Dad wants to make the cornbread, I dont think I'll have to twist his arm too much. All he's had to do to cook today was put the chili into the crockpot and put the ribs into the barbeque crockpot thingie with some sauce and Liquid Hickory Smoke... We're doing simple stuff this year...altho I might put a baked potato in the oven later (to put chili on top of)

too bad I didnt think of anything for dessert other than some cookies...I wonder if Hostess Ho Ho's would count as a dessert food...maybe if I put a ice cream christmas tree next to it and top it off with whipped cream? (thank goodness we remembered the whipped cream)

I have to go stare intently at the crockpots and hope that dinner comes soon...and wrap a couple of presents...errr...uhh...put the presents into the nice fabric bags that I've been sewing for the past several years. I've got a nice collection of them now, and my dad likes them because it's saved him a bunch by not buying wrapping paper and he doesnt have to struggle with the tape and ribbons.

I'm starving!!!!!

My dad is making chili and some ribs for Christmas...my mom and I had asked him to make chili and french fries to eat today and tomorrow. My dad has been dreaming about making ribs for quite awhile apparently. A couple of days ago he started talking about wanting this crockpot style barbeque pit thingie. So, last night when he took us down to Target to do some grocery shopping and get a few more presents for him, he wandered off and bought himself his rib cooker he's been wanting. Told my mom that she bought it for him for Christmas. :)

So he's upstairs, basting ribs and stirring chili...I'm sitting down here, dying of hunger because the chili is starting to smell good. (I didnt eat breakfast)

I'm hoping that Santa brought me a Hobby Lobby gift card full of money so that I can go yarn shopping monday. I cant decide on anything new to crochet, so I think I need to go yarn shopping and buy a ton of that and get some new patterns. I doubt that Santa will bring me a Hobby Lobby card...at least not one with a zillion dollars on it so I can clean out the yarn department all at once.

I forgot to get stocking stuffers, so while my parents are at church, I'm heading over to WalMart to see what's left after the last minute shoppers raided the place today.

Ranting about WalMart's craft department

I'm making fabric gift bags to put Christmas presents in. I bought some really pretty plaid fabric the other day at WalMart. Pulled out the fabric today and was getting ready to pin it to sew it into bags when I realized that the moron fabric cutters at WM cut it so crooked that if I try to sew it the lines in the plaid are going to be all wonky.

I used to cut fabric for Hobby Lobby and (ironically) Walmart. It was at WalMart where I learned that if you cut fabric with lines in it (like plaids, or quilt panels) that you have to cut one side of the fabric at a time.

I understand that it's really freaking time consuming to cut it on the line like that, (used to hate the quilters who'd come in 5 minutes before I was supposed to go to lunch, pull down 30 bolts of plaid and ask for forty-five 1/4yd pieces) But it really needs to be done this way.

I know some people reading this are going to think I'm an anal retentive bitch, but if you've ever worked with plaid fabric you'll understand.

Now I have to go up to WalMart, bitch to the manager, and see if they'll re-cut it (and hope that they still have the same fabric in stock).

What did I do?

this has nothing to do with crochet... I'm sitting here, scratching myself to death.

I have food allergies...no idea exactly what food I'm allergic to (other than seafood) and what I ate today seemed at the time to not be anything bad. All I've had today is some leftover pizza from the Old Chicago restaurant (wasnt very good, so I didnt eat it all) and some Campbell's chicken noodle soup with an entire can of creamed corn dumped into it instead of water (that's the way my dad made the soup for me when I was little..it's a comfort food now) and some mandarin oranges.

I guess I'm just whining, because scratching the hives off my body is so annoying (and time consuming, and not to mention it could get messy) One of these days I'll find an allergist and find out what it is that's causing this.

On a crochet note, I cant decide what to make next...everything I've started in the past week or two has ended up frogged.

Resized some pictures

I went thru most of my blog and resized a lot of the pictures...decided to make it easier for people on dial-up to be able to see the pictures. It was easier than I thought was going to be...Photobucket, where I store my pictures, has a resizing tool...so I just went thru all the pictures that I have linked to here and dropped them down 50%...

Showing off again Part II

Did another pineapple shawl. This one was done with Red Heart SS Light Fucshia with a "K" hook. It's a bit bigger than the pink one I did. (pink one was made with an "I" hook and RH Giant worsted weight yarn...yarn was a bit thinner than the Super Saver yarn)

The fucshia shawl took me about 7 hours to complete, and it's my favorite (until I can get my hands on some purple yarn...WalMart was out of the color I wanted the other day)

The fucshia one drapes a lot better than the first one and feels a lot warmer.

This is definately one of my most favorite things that I've made so far. I've always wanted to make something with pineapples in the design...ever since I was a little girl and saw the crocheted thread pineapple pincushion that my grandmother used to have hanging on the wall in her kitchen. (I have THAT pattern too)


Here's a close up of the fucshia one

A side-by-side comparison of both shawls

and another close up of the fucshia

Just showing off again.... :)

I got a little bit obsessed with a pattern this week. It took me about 5 attempts, but I finally got it figured out (except for the edging, which I decided not to do) The pattern originally is from a doily pattern for a chair back doily. I used an "I" hook and worsted weight yarn (Red Heart...think the color is Baby Pink) The first few attempts took me a couple of days... I had originally attempted it in blue, but ended up not having enough and I had frogged that yarn so much that it was not in very good shape, so I started over with another yarn...frogged that one a few times and got nearly finished when I ran out of yarn...since that was a discontinued color, I had to start over again... By this time I pretty much had the pattern figured out, so it was easy to do...took me about 5 or 6 hours to do this one. Another hour to weave in tails and to attempt the edging (left the edging off)

It's actually a warm shawl...I didnt think it would be till I put it on and stepped out onto our enclosed deck to fiddle with the Xmas tree. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Might end up keeping it.

This is what my obsession got me.