Yarn Winder - Where Have You Been All My Yarn Life?

I made an awesome score on yarn at my favorite local thrift store the other day, and one of the skeins was crazy loose and coming apart in a big twisted mess. Since I really couldn't do much with it in its original state, I decided to let it be the inaugural skein for my new yarn winder :)

I've always loved how balls wound by these babies look, and they seem so easy to manage, so I set to work. I spent a good amount of time unwinding the original skein with one hand (what a pain in the butt, ya'll) while spinning the crank on the winder with the other hand. I also had to support the little guide bar with my left hand while I cranked to keep it up - is this normal, yarn winder aficionados? Or is this just because I have a cheap Chinese one? - but eventually I made it to the end of the skein and came away with 2 neat and tidy balls:

Ah, looks at those nicely wound balls :) Isn't it a lovely sight? After the relatively quick success I had with this skein, a thought came into my head - remember my yarn washing fiasco back in September? You can see the whole gruesome tale here, but as a quick recap I followed some advise I found on Pinterest to wash some yicky looking yarn I got at a thrift store and ended up with this:

A crazed yellow nightmare, right? Well, it's looked exactly like that but been shuffled to various unused surfaces in our office ever since. Until last night! I had a wild hair to wind this up and officially make it usable again (I know, I have the most exciting Friday nights ever). I would unwind/untangle as much as I could until a true knot was found, cut the yarn, untangle the knot, tie it together with a square knot, clip the excess, and continue winding. I repeated this process for about an hour all together (yikes!), but I soldiered on and ended up with this:

Ah, what a beautiful sight! This yarn is certainly not high quality - it's some kind of scratchy acrylic - but I went through the trouble of cleaning it and it came out very bright and fun. I'm so glad I didn't just throw it away when it tangled in the wash! The 4 original skeins ended up weighing 442 grams and it seems to be a heavy worsted weight. By the last few skeins, I don't think I had to cut it at all, just untangle and wind :) I honestly don't know what I will do with all of it, but I originally bought it thinking it would make a cute amigurumi duck, so I will at least stick to that plan.

So what is the point of this post other than to show off my freshly wound former messes of yarn? To go on the record saying that you need a yarn winder! I put this purchase off for far too long and wound several skeins by hand (my back hurts just remembering it). Mine was purchased through ebay for $16 from Hong Kong - not a bad price for such wonderful satisfaction :) Also it was amazingly cheaper than any winders I could find from craft and yarn stores in the US. Anyway, if you've thought about buying one but thought it was frivolous like I did, just stop it right now and do yourself a fantastic favor by buying one. You will not regret it! I was able to take a ridiculous mess and turn it into not only usable yarn, but yarn that pulls from the center and sits flat and wont' roll around as I pull - fantastic!

Now I'm off to wind more yarn balls :)

Weekly Pinspirations: How NOT To Clean Yarn

I bought a bag of yarn at a thrift store a few weeks ago for $1 - it was yellow with a white twist in it from what I could see through the bag (it was tied closed), so I bought it and went on my merry way. When I got it home and opened the bag, I was not quite so thrilled with my find ...

It was moldy! Gross! At least it was only $1, but I really want to salvage what I could. I had come across a link on Pinterest that looked like it could help me out:

I saw this pin and figured that if you could wash the yarn to "soften it", it would be ok following the same process to actually wash it. So, I put my yarn into lingerie bags:

I put 3 into one bag and 1 in a bag by itself because it couldn't fit them all into the one. I put them in the wash on a small load on cold water with some detergent and a downy ball with vinegar in it - why not soften the yarn at the same time, right? So, I let the washer do its thing and I came back to find this:

Oh. My. Gosh. Right? It looked like someone had spilled noodles in the bottom of my machine. I was quite bummed to say the least. I hoped that even though the skeins had come undone that they would have still stayed somewhat together so I could separate the 3 in the one bag.

Yeah, that didn't happen. There are a few blobs that are bigger than others and one skein that still looks somewhat like a skein, but they are all seriously tangled together. I couldn't separate them. So, I just left them like that to dry on the dryer. I will say, they are definitely devoid of mold, but now completely unusable for a different reason all together. I shoved the yarn in a bag and that is where it will sit until I feel ambitious enough to try and untangle it - let's face it, it will probably stay all knotted like that for eternity, lol.

So, this pin is absolutely busted. If you need to clean your yarn, I suggest you try this idea instead:

Granted, the description of this pin is on how to make your own wool dryer balls, but the idea is fantastic - put the skein in a nylon and then wash it. This is what I will try next time - I'm hoping I never have to do it again though.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF YARN, DO NOT "WASH" YOUR YARN IN A LINGERIE BAG! Save your sanity and just don't believe pinterest. lol Learn from my misfortune.

Weekly Pinspirations

I've been all about trying out pins lately. I'm not sure what spawned the urge, but it's been ongoing so hopefully i can keep up the momentum :)

I came across this pin a while ago and didn't think much of it, but I've noticed that my house shoes have a little aroma going on so I decided to give this a try.

I'm not a tea drinker, so I picked this box up at Aldi just for this purpose (it cost like $1.17 or something for the whole box). I went with the lemon green tea in hopes that it would make them smell a bit more like lemon and less like tea (again, I'm not a tea person).

I put the tea bags in the toes of my shoes when I went to bed and checked them in the morning. I will say that when I first sniffed them, the foot smell was gone, so I thought it had worked. That was about as far as it got. I wore these around that morning while I was getting ready and by the time I left an hour later, they smelled like feet again. So this works well ... if you don't intend to wear your shoes ever again. I was not impressed. I definitely count this pin as busted.

This second "pinspiration" I read once on one of those annoyingly long pins with the images and little tips. Of course since it was long and annoying, I didn't pin it and therefore I can't find it now. So just trust me, I read this on pinterest. This one said that if your hair has a lot of static, rub a ball of aluminum foil on your head to counteract it. Well, the other day I was sitting at work and my hair was so static-filled it was driving me nuts! It was sticking to my face and neck and looking ridiculous, so I decided to give this a try.

I grabbed some aluminum foil from the lunch area and wadded it up into a ball. Then I started rubbing my head. I rubbed the outside of my hair and even put the ball inside a bit, all with the best of hopes.

I think some of these "tip" pins are made by people who just want you to look like an idiot. As you can see below, this actually MADE THE STATIC WORSE! So not only did I look like a total weirdo (luckily no one saw me), but I had more static in my hair because of it. Needless to say, I was not happy.

So, don't try either of these pins! lol This is the first time in my Weekly Pinspirations that the pins didn't work out at all, but if you never try, you never know, right? So take my trials as your lesson and don't try these yourself. It will save you some unneeded embarrassment, lol.

Weekly Pinspirations

I happen to be completely addicted to kettle corn. I've been buying Popcorn Indiana's Kettle Corn for a while, but not only has it gotten more expensive lately, it's also become very hard to find around here. In the interest of saving money and time searching for it, I decided to make some at home. I tried making kettle corn about a year ago, but I did something wrong because the sugar was burnt and the whole batch tasted like burnt sugar - not good. This time I decided to consult Pinterest and I decided on this recipe:

To be honest, this pin is a little vague and I mostly just used it for the proportions of the ingredients. When I made kettle corn before, I think my problem was that I added the sugar too early which caused it to burn. This time, I decided to add the kernels and the sugar at the same time = success! I also used coconut oil which adds a little natural sweetness even if you don't want to add the sugar. Here is what mine looked like:

lol I didn't notice until now that even my bowl is the same color as the picture in the pin. My kettle corn came out seriously awesome and it filled this entire bowl! The best part of this is how much it cost to make. I bought the corn kernels a long time ago on a buy 1 get 1 free sale and got 2 bottles for $5.99. It only took 1/2 a cup for this recipe which was maybe 1/8th of the bottle so that's $0.38. And a rough cost for the 1/4 cup of sugar is about $0.14 right now. I received the coconut oil free to try, so this batch cost me about $0.52 plus a few shakes of sea salt and the power it took to make it. That's a pretty big difference from almost $5 for a small bag of Popcorn Indiana which is what my local Walgreens has it priced at now. I think I may become not just a kettle corn eating addict, but a making addict as well :)

My second pin was encouraged by my family :) My favorite cookbook is the Our Best Bites cookbook and they have a recipe for Brazilian Lemonade that I have always wanted to try out and I mentioned it to my mom and sisters a week or so ago. We went over to my parent's house on Sunday for a birthday/going away party for my new bro-in-law and my mom had a bag of limes waiting for me. She said she figured I could make it for the party :) I didn't have my cookbook with me, but luckily this is one of their recipes they also posted on their website, so I was able to access it and make it up.

This was my version. Isn't that the perfect pitcher for Brazilian Lemonade? Even though it's called "lemonade" there are no lemons. It's made using limes and I mean the whole lime! You chop it up and throw all the pieces in the blender with sugar water, then pour it through a strainer to get the chunks out. Then you add sweetened condensed milk. Mmmm... I will say, I had to add a bit more sugar than the recipe calls for, but that might be because our limes weren't fully ripe yet. It was really tasty though :) I also highly recommend adding a little bit of sprite to it - delicious!

So those are my pins I tried this past week :) Have you tried anything good lately?

Weekly Pinspirations

The weekend was full of random Pinterest help. Some friends of ours were driving home through Georgia and stopped at the state Farmer's Market to grab peaches. They grabbed a whole box full for us, so I was busy processing the peaches. I started off with peach cobbler for dessert, but I honestly had never made it with anything but canned peaches, so I needed to find a recipe and this one fit the bill:

I didn't get a picture of my results, but I can tell you - it was quite tasty!

With all the peaches I peeled and sliced I ended up with a bunch of pits and seeds. I got it into my head not to waste them so I looked up what to do to start my own seeds.

My search brought me to this pin. It was pretty straight forward - clean all the pulp off the pits, wrap them in a damp paper towel, put them in a ziplock bag and freeze them for several months. Pretty easy. Aparently you can do thus with just the seeds too and most of my pits had already opened up I had mostly seeds. One thing I learned - you have to be careful with peach seeds because they contain cyanide! Interesting ...

For dinner last night, my husband really wanted enchiladas. No problem! I went to the cupboard to get enchilada sauce to find that we only had one can - and the recipe required two. I knew I could make it myself so I turned to Pinterest for a recipe and decided to go with this one:

It was very easy to make. My only complaint is about the person's taste - I made it up like it says and it was total blandsville. Like salty canned tomato sauce. Then I noticed that she says her family doesn't like spicy food - she wasn't kidding. So I pretty much tripled the amount of spices the recipe calls for. I just added a little, tasted it, then added some more, and so on until it tasted like actual enchilada sauce. Success!

This was my sauce and it no joke tasted just like the canned stuff, just without the nasty preservatives :)

And here is my lack luster photograph. I forgot to take a pic until after we ate and they had been out if the oven for about 20 minutes. Is it just me or does cheese just loose all its visual appeal after it's cooled? The enchiladas were really good though, in spite of my not so great looking photo.

So that's a sampling of my Pinterest adventures of the weekend. Have you used any pins lately?

Weekly Pinspirations

I was able to snag some shrimp on sale at Publix last week, so we decided to pull it out of the freezer and make it for dinner yesterday. As a new-shrimp-eater, I have never cooked them before. I had seen a pin that looked easy and tasty, so I decided to give it a try.

This pin has a very easy recipe. I just covered a baking sheet in aluminum foil (for easy clean up) and put it in the oven on 350F with a stick of butter cut up on it until the butter melted. Then I took it out, sliced up a lemon, squeezed it slightly and then set the slices in the pan. Next I added the shrimp and just stirred them on the pan to coat them in the butter. Once they were all spaced out again, I sprinkled a packed of Italian Dressing mix on top and baked them for 10 minutes.

My pan isn't as lemon-full as the other (the recipe said just one lemon but clearly they used more), but man was it tasty! ate the shrimp with noodles and a little of the butter sauce to coat everything. I definitely recommend this recipe - it was very easy and came out great. Man, I love Pinterest!

Weekly Pinspirations

So, remember at the beginning of the year when I started this post series and only did it for, like, 2 weeks? Yeah, I suck, I know. That doesn't mean I haven't been trying out more things I pin on Pinterest though! I've used a bunch of ideas inspired by pins over the last few months around my house. Have I taken pictures of them to show you? Not so much. The last few weeks though, I have made a few food items thanks to Pinterest that I thought I would share :)

This one my husband actually saw on someone's Facebook wall and decided we needed to try it. Coincidentally, I had pinned it way back when, so we had the recipe on hand and cave it a go. You take a sourdough loaf and cut the top in cubes (it's still connected at the base). Then you sprinkle it with cheese, bacon bits, and melted butter with ranch dressing mix in it. It was just as terribly fattening as it sounds, but oh man was it good!

Last night, we decided to eat the lobster tails I got on sale last weekend for dinner. I've never made lobster myself before, so I consulted Pinterest. This is the link for the recipe we chose to use.

The photo doesn't look like much, but the recipe was fantastic! You remove the lobster from the shell, set it on top, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle with lemon pepper, and broil it for about 5 - 8 minutes. So easy! And it was seriously good. Here is ours:

It looks a little weird here (it slipped off the shell and didn't want to sit back on it for the photo), but trust me - delicious!

And this was our carnage afterward :) These guys sure were tasty!

Have you tried out any pins lately? Do share!

Pinspirations: Week 2

So, I was a little delinquent in my Pinspirations posts - already! Man, I hope I can do better :) Here are a few pins I've tried and loves lately:

This pin was seriously life changing when I first found it months ago and I do this at least once a month as my "bad stain" pile builds up. If you have any type of stain, try this before you throw the garment out. The pin says it's for pit stains - I have used this trick on that for a thrift store top and it looked as good as new! Also, this recently saved one of my favorite skirts. I went to wash it and noticed some brown staining on it (probably that bled off a rag or something in the hamper). So, I combined 1 part regular Dawn dish soap, 2 parts hydrogen peroxide, and a little shake of baking soda to give it extra staying power. I brushed the mixture into the stains with a toothbrush and then let it sit for 30 minutes before putting into the wash like normal. Good as new! You would n ever know there were stains there :) This also is great for those ghosty marks that fabric softener can leave if it accidentally got directly on the fabric. This is one of the pins I am most glad I found and I highly recommend it!

This pin is a little bit of a cop out because I've known about this trick for a long time (Also, I don't do this personally anymore, but I can vouch that it works!). If you have an old sweater that has pilled from washing and friction over time (little balls of fluff built up on it), you can actually use a new disposable razor. Lightly rake the razor over your sweater and it will de-fuzz quickly and easily :) They also make little clothing shavers - I use the Dritz model and it works great. It does the same thing.

Have you ever tried either of these tricks? Let us know your results!

Pinspirations: Week 1

Just like all Pinterest addicts, I have a zillion pins on my boards. Occasionally I will try one of two of them, but the ratio of 'pins tried' to just 'pinned' is crazy. I love cruising pinterest and it gives me lots of great ideas, and I really want to make an effort to put more of these great ideas into practice. So, I will try to make this a weekly post of something that inspired me or helped me in some way during the week :)

This week, I've been on a cleaning kick - well, I've tried to be. Let's say I've wanted to clean and got a decent amount done, but my illnesses prevented me from doing as much as I like. But I digress. I have these small rugs that we use in our kitchen that look and feel just nasty. I saw this pin a while back and luckily remembered it yesterday so I put it to the test on the two little rugs.

If you want to try this yourself - make sure you actually run the whole wash cycle each time. I tried just doing it on rise and spin and ended up with a bunch of wet baking soda in my washer. But I ran it again with both the baking soda and the vinegar in one wash and it worked great. Those rugs look better than they have in years :)

Also while cleaning yesterday, I did lots of laundry and really wanted to get it all put away. This is a constant problem at our house - the laundry gets done but just remains in baskets because we can't get it in our drawers or we're just plain lazy. In an effort to make this better, I saw this pin and tried it out on my husbands t-shirt drawer.

This seriously has changed my life. When the shirts are folded this way, not only can you fit more in the drawer (I was able to add at least 8 shirts!), it also makes it easier to tell which shirt is which because the graphic on the front ends up right on the fold. Easy peasy!

So, hopefully this can add a little inspiration to your week too :) Have you found any useful pins lately?