Another BIG SP4 thank-you!! (and: NSD)

I've decided it's going to be impossible to get a picture of the true color of this yarn. It's a very dark eggplant with bits of lighter purple and dark blue in it. Gorgeous! Best of all, it's 100% silk! Yum! From Japan!! Way, way, cool. It looks like lace or fingering weight, which I have been wanting to try. My Secret Pal #2, who has chosen to remain secret, suggested working three strands together, but I think I will work with it as a single strand and treat it as fingering weight. I have been wanting an excuse (like we knitters need one, right?!) to get Folk Shawls...


Yarn from Japan


My only trouble is figuring out exactly how much I have here. There are no labels, for which my SP#2 apologized, so I have to do some calculating, perhaps by weight? Any suggestions?

Thanks again, SP#2. She packaged it in a very cool bag, too. And did I mention it came all the way from Japan?! Exciting.


Paper bag album - had a flash shot with better colors,
but I like that this shows the mess my scraproom is in...

I was poo-pooing these just a few weeks ago, but I remembered to take my camera with me to Kindermusik last Thursday, and got some great shots of the kids. Sooo...here's my first attempt at a Paper Bag Album.

I am SUCH A DORK when it comes to following instructions. I didn't get to crop until 8p last night, and my LSS (Local Scrapbook Store) closes at 11p, so I didn't have much time to figure this out, either. I am going to crop tomorrow, and I should be able to finish it up to give to our Kindermusik instructor at our end-of-the-year party on Monday afternoon.

It's basically 4 paper bags folded in half, with the very bottom cut off and a fancy "Japanese stab binding" technique on the spine (explained at length, with photos, at the above link). Not a whole lot of room. I had another way figured out (read: I made a big mistake at first, and cut off the whole bottom of the paper bags), but it works much better folded. I have tags tucked into the "top" of the bags (every other page) in different colors and I'm using up a bunch of scraps from a Close To My Heart paper pack.

Speaking of CTMH, I went to Mega Meet today. It was National Scrapbooking Day (NSD) today (first Saturday in May), so I got online first thing at the Creating Keepsakes message board (I'm Motown Lady), got some sale items at the CK store, chatted a bit, then watched Lisa Bearnson on QVC. It inspired me to get out to Novi today, and I did it just in the nick of time.

I didn't sign up for any classes but my buddy Lisa T. was there (dang, I know too many Lisas) so I called ahead and caught up with her as she got out of her last class. I've found the classes are all about selling you product, plus the show runs Thurs-Fri-Sat, so unless I get a babysitter, I'm out of luck on classes anyway. But I did score some specials: a $10 black linen album (8x8) for my Book of Me, a $7 board book I'm curious to try out, some cheap bottle caps and twill tape, and $1 laser die cuts from Deluxe Cuts. The biggest expense was the $10 admission charge (ugh) and the $5 parking charge (double ugh).

I'm saving my dough for the Auntie Amy show (dang, again with the rhyming!) in August.