Chain Link 2009 was a fabulous experience! I'll be posting some of my favorite conference memories this week. Keep watching for updates!

50 Questions

1. High heels or boots? Boots, preferably with high heels!
2. What time did you get up this morning? 5:30
3. Diamonds or pearls? Neither
4. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? X-Men Origins: Wolverine
5. What is your favorite TV show? Heroes, Project Runway
6. What do you usually have for breakfast? Coffee
8. What food do you dislike? Liver
9. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Phantom of the Opera soundtrack
10. Favorite sandwich? jalapeno pimento cheese
11. What characteristic do you despise? two-faced people
12. Favorite clothing? romantic styles
13. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation? New Zealand/Australia
14. Are you an organized person? no
15. Where would you like to retire to? here
16. What was your most recent memorable birthday? the year dh insisted my birthday was in April, not March (after we'd been married a couple years)
17. What are you going to do when you finish this? watch a Harry Potter movie and work on the Baby Doll Dress by Amy O'Neill Houck
18. Favorite drink? diet cola
19. What's your sign? Aries
20. Morning person or a night person? night
21. What is your shoe size? 7.5
22. Pets? 3 cats, lots of fish
23. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? I found a replacement roommate for Chain Link!
24. What did you want to be when you were little? a psychiatrist or a genetics researcher
25. What is your favorite flower? lily of the valley
26. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to? October 3: family reunion in Gatlinburg, TN
27. What was the last thing you ate? scones with butter and blackcurrant preserves
28. Do you wish upon stars? no
29. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? any version of purple
30. How is the weather right now? sunny and cool
31. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? my next door neighbor
32. Favorite soft drink? diet cola
33. Hair color? dark blonde
34. What was your favorite toy as a child? books, books, and more books
35. Summer or winter? both
36. Chocolate or vanilla? ice cream vanilla, chocolate everything else
37. Coffee or tea? both
38. Favorite Food of all time? sushi
40. When was the last time you cried? reading Tad Williams' Otherland series
41. What is under your bed? storage boxes
42. What did you do last night? Ladies' Tea at church
43. What are you afraid of? taking my feet off the bottom in water
44. Salty or sweet? depends on the time of the month
45. How many years at your current job? 14
46. Favorite day of the week? Sunday
47. Positive or negative? Positive
48. Favorite pastime? crocheting and reading
49. Beach or mountain? mountains
50. Do you like finding out all this stuff about your friends? sure

The BBC believes most people have read only 6 of these 100 baooks. Copy, edit and paste into a note of your own. Put an X by the books you have read.

I've read 37 of them!

x 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
x 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
x 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
x 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
x 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee-
x 6 The Bible
x 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
x 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
x 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
x 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
x 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
x 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
x 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky-
x 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
x 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -
x 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame-
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
x 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
x 34 Emma - Jane Austen -
x 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
x 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
x 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
x 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -
x 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
x 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
x 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
x 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
x 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
x 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
x 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
x 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
x 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley-
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
x 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno - Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
x 80 Possession - AS Byatt
x 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
x 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
x 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -
x 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

After dilly-dallying for a long time, I finally got around to submitting my application for professional status to the Crochet Guild of America back in July. I figured if I was going to be the luncheon speaker on Professional Development Day, it might be a good thing if I were actually a CGOA Professional.

I was very pleased to hear the other day that my application was approved! I am so excited, and I feel like I'm finally really, truly a part of the professional crochet industry!

The 2008 Crochet Games of Ancient Greece being held at Crochetville are about to come to a close. Over 230 crochet athletes accepted a challenge to complete a project that would be difficult, but not impossible, for them to complete between the time of the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies on August 8 and the time the flame is extinguished on August 24.

Come check out this thread to see who is winning medals!

I have just set up an Amazon bookstore to make it easy for people to shop for crochet, beading, and knitting books when visiting my blog. Click here to visit my store!

Shop for books like these:





Yes, this is part of the amazon affiliate program, so your purchases help support this blog!

I have FINALLY been able to record Episode 3 of Crochet Unraveled, after a very long absence from the airwaves! First, I was totally swamped over the summer managing the Crochetville auction. Then, I had a bad cold toward the end of summer as the auction was ending that left me with a bad case of bronchitis. Which meant that I couldn't talk for long periods of time without sounding like this: cough, cough, a-sentence-or-two, cough, cough, half-a-sentence, cough, cough, another-couple-sentences, cough cough,...... Well, you get the picture.

But I was determined to get 2008 off to a good start and make it back to the podcastign world! So with lots of concentration and determination, I was able to make it through a new 30-minute episode!

Now I need to get working on Episode 4.

Here are some links you may need for Crochet Unraveled:

Episode 3 Show Notes

Crochet Unraveled Episode 3: direct link to the episode

Crochet Unraveled RSS feed

Crochet Unraveled can also be found in the iTunes podcast directory. Just use the advance search feature. You can search on the title with "Crochet Unraveled" or use the subject crochet. You should be able to turn us up either way.

1. Lacy Trellis socks for Jill

2. Fat Bottom Bag in blue for me

3. FBB in brown for Julie

4. FBB in black for Kathy

5. FBB in black for Lynne

6. Bell Sleeve Pullover from Tahki Stacy Charles for me

7. Belt from Noro Daria for me

8. Green Cable and Puff Purse for me

9. Cable and Puff Purse for Julie

10. Cable and Puff Purse for Kathy

11. Cable and Puff Purse for Mom

12. Cable and Puff Purse for Aunt Lynne

13. Seraphina Shawl for Jill

14. Cupcake from SnB: HH for me