EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

However you heard that in your head, multiply the pitch by 3 and the volume by 5! I am SO excited!!!!!!!!!! My kit came in today, and it's a fantastic kit!!!!!!!!!!!! With every thing I opened, I squeed louder! LOL I definitely nominate my spoiler for best kit!!! And everyone else is saying they are limiting the pictures they post because they don't want it to be too picture heavy, but a) I don't think I can limit it, and b) even if I could, I wouldn't, because I'm far too excited to not share all the pictures I have! (Hey, just be grateful I'm not sharing multiple angles of each individual object!!! LOL) So without further ado, the purple-y gold awesomeness that is my kit!!!!

Everything all wrapped up:

A package with more little goodies inside!:

I have wanted this yarn cutter since I first saw it! It's so pretty! And I can never have too many locking stitch markers (for crocheted projects) and stitch holders to free up my knitting needles! LOL:

OMGosh, some of the YUMMIEST yarn EVER! Knit Picks Imagination hand-painted sock yarn (50% superwash merino, 25% alpaca, 25% nylon) in the Evil Stepmother colorway (just in time for the Dobby sock-along!):

HOORAY!!!!! for a knitting chart keeper! Maybe this will help me be motivated to finish Percy before starting the sock-along! LOL:



A cute little bag in the most gorgeous shade of purple!!! I siwh I could get an accurate shot of the color, but for now the flash on the camera will have to suffice:



And this hat! I am in love with this hat! It's the first knitted colorwork anything in my house, made by me or sent to me! So pretty!:



Me wearing said hat:



My kit unwrapped (the 2 sock patterns are in the back):

And there is also a cute little purple notepad, 3 packets of hot cooca (I know what I'm drinking tomorrow morning! Not to mention tonight!) and some Bertie Botts Ever Flavor Beans! Yay! :D Thankyou-thankyou-thankyou-thankyou-thankyou-thankyou-thankyou, Minerva! I love it all!!!!!

Whoopsie Daisy!

I really and truly meant to blog while we were in the States over the Thanksgiving holidays, but time got away from me! LOL Upon coming home to Italy, though, I found a package waiting for me that nearly completes my spoilee's kit! I was looking at what I had laying around and noticed that it looked sparse...because I forgot about the little tidbits to fill it out! So I'll be working on that over the next couple of days. :)

On another note...I also got into my shrinkydinks! I noticed the ways that Pren had used them and told myself I had to try them! Here's my first attempt:

Using a picture taken while we were in the States, I made a magnet. :) It's far from perfect, but it's still super cute, and I'm betting my BFF will love it. :) (She's the one in the picture with my younger poltergeist.) The settings on my printer are weird and I can't find a way to set the ink at 50%, I just see the "quick print" option, but that puts lines in the final product that make it look less than what it should be...I may be checking out Poppy's printer settings when I'm over there in a couple of days! ;) And now I'm off to scrounge up the material that I was intending to use the shrinkydinks for after this little test run. :D

Counting down!!!!!

Wow! So much that has to be done to go on vacation!!!! Thankfully, Mr. Bagnold is feeling better, and so far I've not had any more symptoms, so I don't think he got me sick. Whew!

My spoilee's kit is coming together nicely! I have most of it all together, but am still waiting on a couple of miscellaneous things to come in the mail to add to it. Unfortunately, that means I'm not going to make the early send dates...But I won't sacrifice the awesome-ness that is Ginny's kit for the early send! :) And now, I'm off to continue getting ready for our vacation and continue to count down the hours until we leave! :D

Oh my, oh my!

Oh, I am so very tired! So much to do in so little time! My spoilee's kit is pretty much done; just waiting on the yarn to get here...and soon I'll be up to my magical ears in preparing for an overseas trip with two little munchkins...the vast (and blessed) difference this time from the Edinburgh trip is that I will not be the only adult! Mr. Bagnold is coming along as well! Side-along apparition with ones as small as that is strongly ill-advised, the MoM doesn't issue portkeys for everyone's leisure trips, the poltergeists can't exactly ride brooms that distance, and magic carpets aren't allowed...so we'll be traveling the good old-fashioned way of Muggle airplanes. I am very excited to get to spend the American holiday of Thanksgiving in the U.S. this year and to see friends and family we've not seen in 2 years! So this coming week is going to be very full for me, preparing to leave...packing, cleaning, arranging schedules for our time there...it's definitely a good thing I was so excited about putting my spoilee's kit together!!! Unfortunately, though, I do believe that as a result of the trip, I won't be making the early send dates. :( But it's for a very good reason, so I can comfort myself with that! :D

Oh! And the next round of shuntbumping was today! It was the final for crochet (I was up against Andromeda, a worthy opponent!), and the second to last round for the knitters. I am proud to say that I won! I am, as Olive dubbed me, the "fastest hooker in HSKS9"!...Er, hang on a second...

Dark Magic?....or Mischief?...

I don't know why....but I cannot access Ravelry! I'm about to go out of my mind! I've not been able to check the forums since I last posted a reply in the Portree Locker Room about the moebius! I had to take the poltergeists out of the house so that Mr. Bagnold could study for a teast, so we went and did laundry and ate dinner out and all that...I come home...and Ravelry won't work!!!!!! I can access every other page in the World Wide Web, but not that one! I'm actually going through withdrawals...I've been trying for over the past hour to log on! I may seriously cry...(Wait...is that what they call an addiction?...) Anyway, I can't decide if it's the work of dark wizards or if someone on another team just has a really good handle on the confundus charm...It's only my computer (Poppy can log on just fine!), and it's only that one site!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!


In other news (that is a lot happier), my Knit Picks order came in, so now I have the _____ to make the _______ for Ginny's kit, as well as the _____ . Oh! And the yarn that I ordered for the shuntbumping is finally here! LOL The buttons came in today as well. And Pren, so did my first ever shrinky dinks! I'm super excited to try them out! (Now I just have to wait for my printer's ink to get here to play with it...) Ah, well, I'm off to ____ the _____ for the _____ that I've been itching to cast on....I'm hoping this Ravelry issue resolves itself...and soon!

Let the shuntbumping continue!!!

Whew! I've been so busy with being the Team Announcer and Assistant Captain (on top of the everyday duties of caring for two poltergeists), that I'm cutting it a little close on my blogging this week! Shuntbumping was fun last week, though my opponent, Poppy Pluot, was at a bit of a disadvantage, seeing as how I'm the one that taught her to crochet, and I've been doing it for about 13 years now, as opposed to her handful of months' experience. LOL Here's a picture of my completed hat for round 1:

I'm in awe of how quickly some of them got theirs done! I think the first competitor done only took an hour to make a single crochet hat of adult size!!!!!!!!!!!! And here I ignorantly thought that I was a quick crocheter!!! This hat took me near to 3 hours to complete! (Though, in my defense, the pattern wasn't released until midnight my time, after a looooooooong day, and I was sick, so.....) I am grateful for the new rules, though, where it is decided by who first posts a picture, as opposed to relying on the post to deliver it in a timely manner (a laughable concept when dealing with APO addresses). And because of said rule change, I am now able to gift this hat to someone. :) And now I'm forging ahead to round two!!! Yay! This time I'm going up against Emma Gorodok, and I once again have the upper hand. Unfairly so, actually. She's going to a convention out-of-town and will not have Internet access for 2 days! But, that actually helps me out a little bit, seeing as how we have a Halloween event scheduled today for the poltergeists on base (that I completely forgot about until Mr. Bagnold reminded me)! I had ordered some yarn through the Muggle Internet, enough for all four rounds, along with some buttons for the final two rounds, but the order hasn't come in yet, unfortunately...(Good thing I have a stash to dip into!!!)

But I need to go get cleaned up and prepare for the time out with the poltergeists. They're dressing up as superheroes this year: Superman and Batman. And we've already carved pumpkins with Poppy and her little house elf. It was a lot of fun! Halloween is almost upon us!

The Preliminaries

Find the following people among players on your and the other teams. (Each person can only be listed once.)

1. Someone with the same craft as you (either those listed above or another one).
   Stellwa Quinn (knitting!)
   
2. Someone who was born in the same month.
   Celeena Cree (Oct. 22)
   
3. Someone from a different country.
   Lizzie Wychwood
   
4. A new HSKS Quidditch player.
   Maisy Muddlestixs
   
5. A player who has been in 3 or more HSKS swaps.
   Rowena Bladvak
   
6. A player who has a bigger stash than you! (And if your stash is the biggest, proudly say so!)
   Antonio de la Weasley
   
7. A player who both knits and crochets.
   Agatha Vablatsky
   
8. Someone who has the same favorite color as you.
   Megeara Black (blue!)
   

I saw that Stellwa is making a murloc (from the universe of World of Warcraft), and though I can't stand the little buggers, I can't wait to see her finished work!

Cel'eena has quite a few projects centered around amigurumi, but in my opinion, this little guy takes the cake!

Lizzie's knitting prowess seems to know no bounds (at least, not when it comes to needle size)! I absolutely love this project, and the fact that it is indeed a miniature of an actual pattern in there!

Maisy made this lovely blanket that looks as though it's quilted rather than crocheted...I have a similar project myself, on my page...I love the visual effects of that!

I got a good empathetic chuckle out of the name of the project that Rowena gave to these beautiful mitts...I tend to rather be a klutz myelf! LOL

The color of these socks Antonio made jumped right off the screen at me, since I have use that exact colorway myself! So beautiful and vibrant!

I can't wait to see Agatha's finished scarf from the traveling scarf group we were both in, in between HSKS swaps!

I love the neckercheif that Megaera made! I love lace that looks like leaves!

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes!

Summer Camp has ended, yet there are a few wayward owls left out and about (Persephone being one of them...she's not made it to Washington yet...), and one of them found it's way to me, here in Italy! It took me a few minutes to recognize the name of the sender, but as soon as I had (since I knew I had been chosen to receive a WWW), I performed a couple of simple spells to make sure there was nothing too bad in there...and it's a good thing I did! There was a fins powder in there that made me think of something Muggles are afraid of, called "anthrax" (though I know a fellow camper would not send that!)...it turned out that the sweets Salamandra enclosed had gotten a little hole in the bottom and some of it leaked out. :) She said that she tried to use the time turner Lizzie sent her to go back and send it on time, but it didn't quite work as she planned. (Maybe I should offer her some help on how to operate it?...but time turners are extremely rare since all the others getting destroyed at the Ministy all those years ago, so I may be tempted to make off with it! LOL) Along with the sweets inside (which I haven't gotten to try yet, but I'm excited to, since it involves licorice!), there were two pencils with very fun designs that are exactly within my tastes for patterns/designs, and some fun stickers! (I got a huge kick out of the fact that the printed languages on the sticker packets were French and English...and an even bigger kick out of the fact that I could actually read said French!) :D Evidently, the Wheeze was in the potion she had included, but it seems to have "gone bad" and turned into a crystallized form...now it works as bath salts! Yay!!!

Yarny Goodness!

So a few weeks back, I signed up for Olive's sock club...and am I ever glad I did!!!! The package came in the mail on Friday! The theme is Pear & Pomegranate, and I love it!!! I'm not generally a tea drinker, and nearly always prefer iced tea to hot, (though the tea I drank while in England was pretty amazing!), so she sent a pear and pomegranate tea (with a little note on brewing it to ice!) and a tea infuser spoon (very nice, as I previously had nothing for straining tea...all the tea I have is in bags!)...I think I'll be trying my new new tea tonight after I get home from Venice! There are also some incredibly cute note cards and gorgeous sock yarn dyed in reds and greens(which was all nicely wrapped with a cute little "B" sticker, but I couldn't wait to open it and didn't get a picture of it until post-opening), along with the cutest stitch markers! And I love, love, love, love, love the bag! It's uber-cute!

(And it seems my computer is having issues, so I'll have to post pictures later...)

Road Trip!

I'm so glad I'm one of the people that can sleep in a moving vehicle...when the Knight Bus comes, i think I'm going to just pass out on it for the whole ride back home. Mr. Bagnold took a trip with a friend to Germany this weekend for a gamer convention, and so I'm not only alone with the poltergeists, but without a car. (They drove there.) And the little ones are none to happy that Daddy is gone. I didn't even realize it was already Saturday! I can't believe I've fallen behind like this! And I'm so exhausted, too. I feel like I've been such a bad counselor! To my Erumpents, I apologize profusely! And to my spoilee, I apologize even more! I'm having some bag issues. But I need to go tend to my counselor duties before I fall asleep and the week is over! Anyone have any invigorating potion?...this Muggle caffiene just isn't cutting it.

Follow the Patronus

::you find on the ground an object that looks a bit out of place...you bend to pick it up and are whooshed away::

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Whew! Who knew that wrapping up camp would take so much effort? Kits are being packed up, owls are being set loose all over, last minute reminders have been all over the place, mis-placed items finding their way back to the appropriate trunks...it's been mayhem!

Last week I was stung not once, but twice! I'd never been stung before in my life, but we had some wasps that, unbeknown to me, took up residence in our mailbox. I got stung last Friday when I tried to empty said mailbox and then again Saturday when I opened the gate (guess I rattled it too much)! Mr. Bagnold has since exterminated them, and a good thing, too! That Muggle "remedy," Benadryl, makes me a bit loopy! So no more stings this week, thankfully, but just today, the stings I got last week started itching terribly, for no rhyme or reason. Couldn't find my cortisone cream, so I had to settle for calamine lotion. It seems to be wearing off. :(

I want to try and make a little trip to Venice tomorrow, but we'll see whether or not that happens...and I have game 7 to put on! Whew! Guess I'd better get to it (after making the blog rounds and hitting the showers)! Be sure to get all your WWW's and everything back in your trunks before the Knight Bus shows up in a couple weeks!

Picture fun!

Muggles may not have moving photos, but they sure have technology! We bought a Muggle printer (it's this device you connect to a computer and it will eat a piece of blank paper and poop out a paper with pictures and words on it!) that has something called a "scanner" on it. You lift the lid, set something on the glass, close the lid, push a button, and voila! Whatever you put on that glass goes into your computer! Anyway, I found a Muggle photo from when I was a wee little witch (I'm guessing some time around the mid-1980's...I look about 2 or 3 years old and was born in 1983) with my cousin, and wanted to share it (because it's so darned cute!):




Can you guess (without looking it up on the Muggle site Facebook) which one is me?! Share your own summer photo in your blog!

Great Green Globs....

Ahh, potions. Not one of my favorite classes at Hogwarts, but certainly vital! Here are the potions that I'm guessing Winnie brought with her:

1. Draught of Peace
2. Mandrake Restorative Draught
3. Babbling Beverage
4. Essence of Murtlap

I'm not quite sure how we're supposed to guess 7 potions with only 4 clues...but there's my guesses for what was put out there, and here are three random ones (and why I think she would have them!):

5. Invigoration Draught (for the long camp hikes!)
6. Sleekeazy's Hair Potion (because, let's face it, there aren't the greatest resources out here in the middle of nowhere for a girl to primp, and Sleekeazy's helps!)
7. Hiccuping Solution (for playing practical jokes, naturally!)

Edit: Okay, so those were my original other three guesses, but now I want to change them (if it's not too late, which I feel it probably is), since Miss Wartbobble actually had a list of potions on a previous blog posting!

5. Forgetfulness Potion (I must have been slipped a little of this...)
6. Shrinking Solution
7. Wit-Sharpening Potion

ENGLAND!!!!!!!!!!! (Part 5)

I believe this one will be the grand finale...

Once we were done on the boat ride, the rain had pretty well let up, and we stopped at the cafe and gift shop for a bit of refreshment...Poppy and I both got scones (with jam and clotted cream) and small (note that I said small) hot chocolates.





It was soooooooooooooooooo good! I think Poppy would agree with me that it was better than any birthday cake would have been! (It was her birthday!)



We didn't have a whole lot of time before we had to go back to Emma's to get our things for our trip home, so we stayed in that area and walked around a bit, enjoying the English countryside.







On our walk, Lizzie was excited to see something that she used to play with in her childhood...



It's a swing! You sit on the stick and swing! It was a lot of fun. Of course I, being the city girl that I am, had some trouble getting off without running into the huge tree the rope was tied to, and Lizzie had to save me! LOL





So we each took a turn, and then just a little further on, we found......



Willy Wonka's Chocolate Waterfall! Who knew?! So after that lovely stroll, we headed back toward Emma's home, stopping by their local marina on the way (and here's Poppy on the lock we had to walk across to get to the marina).



They had some lovely paint jobs on the boats!




(And I absolutely loved this building that was nearby...quite picturesque, don't you think?)



And because I have to put it somewhere, this is the beautiful view I had from the room I slept in, and the lovely occupant with whom I shared the room...



After that, we made sure all was packed (including our goods from the nearby shops...Wensleydale cheese, crumpets and candy!) and headed out to Nottingham. We found an old, abandoned field, got on our broomsticks and kicked off to home. It's quite a length of time to be on a broomstick, for sure, but above all the clouds, it was beautiful! I did actually get to see the coast of France, and wanted to land there so badly I nearly cried, but we had to push on to get back home and catch the Knight Bus to the Hogwarts Express and back home. I miss the moors sooooooooooooo much! Goodbye, England! I will come again, some day...

ENGLAND!!!!!!!!!!! (Part 4)

I can't believe it's already been over a week since I was in England! It doesn't seem that long ago! Next time I'll just have to stay longer. ;) But I know that if I don't finish my blogging now, the England trip will go the way of the recordings of the Edinburgh trip...into obscurity...LOL

So the Sunday we were there, Poppy and I got to spend some time with Lizzie, as Emma had a graduation party for a family friend to go to. Sunday's plans were very spur-of-the-moment! LOL It had started out all rainy (I got to experience British rain! It's nothing like American rain! ;) LOL ), but I thoroughly enjoyed it, really and truly! I love rainy weather, and getting rained on there only made our experience that much more genuine. ;) Anyway, Lizzie took us over to the Standedge Tunnels. We went by the exhibit first, and learned a fair bit before getting to go on the canal boat ride!


We had to wear hard hats (for safety reasons) if we went out from under the boat's roof.


The ride took us a quarter of a mile into the tunnel (the total length of the tunnel is 3 and a quarter miles), and it was quite dark! The history behind the tunnels is truly intriguing! They even found a pick ax head when they were going about the restoration of the tunnels, and they believe it was used in the original making of the tunnels, in the 1800's! I got to hold it, even. :)


It wasn't very large, and it wasn't heavy at all, really, but I can easily see how repeatedly swinging it (especially overhead!) it would quickly become heavy. They believe that the owner of the ax head they found was illiterate, because you could see the markings he made on it to show ownership of it.


We even got to see a "drill"! It was a tool that was used as a drill long before power tools were invented...and let me tell you, I am so glad that I never had to drill a hole the way they did! I didn't get a picture of it, but it basically looks like this thin, cast iron rod with a little point on the end of it. One man would hold it up, and someone else would use a hammer to pound it against the wall of rock. The one holding the drill would rotate the drill a small degree, and it would get hit again. They repeatedly did that so they could fit some explosives into the hole, light it, run like mad, and pray they ran far enough away to not get killed by the blast. Sounds like fun, right? (Thank goodness for spells like bombarda!)

Inside the tunnel, you can see these "ridges," which are supportive arches that were added with the restoration, but there are actual gaps between these arches, and you can see how far up the tunnel ceiling used to be (though you can't really see it in the picture...you just see the arch and then pitch black. LOL).





It was a very narrow and dark tunnel (certainly not recommended for those that are clausterphobic!) where the boat barely had room to fit through. We repeatedly hit the walls. And back in the day of no engines, the poor Muggles had to use this technique called "legging," where two people would lay on their backs at the front of the boat (laying head-to-head) and sort of walk sideways down the canal to move the boat through. Evidently, it gets a bit wider further down the tunnel, and you had to be carfeul, or you may fall in! For those areas, they used another technique, called "shafting," where a person standing at the back of the boat would use a long pole to push the boat along. And there were people that did nothing but legging and shafting all day long! What a job!

The tunnel also runs parallel to the train lines, and we could hear them rumble past a few times. In fact, there was also a side tunnel (that was long since caved in, and didn't allow boat access) that connected to the train line.



Anyway, lots of history and fun little facts, but enough of the lecture. :) It is summer, after all, and I know not everyone is as into learning as the Ravenclaw lot. :) But the Standedge Tunnels was really a lot of fun to go see!



And I think I'll leave the rest of the day's adventures to yet another blog!

Week 5 Game, Part 2!

Here is the marker I will be using in the photos I take (I absolutely love my engagement ring!):



And here are the photos!

#1 - Animagus: (Internet image)



#2 - Daily Prophet (which, here, is cleverly disguised as a Muggle paper):



#3 - Bowtruckle (This is a very special bowtruckle from a Knit Picks tree that I coerced out into the open with some wood lice!):



#4 - Extendable Ears:


#5 - Radish Earrings:


#6 - Forbidden Forest (my marker is in this picture, I promise you...on my left ring finger!):


#7 - Golden Cherub: (Internet image)



#8 - Thestral (Hey, it only said "fleshless black-winged skeleton! LOL He's holding my ring...):


#9 - High Inquisitor: (Internet image)



#10 - Educational Decree: (Internet image)