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!!!