Website update - FROM LUNA'S KNITS

For the first time in a while, I finally took the time to update my website: http://luna.radiantknights.com

It is all info about my knitting and photos of current projects that will be available for sale. I'm a little bummed because I won't be able to do a craft fair that I was hoping to do this year, but there's always next November. I just don't have enough merchandise to sell, and I need to be focusing on what to make for Christmas gifts this year.

I finished an adorable baby hat the other day, and got it all blocked out. I need to get a photo of it soon, but I am happy with it. I have enough yarn to make a second one, so I will probably make another to add to my sale inventory. I need to start focusing on the things I'm making for Christmas.The hat that I made was using Blue Sky Organic Cotton and a Blue Sky pattern. It is really soft, and very cute! I'm looking forward to making another one!

New Blog Address, among other things

Well, as you can see, I now have a new blog address for this blog. I finally decided to change it because it made the most sense to do so. My logic was that after the baby comes, I won't be needing to refer to the baby as "Roo" anymore, since the baby will actually have a name by then!

Today I plan on spending a lot of the day getting my e-mail address book updated and other stuch stuff, so I'll be doing that today. If anyone has any new contact information I should have, please send it my way.

I also spent some time having to have all of my photos moved from Yahoo! Photos to Shutterfly, because Yahoo! Photos is shutting down. I opted to go with Shutterfly because I'll still have the option of being able to have photos sent to Target to get them picked up. Fortunately, Yahoo! and Shutterfly took care of all the hard work for me. Now I've just got to work on updating some of the albums.

Lets see, what else is new... Oh! We have been been graciously given TONS of baby hand-me-downs this week! Lots from Matt, Martha and the crew in Hancock, and some from Kate and Tim, some of our neighbors on our street, after not selling nearly as much as they thought they would at their yardsale yesterday! Our whole room is practially done now! It's amazing!

Speaking of baby stuff...


At the end of this week, your baby officially enters the second trimester of development. Although only 3 inches from crown to rump and weighing just half an ounce, she looks, well, human! Her eyes have moved from the sides of her head to the front, and her ears are in their normal position. She's also got reflexes--if you prod her, she'll squirm (although you still won't feel it), and her hands and feet respond to stimuli by closing or clenching.

What else is new... I'm in the process of applying for a teaching job in Epping, a math and science job for 6th grade. Not my ideal, but it would get me certified for elementary ed., and then I could move on to something different. I'm still trying to figure out my ideal work situation for after the baby is here, but it seems that there will never be the "ideal" job, so I'll have to just be some what picky. I am going to go through todays paper and see what they have to offer in there.

John did not get the job at Spaulding High School that we were hoping for. But at least he is happy with his current job. He said today too that he wasn't entirely sure about working with high school kids anyway, so this may be the best thing for him right now. I'm kind of glad that he's not leaving, because at least we'll know that our insurance is secure while the baby is on the way. After we have the baby, THEN we can change insurances!

Alright, I guess that's enough for today... I need to get some muffins in the oven... gotta love those random cravings! At least the craving is for blueberry muffins!

Finished projects and website updates

I feel like it's been forever since I've posted about knitting. Truth is, I've just been really busy, but I've got some completed projects to share with everyone now!

Above: This was my first ever attempt at a hat, and it came out so cute! It is a preemie baby hat I made for a woman in RCIA who is going to be a first time mom in May. She's actually due in June, but they think there is a chance she will have to go early, hence why I made the had for a preemie. This is made from the Plymouth Baby Dream Baby DK yarn . It was very easy to knit up and I did it in just a few days. It was great!Above: Basic dishcloth made of 100% cotton chenille yarn.


Above: Don't Mess With Texas cloth. Not a very good photo of it. Check out my webpage for a better one.Above: A purple washcloth made from the "Spa Sets to Knit" book. It was a VERY easy cloth.
Above: A yellow cloth made from the "Spa Sets to Knit"book. Both this and the purple were made of Sugar and Cream yarn, a 100% cotton yarn that is excellent for cloths.

I had some pictures of some other cloths, but somehow they got lost in the shuffle. I will have to take them again later today and post them.

Also, I FINALLY updated my webpage with the start of some available yarns and patterns. Currently, I am only displaying dishcloths, which are for sale for $5 each or 3 for $12. Hopefully I will be getting back on the ball with that, and getting some things knitted for the upcoming craft fair season.

MySpace

Okay, I have to admit that MySpace is a highly addictive, sometimes pretty fun, website. It's neat to connect with old friends and see how they've all been doing and such. What isn't so cool is the fact that I like to not have my MySpace be so restricted that people have to know my name or e-mail address to find me. Many of the people I hope to connect with either don't know I'm married, or don't know my e-mail. Hence, why I'm hoping to connect with them! However, this morning I got up to see I had an e-mail saying that someone wanted to be added as a friend. So I went and checked it out, only to find that it was one of John's students that I happened to substitute teach for on Wednesday.
Now, okay, granted this student is a pretty nice kid, but there's that line of what's appropriate and what isn't. My guess is that they'd want me to be added on instant messenger too, if they could find me. Needless to say I didn't add the student. I asked John if he had checked his e-mail, and discovered that this student had found him on MySpace as well. John also said he wasn't going to add them.
Alright, I guess that's all I have to say about MySpace today.

Current knitting projects

I thought I would post a couple of pictures of my current knitting projects. I'm leaving off the pictures of the baby blanket, for now, because there wasn't a good way to get a picture of it in it's current state.

This is the ruana I'm knitting right now. I'm using Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky to make it. The color is called Bay Harbor. It shows up a little more blue in this picture, but it's a little more like a denim color. I'm knitting it on size 13 needles bamboo needles, and the pattern is just K5, P5, all the way across, so it can be cast on in any multiple of 5. In retrospect, I probably should have done it with about 20 less stitches, because it's a little bulkier than I wanted. But it will keep me nice and warm with the cold weather we've been having!


This is a scarf that I'm just about done with. I am using Lion Brand Jiffy, which is a 100% acrylic yarn that looks like mohair. It feels a lot softer when it's in the ball, but it's not quite so soft when it's been knit up (at least, not right now). The scarf is being knit on size 9 bamboo needles, and the pattern is done in multiples of 10. Row 1: K5, P5. Row 2: K4, P1, K1, P4. Row 3: K3, P2, K2, P3. Row 4: K2, P3, K3, P2. Row 5: K1, P4, K4, P1. Row 6: P5, K5. Row 7: K1, P4, K4, P1. Row 8: K2, P3, K3, P2. Row 8: K3, P2, K2, P3. Row 9: K4, P1, K1, P4. Row 10: K5, P5. Then it just repeats, and you end up with a pattern that makes triangle shapes through it. This pattern came from www.knittingonthenet.com/scarves and can be found under "Triangle Scarf." Once you get into the rhythm of it, it's pretty easy to do, it just took some getting used to and a lot of counting to keep track of where I was early on. If you don't have one (like I don't), I would recommend a row counter to keep track of where you are in the pattern, at least while getting started.

Now that I'm here...

As you can see, I've moved over to Blogger. I think I am going to enjoy having this as my new place to blog, as I like the things it allows me to do much more than what I was getting from LiveJournal. I like being able to have my comments come as a pop-up, and I over all like the ease of use this site gives.

Now I just need to find something interesting to blog about.

I will probably put up my book reviews here as I read them and put the reviews up on my personal site.

So I hope you enjoy your stay at Luna's Chambers!

Just a quick update

For those of you who haven't looked, my homepage has been totally revamped, stylistically (is that how it's spelled?? I have no idea.). I will be transferring old posts over there for a while, but that's not totally done yet.

For those of you who heard about "Kat", we have found her a good home - she will be going to live with my Aunt Pat in Concord. She moves again this weekend. Her new name is Maya, and I'm sure she'll do well over there. She's a super sweetie, and I wish we could keep her, but John is adamant that we not have another cat.

I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday. I am SO ready for the weekend.

Sometimes I think...

Sometimes I'm convinced that MySpace is the best site on the internet. It just allowed me to reconnect with someone I haven't spoken to since I was about a junior in high school! And now, he's in the Army over in Baghdad! It was so exciting to hear from him yesterday. We spent a ton of time e-mailing back and forth, just getting caught up with each other. It's hard to sum up 7 years in an e-mail, but we've managed to do alright :-)
I love it when stuff like that happens. It's weird, the timing of it too, because I was just somewhere where I had thought of him, and it was recent too! So that was just funny. But I love getting to reconnect with old friends and seeing or hearing from people I haven't heard from in a long time. I think I realized to late that I had the best group of friends in high school. We were all, for the most part, pretty good kids. We were fun, and funny, and there was always someone to go to if there was a problem or if you needed help or anything like that. I miss those days!
Okay, I'm feeling a little nostalgic, I guess. Maybe it's the time of year - we're starting to get into the graduation times. I should know this is going to happen to me, it does every single year! But it's nice being able to find these people again, and at least be able to e-mail with them, if nothing more.
It's strange how your relationships with people evolve over time. The older you get, the more focused on one person you become. Like, if you asked me now, who my best friend is, I would say John. But if you asked me 7 years ago I would have said Jo, and Soni, and Sarah and... and... and.... It's all part of normal development (believe me, I know, I sit through hours of training on it), but it's just a strange phenomenon. Sometimes I wish that I could maintain the same types of friendships I had in high school today. Or even in college! I had great friends in college as well, and even a lot of them I've lost touch with. Sad, isn't it?
So I guess that's really about all I have to write about. I have stuff I need to get done before heading out to my training today, so I'm going to work on showering and getting dressed and such. So, people, track me down, say hi, all that good stuff!

Yay Sarah and Chad!

Sarah and Chad's wedding was so great! It was nice to see everyone at the wedding, and Sarah looked so happy! Pyper was adorable, so it was so fun seeing them all dance together during Sarah and Chads dance was so wonderful! I'm so happy for them! Weddings are so much fun! My sister-in-laws wedding is coming up in just under 2 weeks, I wonder if she's flipping out yet... Sarah, if you read this - everything went so smoothly and you looked wonderful! I hope you're happy with the way the day went! Can you believe we're old married women now? =) Call me or e-mail me when you get home for your honeymoon. I hope you had a great time!
Anyway, things here with me? Same old, same old. I'm going to post pictures from Sarah and Chads wedding tonight, so people will have to check out my photos thing: http://pg.yahoo.photos.com/ph/mcardin81/my_photos. But there really isn't anything much for me to write about unless people want me to gush on about how great weddings are and stuff like that. Oh! John and I went apple picking today. That was fun, since the weather was so nice.
Anyway, we're going to church tonight, so I suppose I should take care of unpacking and what-not... Talk to you all later!

Life as a married college graduate

Well, first off, the wedding went so smoothly! I couldn't believe we didn't have a single problem the whole day! Everything went fine, everyone showed up when they were suposed to, we ended up with really good food at the reception, and we got rave reviews about our DJ! All of the pictures are up on http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/mcardin81/my_photos and just follow the one that says wedding. As soon as we get some back from the photograper and can get them scanned in, I'll upload some of the great professional ones too.
Our honeymoon was fantastic also! We drove to Searsport, ME, and stayed for two nights, then on to Port Elgin, New Brunswick for two nights, then on to Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. While in Searsport, we ventured up to Bar Harbor, took a trolley tour of Acadia, which was really nice, and got a lot of great pictures. We did a small amount of shopping while we were there, too. Neither of us had ever been to Bar Harbor, so it was nice to visit. The next day we drove up to New Brunswick to stay in this REALLY nice place in Port Elgin, which is about 1/2 an hour north of Moncton, and maybe 45 minutes from Fundy National Park. This inn was AMAZING. They had the best food and the suite we stayed in was so nice! There are some pictures of it in the Honeymoon part one photo album at the same website. While we were in NB, we went to Magnetic Hill, which is a hill that you drive down, get into the left lane, put the car in reverse and then get "pulled" back up the hill! Want to know how it works? You won't hear it from me! =) It is an optical illusion though, but still cool none the less. Then we went to Fundy National Park for the afternoon, which was also great. The weather was nice while we were there, for the most part (we got some rain just as we were getting ready to head back out of the park), and we did a lot of hiking around in the woods. We went to see a waterfall and got some nice views while we were there. The park is about 80 miles, give or take, so there was a TON we didn't get to see, which was kind of sad. It would be very easy to spend a couple of days or a week exploring it. John and I both got tee-shirts at the visitors center, so that was a fun way to commemorate our trip there.
After Fundy, we went to see the Hopewell Rocks, which are these rocks that, when the tide is out, you can go explore the caves and crevices of them, but when the tide comes in, look out! It rises about 20-30 feet, and you can go kayaking around the rocks instead! There are some great pictures of them on in our photos. We made it back to the inn an hour late for dinner, but the innkeepers were great about it.
The last phase of our trip included Prince Edward Island. So, when we left Port Elgin, we stopped at Cape Jourimain, which had a lighthouse we could hike out too, plus some really nice pictures of the Confederation bridge, which is the 8 mile bridge that crosses into P.E.I. We hiked around there for a bit, then hopped back in the car and crossed over the bridge into P.E.I. Our first stop there was at Gateway Village, which has a tourist center for people coming into P.E.I., plus lots of little shops. We picked up some brochures, then drove around that part of the island to Charlottetown. After lunch and exploring Charlottetown for a bit, we headed up to the place we stayed in Cavendish. That place was really nice too. The suite we had was great and had this HUGE whirlpool tub in it. We went out to dinner in New Glasgow that night, to a really fancy restaurant. I tried muscles for the first time, and John had salmon that was cooked on a piece of cedar wood. The dinner was good. The next day we saw the Green Gables house, from the Anne of Green Gables books (NOT the one from the movie - not to be confused, this was not that house) and hiked through the "haunted" forest. That was cool. Then we moved on to Avonlea. This was the town from the Anne of Green Gables books and they have people that dress up like all of the characters and play the roles of them there. Every 15 minutes or so they do another skit somewhere around the town, so that was kind of neat. Next we went to the Cavendish Boardwalk. There are a bunch of little shops there, and John got a "Red Dirt Shirt" there, and I got a PEI Dirt Visor. They're dyed with the red dirt and mud in PEI. Then it was lunch time for us, and then we headed to the Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum. There was some really cool stuff there! After that, we drove to Kensington to go to Woodleigh Replicas, a place that has all scale replicas of medieval castles and chapels and houses and such. Some were large enough to go into, some were only like up to our waists, but they were all really cool. After that we went back to Cavendish and went to the beach. We have some beautiful pictures of Cavendish beach up on the photo site, so check those out. All of the dirt, more or less, is red, so a lot of the beach is red. The sand was brown, like normal beach sand, but the beach itself was just gorgeous. After that, it was dinner at Rachel's Restaurante, and then we went out to the Boardwalk again so I could get a visor for my sister and some chocolates for my parents.
When we went home the next day, we made a couple of stops so that the drive didn't feel as long. We went to the reversing falls in St. John New Brunswick, then we stopped in St. Andrews for lunch, then it was on to Bangor, ME to get gas, then on to Dover to swing by John's parents house to pick up our wedding gifts, and finally home by 10:30 that night. It was such a great trip though, we got to see and do so much by driving! I'm so glad we did it that way. Maybe next year we'll take the Scotia Prince up to Nova Scotia to get to see that part of the Maritime Provinces.
So this week I've just been dealing with name change stuff and let me tell you: that has been the biggest hassle! Since I wanted my name to be Melissa Streeter Cardin, I figured I would just go to the social security office to change it. Well, apparently I can't just change my middle name, I have to go to probate court to do that. Not to mention, we (me and the woman that works at social security) discovered that social security and the IRS had my date of birth as September 19 instead of August 19, so that alone has caused enough problems. So for two days I was walking around with a legal name of Melissa Marion Cardin, and since my date of birth was wrong, they have to verify from the state (even though I had my birth certificate there) that I was really born Aug. 19. So it's going to take like a month to get the new card. So today I went to probate court and had my name legally changed from Melissa Marion Cardin to Melissa Streeter Cardin, and then I went back to the social security office, and waited two hours to have it changed again. Then she told me that they would put it in the computer, but since they still had to wait for D.O.B. verification, I probably won't get my new card for like a month. SOOOOO if I get hired on by the state, I'm going to have to bring like... my old SS card, my form from them stating my name was change to Melissa M. Cardin, my marriage certificate, and the court order that my name was changed to Melissa S. Cardin. But most of the major stuff is done anyway... not much more I can change. I just need to mail the stuff to the bank for my car loan and UNH and my student loan company. Then when I register my car, I'll have to take care of the name change there.
So, that's how I've been spending my time as a college graduate... still looking for my DCYF job, but I called the Rochester office and they said there should be two openings waived next week. That means that everyone HAS to start praying really hard about that =)
Okay, I'm going to wrap this up, my fingers are sore, and I've been working on this entry for about 40 minutes now. I'll catch up with everyone in due time! Oh, and in case you didn't know - mcardin81 on AIM!