Giveaway Winner, Branching Out and a Bit Nerdy

Lee Peters is the lucky winner of the beautiful rainbow fat quarter bundle!  I have emailed her to let her know.  Thank you soooo much for all the love and great recipe ideas.  I am going to come back to that post if ever I can't think of something to cook.  :)

I need to apologize.  The new Yahoo Mail format has thrown me for a loop.  It bundles all of the post comments in one email, which is nice so they don't take up the whole inbox, but it was hard for me to respond and keep track of who I had responded back to because my responses were put at the bottom of the list.  Then someone responded back and I didn't see her message for days and just now as I emailed Lee I saw a little link that said "25 more" and there were 25 more comments that I hadn't seen!!!  So if I didn't respond you might have been one of those 25.  Sorry.  I read all the comments as they appeared on the blog - it was easier  :) - and I truly appreciated every one.

This last week I branched out from quilting.  My friend Julie makes some awesome crocheted hats (check out her etsy site) and I have been bugging her for months to teach me how.  So with the cold weather coming, I finally went over.  I know how to do basic crochet, but can't really follow a pattern.  She sat by me and gave me step-by-step instructions as I made the purple owl hat.  I love it!  The girls all loved it too and each placed an order for their own owl hat.  I made the base of the blue/green hat (all by myself !) and just need to add the extras.  I also made a coordinating scarf.  I used a larger hook and double crocheted (DC for those in-the-know) a strand of blue and green at the same time.  It is super thick and warm.

So last Friday, my husband and I went out to dinner with another couple.  So fun!  I brought my yarn with me because I thought there might be a wait and figured I could work on the scarf at the restaurant.  As we waited for our meals to come, I reached into my bag to pull it out.  Then I stopped.  I looked around and thought, "This is going to be really weird if I pull this out.  No one else is crocheting...maybe I shouldn't."  Then I felt rather ashamed of myself for feeling embarrassed about my hobby.  Goodness, my husband and friends know I crochet and it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.  For the record, I don't think one should pull out a knitting project on a first date ;) or if it will distract you from participating in a social situation, but that was not the case here.  So I pulled it out and got a few more rows on the scarf finished before our meal came.

Have you ever felt odd/embarrassed/nerdy because of quilting/sewing/crocheting/knitting?