Whoopee!! Stitch Markers.. I did it!!

Yes, I got up my nerve and made some beaded stitch markers!! How I got to this was an adventure in itself. This morning after coffee with Mom, I came home to DH asking if I wanted to investigate the porch sale we saw in the village on the way home from Kroger's last night. (We didn't stop then because we had just picked up a bake-it-at-home pizza and Mom had her oven on pre-heat.) So off we went and the first thing that DH spotted was a cast iron door stop in the shape of a black cat. Mom's cat, Sadie is black, and while the doorstop was obviously a short hair cat, unlike Sadie, we both agreed that Mom would probably like it so $1 exchanged hands and off we went to Mom's. She was pleasantly surprised and we all agreed that the cat needed a green bead for an eye in place of the simple hole that was there. Hmmm.. JoAnne's is having a 40% off sale on jewelry findings & beads and it's right across the parking lot from Meijer's where asparagus is still on sale for 99¢ a pound. A plan was forming and off the three of us went. We found a package of mixed beads in greens & golds that looked promising and I picked up a package of wires with little heads on one end and one of small rings. Back at Mom's, after a couple other uninteresting stops (we did get another 3#s of asparagus), the smallest green bead was a perfect fit for the cat's eye and a little Elmer's glue held it in place with the hole running top to bottom and looking like a slit pupil.. Perfect!

I brought the rest of the package of beads home and after much hemming & hawing, enlisted DH's help and here are the results:



The white beads are more opalescent than they show in the photo - another case of the flash washing out the color. Anyway, I used them this evening on the Fuzzy Feet and on the latest pair of booties and I love them. I'm seriously thinking about going back tomorrow while the sale is still on and stocking up on some more supplies. I should mention that yesterday, I stopped at the fancy bead store in Oxford, 3 miles up the road, and had absolutely no luck in finding either rings or the wires with the stops on one end. I asked for help and the woman had no idea what I was talking about and didn't seem interested in either understanding what I needed or offering suggestions. So finding what I needed and at 40% off today was a real high.

On the actual knitting front, I gave Mom the red vest from the Knit Red KAL and she loves it. It fits her perfectly and she was going through her closet picking out outfits that it would go with. She mentioned a few weeks ago that she really liked the lime green micro-fiber yarn that I've been using for the baby booties and while I couldn't find that type today, the Red Heart Kids has a worsted weight that's almost the exact color though without the sheen. I picked up two 5 ounce skeins and will make her a vest, probably the Jiffy vest from Leisure Arts with the leaf lace panel in the front (if I can find where I put the pattern!).