Back to work Monday!

 Had last week off for vacation........or a staycation as it were. Weather was still a little chilly but it was sunny out all week so we got to do some outdoor things and he got this lawn situated for summer while I did some spring cleaning, etc. (And there may have been some indulgent shopping and eating in there too.)

It wasn't all good because a quick trip to the vet's to get Mooshie some meds for his spring cold turned ugly rather quickly. He had another reaction to antibiotics (a different kind this time) and had a couple seizures a few hours after we got home. Very upsetting. And disturbing. I was 99% positive he was heading in that direction after we'd been home for a little while (pre-seizure activity is fairly easy to spot with him) so I dug his prescription of Valium out of the medicine cabinet to get ready but I would have rather not had to use them, you know? He only had the two seizures before it kicked in and stopped any more from happening, so that was good. His failing kidneys couldn't flush the Valium out of his system though and when he was still knocked out from them 13 hours later on HALF a pill, he ended up in hospital for a couple days while he got IV fluids round the clock to get him situated again. So. The last part of vacation wasn't much fun. :(

He seems fine now - for him anyway. (He's still suffering from late stage kidney disease, of course.) And there is one small upside in that the storm in his brain is making him really hungry so he's eating all the time vs. me having to cajole him to eat a tablespoon of food here and there. He ate a full can of food by himself every day the last two days which is AMAZING.

Needless to say, he's off all medications now for the rest of his life, as it's too risky. We thought he was allergic to one specific class of drug but it's obviously more complicated than that. Sigh. Poor little guy. :(

Anyhoooooo. I managed to knock off a bunch of projects with the time off. I rewatched all of season five of Mad Men in the early part of the week to get ready for the new season - thank you Netflix streaming - which was GREAT for making progress on things. (I was shocked how much I forgot about last season too. Was I dozing when I originally watched those episodes??) Must get pics of that stuff today. It's a crazy-inducing 64 degrees here today so maybe I'll even get to take pictures OUTSIDE for the first time in forever. :)

New new new.

Firstly, I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day. :)

I'm not a mother but I didn't want to feel left out so I made myself a nice home-cooked 'mother's day breakfast'. lol (It was YUMMY too!) And then I was busy for the rest of the afternoon doing lots and lots of housework and food shopping. Hmph. (That part wasn't as fun.) The weather was just PERFECT perfect perfect though and I did manage to enjoy a bit of it out on the deck, doing my nails and chillaxing with a book.

I also finished a new stitchy!

This was the Shepherd's Bush kit that came out a couple months ago. Quick stitch and even quicker to finish. I went digging in my fabric stash and, shockingly, found something that closely matched the chenille trim that came with the kit. (Shocking because I don't have too many fabrics in the purple-mauve-plum tones in my stash.)

Not too cool? The chenille trim didn't fit the piece. 

!@#$!@#!@#$!@#!@#!@#

Disappointing because the kit instructions call for cutting the square to 8 inches and I actually cut it to 6 - so by my reasoning I should have had EXTRA trim, not fallen an inch short of it. Grrrr.

The gap is on the bottom so it's not really noticeable but it's going to bother me knowing...it's...there...mocking....me. I'm going to email them and see if they can send me out another piece. If they don't have any extras, I'll hit up the lovely Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe for some other chenille trim. I'll get 'er done one way or the other. :)

Also new, some new beads are up on the shoppe pages and Etsy:

(Plus others.)

I also spent a little time redoing the front page of my web site. Always good to spruce things up once and again. I get bored with it so I have to think OTHER people get bored with it too. lol

There's more work to be done to it, I think, but I'm done with it for the moment while I think on it. I'm no pro when it comes to html and style sheets and blah blah blah geekspeak so I have to move carefully and slowly and to get where I want to go and my brain is melted after this first go round.

State of the Stash.

But first......

I know I said I wasn't going to do any more new Halloween items but someone asked for an owl for Halloween so..............

Who am I resist such a thing? I am weak in the face of Halloween requests. :)

(A few other, non-Halloween things, have also been posted, btw.)

Well...................we made an attempt to go through my poor stash stuff this weekend and here is what I was able to save:

Yep. One lonely little bag of snowflake buttons. *sigh*

Everything else was tossed. All of my Crescent Color threads, the silks/Watercolors/Waterlillies/etc, metallics, floss bags, extra DMC I had in a bag, a box of new DMC colors that I had never gotten around to wrapping on cards, a box of the DMC linen collection..........*sad*

Could have been worse, I guess. At least my DMC was in separate boxes so that was safe. I don't even want to think about having to replace an entire collection of DMC. (Heeeeee heeeeeeee hooooooo! Oh god no.) 

And if this had happened this time last year all of my WDW and GAST threads would have been in there too. (Those collections have gotten large enough that they had to be moved to their own storage box.)  

I wasn't even able to save the plastic container everything was originally in. 

Now this I really don't understand. You think some harsh detergent/Nature's Miracle/Simple Green combo would be enough to clean hard plastic............and you would be wrong. lol All of the stuff I lost was in floss bags which were closed, didn't even get wet, and they were still disgusting. WTF?

Oh well. I reordered the Crescent Colors and a couple other things that I use all the time (don't ask me how much that cost) as a super-early birthday/Xmas present to myself and the rest I will just reorder if/when I ever get to the project that I originally bought them for. On the bright side, it will fun going through a whole ton of new threads once that order comes in. :|

 I have plenty of cats left to get all up in my business but, thankfully, I've never had any problems with my Himmies. *crosses fingers*

Though they *do* like to help you do pretty much everything you want to do without them around.

Seriously guys? It's a bag of buttons. And a camera.  So not that interesting! lol

He might actually be sitting on the buttons at this point. But I let him because he was sitting pretty for a quick photo. :)

OMG. Guys.

I don't even.

It's like what?

Head is broken.

Panic attack.

I just don't even understand.

Was expecting to be sad about having to say good bye to Nitwit (we did end up putting her down yesterday morning) and then...............something happened later in the day and it was like a record needle scratch and now I'm instantly over it. Snap. Sadness gone. 

Things had been bad with her since January but, up until the last 5-6 weeks, things had been manageable. They were manageable. There were Rules and as long as you followed the Rules, thing were fine 98% of the time. 

Rule #1: do not leave anything on the floor in the bathrooms. Not a terribly difficult rule as far as rules go, you know? If you forgot to pick up the rug after showering or whatever and it got peed on, well, that was your fault as that was a clear violation of the Rules. Why the bathrooms and not, say, the kitchen, where there are also throw rugs and various things on the floor (like, say, cloth grocery bags after a big shopping trip) at certain times? I don't know. I DIDN'T MAKE THE RULES. I was just expected to follow them.

Rule#2: things laid on top of the hamper or on the bedroom floors was a sure path to Badness. Why the hamper and not, say, the bed? (Or couches.) Again: I don't know. Not the rule maker, just the rule follower. (Personally, I was just glad that the bed and the couches were off limits for some unknown, anonymous reason and didn't probe it too much. Though, having said that, if they hadn't of been off limits this whole 'situation' would have ended many, many months ago, KWIM?)

Things only got 'real' a short while ago when suddenly the Rules seemed to have changed overnight and it was like, welllll, not so much with these new Rules. The new Rules were not going to cut it. They included: my brand new office chair, a wood sitting chair with a fabric seat and pretty much any/all cat beds in the house. New Rules = BAD. So, after more blood tests/xrays/medicine, she was sequestered in the guest room for a week (nearly fabric less at the moment as I threw the full sized bed out when we did the floors in June, with plans to get a smaller one in the future) to see if the new Rules were permanent or not. 

Turns out, after a couple weeks try out, the new Rules were permanent and that was unmanageable for a house that we, like, actually like to live in so we find ourselves up to date with things. And then I went to go pull a few threads out of my big Craftable blue/rubbermaid-like container and discovered it was full of pee. 

And then my head broke and I had a massive can't speak-walking in circles-staring at the wall-panic attack that lasted, ohhhh..................well it should be over soon at any rate. Any minute now. *tap*tap*tap* 

Yeah. I mean.................what? I just don't even. Understand? It's plastic. And.........what? It holds: all of my linen, all of my DMC and about half of my specialty fibers (of which I have a CONSIDERABLE stash). And other stuff? Like.........other stuff? AND MY HEAD IS BROKEN. I can not wrap my head around the magnitude of how to clean this up. Vinegar baths followed by........something? And keeping track of what is what? Uncoiling 312341234123 wrapped skeins or leaving them wrapped? Or? ...?....? And what about non color-fast items? Metallics? Silks????

Strangely enough (and luckily enough?), the linen all seems fine. I don't mean fine in that sense that I'm trying to talk myself INTO it being fine either. I mean *actually* fine. I checked it with a black light, my nose, extreme inspection under a bright light. It was in the top of the compartment, which is removable and I *do* take it off sometimes when I'm laying pieces out in the living room to figure out what I want to use. I went through it like that one night about 4 weeks ago, which is certainly within the 'new Rules' period, when starting a new project so I suppose it's possible she jumped into the box in the 1.74 hours that the top was off of it?

I'm still not 100% on the condition of the DMC. Those are in four tackle boxes so closed boxes inside a closed box (meta anyone?)............it should be fine but I can't make a definitive decision on that until it's been away from the stuff that is So Clearly NOT Fine for a few days. I'm seeing shadows inside of shadows on top of more shadows right now until I'm cross-eyed and pie-eyed and can not trust my judgement. (Because my first thoughts? THROW IT ALL AWAY. All twenty years of it. And find a NEW HOBBY. lol)

It's just the rest of it. You can't just throw it in the wash. Or use harsh detergents on it with out stripping the color out. Or ?? The best I can come up with at the moment is possibly a clothes line type assembly line maybe? String the skein, then the bag, repeat with all, etc. and then dip each one through a series of vinegar/Nature's Miracle/I don't know what? individually and hang it up to dry? At least that way the bags will be with the floss and I can tell what is what. Otherwise maybe take a picture of each one before taking it out of the floss bag to sort it all out later? (I have no hopes that the stuff inside the floss bags is fine because those 'bags' have two holes in them for threading on split rings, you know? And it's............wow. Covered. Sticky. And it's all.......All baaaaaaaaaaad.)

I fully expect half of y'all to not really understand what the big deal is about but the rest of you will know. You know. A quart of rancid pee poured on your stash? Worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars? A stash that is not easily cleaned *or* replaced? Oh yes, YOU know my horror. 0_o 

**********************

You know it's funny (though not really in that HAHAHA type of way) because I did a post on my Livejournal a few weeks ago about, what I thought at the time, was possibly the grossest thing to ever happen inside my house in my entire life. I didn't mention it here but the bathroom fan downstairs, uhhh, killed a large mouse and we didn't realize why it was clunking at the time until a week later* when, oh, maggots and maggoty flies started dropping from the ceiling. Like a lot. Of maggots. From the ceiling. Dropping and dropping and dropping. Will it stop? Looks like no. Dropping and dropping. While we took turns staring at it and running around in circles screaming like little girls. That's, like, horror show gross.But in retrospect, sooooooooo much easier to get my head around than this. *THAT* was easy to clean. *THIS*............I just don't even.

*Obviously, there was strong odor for a couple days too but we looked and looked for the source and couldn't find it. We thought it possible something had gotten into the chimney? It never occurred to us to look inside the fan, you know? Who would think of that?!?

What a long week!

I've been having to 'babysit' for Mr. Sad Face there on the bottom of the stack there all week and I think we've both had enough of it. (Note: the only way to get all four cats in the same picture at the same time is to sprinkle cat nip all over the cat tree. They all come running for that!)

His boo-boo tail, uhhhh, 'shed' another piece last week. Woke up to it on THE COUCH !@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$, along with blood sprayed all over my couch, the wall, the rugs, the floors, and everything in between while he was swooshing that badness all night long with no one to notice. *squick* It's like a CSI nightmare all up in here. :(

So that was that. CHOP GOES THE BOO-BOO TAIL this last Monday. It had a chance and it failed. He still has half of his tail left so it's not too bad but he has to wear the Cone of Shame for two weeks, no exceptions, so the stitches don't come out. He's deeply depressed over this and I'm deeply exhausted at having to babysit. He scoops up water when he drinks, which sloshes all down his front, which he then takes into the litter box and scoops up a chunk of dirty litter (or worse), then goes back to the water dish to deposit the litter (or worse), which sloshes down his front in a slurry, etc. Repeat, rewind, all day long. I'm getting used to the routine now. Switch the cone out for a clean one (I have two), scrub and replace the water dish, wash him down with a face cloth, dry it all off, cone back on, now let's all meet up to do it again in a few hours! *sigh* Are all cats this inept with a cone or is it just my 'honor school' child that is like this? lol

I'm not even sure what the point of the cone *IS* seeing as he can STILL reach his tail if he bends the right way. DURN CATS AND THEIR BENDY TRICKSY WAYS. *shakes fist*

Five days down, nine left to go. :)

So much sadness lately.

First it was a couple weeks ago with a person I knew for almost a decade on Livejournal. Just *poof* and she was gone in her sleep, at age 47. No warning at all.

Then one of my husband co-workers also passed away in his sleep, at age 51. He was a runner and in (seemingly) perfect health.

And now Lisa, who've I've followed online for a quite a while. 

Just a terrible, terrible cloud hanging over everything lately. My heart breaks for all of their families and loved ones.

It really makes you step back and reexamine your priorities. Or at least it does for me.

I was a little sick this weekend, out of the blue, for what reason?? I don't know. I just woke up Saturday sneezing every 10 seconds with leaky eyes and a floaty head but some allergy meds beat it back and it was gone by Monday morning. Not sure what that was about but I'm grateful it didn't hang around for long. Maybe it was just allergies though because Maggie's allergies have been driving her insane lately so something is in the air. (Weird fact: the cat and I take the same allergy medicine. Literally. OTC drug, only she gets half a pill and I take a whole one. lol This is the new thing for cat's with allergies, I guess, vs. dragging them in every other month for a steroid shot. Doesn't seem to work as well though because she's been walking around with a nasty hot spot on her shoulder despite the meds. Grrr.)

Here is my sweater progress for last week:

Maggie loves to act as photo assistant. :)

So for the week I got  a couple inches done on the bottom, the woven band (which KILLED my hands!@!) and up to the shoulders. (I finished the left shoulder bit last night.) It said to block it before doing the sleeves but I'm not sure why? I'm not into doing a whole big wet blocking unless the WHOLE THING is finished so I just laid it out and sprayed it a bit using a spray bottle. It seems like a waste of time to do an aggressive blocking at this point?? Am I wrong, anyone??? Thankfully, the sizing seems to be okay so far. I was worried it was too short but I tried it on and it falls on the long side of my hips. Now I'm worried that the arm hole openings seem too big so the sleeves will be huge, etc.........we'll see how it works out. :)

I'm kind of ready for this project to be done, to be honest. I've been faithful to it for 3 weeks now and my interest is waning. I'm ready to dig into some stitchy projects and another pair of socks. Oh woe is me and my short attention span. lolol

Oh, sad day.

Sad, sad day.

My favorite pair of knitted socks finally wore through in the heel and now they are gone, gone, gone. *sob*

(Mr. Chicken is from the Pigeon Loft on Etsy. He's always helpful when something needs a good inspection. All business and cluck, cluck, cluck.)

These predate Ravelry so they are pretty old. I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. They were made with BMFA Socks That Rocks yarn, my all-time fav sock yarn, and no matter how much the color dulled, how many fuzzies they got, they were still comfy and squishy. Well, not too squishy in the heel, apparently, because the yarn seems to have just worn down to literal nothingness in that one spot. They were a little thick for wearing with shoes so I called them my 'slipper socks' and wore them around the house, usually once a week** in the winter.

The pattern is Crusoe from Knitty so I guess I'll have to put together another pair. I like the pattern (obviously) but I remember being slightly flummoxed, as a new knitter, at the number of stitches for the cast-on. My knitting 'brain' is all configured for a 64 stitch cast-on so a 44/48 stitch cast-on makes me break a few springs in the ole noggin', you know? It's not hard to reconfigure though. A few notes jotted down and you're set to go.

Anyhoo......Time to go digging through my stash to see what I have for BFMA yarn in there! (This sock was done with Fire on the Mountain but I'm open to all colors.) I don't currently have any socks on the needles so my way forward is clear. lol

**This is a big deal because I probably have 30 pairs (!!!) of hand knit socks in my drawer so I can rotate through them quite a bit if I want.

Gah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Emails, etc. may be delayed as my computer is totally totally FUBARed today.
(I'm currently on my husband's netbook, which is not set up for my email or printing - which is ok for internet browsing, not so great for doing my bead biz stuff. *sigh*)

My pc user profile was corrupted and I'm finding out now that having only one user account on your pc is a bad idea. Because if you corrupt your administrator account, well, you are in deep do-do. OH HAI THERE, YOU COULDN'T HAVE FOUND A WAY TO GET THIS INTO MY HEAD SOMEHOW LIKE YEARSSSSSSSSSSS AGO??????????
I thought having only one user account meant that my marriage was 'open' and very trusting because we had no need to hide anything from one another so OF COURSE we only needed one computer 'user'. My passwords are his passwords and la la la aren't we all modern and Share-y McShare-atons and shit? WHOOPS. BAD ME. Now I get to try and recreate everything from scratch from the last 2 years from when we bought this computer. *le sigh* (Because seemingly easy copy/paste/restore/backup functions don't seem to be working. Nothing ever goes as it should when it comes to computer problems though, right? That's par for the course. lol)

Oh well, I'm off to browse pretty stitchy/yarny pr0n blogs while waiting for a seemingly endless check disk thingy to finish in an attempt to sooth my soul before I have to start trying to repair stuff again. Wish me luck! :)

You know what today is?

It WWKiP day! Or, errrrr, daysss. (It's more than one day now? You only get one day if you call it knit in public DAY, people! What kind of weird voodoo math is this? lol)

So what am I knitting in public today on the first day of Knit in Public, err, Day? Nothing actually. Today is pretty much like every day this week: starts off a little sunny, off/on showers in the afternoon. So everything stays a little wet and a little bit dreary. Not weather conducive to dragging wool yarn around, in other words.

I kept my 'rule' of only working on the NeverEnding Scarf of Doom this week.....with the side effect that I sat around the last three nights doing nothing other than giving it a fitful glance once and again because I so am TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY OVER knitting on this thing but I didn't want to 'cheat' and work on something else. So I did nothing instead. (Which I really hate. All that wasted time. I'm much too ADD to just sit and watch tv without my hands in motion working on a project.) Technically it's 'done' because you can look at it and it is clearly a scarf, but it is not done because it's not long enough. At least it's not long enough for me. I like to fold my scarves in half and then throw the two ends through the loop and wear them that way. You do that with this and you end up with two stumpy six inch tails - I like a looooooooooong scarf. But if I keep trying to knit on this any longer I might go COMPLETELY INSANE. So I thought maybe wet blocking it would 'release it' some and get a little extra length out of it.

Nope. Still not long enough. I really hoped that the math, reason and facts were all wrong and it would wet block into the long scarf of my dreams. NOPE.
!!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$@$@$@#$

So do I just call it day because it is *pretty* enough without any extra length..........knowing I probably won't like wearing it very much because it's too short or.........suck it up and try to knit some more to make it longer? Decisions, decisions. I can only complete one swirl an hour which is a maximum of three swirls per night of working on it (but more like only two) and you need three to complete the pattern. Each new row of swirls gives you approximately 4" of length. So basically I need to keep knitting until I'm a drooling half-mad fool because UGH UGH UGH I DON'T WANT TO WORK ON THIS ANYMORE. This is what sucks about being a process knitting: when the process SUCKS you just want to kick the whole project into a ball in some random, dusty, long forgotten corner of your house regardless of how asinine that is. This is what sucks about being a perfectionist: you can't possibly do the above without thinking you are a horrible, weak, immature person and you will be forever haunted by your failing. DAMN YOU SCARF, you will not defeat me. *shakes fists at the sky*

The colors are really pretty though *not coming across in this picture) and it feels very nice after a nice long soak in Soak. So..........there's that. I don't dislike the scarf or the pattern - I JUST HATE KNITTING THE DAMN THING. lol This casting on 60, binding it off, weave the ends in, cast on 60 more.......so so so tired of it. I'm dying for something you just knit back and forth or around and around - SOMETHING NORMAL.

I don't know if this is a sign of the times or what but I just looked through the local paper's classifieds out of curiosity for the first time in months and there were only two jobs listed. TWO. As in, one..............TWO.

I know the paper is small (it only comes out once a week) but two jobs? Two? If we're talking land mass, Windham county probably covers about 1/6th (maybe a little less) of the state of Connecticut. I know it's kinda rural on this end of the state but that seems crazy to me. (Sort of crazy. I mean, the hubby works an hour away which isn't exactly atypical for this area. You need to drive to the Boston area (him) or Hartford to make 'decent' wages I'd say unless you are in the medical field but two? TWO JOBS?)