Booooo?

Poor neglected Blogger. :(

I  have been really sick lately though. *cough*hack*cough*

Though I feel MORE bad for the husband than for me. Poor guy. Ended up spending our 22nd anniversary in the hospital - for me. (Where no food was served. Worst anniversary dinner ever. lol)

It wasn't all bad that day though because, in addition to some other things, he gave me a trio of worry warts as a gifts:

Photo credit to Blobhouse because, really, I can't promote her stuff any better than this. It's PERFECT.

How prophetic! Ha! We had laughed and laughed over Blobhouse's whole Etsy shop a while back but especially the worry warts. Those faces SLAY me. (I love EVERYTHING in that shop though. Seriously.) But I hadn't forgotten about them since then so I really did love being surprised with my own warts. 

And then the day after the hospital (which came with some new meds and more doctor appointments to line up) I started to come down with a vicious head cold that, two weeks later, I'm still dealing with. Duh, right? OF COURSE ALL THE SICK PEOPLE ARE AT THE HOSPITAL. IT'S PAR FOR THE COURSE YOU WILL CATCH THE PLAGUE THERE. Cue even MORE ferrying about to doctor appointments and more testing and it's all so MUCH FUN, I can't even. (Nothing definitive yet but beta blockers seem to be helping even without knowing the cause of my heart issues and I have some nifty tranquilizers that scare the crap out me that could be helpful but, honestly, I'm too scared of them to take them.) 

Oh hey, did I mention he was on vacation this whole time too??? I brought down our anniversary AND his vacation. Go me? Heh.

In between me snotting and coughing (and being passed out from sipping from a Nyquil bottle 24/7 because it's the only thing that WORKS now that the meth-heads have stolen the good cold medicine from us) we did manage to get out a couple times though. Once to New London to see an art installation at an American art museum on Louis Tiffany. No pics (see: sick) but it was definitely worth the trip. (This state has more bloody "New" cities than it can shake a stick at though. I think it was New London? Hell, it could have been New Britain. I WAS SICK. AND NOT PAYING ATTENTION. Also, there are a million city and towns here that start with 'New'. lol)

But the real prize was a trip to.....

The Bronx Zoo.

YOU CAN JUST DRIVE THERE? It never occurred to me before but.......YOU TOTALLY CAN.

The impetus for this was an ad I saw in the paper here for a bus trip back in July. That date didn't work for me but it got me thinking....YOU CAN DRIVE THERE FROM HERE. So we did. 

2 1/2 hours down and pretty much traffic free - no complaints at all!

(We will not talk about the drive back because the 95 once you get BACK into Connecticut is the most miserable stretch of epically awful traffic every_single_time_we_do_it_no_matter_the_time_of_day and GAH! Why is it so bad? It's like a 25 mile stretch of HELL. It's literally like falling into a wormhole and coming out into HELL. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Man, I am *so* glad I don't live anywhere near that end of the state.)

Anyhoo - BRONX ZOO. YAY. Totally a bucket list thing for me. It's one of the world's biggest zoos, in operation since 1899 with some of the original buildings from wayyyy back still in use. (The architecture alone is beautiful.) If you love zoos, how could you not want to go? 

Verdict? It was awesome. And big. So so so so so big. We used up every last minute of the 7 hours the zoo is open to see everything. And we had to HUSTLE at the end, I tell you. For real. You can not overstate how big this zoo this. (My Fitbit recorded us walking SEVEN MILES while we were there. No joke!)

The favorite was the lowland gorillas. They have a really BIG enclosure that wraps around and around (and even over you) but a lot of them like to spend their time up right against the glass. I've seen gorillas before but never so close and at eye level. You could literally sit right NEXT to them, with just a slip of glass between you. Even hold your hand up against their hand, if you want. (And they do interact with you at times.) They stare at you AND through at the same time. It's uncomfortable, to be honest, and makes you think about a lot of.......stuff. (Also? Very humbling.) I would go back just for this. 

Worth the trip if you can make it. :)

I felt pretty good while we were there, magically (?), and then my face blew up on the drive home for some reason and I was a drippy, swollen, cherry red eyed sad sack of a mess by the time we got home. I have no idea why it waited until we were finished with the zoo part of the day but I was so thankful it held off like that. WHEW.

Wish we could have gotten out more but........you know. Stuff happens. 

Also good that week:

HONEY HONEY HONEY HONEY. 

HONEY WAS HARVESTED.

This year's stuff is the darker colored honey. What a difference from last year, huh??

Funny how that works out. 

Now have almost 65 bottles of new honey so this year was a success. THANK YOU.

Kind of nice after both hives collapsing last year. 

Fingers crossed they live through the winter now! :)

More stitchy stuff to update now that *light cough* I'm starting to feel better but I'll save it for a post of it's own. :)

Bullet: DODGED.

As in, I was sweating bullets when that October Surprise aka SNOWMAGEDDEN passed through here this weekend because I was *sure* the power would go out, given how many damaged trees there are now from that pesky Irene. It flickered enough to keep us in a state of anxiety about it but crisis averted! WHEW. This should be the last one we sweat through too because the electrician is finally coming this week to wire up a generator all 'proper like' so we will, at the very least, be able to keep the fridge and water running for future outages, which is all I really need to keep me happy. Unspoiled food and toilet privileges and I can live like a king  queen. :)

It's good too because I had SO MUCH work to do this weekend if I hadn't been able to get to it a total nervous breakdown would have imminent. Exhibit A:

Beads made this weekend. As in, the last two days. 

TWO. DAYS. 

(There are at least 400 beads there, believe it or not. *I* believe it because I've lived it but you? You might have some doubt.) 

My left hand is BUSTED like woah now though. Sorry sorry state it's in. I was cleaning and stringing them for over an hour and had to walk away because my left hand isn't working any more. (So I went on to...........photo taking and TYPING UP a blog post...........because *THAT* will surely help things. *eye roll*) I'm hoping two Advil get it 'back' enough in the next hour or two because I have to start digging into another stack of orders this afternoon. I'm down with the whole 'making hay while the sun is shining' thing re: working a lot a lot a lot.............. until my left hand stops actually working because the muscles on the top of my hand are busted from twirling mandrels for umpteen million hours. (Unlike over-knitting, which targets my right hand, I can't be going WHOOPSIE and dropping 1000 degree hot-like-FIYAHHHH things in my lap when working because of numbness. Doesn't work.....not without some serious burning of shit.......or skin.) So we'll see how this week goes. Worst case scenario I'm calling a time out, closing up shop, and taking a week or two off. I could use a break so it won't be the worst thing ever. :)

Anyhoo, I'm now going to show you some things that totally doesn't jib with the hand issues of above but 1) the mitten knitting all took place the weekend before and 2) 97% of the sock knitting took place earlier last week i.e. I've done nothing at all this weekend, knitting-wise. So trust me - I'm not compounding the issue the last few days like a fool. :)

So yeah. I finished the second of the big giant Man Mittens started in September in preparation for last week's Stitches East:

Yay! One pair of unfinished mittens done, one more to tackle.

And mad love was given to a an ever-hopeful thought of finishing up some October socks. (Pattern: Monkey!)

Outlook now: dark and cloudy given my numb hand. But I managed to get 3/4ers of the way through two-at-a-time socks so I made good progress before the shut down.

Also making me sad:

OH NOES!!

My favorite pair of socks, with both heels found to be held together by nothing more than magic dust and a prayer. The stitches seem to be, quite literally, held together by nothing more than a whisper. It's like watching a slo-mo train wreck. You know it's going to blow out and turn into a raveling mess at some point real soon but it's going to taunt me in the meantime until it happens.

I feel certain a new heel could be put on by picking up the stitches where the heel turns but I'm not sure I have the stomach for such fiddliness at the moment. I have to contemplate things for awhile and come up with a plan of attack. The rest of the socks are in such good shape, tossing them, at this point is just NOT an option. 0_o

Edit to add: Ravelry says I finished those socks in Feb. 2009. So nearly three years of wearing them once a week for 5 months a year (they really are my favs).........yeah, I can see why the heels are blown out. Plus, note to self: STOP 'SKATING' AROUND ON THE WOOD FLOORS ALL THE TIME LIKE A BIG IDIOT.)

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?!?

Boo Hoo Hoo. I haz a sad.

A moment of silence, please, for my dearly departed kiln:

8/2002 - 8/2011

Oh, I'm sure he will rise from the dead at some point when I can track down a couple new parts for him but for now he's DOA, having quit on me (of course) when I was smack-dab in the middle of a huge stack of orders. *sigh*

So I am kiln-less at the moment and awaiting a whole new one to find it's way to me hopefully within a week. It took some honest-to-god pitiful begging on my part to find someone who could build me another one *this* weekend because no one but no one has these babies sitting on a shelf ready to go, it seems. It's kind of nauseating to see '2-4 weeks to ship' over and over and over again when you need one like, OMG YESTERDAY. So I have week off from bead making while things are in motion and I think I need it to help alleviate my stress levels.

Anyhoo. I have grand plans for my upcoming 'unemployment' aka forced unpaid vacation like:

• catching up on six months/eight inch high stacks of paperwork. *ahem*
• work on the site/Etsy in regards to Halloween/Xmas stuff so it's ready to go when the new kiln is here
• no-excuses-anymore regular exercise.
• no-excuses-anymore down and dirty housecleaning
• track down some parts for the broken kiln so I will have a back-up in the future
• oh, and all the usual not-at-all productive type things in the larger sense like knitting, finally finishing the Dance with Dragons book, etc.

 First up in the non-productive type thing is to finish this pair of mittens I started this week:

I think I had planned for these to be a Xmas gift for the hubby last year but he ended up with just the skeins of yarn in his stocking. Heh. On the bright side, I am now on schedule to make a grand debut of them for *this* year's Xmas stocking. :)

And my personal 2011 Sock challenge socks for July are fini so it's time to cast on for a pair for August. (I'm thinking a pair of candy-corn-ish striped pair of Jaywalkers. Mmm.) The yarn - Lornes Laces - and pattern - Boysenberry Yo - are exclusive to the Cookie A Sock Club and were a fun knit.Vaguely reminiscent of a feather-and-fan pattern.

I can't tell you HOW MUCH I am enjoying this sock club this year. I've joined a bunch of sock clubs over the years and this is the first one where I have not only used the yarn/patterns as they came in but I've used them TOGETHER. Usually you like the yarn but not the pattern or you don't like how they look together, but this one has been just perfect with each shipment. I think we just have one more shipment to go, in November, and then it's done. *sad*

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. :)

I am losing my mind.

I need someone to take this sweater from my hands and finish it for me before I end up in the looney bin. 

There is a reason, in the five years since I've learned to knit, that I never attempted to do a sweater before: because I am too anal retentive perfectionistic discriminating for this sort of work. Combined with a lack of 'knitterly' instincts and a tendency to read knitting patterns too literally............gone. I'm gone. Totally bonkers. Lost in a sea of trying to get it 'right' while simultaneously rewriting parts of the pattern until I'm going around in circles and OMG I CAN'T JUST LET IT BE.

(And just to be clear - it's not the techniques of sweater knitting that I find difficult. There isn't anything difficult with this pattern in that regard.)

Knitting the first sleeve went like this:

• Picked up stitches for sleeve, didn't like it, took two more tries to get it just 'so'. (Not a huge time investment.)
• Got started on the short rows/sleeve cap,  hated them when I was done, ripped it out back to the beginning, watched 9234123 videos on short rows to bone up on the technique.
• Got started again, short rows much better, start having doubts about the fit of sleeve, don't address those doubts until 2/3rds of the way down and realize I hate the way said sleeve is coming out. (The pattern knits up a very fitted sleeve, which I don't understand since this is a HOODIE which is meant to be worn OVER OTHER THINGS? I want/need ROOM in there in case I wear it over a long-sleeved shirt.)
• Ripped sleeve out AGAIN (this time more painful because it had taken me a week to get up to that point), rewrote the sleeve decreases to what I thought would be looser but not TOO loose, started again and, THANKFULLY, with a whole lot of 'making it up as I go along', it worked out so I could finish.

First sleeve: two weeks. Second sleeve, aside from some very minor ripping back to make sure it matched the first sleeve, took one week.

 

Behold. I have sleeve.

Now I'm on to the hood and almost immediately fell down into the rabbit hole again. Let's see if you can see my problem: Pattern repeat is FIVE stitches and you have to increase the hood stitches to 126 stitches. Five.....into 126...............??????????????? Where is that extra stitch supposed to hang out? WHO KNOWS. He's just there to be a pain in your side. Or my side, as it were. Be damned if the pattern has any thoughts on the matter.

 I dealt with this initially by........not dealing with it. I just let the increases in the middle do their own thing, creating this V pattern. Then I panicked about that being 'right', looked up 124512 pictures of other people's hoods (fruitless, because everybody else seemed to wing it too), dropped a few stitches down to start creating more lines like the rest of the hood, DECIDED I HATED THAT because it looked sloppy as hell, with lines just springing out of NOWHERE like bad magic, dropped those stitches again, and reknit them back up to the needles using a crochet hook so it's back to where it was. *wipes sweat from brow*

From that point, there was THIS. ^

Do you know what this? It's the ramblings of a crazy person at 3am as I rewrite the increases to (hopefully) make this detail where the lines all come out of a central point, like a tree or a wishbone. (You can see what I want by the vaguely-NSFW doodle there.) Problem? I would have to rip out the entire hood to do that and that's assuming what I have on paper will work out like planned in the hand. *ahem* 

(I'm not even going to get into how the yarn for the hood is slightly lighter than the knitted part it is connected to *twitch*  because the hood folds back so it *twitch* won't be *twitch* noticeable. Much)

This project is never going to be over, is it? lol Check back in this space ten years from now and you'll find me still plugging along on it!  

Part of this is my fault and part of it is the pattern. The pattern should be written better IMHO. I think it worked out 'perfectly' (whatever that means) for the test knit in the picture (which is a size small) but wasn't test knit in the other sizes and making a pattern larger is about so much MORE than just adjusting the math by 5 stitches or whatever. There are implications to that that need to be addressed and I'm not happy with having no notations about how to go about that. (Just my opinion, of course. I admit I may have my head up my own ass about this.)

I need to just leave the hood the frack alone and finish it as is. If you want to be  helpful, please leave a comment to that affect i.e. it looks fine, leave it alone. lolol

Good news/Bad news

Good news: Knitpicks new Chroma yarns knits up quite beautifully. It's a great alternative to the (to me) scratchy, splitty Noro yarns that have similiar gradient coloring.

Bad news: I knit these in a size large for him, he wore them the other day, washed them and.............HOLY FRAKKIN' SHRINKAGE. :( I didn't notice the tag said 'hand wash', *ahem*, and all our knit socks go in the machine wash. (In a lingerie bag, always cold water, line dry. It works fine for MOST of the things I knit.) Needless to say, they no longer fit him. I have two more skeins of this, in the Fossil color, I will now *not* be turning into socks like planned. Grrrr!

Somewhat Good News: they still fit *me* fine (yay for having small feet!) but I really owed him a pair of socks and after knitting for two weeks on something for him..................I *still* owe him a pair of socks. *sigh*

(I seem to be having a small run of bad knitting mojo in 2011. Pfffft. Happily, my glass mojo and stitching mojo are still healthy. *knock on wood*)

Like a Phoenix she rises.....

Well that was a crappy week. Turns out a double ear infection - not as much fun as a double rainbow. Who knew? lol Feeling much better now though. I still have one ear blocked so I'm going around saying "What?? What did you say??" a lot but at least it's not STABBITY*STAB*STAB*STAB hurting anymore. I seem to ALWAYS get sick for Labor Day weekend/week with some sort of sinus thing, I assume because of allergies.

 Woodstock Fair 2010 Sand 'Castle' - not as big as the ones in the past. The economy has even gotten to the sand castle builders, I guess. lol

We always go to the Woodstock Fair that weekend and I always feel craptacular in a myriad of ways involving my head when we go. (At least this year I wasn't so stuffed up that I almost choked to death when trying to eat. That would be Labor Day Week Sickness of 2009. I'm still taking three times longer to eat food than most people from that little incident. *shudder*)

I didn't take a lot of pictures at the fair because I'm not sure how many pics of 800lb pumpkins and scores of sheepies one person needs (I think I hit my personal limit a couple years ago) but look at this little cutie:

Look at me and not the poop! 

I've never seen such an interesting color pattern on a bunny before! Black body, white head, with ice BLUE eyes. So so so pretty. This breeder had a bunch of entries this year and all of her bunnies had pretty blue eyes. Some of them were for sale and it was hard to resist them. :(

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'm all random today. Sorry.

 **My brisket came out FABULOUS, if I must say so. (And who else around here is going to say it for me, right? lol) I ended up just making my own recipe out of a hodge podge of recipes that some of my favorite bloggers had posted/stuff I readily had on hand. It basically boiled down to: 1 cup ketchup, 1/2 bottle of chili sauce, 5-6 cloves of peeled/crushed garlic, TB of dry mustard, packet of onion soup mix, 1/4 cup of so of brown sugar, and 2 chipotle chilis (and a little of the adobe sauce they come in). Mix it up, marinade if you want, stick in the crock-pot on low for 8-10 hours. Skim off the fat when it's done and then reduce the sauce on it's own in a pan. Throw sauce over meat and eat. YUM! Only thing I would do differently? Add more chipotle peppers. Those things are killer hot (to me) but two didn't seem to give it any heat at all. At least not for a 5 1/2 lb. brisket. So MORE HOT PEPPERS next time. :)

**I would be a liar if I said I WASN'T desperately jealous at seeing this project that Mary Kathryn posted about the other day. This is so up my alley it makes me want to weep. It's incredibly detailed, endless, and epic in scale - what's not to love? I was halfway to figuring out how big a piece of linen I would need to do it myself before it dawned on me I needed a project like that like I needed a fork in the eye. WANT, BUT DO NOT NEED.Bye bye hundreds of colorful houses. *sniff*

(picture is from her flickr feed)

**I HAVE been trying to do some new beads for an update (which is long long long overdue). The problem? I'm so not into it, it's scary. I'm totally fine with doing custom orders because that seems to say 'do your job' to my head and I get to it but just doing stuff randomly on it's own? NOT FEELING IT THIS MONTH. But I'm doing a thing here and there so it will get done soon. Promise. :)

**I should do a bigger post on the nightmare about us trying to buy a new (HD) tv. The short story is: fell in love with tv, tv is too big for entertainment center, went shopping for new entertainment center, which cemented the decision that the rugs in the living room/hallway have to go and be replaced with a wood floor (continues what is already in the kitchen/dining), which led to discussions on expensive area rug to also buy. Is this normal? You start a debate about which tv to buy and you end up in a $4,000 hole? Or a theoretical hole as no money has actually been spent right now. We went through this last year when shopping for new couches and what did we end up with? NO COUCHES (STILL need those) but all new paint colors in 3/4's of the house to 'theoretically' match with the couches we liked. I feel like this time we're going to end up with new flooring (which actually *IS* needed) but no new tv. Which is no biggie because our current tv still works but we've had an HD TiVo for about 3 years now - with no HD tv. EPIC.FAIL.AT.SHOPPING.

!@#$!@#

OMG THE RAIN WON'T FREAKING STOP AND I'M READY TO JUST QUIT THIS SHIT, MAN

 There, I feel a little better ONLY NOT REALLY.
The water is just bubbling up now downstairs in between the tiles all over the place and the rug half of the room (where I do my torching) is soaked soaked soaked. A soggy squishy drippy mess. It's disgusting. I keep running the rug machine over it to suck it up but it makes no difference. You can literally do it for an hour, get a couple gallons out of it, and the water doesn't ever stop coming. I'm waiting for him to come home from work so we can wrestle the 234234234 lb. solid oak entertainment center onto wood blocks or something because that's in the process of sucking up water too. *YOU* CAN SUCK IT  MOTHER NATURE.

And to add insult to injury, after I started having my current freak out about the state of things downstairs, Nitwit came along and puked twice right in the middle of things. (I refrained from kicking her but will admit to screaming I HATE YOU I HATE YOU HATE YOU HATE YOU like a banshee at her. What? Don't look at me like that - it's not like she UNDERSTANDS ENGLISH. If that's not working for her I can harness her to top of the rug machine and she can SHARE THE WORKLOAD with me instead.)

I have orders to do too and I'll be damned if I'm going to be cowed by no freaking water so I have to suck it up (HARDY HAR HARRRRRR) and work in the midst of it. If I don't post again after this it's because I electrocuted myself. ACCIDENTALLY OR ON PURPOSE - YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Socks are finished!

I was going to finish them up on Sunday evening while watching the House brou-ha-ha stuff but then I thought "Do I really want to bother to finish them if the world is going to end tomorrow?". Probably not. A pair of finished socks really wouldn't be that helpful as the world was imploding in on itself. But then Monday came and went like normal so I finished them last night instead. I feel kind of cheated after all those hysterics about health care. I had popcorn at the ready to watch the fireworks and stuff and turns out it was just boring ole health care stuff after all. Hmph.

Side note: I half-jokingly declared myself a socialist last week on my LJ after we got our taxes back from the tax lady. SWEET BABY JESUS those Obama middle class tax cuts are sweeeeeeeeeeet. And and and and the stimulus tax incentive we got for putting in all new windows on the house last year was even better - it flat out paid for the WHOLE shebang WITH some leftover. What is this? Someone paying ME to put in thirteen new windows for FREE? LOVE YOU LONG TIME, FEDS! If socialism is about not having leaky-ass wood windows that don't give me a hernia every time I try to open them up AND not needing a ladder on the OUTSIDE of the house to clean them, you may have won me over. lol (Yes, I'm easy. What can I say? I really hated those freaking windows!) If they want to throw $3,000 at me this year to put in a brand new furnace, I'm a goner for sure. ;)

Anyhoo, I should be working on new beads this week. Maybe. I haven't been doing any beads other than orders lately because my basement/work area is swampy with the epic rainstorms of the past week. It's been totally gross at times down there. Blech. I'm not complaining too much because parts of the state were hit much harder and people went w/o power for almost a whole week and/or had a ton of damage from trees falling down. We're definitely going to have to rip the carpet out now down there. Half of downstairs is tiled but, of course, that part isn't swampy - it's mostly just the carpeted area. *sigh* So that plus the fact that high humidity is the quickest way to ruin the sieve beds in  your oxygen concentrator has = not many beads coming out of me in the last week. It was *almost* completely dried out and then another pouring rain came in all day today. UGH!!!

Arrrrrggggggggggh.

 I was doing *so* well with the regular blog entries there and then...........I fell off the wagon and now it's been over a week, A WEEK!!!!, since I've been around. For shame. It's mostly not even my fault. We've just hit the part of winter where I seem to slip into a coma. It's hard to write blog entries when you're in a coma, y'all. Just saying!!! So tired of snow, and cold, and dryness, and darkness, and dry skin, and snow, and this house, and........zzzzzzz. <--See? COMA.
There is big ball of fiery brightness out in the sky today that's, like, SHINING ON ME and in MY EYES and stuff, and it burns and makes me want to sleep even more. lolol
And I'm tired of people saying spring is around the corner because around here? Not so much. The trees don't even fill in completely until the END OF MAY.
Where's my 911 waaaaaaaaaambulance to cure me of my pathological state of whinehood?
Oh here he is:


Hmph. Anyhoo. I *will* be working on new beads this weekend, the work, it goes so slowly at the moment. *yawn* But I do need to buckle down, eh? I've been much more productive at night on non-bead stuff while watching tv. I finally finally finally finally finally finished up the 'finishing' on the batch of the Blackbird stockings I stitched up during November/December. (With the exception of the umbrella one - that one I stitched up last week.)



I'm determined to finish every last one of these up, all 36 of them, OH YES I WILL. With this latest batch done, I'm now up to................May. Ugh. So so so many months left to go. lol
I need to take a short break from it though for the moment because I signed up for a pin pillow exchange on Becky Bee's blog and I need to get that ready and mailed before the end of next month. (Not that it will take me that long to finish but I want to do it early enough to cover any 'issues' that may come up with  mailing because that would be my luck and I don't want to end up on the Blog of Shame for not completing it on time. Nooooooo, no no! Will not do. :))



And I started up my swirl scarf last night (for which I bought all the stuff for last October) but it's crap and I have to start over. BUT THAT'S OKAY. No, really. For one thing, the yarn is not changing colors as fast as I thought it would so I'm going to have alternate the colors manually for each swirl that I start vs. letting the yarn do it naturally. (Not at all difficult to change because each swirl is knit separate and then the yarn is cut to start another one. So instead of using the same skein, like I started doing, I'll rotate between the five skeins that I have to get a different coloration going for each swirl.) Also, I wasn't happy with the cast-on because I wasn't exactly sure how to do it and FAR BE IT FOR ME TO GET OFF MY LAZY ASS TO GOOGLE THAT SHIT BEFORE STARTING FOR REAL, so I winged it and it's, uhh, not so good. Too fiddly and too floppy and more than a little sloppy. But I know how to do it the right way NOW and, even better, since I purchased the yarn for this the Yarn Harlot knit/blogged about this same project last month or so which means 123412341234123 people were drawn to it because of her and I now have a gazillion brains to pick on Ravelry vs. the 10 or so brave souls who had finished it back in October. Basically, I can gather up all their tips  that they learned from their mistakes and HOPEFULLY not make so many of my own.  It's not as bad as all that though, so far. The swirls themselves, once you get past the hinky cast on, are ridiculously easy and quick to knit up. ONWARD I SAY!