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.

Will it be lion or lamb? Hmm..................

 This was the view on my road on March 1st so I'm thinking....................lion, right? Could go either way but I'm definitely leaning towards 'in like a lion'. If only the universe had made it a little easier to choose!  ;^)

(Here's to a lamb-like end-of-March!)

So definitely no walking outside for a bit until the snow melts (which it is doing today, matter of fact) but I had plenty of mail goodies to keep me company inside.

Lovely dishclothy and stitch marker gift goodness from Dee. LOVE IT! And the colors are perfect for me - purple AND lime. THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :)

I really do love a good cotton cloth to use around the house* but hate knitting with cotton (it makes my elbows weep in anger) so I never knit them very often and this makes me sad.

*the more you use them, the better they get until that day when, oops, they completely unravel from the middle or something because you've used it so much. lol

And then there was this.

ARGH! I got sucked into joining QPB.... again! 

We've doing this dance for yearsssssssss. Literally. Over a decade now! (For real.) They go 'Psst. I'll let you have all these books for $1 each  if you just promise to love me enough to buy one more over the next year' and I get ALL TWITCHY AND DO IT. And I buy the one extra book, immediately cancel the membership, they woo me for a couple more years and keep adding stuff to the deals to catch my attention (this also came with a Star Trek-y book light and an overnight bag) until, one day, OMG I'M DOING IT AGAIN. Repeat until one of is dead. Honestly, I don't know why they keep wooing me because I'm not good for any other purchases - surely this is not a good business model? It is what it is at this point, I guess. Plus, as much as I love my Kindle(s), I do still love an 'old fashioned' paper book. Books in general make me happy. 

I was particularly pleased to get the Grimm's one. I had one of those when I was kid and it was quite fascinating and...........odd. Almost creepy and very un-Disney-like. I watch that show Once Upon a Time and it renewed my interest in them, to the point where I just wish listed one on Amazon recently. I'm not sure it's good 'reading' material to just sit and read all in a go but I know I'll enjoy going through it here and there. I don't remember them verbatim from childhood but I remember snippets, like, someone stomping their foot through a floor and that being his downfall? (Rumpelstiltskin?) I should probably finish one (or all) of the 4-5 books I've already started though first, eh? lol

Well here's something that hasn't happened to me in a while! Mr. Man and his 'make the leg longer, longerrrrrrrrrrrrrr, longerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' made me run out of yarn on these when doing the toe*. BAH! (I swear he'd be happy if I made a pair of socks long enough to pull right up to his flipping EARS! lol)

Oh well. A quick dive into my leftover bits came up with this heathered gray that blends in so well you probably wouldn't have noticed I had run out of yarn if I hadn't said anything!

*The yarn was generous enough for a normal sized pair of socks so the fault is all mine - on that count. I have to say though, this Paton's Kroy line is a total bust and I won't be using it again. It knits up nice and thick, cushy and wears well. Good price on it. etc. So what's the problem? ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECT FOR THE CONCEPT OF DYE LOT. This is the second time I've used it for socks, using matching dye lots for the two skeins, and both pairs of socks ended up wildly different. One clearly has more vibrant colors than the other and they match only in that 'kinda sorta if you blink' way. Last year with a pair for my mother and now these - same thing. Not cool. Dye lots are there FOR A REASON and the coloring is off WAY too much for a commercial yarn to be anywhere NEAR acceptable. Grrr!

Anyhoo. I think next I might tackle one of the Cookie A patterns that just came in with my red sock club yarn. I'm kinda askeered of them though. *gulp*

They come with five charts to work through. For ONE pair of socks. 0_o

I blurred this a little so you can't really read them but you don't need to read them to see the page after page after page of charts for the design. Wish me luck! Heheheh.

Off to catch up on blog reading! Have a great weekend, y'all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh hello my old friend EPIC FAIL. It's been far too long inbetween visits...

You know? You never can tell what's going to happen with a yarn when it gets wet. For the most part, it turns out softer, loftier, and with a better 'hang' or drape. And sometimes, it goes bad. Really bad. Really really bad.
This would be one of the bad times hitting me square in the face.

Do these look fine to you?

 How about in this pic?

 One more just for good measure.

These *were* a normal sized pair of socks and then I washed them and they stretched... and stretched... and stretched.. All on their own mind you - I wasn't pulling on them or anything. So what *was* a normal sized foot length is now Clown Foot size. Shaq-sized. Frankstein-length. It's just...................ridiculous. Big floppy loose flapping sized length. I literally laughed until I cried when I first saw what was happening.

(And uhhh, one foot might be longer than the other too but that might be because I knit on them when I was really sick. *ahem* I swear the length problem in general was not my fault because he tried them on before I washed them and they fit like a glove, albeit with one a TINY bit longer than the other.)

Oh well. If you're not FAILING, then you're not KNITTING. Just gotta shake it off like a prize fighter and get ready for the next hit. lol Overall it's a fairly easy thing to fix. I can either unravel it back 3-4 inches and reknit the toe entirely or cut the toe off neatly, put it on DPNS, unravel the foot some, and then graft the two back together. I'm usually a champ at grafting so I'm thinking the latter will do it.

Bright Idea/Epic Fail #938383

In which I 'save money' by trying to find  something locally (to save on shipping, you know) and end up spending way more than I would have if I had just shopped the internets. /sigh

Case in point #1:
Just Cross Stitch October magazine (the one with the Halloween ornaments)
There are no local needlework shops within a hundred miles of here (slight exaggeration but anything over an hour away ceases to be 'local', yes?) so a' trekking we went to find it because I didn't want to spend $6 shipping on a $6 item. I didn't find that issue but I found the Xmas ornament preview one so that's good but we drove here (Michaels), there (quest for a craft store listed in Google but seemingly invisible to the naked eye in real life), and everywhere (Barnes & Noble, ding ding ding! winner!) for it, spending more in gas than the shipping would have cost? lol  And now we have to go back to Barnes & Noble for the issue I ACTUALLY wanted at some later date. *head slap*

Case in point #2:
Trek to the (yayyyy!) local yarn shop for a new circular needle because I didn't want to pay $4 shipping from Knitpicks on a $5 item. Shopping locally is good anyway, right? Sure it is. Until you go in for one circular and end up walking out with 1) a circular needle that cost twice as much as the Knitpicks one and 2) with 2 skeins of yarn. /sigh

I couldn't resist the sherbert-y colors of the Zino striping and the Malabrigo skein is something I already have ONE skein of, which is great for socks, but now with TWO skeins I can whip it up into a great big ole scarf (or shawl) instead. (And with a side-by-side comparison, they seem to match pretty well, which is lucky! If it didn't match up, I was just going to alternate skeins. There are no hard color changes in this colorway so I figured it would work out either way.)

Wallet: Empty
Me: Failed but happy because LOOK AT THE PRETTIES! WEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Holllllly heck I don't know where this week has gone. :(

Just POOF! and it's suddenly Friday? I need to make a to-do list for next week, methinks, so I don't get off track again and lose another week to the nothings. lol

Notable things for the week:

OMG NEW HP TRAILER.

What? You didn't watch this obsessively ten times in a row? Oh, maybe it was just me. lolol I even watched it a couple times on my tv to get the full 42-inch HD effect (because all hail the TiVo wireless service that streams all sorts of internets). I don't even know why I get so excited about these trailers because the movie is never ever even close as good as the books. I KNOW THIS and yet I still get excited. There is FiendFyre! And Shell Cottage! Walk in the Forest! Snake in a Old Lady! UGH. Is it November yet? lol

Hey, if someone's cell phone accidentally pants-dials you what do you do? Ignore it? Think the person in question has been kidnapped and get the state police and rescue services involved?

.......................Wait.....what? Yeah, welcome to my world. We went out to eat out-of-state the other night and the hubby's cell phone accidentally crank called his mother a few times while it was in his pocket. She took this to mean we had been abducted, like for REAL, and had 911 emergency services rushing out to our house like woahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Now you have to understand - this is a very quiet neighborhood. Very. Quiet. There is NO thru traffic on this street and I've only seen a police car once in my 7 years here and that was when One Eye John took ill. (His actual nickname - I swear I'm not making fun.) So when we got out of the restaurant there was a blizzard of voice mails from his mother, the Connecticut State Police and neighbors to deal with. CRAZY STUFF, man. And, per usual, we forgot to lock our sliding glass doors so I'm not even sure the police didn't come in the house on their own when no one answered the front door. Grrrrr. (Actually, we're lucky the front door was locked. I forget that one too sometimes. *sigh*) I'm glad to know that if something happened, people would notice but I'm not sure I needed firsthand knowledge of this. Hmph.

Sooooo, that's my crazy story for the week. Bet you can't top it. Here's hoping the holiday weekend is boring and drama free! lol

Have a great weekend, guys. :)

Miracle Worker.

There are miraculous things afoot in this house. For every skein of yarn I use up, it is immediately replaced by 2-3 new ones! It's just the strangest thing ever.

Claudia Hand Paint - Watermelon

It's so miraculous, in fact, that someone should possibly alert the Vatican. I mean - imagine if I could translate my miracle making skills into feeding the poor! I'm thinking the Pope would like to get in on that.

Fleece Artist BFL - Daffodil**

Oh wait. It's not miraculous. I'm just a weak-ass person with an active Paypal account. Durn it. *sigh* Does it help that said yarn was on sale and, as we all know, I'm completely and utterly unable to walk away from sale yarn? No? Oh well. It's got to be in my favor then that I have no credit card debt, right? RIGHT?? *sigh*

Claudia Hand Paint - Navy Olive (looks nicer in person)

**Ok, this one actually wasn't on sale. Whoops. But it was part of a 2010 Sock Club thing that I signed up for last year so it's not my fault if yarn not-so-randomly makes it way into my mailbox every 2 months. Ok, it is my fault but I'm going to blame YOU if you burst my denial bubble. *stare*

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!

Whoops. Time got away from me there. :)

(And yes I am a bad bad blogger for not updating more often this month. My husband is even starting to shame me into updating this thing. lol)