Happy Friday the 13th! :)

It's hard to be spooked by it though when it's so bright and sunny and warm though, right?

(I've come across this multiple times today on Facebook, etc. and, while it doesn't seem that fair, I have to say I've snorted  laughed at it every single time. Why? I don't know.)

Hard to believe another week has gone by!! Let's see, what did I get into to this week.......

I finished up all of my current sock projects!

Oh, don't be too impressed though - the "Wayward" (red) ones have been ongoing since the beginning of March. 

 I just had a bitty foot on the right one to do to put that project to bed. (And, because of the complementing wrap-a-round cables, these socks actually *DO* have a left and right to them. Thankfully, I paid attention to what chart was what, out of the stack that this pattern comes with, and ENDED UP with a right/left one vs. two lefts, etc. WHEW!) 

 The Dragonfly socks were a quick knit - easy, easy! Probably could have gone with another repeat for the leg so I'll remember that for next time. (I don't like my socks too long so it's no biggie either way.)

Also (semi) finished:

Stitched my flag stitchy again, this time on the 'proper' fabric so it will fit on top of the star box that came in the kit. Just need to find the time to do the finishing now. (I didn't improvise a little '2012' on the new one but now that I see them together, I kind of miss that? I might have to go back and put that in!)

Anyone else doing the L*K Mystery Sampler Club that was just released??? I started it and love the colors but the fabric is a little larger count (30 ct.) than I would prefer. It's not a deal-breaker though. I'm just a diva and will get over it. *cough* I think the transition from 40ct from the last project to 30ct was a little oogy for me, is all.

I know so many of you are BROILING out there, in the heat, but it's been phenomenally seasonal here the past week...........again. Much better than it usually is for this area! If this is the new 'face' of climate change for this area, I'll take it!!!! Got lots of biking in last week, picture is from one of the (many) bike bridges on the Blackstone River Trail in Lincoln/Cumberland, Rhode Island.

This last pic is from my Epic Kitchen DeClutter this morning. Does anyone else find the kitchen gets cluttered if you so much as take your eyes off of it for a second? I hadn't SERIOUSLY decluttered it in awhile so I went at it in a ruthless manner this morning and now it's all back down to clean surfaces everywhere you look. 

I had to laugh and stop to take a picture of this ridiculousness though:

I *might* have a packet problem. As in, drink packet?

Yeah, I gots it bad. REAL bad.

And I'm not sure the picture is *quite* capturing just how many are there. (And I'm not even getting into how many bottles of MiO are around. *ahem*)

In my defense, I do drink a lot of water. (I even have a water cooler in my kitchen to facilitate things.)

I don't have any defense, really, for ordering more though the other day. True Lemon has 50% off all the lemonade packets this month and I..........may have ordered some more? Less than a 100 packets but, uhhhhh, more than 50. Okay so it was 80. Crap. WHERE IS THE 12 STEP PROGRAM FOR PACKET ADDICTION????? o_0

(Not that anybody asked, but my favorite one is the stevia-sweetened Apple Pear ones from Target. If I could get that one on tap, that would be GLORIOUS.)

Trip to Mecca aka WEBS.

Rays of light from heaven? COULD BE.

A trip to WEBS Yarn Store that is. 

AKA America's Yarn Store 

AKA the biggest yarn store you're ever likely to see in your lifetime. 

The place is legen........dary amongst knitters. For real. 

They even own the yarn.com domain. (How early did you have to get in on the internet craze to grab THAT?!?)  I've always meant to go there but it's in a part of Massachusetts I don't go to very often and over an hour away so it never happened until recently when we were in the area for something else.

This is about one third of the regular shop area.

And the verdict? It really is legendary. lol

From the size, from the sheer amount of employees buzz buzz buzzing around filling web orders..........the size.

It was so busy I didn't feel comfortable taking a picture inside the regular part of the store because there was no way to snap a pic without, literally, getting 6-7 strangers in the pic as well. I wasn't comfortable with that (knowing I was probably going to post it online) so I snagged this one off the web instead. There is so much yarn in the front room it's staggering. And overwhelming. I really think they might sell yarn from EVERY SINGLE KIND of premium/artisan seller out there. It's sheer crazytown makings. And that's before you get to the BACK OF THE STORE, which is.............

....A HUGE FREAKING WAREHOUSE.

With shopping carts. 0_o

Totally, totally BANANAS. It's enough to give you the vapors.

And you'll be totally shocked to learn that I only purchased this little purple knitting bag and one pattern booklet.

Well, that plus the yarn stuffed inside the bag. *ahem*

These are destined for socks for my mother though...

...because she loves purple (as do I) and it's hard to find purple sock yarn WITHOUT it being paired with blue. Always, always with the blue! I get the whole blue-violet thing but how about some purple yarn that's just.....*gasp*.......PURPLE? At least one of these fits that, and the other is, thankfully, devoid of blue for a change so clearly I had to buy them. :)

The other yarn is just a little something for a little scarf...moving along......nothing to see here..

It was fun trip but I don't think I will be going back for a long time. It's waaaaaaay too dangerous awesome and my heart might not be able to take being exposed to all those mountains of yummy yarn that I can NOT resist buying that awesomeness. Might have to be a once a year thing for me. :)



Oh boy. I found these pics on my computer this week - already 'shopped and ready to post. They are from a couple days before Irene hit and we had no power, etc. and I TOTALLY forgot I had them and a whole post in mind for them. So this is a MUCH delayed post but I went through all that work with the pictures so...................ENJOY! :)

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?!?

Oink oink.

In the process of replacing all the carpeting with wood floors this summer, I've done some MAJOR purging. I mean major: 7-8 bags of donated clothing, countless bags of trash, and at least two big bags of paper related materials from the filing cabinet/desk. Nothing escaped my wrath. I was ruthless and threw stuff away while cackling away with glee. (I do love a good purge.) It was good times, peoples, good times.

 In doing all that work in the office, I ended up with a half a drawer empty in the file cabinet. What to do with it...........hmm............HEY! I COULD ORGANIZE MY STITCH STASH. I had it all piled up willy-nilly in a wood 'cheese/shaker' box but I could be, like, all PROFRESHENUL and sort it and stuffs!

So I laid it all out and sorted it by designer....and..........HOLY CRAPBALLS I have a lot of stuff. Good lord! lol

THIS PHOTO DOES NOT DO MY STASH JUSTICE. 

IT'S BAD, PEOPLE.

It's enough to make one a little faint. (Or more than a little, to be honest.) Now, in my defense, I did 'work' as model stitcher for a local shop for 4-5 years in my spare time so, heavy discount and earned cash in hand, I happily worked on building my stash up during that period of time. But still. I really need not every buy anything EVER AGAIN EVER AND THAT WOULD STILL BE TOO SOON HONESTLY.  (Not that that has ever stopped me before. So don't hold your breathe or anything on it happening. lol) It's hard to say which pile makes me break out into a sweat more than the others. 

There is the huuuuuuuuge stack (20? 25?) of LHN/CCN patterns that I got in a series of wicked cheap eBay auctions last summer. Nope.......

Oh ho ho! There is the crazy amount of Shepherd's Bush kits at $30-$60 each. (95% of these were purchased during my stitching heydey, hence they were 'free'.) Close....very close...

Ahh. Here we go. A stack of Bent Creek patterns that all have a PIECE OF CUT LINEN in them, all ready to go. It's all that linen that makes me feel the most guilty, even if I did 'pay' for most of it with my time and expertise, because most of these are pieces that would require framing and, hello, I have a limited amount of wall space for those kinds of projects at this point. *gulp*

Anyhoo. It all fit quite nicely. So, uhh, that's good. Right?

I had ideas of going through this to cull stuff for a giveaway but, honestly, that's going to have to wait until I catch my breathe again and feel less overwhelmed. I feel like I would get rid of TOO much at this point in a frenzy to make it more 'manageable' (if that is even possible) and then maybe end up regretting it. lol

I will do it one day though. :)

You can't keep me down for long.

Back in February I lost a beloved member of my sock family. The King Sock, if you will. I loved them too much, for too long, and blew a huge hole in the heel. *sniff*

(Mr. Chicken was in charge of the inspection process.)

There was only one thing to do, of course........

KNIT ANOTHER PAIR EXACTLY LIKE THE FIRST.

Same yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts - Socks that Rock.

Same pattern: Crusoe (free Knitty pattern)

AND I SHALL LOVE THEM UNTIL THEY FALL APART.

 

(Mr.Chicken approves.)

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

A small confession. (With a free giveaway at the end so stay til the end!!!)

When I said I had 'bought a bag' of teeny buttons on Etsy a couple weeks ago I wasn't being honest.

It may have been more than one bag. 

It may even have been more than several bags.

In fact..........I may have a teeny problem with collecting teeny buttons.....

But, oh, what a glorious problem it is!

Let's just relish in the teeny button pr0n, shall we? 

(Feel free to click on these to get the biggun' pictures for the full pr0n effect.)

My favorites might just be these micro-sized TEENY-WEENIE buttons. *swoon*

But the polka dot ones are a close second. 

I know there are a lot of stitchers who love teeny buttons for their projects just as much as I do so if you are one of them, leave a comment on this entry and I will pick someone randomly on Valentine's Day to receive a little bag of their very own teeny buttons to swoon over. Just a quick and simple giveaway to spread the love.

As always, followers of my blog will get entered in twice for being such cool characters. :)

(But feel free to spread the word to your own blogger friends if you wish - it's open to all, anywhere in the universe.) 

New item up in the Bead Shoppe today.

Or rather - an old item that I haven't offered for a long time but it's getting some new attention because there is currently an article featuring Lori Anderson of Lori Anderson Designs in the current Bead Style magazine and one of the pictures in her article has these lil guys in it. It's been fun doing them up again! I never stopped doing them because I didn't like them - I just felt I had a lot of holiday beads that were redundant so I cut my catalog down a bit the last couple of years. (You know I'm always happy making things with little beady eyes.) Be sure to check out her site even if it's just to bask in the glow of the eye candy. :)

In other news, my computer is now fixed..................maybe. The third thing I tried to fix it, a check disk thingy, actually repaired the stupid ntuser file causing all the problems, though it took forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrever to do it. (Probably a good sign I need to clean my hard drive off a bit. I guess I don't need to save EVERY SINGLE picture I ever take ever ever ever.) So that was good but, ummmm, I've been too a'skeered to shut my computer off since then so I'm not sure what will happen when I do. lololol It may just be a temporary fix, you know? I know I'll have to shut it off at SOME point and see what happens, because there might be something still 'off' that will just REcorrupt that file but for the MOMENT I'm quite content to live in DenialLand. I've had a ton of orders lately which is a ton of emails, a ton of printing of receipts and shipping labels, etc. I can't be fooling with a 2hr repair job every day!  So for now I'm just putting it to 'sleep' at night. I might need a 12-step to get me to shut it off completely because it's turning into a bit of a phobia. OH NOES, COMPUTER TROUBLES IMMINENT, SAVE ME SAVE ME.

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.

Houston, we have a problem............

Due to a bizarre and unpredictable confluence of August events....

...which started with me wanting to get 'that' Halloween magazine and the newest LHN ornament charts...

...which combined with the fact that the place I got them from, ABC Stitch, was having (and is STILL HAVING) a massive sell-off of stuff at 50% off....

Plus a blogger getting rid of some serious stash on Ebay...

...in lots of 7 and 15...

...at unbelievably low prices...

.....*gulp*.....

Let's just say if you don't hear from me again, it's because I've collapsed under the weight of my own excess. 

(In my defense, everything (outside of the two newest patterns and the magazine) was purchased at 50-70% off. Apparently that is the magic number that makes everything seem 'ok'. lol)

Well then. Mmmm.....in more charitable news, the Blackbird Xmas stocking chart is a duplicate for me (which I knew beforehand but it was part of a lot of 7) so I plan on giving that away here on the blog soon. :)