Shop till you drop....

...and then work till you drop. That's how my day-after-Thanksgiving was. My mom, sisters, and I always wake up uber-early to hit the sales. I don't know how I've managed to be so lucky, but the last three years working at Target I've always closed or worked a mid-shift. This year we split up at the beginning, some of going to stand in line at Sears and some of at Wal-Mart. We all got in our lines at 4:30am and then joined up in line at Target at 5:45am. I always get weird looks from my unfortunate coworkers who are dealing with the crowds when they see me among the psycho shoppers. My dad calls this phenomenon "sports shopping". We aren't the gung-ho groups you see running down small children or anything, and we mostly go just for fun, although some of the deals are so incredible you'd have to be crazy not to get them. I love the fact that I can get all my Christmas shopping done in just about one day and then spend the rest of the season decorating, baking, and enjoying time with family. After we finished up with all the crazy shopping I had just enough time to change clothes and grab lunch before I had to go to work to clean up the madness.

Anyway....Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone! The past two weeks have been extremely crazy for me. My dad had a minor heart attack on Tues, Nov. 13th. He's fine now, taking it easy and resting a lot, trying to ease back into things. My sister came home from boot camp on emergency leave to be with the family, which was a blessing in disguise b/c that meant she got to spend Thanksgiving with us. Then my birthday was that Thursday, the 15th. Then we went into pre-Thanksgiving crazy-time with all the preparations. I always host Thanksgiving at my house for my whole family and Doug's parents. Usually it results in anywhere from 9-15 people eating. This year we only had 9, but still that's a lot of food to prepare. Suffice it to say I've been a mess the past two weeks.

Shortly after my birthday my friend Beth took me to see the Lipizzaner Stallions.

They were so elegant and regal. I'd never been to see them, but I recommend it to anyone who likes horses. Very entertaining!

Names, names

Just for fun....

YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car) = Shadow Civic
YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fav. ice cream flavor, favorite cookie) = Cookie Snickerdoodle (I abbreviated Cookie for my two fave flavors of Cookies and Cream and Choc Chip Cookie Dough)
YOUR "FLY GIRL" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of last name) = KSny...which I have been called before as a nickname at work, believe it or not
YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal) = Blue Dog
YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born) = Ann Louisiana
YOUR STAR WASH NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first) = Snyka
SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink, put "The" first) = The Green Margarita
STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne, favorite candy) = Romance Skittles
WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names) = Jean Alan
PORN STAR NAME (name of first pet and name of first street you lived on): Shadow Lamb (I used the earliest street address I can remember....which was in fourth grade. I must have lived a million places before that but I can't remember the addresses.)

Knitting again

I have been knitting again finally. I recently went through a spell where it was difficult to get my hands motivated to knit. It happens every once in a while...usually on the heels of a particularly productive knitting spell. So I cast on for some socks....a little late for Soctoberfest, but what the hey.
These have no intended recipient as of yet, but Christmas is a-coming so we'll see. I'm trying to trick myself into some Christmas knitting this year. When I put a deadline on things they tend to fall to the bottom of the basket, so this year I am "just knitting" and if stuff is done by christmas, then Yay! If not, then oh well.

I did pick up a really really cool Denise Schmidt quilt book on Friday with some cute gift ideas in it. I love these "Dis-Cards". They are really simple and relatively quick to make. I think I will make a few sets of them for stocking stuffers or swaps or something. In case you can't tell, that's fabric quilted onto cardstock.

And, finally, pictures of my spinning attempts.

The ladies that taught me called this stuff "beast" because it's cheap and readily available. I kept thinking of Milwaukee's Best, which we called "Beast" in college for the same reason. Anyway, I'm still pretty rocky at this. My yarn is very "thick and thin" in quality and very fuzzy too, as you can see. But I like the way sometimes the yarn is all white, sometimes all black, and sometimes a twist of both. I have a bunch of roving in pretty blues and purples I will spin when I get more consistent. I think I have enough of the blues/purples to make a hat. Let's just hope I can spin it all before it gets warm again!

Bad Little Blogger

I have been such a bad blogger lately. I know I neglected to post 4 times in the month of October. Plus, I haven't updated my Ravelry notebook in about 40 billion years. There are projects on there that have been ripped out, projects that have been completed (ok, so not completed, but closer to being completed) and I still have not added my stash of yarn and books. Ugh. Not having internet at home really sucks. It takes a considerable amount of motivation to drag my laptop out to go sit in a crowded restaurant in an uncomfortable chair and relax. I really really really want to get internet at home again. I'm trying to convince my hubby. His thought on the subject is if I can get it for free at Panera and other local hot spots, why bother to pay for it? The end result is me not blogging regularly and not getting my email until three days after someone sent it. Snail mail would reach me faster people!

So....enough about me griping. This week was pretty good. On Tuesday I got a lovely surprise at work.

Everyone at work kept asking if it was my birthday, anniversary, etc. Nope, I just have a great husband. :) They were "just because" flowers. Now, I can hear you all groaning in that "that's so sweet it makes me sick" kind of way. This is an out of the ordinary occurance. I actually had people at work ask me what he did, or if we had a fight. First of all, way to put a negative spin on the highlight of my week, thanks, and second of all, how is it any of your business??

That night when I got home the good surprises kept on going when I opened my mailbox to find this:

Thanks Secret Pal! She sent me two skeins of some yummy Crystal Palace yarn in colors that just scream my name. A pair of super-cute knitting needles. I don't know if you can read them, but they say "I *heart* Knitting" with a cute little cat on them. She also sent a cute notepad, some stickers, a candle, and a yummy bath fizzy. Thanks so much SP! I can't wait to cast on for my hat! It's so funny that you suggested that's what I do with the yarn because I was just searching my stash yesterday for some suitable hat yarn. Thanks :)