Mystery Solved

Over a month with no post! I know, I know....last time I promised a fun post and then radio silence for almost two months. Well, a few months ago.....

I must have taken about 6 tests over the course of a week just to "be sure". We decided to wait for the three-month mark to tell anyone at all, including friends and family. We just wanted to be sure that this time was going to be different than what happened last time. I had an initial doctor's appointment around 5 weeks to determine the approximate due date, then another appointment at 13 weeks for our first ultrasound.

(*Note: I have tried about a dozen different ways to get these u/s pics to show up better, but finally I had to resort to just taking pictures of the u/s papers. The scanned pictures wouldn't load properly into blogger. As if that wasn't headache enough, the darn things keep coming up sideways....I give up! Tilt your head to the right and enjoy!)

So that should about sum up by absence. I didn't trust myself to blog without slipping up about our HUGE secret. Not to mention the first few months were a little trying. I was nauseous mostly in the evenings, so dragging the laptop to Panera, the land of a million smells, was pretty much out of the question. Add to that the intense fatigue that comes with the first trimester, and well, there you go. I am feeling MUCH better now. I have just outgrown all my regular pants and I'm starting to show a bit, but only if you already know what to look for. My baby bump isn't quite noticeable as a baby bump, just a little extra weight around the middle right now. As of Wednesday I will be 16 weeks along, due date of May 2nd, 2009!

Now that my secret is out I'm sure I will be posting more regularly, so feel free to stop by and say hi!

Anyone still there?

Holy moly! I can't believe it's been more than a month since I last posted! There hasn't been a whole lot going on over in my world. I haven't really knit anything. (I opted out of doing the Knitting Ravelympics that I posted about last. Too much pressure.) Doug got a new job and I've been adjusting to his very weird schedule. By weird I mean, he is working a M-F 9-5 job. He is home EVERY evening and weekend. That is so bizarre by our standards. It's been a real treat to have him home in the evenings, but werid to not have any weekdays with him. That used to be our errand-running time, and it's been an adjustment to do all that stuff on my own.
No pictures for this post, sorry. I hate posts without pictures, but I just happened to be near a computer when I realized how neglectful of the blog I've been lately, so I had nothing planned. The reason for my long-awaited (ha!) return to blogging? I just got an email that notified me that my SITS day in the sun was coming next Wednesday! I need to do some blogging between now and then so I will be back with pictures and all later this week/weekend. Hopefully.
I have a really super-cool post planned, but probably not until sometime late next week. (That should keep you clicking back, right?)
See you soon!

Link-o-licious

Most of you have at least heard of the Knitting Olympics that are hosted by the Yarn Harlot. They coincide with the winter olympics and only happen every four years. I participated two years ago and didn't quite finish my project. (Although I did FINISH it eventually, a rareity round these parts.) For the summer olympics another group (Ravelry) is hosting the Ravelympics. Same idea....cast on a project during the opening ceremonies and finish before the closing ceremonies. No fair using already cast-on projects, it must be brand spanking new. So I had debated about joining in with this round and I intended on it, but I let life catch up with me a bit and now it's already been two days and I haven't cast on yet. I'm torn. I'd really like to start a project but I have done none of the legwork, ie. picking out a pattern/yarn, etc. I have plenty of yarn to choose from at home and books and books worth of patterns, so that's not the issue. But I'd need to figure out what is actually knit-able in 15 days. So what should it be?

A sweater? I have three of four that I'd really like to make that I already have yarn for, like the
Tangled yoke Cardigan, or the Hourglass Sweater (rav link), or Buttony, or Rusted Root. But I don't think knitting a whole sweater in 15 days is really that reasonable. I mean, maybe, if I had nothing else going on and it was a slow time of year at work. But I am going out of town, celebrating my hubby's bday, and work is c-r-a-z-y right now. I guess Rusted Root could be forced off the needles fast enough, but it would be a huge stretch of my abilites.

So maybe some socks?
There are so many choices. How am I supposed to choose from all those wonderful patterns? Plus there is the problem that all my sock needles are a little tied up at the moment.

Maybe I will just sit this one out. Hmm. I'll have to decide today if I'm going to so I actually have time to knit something. ::scratching head:: Tough decision.

Thank you all for your supportive comments about my jewelry! I really appreciate the advice. I think I will give Etsy the ol' college try, but it will take me a bit to get some stuff together and get the store up and running. I'm sure I will plan some big post to celebrate when I open my Etsy store for real. So keep your eyes peeled for a big party!

Not knitting!

A few weeks ago a friend of mine came over to make dinner with me. We went down to the downtown mall before shopping for the ingredients and happened to wander into a bead store. They had a cute display set up with ready-made pendants. I took one look and thought "I can make those!", so we each picked out a few cute focal beads and some leather and brought it home to be crafty. (Sorry for the blurry pics...not sure why my camera wouldn't cooperate.)

We mostly used accent beads that I had in my *ahem* sizeable bead stash. I don't know why I don't make jewelry more often. I think I lose my patience with all the tiny beads, but I have soooo many beads I really should do stuff like this more.

I wonder if I could post stuff like this in my Etsy store (if I ever get around to setting it up properly). What do you think? Would someone buy these? How much do you think I could ask without over or under selling? This is why I don't have an Etsy store....I wouldn't have a clue how much to charge for things.

I know that the cost of the materials should be some sort of factor in the price, but some things, like jewelry, are hard to calculate the cost. For instance, if you buy something in bulk, like a string of beads, how do you know exactly what the cost was in making one necklace?I really like the way this round green one came out, it's a shame there isn't a better picture of it. The stone is that cat's eye kind of stone, where the light hits it and makes little rings and lines in the stone. This brown one is one that my friend made. I really like her design. The flower is made of shell and the brown round beads are wood. Very beachy

So what do you think, do I have a promising future in jewelry-making? (Assuming I can learn to take better pictures, of course.) It certainly has a higher finished object ratio than my knitting does.

Birthday Boy

Last weekend we did a little celebrating around here.

We were in a bit of a hurry to have cake and ice cream before a certain wokaholic had to take off for one of his many jobs, so we may have iced the cake a bit soon, what do you think?

Galen didn't seem to mind though, as it was just as yummy with the icing all over the place as it would have been if it stayed put.

(Yes, I am doing bunny-ears in the background. It's fun to act like a kid sometimes!)

During every spare second my sister Morgan was doing that familiar knitting dance, the "Just a few more rows and your present will be done!" dance.

She didn't quite make it happen, but she got really, really close.

After dinner we went outside to play with one of Galen's new birthday toys. Water balloons! We started by playing the classic toss-and-catch-and-try-not-to-get-soaked game, which quickly dissolved into an all-out water balloon war in which Galen and I pretty much ganged up on Mom. She was completely drenched from the shoulders down! I managed to pop a big one right over Galen's head when he wasn't looking. I, however, managed to stay relatively dry. I got hit with a few stray balloons here and there, but none of them did very much damage.

Lots of fun had by all! Happy Birthday Galen!

Trying something new

Hello :)

My computer is still out of commission, but I managed to get ahold of some internet access. I've heard of other bloggers setting publish times for later so they can write a bunch at once and have it last them through the week. So I have decided to give it a whirl. So the blogs I line up for this week will NOT BE LIVE BLOGS. I am just letting you know so you don't get upset if I don't respond to comments right away. I am still computer-less (hopefully for not very much longer) but until I get my 'puter back it is very hard to find internet. Bear with me!

So while my computer is out of commission I have been a very busy bee, but in a very non-productive way.

I have lost track of everything I have read, but a few faves:

My Sister's Keeper- I'm actually not quite done with this one yet, but it's been an intriguing page-turner.

The Wednesday Letters-So heartwarming! Definitely a tear-jerker! The bonus is it is set in my region so I recognized a lot of the landmarks and settings.

Firefly Lane-an absolutely amazing story about two girls who become best friends and then grow up and go through life together. A must-read!

I've been going to the library at least once a week, sometimes two times. I could spend hours and hours in there, browsing through the stacks and stacks of books. I love to read. It used to be a joke when my husband and I first started dating , that I could devour a book faster than most people can parallel park a car. I do read fast, especially when I get involved in the story. I can sit down with the intention to read "just a few pages" and suddenly I'm halfway through the book and haven't noticed that the sun set, or that hours of passed. I'm also a very active reader. What I mean by that is, if something is funny, I laugh out loud. If something is sad, I cry. If something in the book starts to get scary I pull the covers up to my chin and keep my dog close by. My husband thinks I'm a nut when I am doing these things while reading. I will be laughing hysterically at something in my book and he comes into the room confused at what could possibly be so funny when the tv isn't on and I'm in the room alone.

So that's what I've been up to since I can't comment on your blogs or post on my own. Anyone have any other good book recommendations? Please post them in the comments!

So much to say....

My computer is sick. Sick meaning the hard drive went kablooey. Nothing survived. No pictures, patterns that I'd saved, music, nothing. Ugh. Most of the pictures were saved elsewhere. Not all, but most. The patterns....well, I can always download them again. Although some of them cost a few dollars, but I'll get them eventually. Really it's not so much the losing stuff as all the time it will take to accumulate all of it again. It's so completely overwhelming to think of all the time I would need to invest just to get everything back. And remember that it's not idle time spent in front of the TV or the few minutes while the oven preheats. Nope, no internet for me at home folks. For me to get online requires a hop, skip, and a jump over to Panera or some other WiFi hotspot.

I have composed many a blog post in my head, taken pictures specifically for the blog, and thought up nice comments to each of your posts. The only reason I'm typing this right now is I came to my parent's house for the afternoon and I'm stealing time on their internet. (Hence no pictures.) I have been able to keep up with my blog-reading on my cell phone, though it is one-sided. (My phone doesn't allow me to post comments for whatever reason.) I hate lurking. It makes me feel a little creepy, like I'm watching you all from outside the house, sneaking glances in a window. I'd much rather read the post and then happily comment about whatever struck me or things we have in common, or just whatever. Just know that if I usually comment on your blog and I've been curiously absent lately, I'm still here reading. I'm just on the other side of the glass. I miss my computer!!

Off-topic...wouldn't you all just love for me to be the new recipient of an ipod Nano? Don't you think after all this laptop drama I deserve a new gadget to make me feel all better? Don't you think if I have to re-download a bunch of music anyway I should get a shiny new ipod to put it all on? Thought so! SITS is having a giveaway this week for a new ipod nano. I don't know if signing up at SITS gets me any extra entries, but if you haven't already checked this website out you totally should. It's a great way to up your reader count and get lots of fun comments, and most importantly meet lots of wonderful bloggers. Of course the whole point of SITS is to comment, comment, comment and share the love and as of late I can not do that, but I love SITS anyway. Despite my lack of comment-ability I have been reading all the featured bloggers and their posts on my one-way phone and laughing my head off all the time. So, SITS mommas, if you are reading this....I'm still here! Just temporarilty disabled! Bench me for now, but I will be back around soon :)

To the rest of you, I will resume regular posting soon. I am slowly building up the blog fodder so I'm sure I will be super-chatty upon my return.

Happy 4th!

Happy Fourth of July!!

Not exactly....

...what I had in mind when I set out to capture a picture of a hay bale, but it'll do.

I've unsuccessfully tried to get a hay picture about a half dozen times in the past few days. We must have drove past about 5 fields full of them on my little road trip, but again...not quick enough on the draw. So when I saw this at a stop light I made sure to position myself nearby and snapped this picture just as the light turned green. Note: do not attempt! Taking pictures while driving is DEFINITELY not safe.

So may I vent to you, lovely blog readers, for just a moment? Thanks. I'll just lay down on the couch. Do you have your yellow legal notepad ready? Ok....I just want to go on record saying that my husband's work schedule sucks! I know that there are many, many women out there whose husbands are overseas and they don't get to see them at all, so I feel a little guilty for complaining, but this is really tough. Doug is literally working ALL the time. He picks up shifts as much as he can, most of which are overnight. When he is not working he is sleeping, so even if he is home I don't get to spend any time with him at all. This just sucks on so many levels. The most obvious being that I don't get to spend any time with him. But the thing I didn't think about when he started all this was how much his funky sleep habits would mess with mine. When he comes home at 4am to go to sleep I inevitably wake up, then I find it hard to go back to sleep. Then when it's time to get up to go to work 3 hours later it's very difficult to get up because my sleep was interrupted. I am tired all-the-time now. If I am home when he is sleeping I have to be careful not to wake him, which means I am very limited in what I can do. He is doing all this because we are struggling a bit financially right now and it's incredible what he is putting himself through so we can catch up. He is being so incredibly selfless so we can get on better footing. I know I couldn't do it. That makes me feel even more guilty for complaining, so I try not to complain to him because I know there is really nothing he can do about it. Summer is "our time". In the summers we enjoy every day to it's fullest, whether we are kayaking, going for a motorcycle ride, or just enjoying the outdoors. We haven't been able to do any of those things so far. Yesterday he came across an amazing opportunity that would allow him to quit one, maybe both, jobs and it would be in the direction he wants to develop his career. There are some hoops to jump through to make it happen, so we will see....but I am praying this all works out because we need some relief. So cross your fingers for me! Ok, selfish rant over. I feel better, thanks for listening!

Next post....a fun giveaway!

Road Trip

Just a quickie post. I'm out of town on a work trip, but I have a funny little story for you about our road trip on the way here. We came around one corner and right in front of us was the largest, orange moon I have ever seen. There were four of us in the car and we were all impressed. I started rumaging around in my bag for my camera so I could take a picture, but of course by the time I came up with it the road had curved and it was buried in the trees. So for the next twenty minutes I played hide and seek with the moon through the trees.

The longer it took me to take a picture, the higher the moon rose. As it rose it lost its color and eventually it wasn't worth photographing anymore. I reall wish I had been able to get a good picture to share because it was gorgeous.

It was pretty comical in the car though because I got everyone in the car in on the need to get a good picture for my blog. Melissa, who was driving, was slowing up and speeding down accordingly wih the gaps in the trees trying to give me a good shot. Tony took the camera for a few minutes when the moon was on his side of the car and Wanda was on moon lookout telling us when a good opportunity to take a good picture was coming. At one point I temporarily blinded Melissa with the red light on my camera that flashes when it is being focused. (No I didn't use flash.) Not good to blind the driver.

Fun times. Hope you all have a super weekend!

I won!

Has anyone else noticed that there are SOO many contests on the blogs lately?
Well, I won something! Kate hosted a fabulous giveaway on her blog and I won! Yay! I will take pictures when it gets here. I think I will pass along the Karma and have a little contest of my own, but I am going out of town for a few days so it will have to be next week. Check back!

The Best Laid Plans

Do you have moments that just inspire you? Yesterday Doug and I went on a long bike ride through the country. There was a field near my house where they were cutting down the long grass and making bales of hay. Something about the sweet smell of fresh hay and the bales sitting out in the field inspired me to write a nice post about summer and all the things about it I love. So I started composing a bit of a post in my head yesterday. Usually my blogging is random and very little preparation goes into it, so I felt like SuperBlogger acutally planning a post out ahead of time. Fast forward to this afternoon. This post wasn't going to be complete without a picture of the bale-laiden field that inspired the whole thing to begin with. The field is about 2 miles from my house, but I figured the short drive in the opposite direction was worth it for the picture. I arrived to find...no bales. I guess they picked them up. Those farmers are too efficient! I remembered another field a few more miles down the road where they had been cutting the grass down and were about to make bales. I thought maybe it was worth the short (now becoming a long) trip on the off chance that there would be a field full of bales to show you. Nope. So now you get a shorter post about summer and my failed attempts to bring you a pretty picture. So, indulge me and imagine an artistic shot of a hilly field with randomly placed bales of hay with the sun setting in the background. Got it? Ok....

Some other things I like about summer (other than sweet-smelling bales of hay):

Ok, I know that technically these are considered weeds, but do you remember how much fun it was to see if you could blow all the fluff off in one breath when you were a kid? I still can't do it all at once...it takes at least two tries.

I have three of these in front of my house. Doug thinks they look a little tacky, but I think they look whimical. I love the bright colors and the way the wind makes them spin. We agreed that the pinwheels could stay as long as they were joined by any pink flamingos or cardboard figures of a large lady's rear end. (Although I secretly think that pink flamingos in the yard would be tacky to the point of being super-cool.)

One great lazy-day activity? Hitting golf balls into the woods behind my house. Don't worry no one lives close enough to get hurt, besides I don't hit them very far and they sometimes end up like this one lodged in a tree. Every few times we do it we go hunting in the woods for the balls to do it again. Great fun!

There are so many other things that I love about summer, way too many to list here. What are your favorite things about summer? Have a good weekend! I'll be off doing another of my favorite summer Saturday activities....yard sale-ing!

Stick it to me

Last month I participated in a Handmade Pincushion Swap. Yesterday I got the pincushion from my pal, well actually TWO pincushions!

Isn't that clever? (Sorry for the blurry pic) You should see the details on the smaller one, too...it looks like a cherry blossom tree. Thanks so much Kim, these will get lots of use!

Here's a pic of the one I sent her:

It's hard to tell from this picture, but the centers of the flowers are actually little clusters of seed beads. All in all, it wasn't difficult to make the pincushion, but that kind of fiddly sewing really isn't my cup of tea.

Last week Chance finally met our next door neighbor dog, Jada. She is a pit bull too, but very very shy. We cautiously introduced them (Chance doesn't always like other dogs). They seemed to like each other just fine, although Jada was just a little bit nervous. Every day since then when I take Chance out he is constantly looking over at her house wondering if she's outside.

So cute!

One more thing...everyone should click on over to Eight Crazy Designs. She is having a great contest until Thursday where you can win won of her customer banners or predesigned blog layouts. If you haven't already checked out her blog layouts you must go look now! She is amazing!

Wind-up

Today my sister Morgan paid me a visit for some yarny goodness time. She brought a duffel bag full of un-wound sock yarns that she wanted to wine into cakes using my swift and ballwinder. So we spent all afternoon doing this
And all our hard work produced this end result:
Left to right that's three skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Silk,two skeins Lorna's Lace Shepherd Sock, two skeins Knitpicks Gloss, Socks that Rock (!!), Fly-dyed Monarch (this yarn was a pain in the patootie to wind...lots of knots), Peace Fleece, more Lorna's Lace and some Tess Designer Super Sock. This was not all of the yarn she brought to wind, but we ran out of time because the world's cutest nephew was delivered to my doorstep.


Adorable right? I know! He likes to "help" wind the yarn. I let him help wind one skein and he decided suddenly to wind it really fast and the whole thing literally flew off the ball winder across the room. Huge mess! So we decided that was the last skein we were going to wind.


Chance was a little bored with our chosen activity for the afternooon. He had his heart set on playing fetch in the backyard. Sorry buddy!

Blog Love

Do you love to leave comments? Do you wish you had more comments to read? If you are looking to up your blog readership and check out some awesome blogs at the same time, go check out The Secret is in the Sauce. If you send them links to three of your posts then you will be added to their list of blogs that they feature each day. Every day (M-F) they pick a different blog to feature and on their blog they tell everyone to go there and leave a comment! Yay for blog love all around.

PLUS, they are having a super-duper contest right now. They are soooo generous and giving away all kinds of bloggy goodies, so what are you waiting for? Go check it out! Click on the link in this post or the button that I added to my sidebar (at the bottom, scroll down). And if you win, you must share the chocolate with me. Mmmm.....

Weird.

So apparently Panera hates Blogger. Every site I tried to browse today while there that was hosted by blogger was blocked. “Content not authorized for viewing.” What exactly about a knitting blog is threatening? Could it be the pointy sticks? Ug. I was able to read most of my faves through bloglines, but couldn’t post to my own blog at all, and I couldn’t post any comments anywhere either. Frowny face.

But, what I wanted to post about was my recent obsession with socks. Here it is in photos:

The sock wars socks were the ones that kicked it off. I actually FINISHED a project. (It’s been a while.) (I did weave in all those nasty ends and graft the toes before I sent them!) I had forgotten how exhilarating that can be. So I immediately cast on for another pair of socks.



These are intended for my grandmother, who had an accident on Mother’s Day. She and my grandfather live in a mobile home and travel the country. They find parks where they can do short term jobs in exchange for hookup fees, etc. So this summer they have been at an amusement park/campground in Iowa. On Mother’s Day Gma was working a ride called the G-Force, checking to see that passengers were safely fastened. The operator of the ride started it before she was clear of the gears and she was…well…squished. She suffered a fractured pelvis bone and lots of bruising, but otherwise she is OK. She was released from the hospital yesterday and is happily back at home, taking it slow and easy. I know that she will have some difficulties moving around as she is using a walker while she is recovering and the trailer is v-e-r-y small. My sisters and I have sent her cards and some knitting/crochet stuff to keep her hands busy, but I thought these socks would warm her spirits (and her feet!). Send some good wishes her way, would ya? Thanks!

This past week I worked a couple of overnight shifts. The night before I started them I decided to try to stay up as late as possible to try and alter my sleep schedule in preparation. What could possibly keep my interest enough to keep me up until 3am? New socks! (Grandma’s socks were at the heel flap which is my least favorite part of a sock other than picking up stitches for the gusset. I hate picking up stitches.) So I cast on for a pair of Monkeys. I just had to see what all the fuss was about. The last time a sock knitting craze (rav link) of this magnitude swept the blogisphere I tried the pattern and was just not impressed. Don’t get me wrong-lovely pattern, love what some people have done with it, just not for me. The monkeys? Well….three repeats in and I must say…all these bloggers are onto something. Monkeys rock!


Last thing, before this blog post gets out of control. Ever have one of those weeks? You know…where NOTHING goes your way? I had one of those this past week. It started out with me being broker than broke. Like, ramen noodle broke. Doug is thankfully now employed, but went about 5 weeks without a job and we just hit that point where his last few paychecks had floated us about as far as they could. No worries, everything is under control now, but it was a tight squeeze this past week. S-t-r-e-s-s-f-u-l. Then things just got plain comical. Thursday morning we got a call from my sister who was worried because her husband hadn’t yet arrived at work but had left with plenty of time to get there on time. So we went on the search for him. Turns out he had ridden his new motorcycle to work and it broke down. Doug went with him to figure out the problem and it turned out to be….he ran out of gas. The funny part is he actually “broke down” at a gas station and it never occurred to him that that cold be the problem, so he pushed the bike about a quarter of a mile up 29 before giving up and walking the rest of the way home (no cell phone). We laughed it up for a bit and then Doug and I took my sis to the dump. We haul our trash to the dump because it isn’t far and a heck of a lot cheaper than paying for pick up. Well, Doug’s old beatup truck had a quarter tank of gas in it. Enough to get to the dump and back, right? Think again. We were about a mile from a gas station and we….ran out of gas. Ha! Serves us right for laughing about Chad’s little motorcycle incident. So we walked to a gas station, found a nice guy to give Doug a ride to the truck with a gallon of gas while Heather and I waited at the gas station, filled up, went home. So now we are even keel right? Two incidents is enough! But wait, there’s more….! Friday afternoon I got a call from Doug who was supposedly on his way to Richmond. Keep in mind that now I have done TWO consecutive overnights and been woken up one of those days to go husband-hunting for my sister, walked a mile in the sweltering heat for gas, not slept, etc. Doug had ran out of gas on mile marker 152 of I-64. For those of you that don’t live locally, we are off exit 124 by about 8 miles, give or take. Yeah…thirty miles. He could potentially walk to a gas station, but see the aforementioned broke as a joke statement. So I got the gas tank that we keep on hand for the mower and went to bail him out, turned around, drove the thirty miles home with exactly enough time to change clothes and go to work. That’s the kind of week where you just have to stop and laugh at yourself because otherwise you would go completely crazy. Ugh.
Novel-length post over. I’m going to go to sleep now. Well, maybe after I knit just a little bit more on my socks…..

Win Something!

Random stuff:

1. My blog's reading level is apparently High School. Eh. I guess that's a good thing because it's not boring and it's not something embarrassing like pre-K?

Movie Reviews

2. To my victim...if you read this. Stop worrying. No socks have been mailed yet. You still have time. You can thank Target for ruling much of my time for the past few days, but I have a day off coming and intend on wearing out my needles then.

3. Everyone should go here and leave a comment so you can be entered to win a $50 gift certificate to Shabby Apple . Once you leave a comment there copy and paste it to a comment here so I can learn all about you too! (Although I don't have a prize to offer, just thought it would be fun!)

4. I really, really, really need to get internet at home. Mobile blogging sucks.

5. I don't do enough self-promotion. I sell album-making supplies (as well as digital stuff and framing) through a company called Creative Memories. I really need to ruffle up a few orders in the next few days so I will do a contest. If you place an order (any amount) on my website by midnight on Saturday I will enter you in a drawing for free photo organizing software. Even if you don't scrapbook, this software is awesome to organize all those digital photos you take and upload to your computer. C'mon, click the link...you know you want to.

5. I love knitting on my back porch on days like today. Nice cool breeze, warm sun, Chance curled up at my feet. Mmmmm.

Have a wonderful Monday!

Blustery Day

(anyone get the Winnie the Pooh reference? One of my favorite stories when I was younger.)

Yesterday day was an extremely windy day. Hubby and I went out to the Downtown Mall for Friday's After Five and this is what we came home to:

Not cool.

He had just changed out our storm door insert from the glass one to the screen one for summer and hadn't yet put the glass one in storage. Boo.

I guess this just means we'll have to get the fancy new storm door I've been wanting sometime before it gets cold. Darn! ;-)

Sock Wars

What have I been doing for the past 5 days? I will tell you. I have been working on creating a deadly weapon.



This may or may not be a picture that is recent. Just in case my victim happens across my blog I will keep it a secret as to whether or not I am finished making my weapon.



Ok, so for those of you scratching your head, let me explain. I am talking about Sock Wars. Basically it is modeled after the game "Assassin". It's a little difficult to explain, but everyone who signed up was given a "target" to knit socks for. The person you are knitting socks for is knitting them for someone else, not you...it's a circle. When you receive your socks, you have been "killed". You then send your socks in progress to your assassin along with your Target's info. Your assassin then picks up where you left off and your Target becomes their new Target. Make sense? I know...totally confusing. I'm not even sure I totally understand it, but I am having fun. My hands and shoulders are sore from all the knitting. I am just hoping that my assassin is knitting VERY slowly so I can stay in the game for a while! The winner (last one left standing) will receive 60 balls of sock yarn (Tofutsies) from Southwest Trading Company . People. 60 balls! What in the world would I do with 60 balls? I don't think I could knit 60 pairs of socks in this lifetime!

Speaking of SWTC, let me relate to you a wonderful tale of excellent customer service. I encountered four knots in my yarn while making my socks. There was a discussion on Ravelry about similar situations so I commented that I really liked the yarn, but the knots were a little frustrating. Within TEN MINUTES of posting that I received a message from the co-owner of SWTC asking for my mailing address so they could send me a replacement ball, totally on them!! I was blown away, I mean...to offer a replacement ball is outstanding enough, not to mention that I was simply posting to a discussion, not complaining to the company or anything! WOW!

As if that wasn't enough for one day, I wrote a quick email to Lantern Moon about a set of needles that I bought last summer. It was a set of ebony sock needles that I splurged on, and on the very first sock I ever knit I broke two of the DPNs. I was bummed but figured I could exchange them without a problem. Uh-uh. No receipt, no exchange. Period. I will not mention the store that gave me such an issue, but if you knit and live in Charlottesville you can probably guess. I didn't think much about it again until the other day when I saw the remaining three lonely needles. I decided to write the company and see if they would be able to do anything for me. The same day I got an email back and they are going to send me two replacement needles for the two that snapped. :)

Lots of good vibes in the universe for me today!

Scarring movie moments

I saw this meme on Jennifer's blog a while back and thought I'd share my own movie moments that scared the bejeezus out of me when I was a kid:

1. Ghostbusters- the scene where Slimer is chasing the librarian through the stacks. My parents took me to see this in the theater and on the way home I was convinced there was a ghost in the floorboard of the car that was going to steal my new sandals right off my feet.

2. E.T.-this was the movie we watched at my 9th birthday party. Don't know what exactly scared me, but something about the scenes when they quarantined the house. I had to leave the room.

3. Watcher in the Woods-the main character was named Karen and when she went through the mirror and got trapped she wrote "Nerak" on the mirror. Ok, so this memory might be a little foggy...but I remember something about "nerak" and being scared.

4. Beetlejuice-my parents were watching this one night after my bed time and I sneaked peaks through a crack in the door. I was totally terrified of my soup after watching the scene where they have the seance and they try to scare them away. "Come Mr. Tallyman, tally me bananas!"

These are all very "vanilla" on the horror-scale, but what can I say? I scare easily...I still don't like horror movies very much.

P.S. Everyone should go check out this post about comments. I really agree with her!

Of Sheep and Wool

Ok, so I have been a HIGHLY negligent blogger, but it's not all my fault. As I've said several times before on this blog I have no internet connection at home. Well, I live across the street from an elementary school and managed to pick up on their internet connection so I've been happily clicking away on Ravelry for the past three weeks. Problem is, their connection has a bunch of firewalls so anything with "blog" in the URL is blocked. So, no blogging for me. (Also no reading a lot of your blogs....I've been missing out!) Anyhoo....last week I lost the signal. I don't know if they found me out and privatized the signal or what, but I'm back to being a mobile blogger. I know, it serves me right for being a moocher, but they didn't password protect their wireless signal either, so....

Ok, so lots of catching up to do. I acutally took a lot of pictures in the last few weeks with the intention of specific blog posts, so bear with me. This will be a long one.

A few weeks back I went to visit my sister in Farmville. I took a fantastic "Saturday Sky" picture to share.

The next Saturday that I had off I went to the Jeopardy auditions.

Sadly, I didn't make it through the first pre-test. My dad did make it through, and went on to take the 50 Q test, but didn't make it past that. Great fun though!

By the way, I just want to share....I *heart* my Garmin GPS. Does anyone else have one of these? I've been doing a lot of traveling lately and haven't gotten lost once. Great, great invention!

Last weekend I went to Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival with my sister Morgan and my friend Jessica. We had such a blast! Morgan got her first spindle and learned to spin

...we made some felted flowers, just like last year.......went to the Ravelry meet-up and saw some fab bloggers.........and drank some homemade soda (veeeery sweet, couldn't drink the whole thing).........and of course, bought yarn! Here's my haul:That's two skeins of 100% wool (greens) intended for some felting, the blue on the left is intended for a small lace stole, the purple/blue is sock yarn, the brownish-green next to it is a frogged Eddie Bauer sweater that I am undecided what to do with, and the blue/green at the bottom is for a lace shawl.

I have a question for any knit-bloggers out there...how do you feel about meeting bloggers in real life? I find it to be a very awkward situation. Especially if I don't comment very often, but always read the blog. I feel a little like a stalker. What do you say when you go to a blog meetup at a festival? "Hello, I read your blog and know all about your life, but you have no idea who I am?" Even if I comment now and then I feel like an intruder if they don't know me. If we read each other's blogs and know that we are both going to the festival and have even mentioned meeting up, that's one thing. But what if you see a blogger that you read a lot? Do you say hello? Maybe it's just me. Any thoughts? I would love to see if anyone else feels this way.

Whew! If anyone needs me, I will be doing this on my back porch for the rest of the weekend.

Late Night JoAnn's trips....

....are the best. There is hardly anyone there and look at what I scored!

The bright floral is almost a whole yard. I'm not sure about this, but I think I might be able to squeeze a skirt out of it. And the blue...that is a lovely jacquard print that I'm thinking will be a pretty coin purse

And this purchase was an amazing find.

This was in the clearance bin in the back-the only one like it. I got it for a mere dollar. (Originally priced 10.99) It's a hard case for storing knitting notions such as stitch markers, tape measure, etc. This particular model is specifically designed to be the right size to hold DPN's as well. I might hold onto this to send in a swap or as a gifty item.

I am in Farmville at my sister's today for a visit. I *sorta* taught her to knit...as best as a righty can teach a lefty to knit. She learned the rest from a book specially designed for lefty knitting. I took a few unfinished projects with me with the hope that a solid day of knitting might turn out some finished objects. My nephew immediately started digging through my bag in search of presents. I did bring him a coloring book and a box of crayons, but he was most interested in this project.

I told him it was a skiing headband and he immediately yanked it onto his head. He is a very good poser of pictures. I asked him to tilt his head down so I could see the pattern.I think it looks much prettier on him that it would on me, what do you think? He was super cute-when I snapped the pictures he said "Pleeease!" instead of cheese.

We then headed out to Charley's for lunch- a local restaurant with an amazing menu and wonderful scenery. It is set right on the bend of the river and has a great atmosphere. I learned that if you are going to feed a toddler chocolate sauce you might want to forego the yellow shirt. But that's why they invented Tide-to-Go pens, right?

Got to go....hopefully I will get some knitting done today :)