Author: Polgara

Categories
Miscellaneous

The week, according to me

aerial view of green grass field
Photo by Anil Sharma on Pexels.com

I had two readers yesterday–two!  Woot!  And, uh oh, one of them clicked on the link to my main website.  Ouch.  That sucker hasn’t been updated in forever!  I’m terribly sorry, mystery reader!  I’ll go post a picture or something right away!

I haven’t done anything yarn-y this week, I’m afraid.  Ever since finishing the shell shawl (picture still to come), I haven’t been inspired to start anything new.  Well, that’s not entirely true–there’s one project I’ve been thinking of, as a present for a friend, but first I have to obtain some Cascade 220 in the desired colors.  I’ve been carrying around a couple of balls of nubbly red yarn and some needles, in case I feel like starting a scarf for the Red Scarf Project, but after three days, the needles are still bare and the yarn is still balled.  Also, my evenings have been spent visiting my friends’ daughter at the hospital, where I stand by her bed and sing to her while she sleeps, so when I get home, my back and neck are cranky from the odd standing position, and my head just doesn’t want to think. Just too tired, I guess.  So, no knitting or crochet news this week.

Instead, I’ve been busy at work, integrating two exhibitions at once (not the first time).  When I take a break, I play with Twitter, or I find new widgets to futz with. (Didja see the new iTunes widget in the sidebar?  Scroll down, it’s neat!) I’ve signed up with Scrabbulous, but have yet to actually play a game–everyone there seems way more advanced than I, it’s very intimidating! And sometimes, I search the internets far and wide for the cheapest Brown Sheep Burley Spun in variegated colors (one hank is the perfect size for a bubble bag!).

Last night, I helped my friend Allyson Beatrice assemble gift bags.  She will be doing a reading from her first book, Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?, and a Q&A this weekend (Saturday, 9/1, 4pm) at Vroman’s in Pasadena.  (You should come!  There will be the aforementioned goody bags, and cake! And, she’s way funnier than me, so it’ll be entertaining, too!)

That has been my week so far. Not exciting, I know (although the near-death of my not-backed-up external harddrive was certainly a pulse-raiser!), but I hate to see this blog go without frequent updates. Perhaps for my next post, I’ll describe my awesome new business cards! 😀

And now, for something completely different–my darlin’, Trouble:
Trouble

The Day After

As part of my birthday celebration yesterday, I spent part of my day at Barnes & Noble, because it’s one of my favoritest places ever.  While there, I purchased many Fall knitting magazines, which, I have to say, have gotten quite expensive.  Seriously, $35 for five magazines?  (Maybe six, I don’t remember exactly.)  So far I’ve only gone through one of them, but that’s because the new Vogue Knitting is enormous–silver anniversary edition, guaranteed to give you a sore shoulder as you cart it around The Grove in your shoulder bag. I don’t know why I continue to buy VK, as I so very rarely ever make anything from it.  Perhaps it’s the pretty (yet dark–?!) pictures, or the articles (it does have good articles).  But the patterns are usually way too complicated/big/time-consuming/just.not.me to justify the cost when you consider $35 for five-six magazines.

Still, pictures of pretty yarns and stitches and textures will get me every time. And it’s so glossy! (Translation: shiny!)

Soon, my awesome friend Kristen will be dropping off the remainder of my birthday cake (I had too many other things to carry last night) and a caramel latte from Coffee Bean, and then I shall chill out in my favorite chair, eating cake, drinking caffeine, and reading the rest of my new magazines–the ones with patterns that actually inspire me.

Natal Anniversary Post

Today’s my birthday, and I tried to do a little early celebrating by splurging at Yarns Unlimited yesterday before my PT appointment.  I got there at 11:15am, which should’ve been perfect, since the store opened at 11am, except…it didn’t.  I got there, and the doors were locked, the security gate was pulled, and all the lights were out.  It was very sad-making, let me tell you.  I’m in a self-imposed yarn embargo, so deciding to buy yarn I didn’t need was a Big Deal, and then it was gone, like smoke.  Phooey.  I’d really wanted that bulky wool, too.

I did, however, finished the shell shawl last night.  Woot!  I have no pictures yet, but soon, I promise.  In the meantime, I’m going to go celebrate my birthday a bit more before dinner with a glass of Irish Mist–mmmm, yummy!

WIP: Shell Shawl

WIP: shell shawlI got started on my latest project this week–the shell shawl from Debbie Stoller’s The Happy Hooker.  (The picture is from early Sunday–I spent most of yesterday on it, so it’s grown quite a bit already.)  It was a little hard to get started–shells and treble stitches are new to me–but once I got into the swing of it, it became easy-peasy (except for the blisters forming on my fingers).  I can even work on it while watching dvds, without losing count.  Woot!  I’m using purple Red Heart, which was a Christmas gift from my friend Tricia last year.  I thought it’d be enough, but as it turns out, I was wrong–looks like I’ll need at least another skein.  I’ve long since thrown the wrapper away, so hopefully dye lot won’t be an issue.

I really like the pattern,  particularly how each row gets quicker, since you’re going top down and therefore decreasing a shell on each pass.  I suspect I’ll be making this shawl again, perhaps with the blue discontinued alpaca from Cascade that I’ve been saving for a special occasion; we’ll see how this one turns out first, though.

Categories
Blogs Knitting and Crochet

Chore Wars!

Yesterday I was catching up on my blog reading, surfing WordPress blogs by tags, and I found a reference to “KnitWars.”  Huh, I thought, I wonder what that is?  There was no link, so I googled it and found Lime n Violet’s website, and what I read of KnitWars intrigued me muchly!

They had found a website called ChoreWars, whose sole purpose is to turn chores into a game resembling a D&D adventure.  Sweet!  Groups of people (families, housemates, offices, etc.) create their own gaming party and define their own adventures (i.e. chores), with rewards, treasures and risks attached to each one.  Presumably these families set up a real-life reward/punishment system based on the scores people earn as motivations for the completion of chores and duties.

Lime and Violet created their own chore party, but instead of mopping, dusting and vacuuming, the adventures run more along the lines of finishing a WIP, frogging a lost cause, and spinning 4 oz. of fiber.  You create your own character and keep track of your accomplishments to earn points, gold and treasure–meaningless in the general scheme of things, since this wasn’t set up to compete against other knitters, but a fun way to keep track of what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and what each goal might be worth on the scale of your own time.  It’s fun and creative and fantasy-adventurish, and may not be for everyone, but for me, competitive and fantasy-loving me, IT’S AWESOME!  So far I love it to pieces, and I’m hoping it motivates me to finish the many WIPs I have stashed away in drawers and closets.

In fact, I love it so much that I created my own private party of one, with all my single-living, nobody to do them but me, chores and activities (including exercise and good eating habits), in the hopes I can kick myself into gear to get those dishes done, and finally throw that old computer away, and earn points and rewards while I’m at it!  (There’s a 5% chance I can buy myself a new dvd if I brush the kitties tonight!)

Yes, I am a goober, but I *heart* technology, especially the kind that makes the tedious necessities of life a little more interesting.

And since I want this post to count towards points in the KnitWars, I have to include a picture:

Purse, waiting to be felted

This is a purse that I knit months and months ago, that has been sitting on a shelf ever since, waiting to be felted. I live in an apartment building, with coin-operated washing machines downstairs. The water doesn’t get very hot, and at $1.00 per wash, it can take a lot of valuable quarters to felt things in it. And this isn’t the only purse waiting to be felted. Someday, they’ll be FO’s, and on that day, I’ll be sure to take the KnitWars points for them!
😀