Categories
Miscellaneous

I’m not wearing underwear today!

knitting supplies and cup of coffee placed on bed
Photo by Flora Westbrook on Pexels.com

Ok, that’s not really true, I just have that song from Avenue Q stuck in my head today:

I’m not wearing underwear today,
No I’m not wearing underwear today
Not that you probably care
Much about my underwear
Still none the less I gotta say
That I’m not wearing underwear today

Right now I’m procrastinating getting dressed and out of the house to visit Miss Gracie. Not that I don’t want to visit Gracie, of course, ’cause she’s usually the highlight of my weekend; it’s the getting moving part that I always have a hard time with. It didn’t help that my morning started off with trying to figure out why my desktop wallpaper didn’t appear when I booted up. Usually that means my external drive needs rebooting, but this time the drive was fine. Turns out, when I went to properties, the only images in the wallpaper selection screen were the defaults, and oddly, the images I’d deleted yesterday. Weird. Still, not a great way to start the morning.

In other news of my terribly exciting life, I spent yesterday knitting my first Christmas gift of the season while watching Buffy dvds. No clue yet who it’ll go to–it actually turned out so nifty I might find it hard to part with it. At least that’s one I can check off, though. Friday night, I sorted my wool yarn by color and pattern so I can just knit through it all without much thought (a rip-roaring Friday night, that was!), so I’ll be starting number two when I get back from Gracie’s.

I also managed to get off my duff last night and took a walk to Best Buy. I was motivated to do so by a desire to go hiking today–I found a nifty site that describes hikes local to my area, and one of them seemed to be not too difficult. Sadly, even though the round trip to BB is barely over a mile, my injured hip was still pissed off before I got back, which means no hiking for me yet. It felt good to get out and moving, though; I’m planning to give it another try tonight (must remember to stretch this time, though). On the plus side, my knee, while tired and cranky after the walk, did not spasm like it usually does. This is very heartening news.

In blog news, I’m going to try to remember to post a photo every day. Everyone likes photos, right? This is a picture of me with my sister, my cousin Kerry and her daughter Korina, taken last month when I went home for my cousin Cindy’s son’s wedding reception. (Didja follow all that?)

Kerry, Korina, Nancy and Paula

Weather: 61F with an expected high of 73F
Breakfast: South Beach PB&chocolate protein bar, two cups of tea

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Squares and bags, bags and squares

squares for a scarfAs promised, pictures of fun, bright squares, to be used at some future date for a cheery scarf in spring-like colors. The yarn is Plymouth Encore, worsted weight–basically, whatever was leftover from the scrap blanket that I haven’t touched in months. I adore these colors and smile whenever I see them. I just need to pick up some more green, and then I have to decide if I want join the squares together, or border them all in one unifying color before joining. (There are more pictures in my Flickr–just follow the image link to find the photostream to click through.)

In other news, I got started on the Christmas bags last night, and so far I adore this first one.  It’s a deep blue (Lamb’s Pride chunky) paired with two skeins of shiny blue Aura from Trendsetter.  It’s sparkly and shiny and glittery and yes, I know that’s three words that all mean the same thing, but I don’t care, but that’s what it is, to the nth degree.  (Perhaps double stranding the Aura was a bit overkill, but it’s too late now, it’s already half done!) Yesterday I went through my feltable yarns and my novelty yarns and paired complementary colors wherever I could, then assigned each set a pattern based on available yardage. Right now I’m looking at a possible five balloon bags, two little cocos and one clutch, and there’s still an enormous bag of Gjestal in three different colors that I haven’t even touched yet.  It’s nice to have a plan, though–no more wondering what to do next.

That’s all for today.  I hope y’all are having a marvelous Saturday!

Categories
Miscellaneous

100 Things About Me: 4-6

4. My closest friends are people I met online, specifically at The Bronze and Buffistas (both Buffy the Vampire Slayer communities).

5. I first started wearing glasses when I was eight, and I was very happy about it, because the most popular girl in class also wore glasses, so I considered them very “in”.

6. When asked, I usually say my favorite color is purple, and yet my favorite nail polish (and hair) color is blue, and most of my yarn purchases are in shades of green, and my bedroom is decorated in pinks, oranges and yellows, so I’ve recently come to realize that I really don’t have a favorite color–I just like all of them!

Weather: 59F, with an expected 81F high for the day

Breakfast: Same as the last two days–protein bar and tea (only one cup so far, ’cause even though I remembered to pick up a box of Lipton yesterday, I didn’t realize how very low the milk supply was)

Categories
Miscellaneous

Scooby-dooby-doo!

One of my favorite online comic strips is Unshelved, about life in a public library. I met the artist last summer at Comic-Con in San Diego–he was very nice, signed my book with a cute drawing of Dewey, the lead character. He said one of the things he’d learned that weekend was that Unshelved had a larger number of non-librarian readers than he’d realized, which I think is cool. After all, librarians aren’t the only ones who love libraries. 🙂

For the past few months, they’ve been featuring a contest called Pimp My Bookcart, which is exactly how it sounds–pimp your bookcart, send in a picture, and the best wins a brand new bookcart (actually, second best does too!). I’ve been ignoring this contest because, let’s face it, I may love libraries, but I don’t work in one. But today, they posted a link to a pimped bookcart that was featured in the news in Rockford, IL: Decked-out library cart is beyond cool.

Look at that picture! Isn’t that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?? But more importantly–and this just proves what an enormous sap I really am–is the story of how the welding class at the school turned it into a class project, and worked together to create something so adorable–and functional–for their school library. I love stories like that; they’re the medicine to all the stories of the apathy of today’s kids that are usually more common.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

My path is clear

For weeks now I’ve been trying to decide what to do about Christmas–do I knit/crochet presents this year? Do I really want to make myself that crazy? And what about the company’s charity auction at the holiday party? What would I do for that this year? I’ve done the scarf and hat thing to death already.

Yarn!  
The three boxes and the blue bin in the front are what I just pulled out. The white rolling drawer set and the two boxes in the back are filled with yarn I’ve already photographed and catalogued.
 

Well, I pulled out four boxes of yarn to photograph and catalogue for Ravelry, and now my path is clear–I have so!much! wool that obviously this is the season of felted purses! Most of the wool is secondhand, passed to me when my friend Kat decided to divest herself of most of her stash, and therefore the colors are not what I’m usually drawn to–lots of earth tones, to be honest. It’s doubtful I’d ever do anything with this wool for myself, so transforming it all to gifts is the only answer.  And maybe I can get some space back in my bedroom in the process.

I’m a smidge undecided on patterns. I have several books with lots of neat felted bags that would teach and challenge me, but really, I just want to make as many purses as I possibly can before December 25 (and really, preferably before December 18th, to give myself some time off to focus on other stressful parts of the holidays, like baking and shopping). This will probably mean using the patterns I’m already familiar with–Booga Bags, Little Cocos, Balloon Bags, and the clutch purse from One Skein.

In other news, I’ve finally photographed the 12 granny squares I’ve finished in the past week and a half, but I’ll need something to post tomorrow, so I’m saving it for then. Hey, it’s something to look forward to, right? 🙂 Until then, here’s a picture of my brother-in-law playing “zombie” with his and my sister’s kitty, Greta:

IMG_3928