FA LA LA LAaaaAAaaaa!

 It's official. I am done with work until the New Year. 

*happy sigh*

Not a moment too soon, either! Just no idea where the last four weeks have gone. :(

Bless anyone who doesn't get a small break for the holidays. It's all so overwhelming.

For my first day of workless bliss (today) I had to deal with some Serious Business straight away before I got arrested........by the BEAUTY POLICE, that is. The mani/pedi situation was a tragedy. Let us not speak of it again. *ahem* I feel so much better now that that is taken care of*.  (It's crazy but true! lol)

 Tomorrow I have to beat back the dust balls in the house and, umm, decorate a little for Christmas? UGH. So late this year. 

Hanging out in the hoodie. If you look closely you can see his tongue sticking out. Silly goose.

 

We went back and forth - and forth and back - on the tree. We love having a tree. 

Do not love: cats knocking over trees. Or climbing trees. Eating trees? Pretty much anything cat + tree = BAD. 

I'm already tired of playing Mean Mommy to Fitz's daytime antics (get down from there! don't scratch that! get out of there! don't go in there!, etc.). I don't think my nerves could handle him AND a tree this year. He's still too, ummmm, rambunctious? He *is* the very definition of 'boy' at the moment. (But cute!) Hopefully next year, when he is older, it will be better. So........we'll miss the tree this year but I think it's best we don't put it up. I can still put some garland up on the stairway and hang a few things from that. (Can't do lights in that area though, which is a bummer.) I feel bad for waiting so long to get to it but we are traveling out to people for Christmas this year so I don't need to go crazy if I'm not entertaining here either, I guess.

THANKFULLY, I am golden on the gift buying. (THANK YOU INTERNETS.) Just need a few details in the gift wrapping department to finish that up. WHEW. 

Okay so after all THAT, *then* I can do something naughty like...........sit for a long stretch of time and read a book? Actually get some knitting done? Or stitching?  Hell, I'll take blankly staring at the wall like a zombie at this point. It's enough that I have TIME to do it without the stress of any work hanging over me everyday.  :)

 I didn't get any knitting done for the holidays this year (yikes) but.........the husband has been going like gangbusters through my yarn stash, weaving scarves for gifts. (There is one more to photo as well.)
I like each one better than the last and it's so great to see more of my yarn come out of retirement the stash boxes and be used up. 

 The brown one? This one is mine because it matches my winter jacket. YUM.

The weft (goes 'weft to right) is in done in Alchemy Yarns which I *think* I got from a sock club package? Anyhoo, the colors on this are divine. I *love* this kind of 'fall inspired' color combo.

The warp (length) is a tan Opal yarn and worked very nicely as the hardly-seen-but-still-important-background.

I rooted around my phone/ipad pics to see what *I* have finished lately and all I came up with is a Halloween finish from a couple weeks ago. :(

It's quite a nice one though! 

Silver Creek Samplers, JCS 2013 Halloween book. 

On.......40 ct maybe? Something small like that, at any rate. 

I messed up at the very very end. Literally. Annoying. Last thing to do on it was the crow and didn't notice until I was done that he was supposed to be perched on the bottom of the 'L', not the top. GRRrrrrr! I chose to EMBRACE my take on it (read: just get 'er done) and did an extra leaf where he was *supposed* to go. I love the little leaves on this so one more is just fine by me. :)

I feel bad for never posting pics of Livvy too but I swear to god she's IMPOSSIBLE to photograph. She LOSES HER MIND everytime I grab my phone to snap a pic and all I end up with is blurry blurry blurry gray messes or something like this:

Because that's a ladylike pose. Hello, crazy eyes!

Wait, wait, I dug around some more. Finally. One good one. It's a Christmas miracle. 

 

Well, hopefully I get a chance to post more often now so I don't run on and on like this anymore. It's exhausting to read, I'm sure. If I don't though, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone!  :)

*(Also, I lasered the crap out of myself with my laser gun but y'all probably aren't interested in that unless you want to hear about how fricking_painful_it_is to have a good laugh at my expense because I PAID $$$ to do this to myself. I literally scream out approximately 3,815 obscenities per leg. At LEAST.  It's like electrocuting yourself. Over and over and over again.)

Ok.

 Which one of you is responsible for letting me go a month without posting? HUH? Please come forward. Because, surely, it's not my fault. It's got to be someone else out there who fell down on poking and prodding me into doing it......right? :)

Also, how is Thanksgiving already upon us? I'm feeling a little shell shocked over that and how close Christmas is, too. *scared*

 Tis the season for lots and lots of bead orders so I've been mostly keeping my head down and just trying to keep up. (Trying being the operative word here.) Muttering under my breath about how slow it will be halfway through December so I don't totally lose my mind over it. I can do it. Right? Just keep on trucking and a day off from all things work related will magically appear at some point? FINGERS CROSSSED. :)

Well, I can't go back and recap a whole month so I'll stick to the good stuff. Firstly, this year's Stitches East show has come and gone (earlier this month). I have mad love for this crazy convention-center-filled-to-the-rafters-in-yarny-goodness but I wasn't feeling it.........much?...this year. I mean, it was great to see everything but nothing was really sticking out to me. Am I jaded? Am I over the 'yarn thing'? Do I need an anti-depressant? Or have I just realized HOW MUCH FRICKIN YARN I HAVE STASHED away and how much I do NOT NOT NOT NOT need a single yard more? I think it might be the latter. Digging through the stash lately to find yarn for the husband's weaving projects have really made it clear how much yarn I have. *gulp*

Anyhoo. This is all I purchased at this year's show. I got the yarn/pattern for a pair of gingerbread mittens I wanted last year at the show and the hot pink sock yarn was 'just because'. (You don't actually come across NEON pink sock yarn very often. It's usually softer tones of pink only. Because most knitters, I assume, are adults and don't want neon colors. I happen to love neon colors but I'm not out there trying to pass as normal either. lol)

The neon colors are a thing with me right now, I guess, because I finished using up this yarn from my last post. I thought it wanted to be gloves but I ripped that out after I finished the first glove. Wasn't using up enough yarn. (This yarn was NOT cheap so I wanted to use up every last bit of it.) So I poked and poked around for a new pattern and came up with a free cowl pattern by the name of Inspira. The pattern is more an 'idea' than a hard and fast pattern. You adapt it to the yarn you want to use and just wing it.

Hmm. Cowls are kinda hard to photograph unless you are into selfies. (Which I'm not.) It's so sad and...........flat.

There. Much better with a model. Livvy loves poking her head and sitting in bags so she was a natural. Just plunked her in front of it and watched her go WHEeeeEEEEEEE A BAG, A BAG! while I snap a picture. I'm still a little dubious of how much wear I will get out of it (I like scarves) but it was fun to knit and the colors worked out quite nicely with a minimum of fuss. (The yarn changes color on it's own. No cutting/weaving ends in here!)

 I also had a MaMaMonkee as a model but I think the Livvy pic is much better. :)

This was all I had leftover of the two skeins of yarn, too. WIN! :)

Babies are babies no more. They had their junk ripped out and are officially sexless now. :) Poor Livvy and her boo-boo belly. Stitches come out the day after Thanksgiving so she's almost better now though. Just a little longer to go. Small price to pay, I think, for not being forced to give birth to your brother's babies. *snort*

At last.

 An update! Well, this month has clearly gotten the best of me, as far as keeping up with stuff. Yeeesh. 

Part of that is that October is inherently busy for me. Fall is my favorite season and I like to take advantage of every nice fall day I can, hitting up the various festivals going on or just making time to sit on the deck when the weather is nice enough. (Anything in the 60's is fine. No lower than that though for Deck Time for me. At least not for sitting.) The other part is that I just stayed away for a bit because I was so sad to hear about Cathey. Reading through everyone's posts remembering her was like a kick in the guts. I don't know that I have anything eloquent to say about that (it's all been said so much better than I can fumble my way through it) but she will be missed and remembered.

I happily signed up for the newest L*K mystery sampler AND even managed to bang the first part out rather quickly this month. It's anyone's guess when I will get back to the rest but I'm quite proud to have finished the first part at least. lol

As charted, so far, except I left off some single 'snow flakes' near the pine trees in case I want to do them in beads (thinking a YES to that) and I think I have to change the parchment colored snowflakes on the bottom too. It doesn't stand out on the green at ALL. Boo. :(

I'll have to wait until more of that parchment floss comes up in the other two patterns though to see what would be a good sub for it. I don't want to have to change it twice, right? 

Seeing all the fall stuff going on though had me a little itchy for bright halloween colors so I did up a couple of quick small pieces from the latest JCS halloween issue.

(More pumpkins for Cathey? :))

Just short and sweet little ornament sized stitchies. I changed the linen on the block one from an ivory to this nice purple. It's not every day you can work a purple linen into a finish, you know? I started a bigger piece from that same issue too but I wasn't ambitious enough to drag it out and snap a pic of it. Heh. I'm about 2/3rds of the way done with it though so it might makes it debut some time soon. Maybe. (I put it away last week to concentrate on some knitting and have yet to get back to it. *sigh*)

My 'babies' are getting soooooOooooooOOo big! Almost five months old and Fitz is weighing in at over 5lbs now. Livvy is a full pound smaller - she can't compete with those boy genes! I let them out on my 'fenced in' deck and he likes to jump to the rail, dig a hole in one of the window boxes and take a nap. Dirty, dirty, kitty! lol

They still do everything together as a pair. Or almost everything. I haven't noticed any 'hormone' type activity going on with them......yet. Thankfully. My vet won't do the ole SNIP SNIP before they are solidly 5 months old so they have to wait a couple more weeks still before we are in the clear and I don't have to worry about THAT any more. Heh. :)

(And yes, poor Livvy got no pictures this time around but she's ALWAYS IN MOTION. ALWAYS. So I have the worst time ever taking pictures of her. Fitz is a fancy pretty boy lazy bum who sits and sits and is more camera ready.)

Little bit of everything.

I've had a couple people ask if I'm still making beads, because I haven't posted any really on the blog in a while. The answer: DEFINITELY YES. I've been working on a ton of them behind the scenes. (Pictured above is the pile of beads made over the weekend that I had to string and ship out yesterday. Have another pile to make over the next few days too.) Having said that though, I'm not super happy about making them anymore so I don't really feel like blogging about it. My left hand hurts when I make beads, my left shoulder is starting to hurt now........things are breaking down and I'm taking more and more Advil as time goes on to get through a torching session. A repetitive hand motion hour after hour, day after day, for over a decade? It's inevitable, I guess, that your body won't put up with that at some point. (And NOTHING hurts the tendons/joints in my hand like the bead work does.) I'm in limbo at the moment over it What to do, right? I could cut the work back but with the amount of taxes I pay as a self-employed person - income, sales tax, business property taxes, also, accountant to handle taxes, etc. - at some point cutting back is just flat out stupid and a waste of time. I still LIKE the beads so there is that. Heh.

Anyhoo. Moving on. 

I finished my big piece for Halloween! :)

How great is this pumpkin? I should have posted a pic of him in my Cathey post too! I love the way the colors work together, it has great depth. 

And how about this crazy, toothy grin? The reason he is so crazy looking is..........

TOO MANY TREATS. 

I mean - look at all those candy corns in there! He's not crazy - he's high on sugar!

So happy to have this done. It's a Bird of a Feather design that I purchased in 2003, along with the linen that it called for (which isn't made anymore, but there are good substitutes). Any design I have put away WITH the linen it needs always make me sad when it sits and sits and sits, waiting to be finished. (I actually wrote shits and shits at first by accident..........WHAT COULD THAT MEAN? Whoops.) It's a crazy design and probably (definitely) not for everyone but I like the kookiness of it. I did the belly part first to get the worst part of the design over with and the rest of it was pretty simple from then on. 

How would you tackle that belly? I'm always interested in how people approach certain things. I did all the periwinkle FIRST, leaving 'holes' for the other things. So I had to count very very very carefully to make sure the 'holes' were all situated correctly, but it made for easy-peasy candy corn stitching after the fact because then I could just hop from one candy to another, anchoring the thread(s) to the already done periwinkle as I went.

I have to say though, the pattern was pure MISERY to work off of. It was teeny TINY. I had to scan and enlarge it, color a lot of it in with colored pencils and it was still hard to see. (THIS is the piece that had me scrambling for new eyeglasses!) Did not relish that part of it.

Next up is the Lizzie Kate Mystery Christmas sampler (and maybe some ornies!). I really like doing the Halloween one last year so I signed up for this one too. I like the colors as is but some of them seem a little too light as I'm doing the actual pattern. I think I"m going to have to go back and switch out the Parchment, at the very least. My snowflakes with it are totally disappearing into nothingness. :( 

I kinda miss that there are no beads or charms with it too. I've got a TON of Mill Hill beads though so that will be easy enough to add if I want at the end.

Annnnnndddd......I guess that's it for now. Except for a Fitz pic. 

The 'babies' turned 4 months on Sunday. Getting soooooooooooo big!!!

Hey look!

I actually made some progress on a couple projects. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! That hasn't happened in a while. (Seriously - where did the summer go? I feel like I did nothing, went no where, etc. It was a pretty depressing summer though, for the most part. It's probably better that it's over actually, now that I think about it. Good riddance summer? lol)

These are my 'Jury Duty Jaywalker' socks finally finished. I had jury duty in July and I prepared for that by making sure I had a pair of wooden circular needles (because you can't have metal needles here) and got some nice striping yarn (because I lovessssssssssssssssss striping yarn) and even started the cast on in a much-loved-by-me pattern (Jaywalkers) to get them ready for some major courtroom knitting and......................my jury duty was canceled. Of course. (I'm 0 for 4 now in being called up for jury duty. I'll get there one day, oh yes I will! lol) Oh well. I finished them eventually.
 

I'm not going to try and figure out many times I've knit this pattern now but it's a lot. (Ten maybe?) There really is nothing better out there to showcase a self-striping sock yarn, IMHO. And it's free to boot! (I think? It used to be free. It's PROBABLY still free? I should check that. lol)

Okay so this isn't finished, not by a long shot, but I'm very proud I made it this far on this. It's a creepy, waaaaaaay out there Halloween design that has been in my stash a long, long, long time. (Long enough that this particular fabric is no longer sold so I'm glad I got it at the same time as the pattern. It really needs a linen with character, I think, to offset the crazy design.) It's not easy trying to cross stitch when you have a silver bullet who likes to LAUNCH herself at your Q-Snapped piece like it was a trampoline. Seriously. What is the appeal?? She just comes out of nowhere and BOUNCES off it like a gymnast! It's funny but it makes stitching, uh, a little slow. Heh.

Not that these guys are ever naughty like that. Oh no. Perfect angels, all the time. *snerk*

(They just turned 12 weeks this Sunday and I'm fairly certain that = Terrible Twos. I'm starting to turn into Bad Mommy with the No! Don't Chew That!s and No! Biting!s and the always popular Get Down from There! And then 10 minutes later they are snuggly cuddle muffins who melt your heart. *sigh*)

My beloved Fair was this weekend and, in fitting with the whole summer, it was kinda depressing so I'm not going to bother to post pics. *sniff* It was dark, dreary, rainy and humid (oh god, HUMID!) the entire time it was going on so we didn't spend much time there. Also, I didn't enter in anything this year so there was excitedly hunting for ribbon status, etc. Maybe we'll go to the Big Eastern Exposition in Massachusetts in a couple weeks to try for another 'fair fix'. :)

Another week.

It's crazy how fast this summer is going by!! It doesn't help that I've been seeing a lot more Halloween beads being ordered from my web shop the last couple weeks. (Yes, Halloween. Already. I do love the colors in Halloween stuff though so I don't mind it.)  

Mostly everything is put back to rights from the lightening strike. (Was that LAST weekend? Good god it feels like a MONTH ago already.) New grass is being grown to get rid of the dirt runway in my lawn, we've started purchasing some new flowers and plants to replace the big bushes that were pulled out near my front door, and all the smoke damaged clothes are off being handled by a service that specializes in that type of thing. Insurance paid for everything right away so....WHEW. No worries there. (Thank you, Safeco Insurance. You were, dare I say it, quite amazing to deal with?)

Hey! Do you want a free pattern?

I finished up my Dandy Dreams and, in the spirit in which it was given to me (thank you, Maggee!), if you'd like to stitch it too I will be happy to send it along to the first person who asks. I stitched this up with no mods in the colors, on a.......I believe it was 36ct fabric? Loved it, aside from blurry issues with my eye sight, that seems to be affecting everything I do lately. (Not sure if I 'suddenly' need bifocals or what. Does that come on you real quick like? I'm off to the eye doctors in a couple weeks at any rate because it's really annoying. It seems a little better when wearing glasses vs. contacts so I'm just sticking to glasses when doing my handwork stuff.)

I've been meaning to get to finishing up another WIP project so I went digging in my storage ottoman (where things go to die) and came up with this........

You know what? I kinda hate this project so there doesn't seem any point in finishing it, to be honest. BYE BYE, FISHIES. (insert 'swim with da fishes' joke here)

Like: the pattern, the colors. Dislike: the linen, linen, linen

I feel like the stitch count is too big for such a simple pattern. It needs to be done over one or over two on a much finer linen, like a 40ct. It's hard to tell in such a random picture but the fish are just too.......BIG. Don't like. Moving on.

I started something else but it needs more work before it has a TA-DA!!! moment. :)

If you ever wondered (which I'm sure NO ONE has) where my interest in handwork type things come from, I offer the above towels as evidence that it came from my mother. She did those last month for me. All freehand and her own pattern. She doesn't care for cross-stitch because it's too 'structured' but she can embroider the hell out of most anything. (Thanks, Mom!)

My wee little kitties-to-be are getting bigger and are *almost* big enough to take home with us. They are being weaned this week so we're almost there. :)

Not gonna lie.

I kinda hate July a little so far. It's the weather. Ugh.

Too hot and WAY too humid to do anything fun outside. Or anything outside really. (You could swim.......but I don't have a pool.) I've been reading a lot lately. Which is good for working through the stacks of books (both paper and digital) that I have. But man, I hate humid. It turns me into a whiny princess. :(

Way back a couple weeks ago, before the dew point parked it's ass in the 70-75 degree range and refused to budge, I did manage to finish a couple projects.

Cookie A - Jubilee pattern

Yay! Socks! Only my second pair this year. NUTS. I am seriously lacking in sockitude this year because of my tendonitis issues. They are..........a little weird? They look massively big but fit pretty okay. Probably too thick to wear with lace up shoes but, as luck would have it, I tend to wear clogs more often than not in the winter around the house. (I contemplated doing the smaller pattern size but the gauge was telling me they would have been too small then so I didn't even bother to try it.) Cheetos-colored socks aren't for everyone though, obviously, so these I'm definitely keeping for myself. :)

That's it for me with knitting though until the weather changes. I started a scarf but it's too too too sticky draping over your legs, etc. to work on it right now.

Also finished, little L*K strawberry sampler that's......also a little weird? I had almost none of the hand-dyed threads it called for and the DMC conversions provided were........less than stellar. I'm not 100% on some of the colors, as far as them all working together, but, you know - it is just a little sampler. No sense in driving yourself mad over it either.

Do you know how hard it is to find collectables that have LIGHT-colored Himalayans in them? IMPOSSIBLE. Everything is done up with the darker Seal and Chocolate point Himalayans.  *pout* 

So I was SUPER stoked to find this original watercolor on Etsy with a Blue point kitty, just like my Mooshie. OH HELLO, I MUST HAVE YOU.  (The seller is Amble and Sing. SUPER cute stuff!) It's just about the most perfect thing EVERrrrRRrrrrr. *ahem* I put one of his favorite 'glitter' balls he loved to fetch with  it and I just love it. Makes me smile every time I pass it in the hall. :)

I'm really over how quiet the house is too. I had tuna fish for lunch yesterday - alone.
By myself. Do you know how sad that is? No one cared. No one came to sit with me. No one begged for a treat. It tasted like salty tears and disappointment. 

To remedy that, expect a can of whoop ass to be unleashed around these parts around mid-August. Hopefully. *fingers crossed*

Bunny bomb.

 I'll get to the bunnies but first I wanted to thank y'all for the sweet comments about my Mooshie on my last post. It was a difficult week. You resign yourself to crying at inappropriate times (or so it feels like) and you get through it. I feel a little better this week and I did have some good moments going through my mementos of him. I dug up the pictures of when he was a kitten, which I hadn't seen in yearsssss. (Actual photos because we didn't have digital cameras back then! lol) Had real photos made of the digital photos I have of him, to add to those. And I ordered a custom engraved stone for where we bury him, right next to Tubby, who was his friend from way, way back. (She has a stone too.)  It gives me comfort to go through things like that. Makes it feel like you are a tiny bit proactive and not so out of control with it all. Maybe it's just me though. :)

 While I was digging for his photos though I came across this little angel, just tucked away and long forgotten in a sandwich baggie. I used to work on the side as a sample stitcher for a LNS (that no longer exists) and I think this was the sample I submitted as proof of my work, as an example of neatness, ability to do over one work, etc. Gosh, talk about a long buried memory! That's going back AGES. 

It's part of a free angel ornament pattern by Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum circa 1997. (Plenty more of those free angels here.) I had totally forgotten how amazing her angels are. I'm wondering if I can just rip back the sleeve a bit on this a little to round the bottom out and make it into an ornament. You just know that red has left a mark on that linen by NOW though.*sigh* Reds. They are trouble makers.

Anyhoo. I had finished up a couple new bunnies a couple weeks ago and then..........got distracted and stuff. :(  

 I feel kinda over it now but the photos were already done and they *are* cute so I figured I would post them anyway. I mean, it's not their fault, is it? I was very happy to knit them up. This boy might be my favorite of the bunch. His face and sweater just came out so perfect, I love him lots. :)

My efforts to knit through that sack of worsted wool were wasted though because, four bunnies later, I still have a sack full of it. lol 

And I'm not sure what to do with them now that I have them. They don't seem inclined to hop off anywhere so I will keep them until another use for them makes itself known. Maybe everyone I know will get a bunny for Christmas and then THEY can wonder about what to do with them. I just like KNITTING and these were a hoot to knit. :)

Hope everyone (who celebrates) has a happy and safe Fourth!

I actually remembered to gather up all my red/white/blue stitchies to put out in time for the holiday. 

Well, me oh my. Miracles do exist. lol