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. :)

Ahhhh....fall.

 (not my pic but I couldn't resist saving it) 

October is usually one of my favorites months. I love the chilly weather and all the colorful leaves and fall festivals to attend. (It doesn't hurt that the Stitches East aka Yarn Mecca is also in October.) And, of course, there is Halloween.

Walk in Putnam, CT last Sunday.

This one is off to a bit of a slow start. I've been limiting my computer and crafty times because I've had a terrible case of trigger finger in my left hand for the past 4 weeks or so. It's caused (for me) by too much bead making. I can knit for an hour and have no problems but after 15 minutes of bead making, my middle finger starts getting tight and, another 15 minutes in it starts 'clicking' like an off/on switch, eventually getting so constricted I need to use my OTHER hand to straighten it out for the next couple hours or so. It's not particularly painful really - more annoying than anything else. Especially when trying to sleep. (You tend to keep waking up and having to straighten it out.) I kept it taped up for a few weeks whenever I wasn't working and that has helped. It's still bothering me when I'm working but it's settling down fairly quickly after I'm done for the day vs. being cranky 24/7. So that's good!

Biking here in town yesterday.

The husband is still building his brand spanky-new uber-big shed. Or was. Until he fell off the ladder last week. Broken rib(s). Hard to tell if it's one or two. (And one ass cheek that looks like a rotten banana. lol) So now he has a month off work to heal. (He offered to do a light duty position but they declined. Guess they only do that when you get hurt at work. Oh well. So much for trying NOT to be a '47% moocher'. Bring on the disability checks! lol) So he's pretty miserable at the moment. Can't work on his shed and can't go bike riding with me, etc. He's getting a lot of reading done. *snort*

Fancy-pants panorama from in town

It *IS* Walktober though so I'm still dragging him out of the house with me for some daily exercise. Even shuffling around for a half hour or whatever is better than sitting around the house all day. Between that and picking up all his chores, things are busy, busy, busy! Looking forward to taking a day off for the Stitches East show this weekend, I tell you WHAT. 

IMMA GONNA GET MY YARN ON.

Happy Friday the 13th! :)

It's hard to be spooked by it though when it's so bright and sunny and warm though, right?

(I've come across this multiple times today on Facebook, etc. and, while it doesn't seem that fair, I have to say I've snorted  laughed at it every single time. Why? I don't know.)

Hard to believe another week has gone by!! Let's see, what did I get into to this week.......

I finished up all of my current sock projects!

Oh, don't be too impressed though - the "Wayward" (red) ones have been ongoing since the beginning of March. 

 I just had a bitty foot on the right one to do to put that project to bed. (And, because of the complementing wrap-a-round cables, these socks actually *DO* have a left and right to them. Thankfully, I paid attention to what chart was what, out of the stack that this pattern comes with, and ENDED UP with a right/left one vs. two lefts, etc. WHEW!) 

 The Dragonfly socks were a quick knit - easy, easy! Probably could have gone with another repeat for the leg so I'll remember that for next time. (I don't like my socks too long so it's no biggie either way.)

Also (semi) finished:

Stitched my flag stitchy again, this time on the 'proper' fabric so it will fit on top of the star box that came in the kit. Just need to find the time to do the finishing now. (I didn't improvise a little '2012' on the new one but now that I see them together, I kind of miss that? I might have to go back and put that in!)

Anyone else doing the L*K Mystery Sampler Club that was just released??? I started it and love the colors but the fabric is a little larger count (30 ct.) than I would prefer. It's not a deal-breaker though. I'm just a diva and will get over it. *cough* I think the transition from 40ct from the last project to 30ct was a little oogy for me, is all.

I know so many of you are BROILING out there, in the heat, but it's been phenomenally seasonal here the past week...........again. Much better than it usually is for this area! If this is the new 'face' of climate change for this area, I'll take it!!!! Got lots of biking in last week, picture is from one of the (many) bike bridges on the Blackstone River Trail in Lincoln/Cumberland, Rhode Island.

This last pic is from my Epic Kitchen DeClutter this morning. Does anyone else find the kitchen gets cluttered if you so much as take your eyes off of it for a second? I hadn't SERIOUSLY decluttered it in awhile so I went at it in a ruthless manner this morning and now it's all back down to clean surfaces everywhere you look. 

I had to laugh and stop to take a picture of this ridiculousness though:

I *might* have a packet problem. As in, drink packet?

Yeah, I gots it bad. REAL bad.

And I'm not sure the picture is *quite* capturing just how many are there. (And I'm not even getting into how many bottles of MiO are around. *ahem*)

In my defense, I do drink a lot of water. (I even have a water cooler in my kitchen to facilitate things.)

I don't have any defense, really, for ordering more though the other day. True Lemon has 50% off all the lemonade packets this month and I..........may have ordered some more? Less than a 100 packets but, uhhhhh, more than 50. Okay so it was 80. Crap. WHERE IS THE 12 STEP PROGRAM FOR PACKET ADDICTION????? o_0

(Not that anybody asked, but my favorite one is the stevia-sweetened Apple Pear ones from Target. If I could get that one on tap, that would be GLORIOUS.)

OH MY!

 Sooooooooooooooooo busy lately. You can tell from my frazzled needs-to-be-dyed immediately and not-quite-red-anymore hair (hate that red washes out so quickly) and the number of mumbled-under-my-breath F bombs I'm dropping per day that things have been, well, busy. Vacation is coming in a week and I'm trying to keep on top of EVERYTHING (work/housework/shopping for a vacation that I have exactly ZERO clothes for) all at once so I don't end up 'last minute'ing everything and.............it has been a little crazy. *whew*

First up.........

Time to say BUH-BYE to the snowmen for the year. It's back to being cold out here but it's time to, sniff, put these away for spring. Loaded them all up and onto (and under............and around.....) the coffee table and packed them away into their bins. It hurts a little because I picture them going "Oh nooooooooooooooo!" in a Mr. Bill voice as I do it. lol (I probably just dated myself with the Mr. Bill reference too. Heh.)

Hey! How crazy is this?

Apparently if you write a polite letter to Patons telling them you are disappointed in their lack of dye lot know-how (see: multiple pairs of non-matching socks done with the FX yarn line) they send you a box of free YARN. That's pretty cool of them, right? Aside from the non-matching dye lots in this FX stuff, it is good sturdy yarn and will make very wearable socks. I do appreciate the effort because I wasn't looking for replacement yarn, to be honest. Free yarn = always awesome.

I threw out the shall-not-be-named stitchy that was giving me grief. Yes, threw it out. It was too far gone to do anything else, to be honest, and keeping it around would have assured I continued to stay butt hurt over it so.......................a quick flash of the scissors to free the linen that was used up and off to the trash it went. I went back to trying to finish the LHN design pictured above and all was right in my world again. (I could *possibly* finish this one this week if I stay monogamous with it and don't start side eyeing the 823423234 other things on tap.)

Does anybody else Lolo Fit? I know fitness posts are uber-boring but I started using their treadmill app last week and it's pretty durn cool and figured it might punch up someone else's treadmill routine too. You set how long you want to walk, load your own music set from your iPod if you wish, and it gives you a walking (or running if you do that..........I don't because OW. OW. OW.) plan that goes through intervals and different inclines to keep you interested. Changes it up every few minutes or sometimes even every 30 seconds. The trainer voice speaks over your music when it is time to change the speed and, surprisingly enough, I haven't wanted to strangle and/or kill her yet. lol It sounds simple but it really does make the hour go by MUCH faster somehow. IT'S TRICKSY LIKE THAT. Gotta love something that makes exercise a TEENSY bit better, ya know? Now I just need an app that magically makes pizza and tortilla chips look like a pile of poo and I will be all set for life!!!! :)

My bad.

I think I forgot there for a couple weeks that I have, like, a blog and stuff. And I should, I dunno, like.........USE it or something. lol

I have been keeping myself busy OFFline though! :)

There have been a few new beads posted:

I am making good headway on the long, long, long list of WIP stitching projects I have started or kitted up around the hosue:

An Ewe & Friends Roly-Poly Snowman. 

I had this kitted up for so long that I probably had 75% less wrinkles and gray hair when I first put it together. *cough* Finished it up in FOUR nights. (What the heck was wrong with me that I let it go so long??) I think I want to finish this up as cube. Hmm......

Some Midnight Stitching cutie-pie snowman hearts started last winter. 

I actually finished up a pinker version of the right one last winter but I ended up HATING the fabric it was on (too holey) so I restitched it on a better fabric and did it with a different red too, because I love deep reds. 

A trio of Bent Creek minis. 

(The third one, a wee little house, was downstairs when I was picture taking and if you think I was going to  haul off and go down two flights of stairs to get it in the interests of doing a blog post, well then, you don't know me very well. My sedentary nature knows NO BOUNDS.)

I'm loving my new most-favoritest nail polish (all new polish automatically becomes my most-favoritest, you know that, right?)

He gifted me the OPI from his visit to the hair salon last week and it's the perfect shade of green for this lime-loving gal. (Matches my pocketbook, my iPhone cover, AND my Fire cover! lol) Paired with an iridescent top coat? Totally springalicious! Like a perfect, glittery easter egg. I may be stuck on this combo for a while. (The top coat is clear with an iridescent micro-glitter - not white like it looks like here.)

Trying to get back into reading every day again. Currently on tap:

This one just came out TODAY (or the Kindle version was just released, not sure about hard cover) but I had it pre-ordered and actually started it this morning. I have a friend who has been living in India for a couple years now (husband's job was moved there) so I'm not entirely ignorant of how things work there but I still fully expect to be horrified, frustrated, angry, depressed, interested, saddened and moved by this book.

Enh. Not loving this one. I'm giving it a few more chapters before I give it up entirely. (It's probably not the book - I'm just hit or miss on nonfiction.)

You're either a foodie or you're not and non-foodies can ignore this one. Personally, I love these collections because I love food blogs in general. And I like how most of the essays are short enough that you can pick one off here and there when you only have a little time to read.

Watching a whole of this:

I never got around to watching it when it was on air but it's on Netflix streaming so I'm picking it off, little by little while I'm working, etc. I can't say I LOVE IT but it's entertaining enough.

I just finished up season three last night and it doesn't seem possible that it had enough juice to get through three MORE seasons? Hmph. I'm not sure I'll make it all the way to the end, to be honest. /shrug

Whew! I think I'm all caught up on the goings on of late now. Nothing terribly exciting going on, to be honest. lol It may not be very snowy/stormy out this winter but it's still winter and it's still COLD and, therefore, still a little dreary and blah. Here's to spring and more interesting goings-on! :)

Deep breath.

Definitely been a trying week, you know? But I felt much better today so moving on..

 I went back to the project that I tried to start on Thursday, gotta get back on that horse you know......

Oh............my......

Yes the project that started all this was Death. Black Death to be exact. How prophetic. Or ironic. Or........something. 

It's Death by Candy Corn and why didn't I notice those cutie candy corns were over one before I started this? Holy lot-of-teeny-tiny-stitching-for-one-stinking-corn Batman! To be fair, the pattern calls for a half stitch for these but I couldn't see the damn thread when I did it that way so a full cross stitch it is. Oh hello, instant doubling of the time/stitches. *mwah*

I finished my-not-quite-August/not-quite-September pair of socks a couple days ago and aren't these the most ridiculous pair of socks you've ever seen:

Yep. Candy corn socks. 

I'm totally going to wear them with some Mary Jane-style shoes too and not care one bit how many crazy looks it gets me. So there.

I will be offline tomorrow because, quite honestly, I just can't handle the 9/11 coverage. Just a handful of it on the tv or whatever and I start to feel panicky and overwhelmed by it like it's happening all over again, even to this day. :(

Is it really the weekend already?

Wow. Well THAT was a quick week. :(

My poor blog has been so boring lately but I've been busy busy busy with orders. (Not complaining.) Not much in the way of 'fun' stuff going on around here lately, unless you count a trip to Trader Joe's mid-week as 'fun'. (Which I do because I never get to go there because it's too far away. It's like a food porn store for foodpornaholics. *fans self* It may take me days to fully recover from the experience.) I'll have a giveaway up either tomorrow or Monday to make up for slim picking around here lately. :)

Having said that, I have been able to get some 'gifting knitting' out of the way though. 

An Easy Drop Stitch scarf in these pretty, pretty colors:

(Mooshie was my photo assistant on these, as you can see.)

A quick pair of Fetching mitts.

(Pattern link.)

Over 16,000 people have knit a pair of these on Ravelry. 

Six.teen.Thous.and. 

That's pretty crazy, right? I can't say anything about them that hasn't already been said. Solid pattern. Great for using up a small bit of worsted weight-ish yarn. Mine turned out a 'titch bigger than I would have liked - a smaller needle size would have been better, I think. Duly noted for the next pair. :)

I only have one more thing I want to knit for Xmas, I think? (I never rule out the possibility of a last minute, knitting until 4am and your hands are about to fall off, breaking out the stand fan and prayers for drying yarn, crisis popping up. COULD HAPPEN. There was that ONE crazy year, you know!) So now it's onward to some stitchy gifty goodness!

I'm all random today. Sorry.

 **My brisket came out FABULOUS, if I must say so. (And who else around here is going to say it for me, right? lol) I ended up just making my own recipe out of a hodge podge of recipes that some of my favorite bloggers had posted/stuff I readily had on hand. It basically boiled down to: 1 cup ketchup, 1/2 bottle of chili sauce, 5-6 cloves of peeled/crushed garlic, TB of dry mustard, packet of onion soup mix, 1/4 cup of so of brown sugar, and 2 chipotle chilis (and a little of the adobe sauce they come in). Mix it up, marinade if you want, stick in the crock-pot on low for 8-10 hours. Skim off the fat when it's done and then reduce the sauce on it's own in a pan. Throw sauce over meat and eat. YUM! Only thing I would do differently? Add more chipotle peppers. Those things are killer hot (to me) but two didn't seem to give it any heat at all. At least not for a 5 1/2 lb. brisket. So MORE HOT PEPPERS next time. :)

**I would be a liar if I said I WASN'T desperately jealous at seeing this project that Mary Kathryn posted about the other day. This is so up my alley it makes me want to weep. It's incredibly detailed, endless, and epic in scale - what's not to love? I was halfway to figuring out how big a piece of linen I would need to do it myself before it dawned on me I needed a project like that like I needed a fork in the eye. WANT, BUT DO NOT NEED.Bye bye hundreds of colorful houses. *sniff*

(picture is from her flickr feed)

**I HAVE been trying to do some new beads for an update (which is long long long overdue). The problem? I'm so not into it, it's scary. I'm totally fine with doing custom orders because that seems to say 'do your job' to my head and I get to it but just doing stuff randomly on it's own? NOT FEELING IT THIS MONTH. But I'm doing a thing here and there so it will get done soon. Promise. :)

**I should do a bigger post on the nightmare about us trying to buy a new (HD) tv. The short story is: fell in love with tv, tv is too big for entertainment center, went shopping for new entertainment center, which cemented the decision that the rugs in the living room/hallway have to go and be replaced with a wood floor (continues what is already in the kitchen/dining), which led to discussions on expensive area rug to also buy. Is this normal? You start a debate about which tv to buy and you end up in a $4,000 hole? Or a theoretical hole as no money has actually been spent right now. We went through this last year when shopping for new couches and what did we end up with? NO COUCHES (STILL need those) but all new paint colors in 3/4's of the house to 'theoretically' match with the couches we liked. I feel like this time we're going to end up with new flooring (which actually *IS* needed) but no new tv. Which is no biggie because our current tv still works but we've had an HD TiVo for about 3 years now - with no HD tv. EPIC.FAIL.AT.SHOPPING.

WHO LOVES YA BABY??????

There are a bunch of events in the Winter Games that put me into straight into an Olympicoma if I have to watch them for more than 5 minutes (read: any type of skiing/skating that takes longer than a few minutes per run to complete and/or any type of luge/bobsled event) but this year I've discovered, strangely enough, that I FREAKING LOVE CURLING. ADORE IT. TOTALLY HOOKED. LOVES ME SOME CURLING.

Who knew, eh? It's the kind of love that sneaks up on  you. I've been watching it every night around supper time and I've got the lingo down now. I'm all HAMMER! BUTTON! T-LINE!, etc.  It's a one way ticket to the unhippest Crazy Town you've ever seen but I'm enjoying the train ride. :)

It's war, baby.

Anybody else interested in this whole crazy situation with the Tonight Show? I admit that I am fascinated by it but I really couldn't tell you WHY, especially because I don't generally watch any late night tv. Whaaaat? (The exception being The Daily Show but I tivo that and watch it whenever I get around to it.) I've never even been a big watcher of the Tonight Show. Carson was a little too old for me when he was on and I've never been able to stomach Leno as a comic.

I think the whole thing though is such an EPIC FAIL that it piqued my interest. OMG DRAMAZ where nobody is actually being hurt? SIGN ME UP! I love a good (but harmless) trainwreck, ya know? If I have to pick a team though I'm definitely with COCO. I'll take wacky-funny over boring-and-too-politically-correct-'funny' every single time. Poor Coco. We hardly knew ye. No, really - WE HARDLY KNEW YE! *snort*

(Though I have to be honest and say that if I have to pick a late night show as my fav, it's Craig Ferguson's. He's wickedly clever, sharp as a tack, and, Ooowheeeee, the Scottish accent  ain't bad either. Who doesn't love a good Scottish brogue? *purrr* I wish I had time to watch his monologue every day but ya can't watch everything. I catch him sometimes during the summer when there is nothing else to tape.)

And to save this entry from being TOTAL MINDLESS DRECK THAT NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD BE INTERESTED IN........I'll throw in a photo of some Xmas ornaments I *finally* got around to sewing up the other day. (Refresher: I did the needlework in Nov/Dec.)

I'm sure they'll look good on the tree...................NEXT DECEMBER. Heehee. Three finished about five more to go. I'll get around to it sooner or later. :) And I even put beads on one of them so, POOF, I ended up bringing this all right back around to beads. *proud*