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*

State of the Stash.

But first......

I know I said I wasn't going to do any more new Halloween items but someone asked for an owl for Halloween so..............

Who am I resist such a thing? I am weak in the face of Halloween requests. :)

(A few other, non-Halloween things, have also been posted, btw.)

Well...................we made an attempt to go through my poor stash stuff this weekend and here is what I was able to save:

Yep. One lonely little bag of snowflake buttons. *sigh*

Everything else was tossed. All of my Crescent Color threads, the silks/Watercolors/Waterlillies/etc, metallics, floss bags, extra DMC I had in a bag, a box of new DMC colors that I had never gotten around to wrapping on cards, a box of the DMC linen collection..........*sad*

Could have been worse, I guess. At least my DMC was in separate boxes so that was safe. I don't even want to think about having to replace an entire collection of DMC. (Heeeeee heeeeeeee hooooooo! Oh god no.) 

And if this had happened this time last year all of my WDW and GAST threads would have been in there too. (Those collections have gotten large enough that they had to be moved to their own storage box.)  

I wasn't even able to save the plastic container everything was originally in. 

Now this I really don't understand. You think some harsh detergent/Nature's Miracle/Simple Green combo would be enough to clean hard plastic............and you would be wrong. lol All of the stuff I lost was in floss bags which were closed, didn't even get wet, and they were still disgusting. WTF?

Oh well. I reordered the Crescent Colors and a couple other things that I use all the time (don't ask me how much that cost) as a super-early birthday/Xmas present to myself and the rest I will just reorder if/when I ever get to the project that I originally bought them for. On the bright side, it will fun going through a whole ton of new threads once that order comes in. :|

 I have plenty of cats left to get all up in my business but, thankfully, I've never had any problems with my Himmies. *crosses fingers*

Though they *do* like to help you do pretty much everything you want to do without them around.

Seriously guys? It's a bag of buttons. And a camera.  So not that interesting! lol

He might actually be sitting on the buttons at this point. But I let him because he was sitting pretty for a quick photo. :)

OMG. Guys.

I don't even.

It's like what?

Head is broken.

Panic attack.

I just don't even understand.

Was expecting to be sad about having to say good bye to Nitwit (we did end up putting her down yesterday morning) and then...............something happened later in the day and it was like a record needle scratch and now I'm instantly over it. Snap. Sadness gone. 

Things had been bad with her since January but, up until the last 5-6 weeks, things had been manageable. They were manageable. There were Rules and as long as you followed the Rules, thing were fine 98% of the time. 

Rule #1: do not leave anything on the floor in the bathrooms. Not a terribly difficult rule as far as rules go, you know? If you forgot to pick up the rug after showering or whatever and it got peed on, well, that was your fault as that was a clear violation of the Rules. Why the bathrooms and not, say, the kitchen, where there are also throw rugs and various things on the floor (like, say, cloth grocery bags after a big shopping trip) at certain times? I don't know. I DIDN'T MAKE THE RULES. I was just expected to follow them.

Rule#2: things laid on top of the hamper or on the bedroom floors was a sure path to Badness. Why the hamper and not, say, the bed? (Or couches.) Again: I don't know. Not the rule maker, just the rule follower. (Personally, I was just glad that the bed and the couches were off limits for some unknown, anonymous reason and didn't probe it too much. Though, having said that, if they hadn't of been off limits this whole 'situation' would have ended many, many months ago, KWIM?)

Things only got 'real' a short while ago when suddenly the Rules seemed to have changed overnight and it was like, welllll, not so much with these new Rules. The new Rules were not going to cut it. They included: my brand new office chair, a wood sitting chair with a fabric seat and pretty much any/all cat beds in the house. New Rules = BAD. So, after more blood tests/xrays/medicine, she was sequestered in the guest room for a week (nearly fabric less at the moment as I threw the full sized bed out when we did the floors in June, with plans to get a smaller one in the future) to see if the new Rules were permanent or not. 

Turns out, after a couple weeks try out, the new Rules were permanent and that was unmanageable for a house that we, like, actually like to live in so we find ourselves up to date with things. And then I went to go pull a few threads out of my big Craftable blue/rubbermaid-like container and discovered it was full of pee. 

And then my head broke and I had a massive can't speak-walking in circles-staring at the wall-panic attack that lasted, ohhhh..................well it should be over soon at any rate. Any minute now. *tap*tap*tap* 

Yeah. I mean.................what? I just don't even. Understand? It's plastic. And.........what? It holds: all of my linen, all of my DMC and about half of my specialty fibers (of which I have a CONSIDERABLE stash). And other stuff? Like.........other stuff? AND MY HEAD IS BROKEN. I can not wrap my head around the magnitude of how to clean this up. Vinegar baths followed by........something? And keeping track of what is what? Uncoiling 312341234123 wrapped skeins or leaving them wrapped? Or? ...?....? And what about non color-fast items? Metallics? Silks????

Strangely enough (and luckily enough?), the linen all seems fine. I don't mean fine in that sense that I'm trying to talk myself INTO it being fine either. I mean *actually* fine. I checked it with a black light, my nose, extreme inspection under a bright light. It was in the top of the compartment, which is removable and I *do* take it off sometimes when I'm laying pieces out in the living room to figure out what I want to use. I went through it like that one night about 4 weeks ago, which is certainly within the 'new Rules' period, when starting a new project so I suppose it's possible she jumped into the box in the 1.74 hours that the top was off of it?

I'm still not 100% on the condition of the DMC. Those are in four tackle boxes so closed boxes inside a closed box (meta anyone?)............it should be fine but I can't make a definitive decision on that until it's been away from the stuff that is So Clearly NOT Fine for a few days. I'm seeing shadows inside of shadows on top of more shadows right now until I'm cross-eyed and pie-eyed and can not trust my judgement. (Because my first thoughts? THROW IT ALL AWAY. All twenty years of it. And find a NEW HOBBY. lol)

It's just the rest of it. You can't just throw it in the wash. Or use harsh detergents on it with out stripping the color out. Or ?? The best I can come up with at the moment is possibly a clothes line type assembly line maybe? String the skein, then the bag, repeat with all, etc. and then dip each one through a series of vinegar/Nature's Miracle/I don't know what? individually and hang it up to dry? At least that way the bags will be with the floss and I can tell what is what. Otherwise maybe take a picture of each one before taking it out of the floss bag to sort it all out later? (I have no hopes that the stuff inside the floss bags is fine because those 'bags' have two holes in them for threading on split rings, you know? And it's............wow. Covered. Sticky. And it's all.......All baaaaaaaaaaad.)

I fully expect half of y'all to not really understand what the big deal is about but the rest of you will know. You know. A quart of rancid pee poured on your stash? Worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars? A stash that is not easily cleaned *or* replaced? Oh yes, YOU know my horror. 0_o 

**********************

You know it's funny (though not really in that HAHAHA type of way) because I did a post on my Livejournal a few weeks ago about, what I thought at the time, was possibly the grossest thing to ever happen inside my house in my entire life. I didn't mention it here but the bathroom fan downstairs, uhhh, killed a large mouse and we didn't realize why it was clunking at the time until a week later* when, oh, maggots and maggoty flies started dropping from the ceiling. Like a lot. Of maggots. From the ceiling. Dropping and dropping and dropping. Will it stop? Looks like no. Dropping and dropping. While we took turns staring at it and running around in circles screaming like little girls. That's, like, horror show gross.But in retrospect, sooooooooo much easier to get my head around than this. *THAT* was easy to clean. *THIS*............I just don't even.

*Obviously, there was strong odor for a couple days too but we looked and looked for the source and couldn't find it. We thought it possible something had gotten into the chimney? It never occurred to us to look inside the fan, you know? Who would think of that?!?

Oink oink.

In the process of replacing all the carpeting with wood floors this summer, I've done some MAJOR purging. I mean major: 7-8 bags of donated clothing, countless bags of trash, and at least two big bags of paper related materials from the filing cabinet/desk. Nothing escaped my wrath. I was ruthless and threw stuff away while cackling away with glee. (I do love a good purge.) It was good times, peoples, good times.

 In doing all that work in the office, I ended up with a half a drawer empty in the file cabinet. What to do with it...........hmm............HEY! I COULD ORGANIZE MY STITCH STASH. I had it all piled up willy-nilly in a wood 'cheese/shaker' box but I could be, like, all PROFRESHENUL and sort it and stuffs!

So I laid it all out and sorted it by designer....and..........HOLY CRAPBALLS I have a lot of stuff. Good lord! lol

THIS PHOTO DOES NOT DO MY STASH JUSTICE. 

IT'S BAD, PEOPLE.

It's enough to make one a little faint. (Or more than a little, to be honest.) Now, in my defense, I did 'work' as model stitcher for a local shop for 4-5 years in my spare time so, heavy discount and earned cash in hand, I happily worked on building my stash up during that period of time. But still. I really need not every buy anything EVER AGAIN EVER AND THAT WOULD STILL BE TOO SOON HONESTLY.  (Not that that has ever stopped me before. So don't hold your breathe or anything on it happening. lol) It's hard to say which pile makes me break out into a sweat more than the others. 

There is the huuuuuuuuge stack (20? 25?) of LHN/CCN patterns that I got in a series of wicked cheap eBay auctions last summer. Nope.......

Oh ho ho! There is the crazy amount of Shepherd's Bush kits at $30-$60 each. (95% of these were purchased during my stitching heydey, hence they were 'free'.) Close....very close...

Ahh. Here we go. A stack of Bent Creek patterns that all have a PIECE OF CUT LINEN in them, all ready to go. It's all that linen that makes me feel the most guilty, even if I did 'pay' for most of it with my time and expertise, because most of these are pieces that would require framing and, hello, I have a limited amount of wall space for those kinds of projects at this point. *gulp*

Anyhoo. It all fit quite nicely. So, uhh, that's good. Right?

I had ideas of going through this to cull stuff for a giveaway but, honestly, that's going to have to wait until I catch my breathe again and feel less overwhelmed. I feel like I would get rid of TOO much at this point in a frenzy to make it more 'manageable' (if that is even possible) and then maybe end up regretting it. lol

I will do it one day though. :)

Boo Hoo Hoo. I haz a sad.

A moment of silence, please, for my dearly departed kiln:

8/2002 - 8/2011

Oh, I'm sure he will rise from the dead at some point when I can track down a couple new parts for him but for now he's DOA, having quit on me (of course) when I was smack-dab in the middle of a huge stack of orders. *sigh*

So I am kiln-less at the moment and awaiting a whole new one to find it's way to me hopefully within a week. It took some honest-to-god pitiful begging on my part to find someone who could build me another one *this* weekend because no one but no one has these babies sitting on a shelf ready to go, it seems. It's kind of nauseating to see '2-4 weeks to ship' over and over and over again when you need one like, OMG YESTERDAY. So I have week off from bead making while things are in motion and I think I need it to help alleviate my stress levels.

Anyhoo. I have grand plans for my upcoming 'unemployment' aka forced unpaid vacation like:

• catching up on six months/eight inch high stacks of paperwork. *ahem*
• work on the site/Etsy in regards to Halloween/Xmas stuff so it's ready to go when the new kiln is here
• no-excuses-anymore regular exercise.
• no-excuses-anymore down and dirty housecleaning
• track down some parts for the broken kiln so I will have a back-up in the future
• oh, and all the usual not-at-all productive type things in the larger sense like knitting, finally finishing the Dance with Dragons book, etc.

 First up in the non-productive type thing is to finish this pair of mittens I started this week:

I think I had planned for these to be a Xmas gift for the hubby last year but he ended up with just the skeins of yarn in his stocking. Heh. On the bright side, I am now on schedule to make a grand debut of them for *this* year's Xmas stocking. :)

And my personal 2011 Sock challenge socks for July are fini so it's time to cast on for a pair for August. (I'm thinking a pair of candy-corn-ish striped pair of Jaywalkers. Mmm.) The yarn - Lornes Laces - and pattern - Boysenberry Yo - are exclusive to the Cookie A Sock Club and were a fun knit.Vaguely reminiscent of a feather-and-fan pattern.

I can't tell you HOW MUCH I am enjoying this sock club this year. I've joined a bunch of sock clubs over the years and this is the first one where I have not only used the yarn/patterns as they came in but I've used them TOGETHER. Usually you like the yarn but not the pattern or you don't like how they look together, but this one has been just perfect with each shipment. I think we just have one more shipment to go, in November, and then it's done. *sad*

Ugh. I'm depressed. :(

They ended up keeping Mooshie at the vet's today. His tail is a total frakking mess. I miss him and feel so bad, even though we have NO IDEA what he did to injure himself. It's a mystery that will never be solved. Something fell on him or he got stuck somewhere.........who knows. Even indoor cats are secret ninjas, I guess. lol

He's going to stay at the vet's until Saturday or Monday to get some quiet time away from the other cats and see if his tail is going to heal on it's own or need to be amputated. (We could have brought him home but he was dripping blood everywhere by the time she was done with him and they can't bandage the tail or whatever so it seemed best to leave him there so it stays clean and has the best chance possible to heal up. I don't want the other cats picking on him or have him dragging it around the house through god knows what.)

What fell off in our hands the other night when we tried to look at it ourselves was indeed the end of his tail, like we thought. *shudder* I didn't watch this today (lalalalal looking out the window lalalala) but Patrick said the 'clumpy' skin that we left alone just slipped off like a sock when she tugged on it. OH. MY. GOD. His tail looks like it's been through a damn wood chipper. *hurl* So probably a 1/2 inch is gone already, another 1/2 inch looks black and likely to fall off, the remaining injured part (3-4 inches) may or may not have to come off in a few days if it can't stay infection free and/or 'pinked up'. Luckily for him, I guess, he's always loved his back feet way more than his tail. He just loves to roll around on his back, lovingly clutching a back foot between his front feet and lick it to death. I'm not even sure how aware he is that he has a tail. (He tends to get hung up on the feet and then bliss out without going any further north.)


My poor little boo-boo. His 15th birthday is actually coming up in 2 weeks - isn't he too old to be getting into this much trouble??? :(