Happy St. Patrick's Day!

My last name is Irish McIrishy so I always look forward to St. Patty's and tucking into a corned beef dinner. Any holiday that comes with good food is a good holiday to celebrate, right? 

(I also had my one Shamrock Shake for the year yesterday but I'm prettttttttty sure that has nothing to do with being Irish. lol)

I only have the one little stitchy done up for the holiday though. :(

At least, not until I finish up the items in my 'in progress pile'....

 I HAVE DONE SO MANY NEW PIECES LATELY! LOOK AT THEM ALL!!!!!!!!!

THERE ARE SEVEN THERE. SEVEN.

 I haven't been knitting lately so I keep blazing through these little charts like WOAH. I'm trying to be good and 'finish-finish' them at the same time so they just don't hang around either. I need to get busy cord-making, ribbon-making and stuffing now and this new batch will be DONE.

Also, this happened for Valentine's Day last month:

I can't say that the husband is really 'into' having his own cross stitch piece gifted to him but I thought it was cute. :)

February

Out with the old....

And in with the new...

Who knew I had so many stitches for Valentine's? I was pleasantly surprised when I went digging to switch out my little basket here!

They might have to stay in there for quite some time though because I really have nothing for spring time smalls. Not sure how that happened either (I don't hate rabbits?!? Or spring flowers?!?) but I might have to buckle down and get some finishing done if I want to keep up with this basket this year. :)

I am perpetually out of sync with the seasons with my projects though.

Case in point I *just* finished this little guy I started last Thanksgiving. 

Well, I'm all set for NEXT Thanksgiving, I guess.  It really was delusional of me to think I would get it done for last year, seeing as I started it just a few days before the holiday. This is only the second biscornu I've done, which is a shame because they are super easy to do.

(Designer is Barbara Ana, which you could probably guess because she has a distinctive look.)

Getting anything done the last few weeks has been difficult as there has been a literal plague hitting my house. We got a bad batch of cat food (I believe) and ALL FOUR CATS were violently ill in turn for days at a time. It was disgusting but, thankfully, they all seem to have come through it okay. (I think it helped that I mix two foods together so they didn't eat a full portion of whatever one was tainted.)

Then we went to see Fleetwood Mac, which was amazing - until I came down with the flu about 48 hours later. Dirty, dirty public places! UGH! I should have covered myself in Purell every time I touched a handrail. My bad. :(

I promptly gave it to the husband, of course, but at least he was about 4 days behind me so we didn't both have a high fever at the SAME time. That would have been real bad with both of us flat-out in bed at the same time. Heh. 

Man though, when does the nagging cough end? It's been almost two weeks now and I'm still sipping the prescription cough medicine like it's a crack pipe. *cough*cough*cough* So annoying. 

On the upside, you can't catch the flu twice............right? God, PLEASE TELL ME you can't catch it twice. :(

Merry Christmas!

And Happy Holidays to all!

November!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Almost missed my picture post for November!! *scramble*scramble*scramble* 

Getting in just under the wire. :)

(This post was a real labor of love, too, because I hit something on my keyboard in the middle of it that split all the paragraphs and symbols into gobbledy-gook and, well, it took some doing to figure out how I had screwed THAT up. Turns out ctrl-alt-something will change the formatting of your keyboard to.......something that does not benefit an English only speaker. Ha!)

 Hope everyone in the US had a nice Thanksgiving.  I cooked a lot......and ate a lot. So two thumbs up for the holiday from me! (Also: watched some movies I've been meaning to get to, like Catching Fire, that I never make time for.) 

 (Much better Youtube link)

The husband was  a little more pro-active than me, as he participated in a bike run through the woods in the morning, put on by the local bike shop. (Which is also a fledgling beer company. Beer and bikes! That's aweso.......wait, what? I'm not sure they thought that one out. lol)

I will admit I was still sleeping when he got back from the run. 6am on a holiday? NOT ON YOUR LIFE. lol) 

 No crazy Black Friday shopping for either of us. Not my scene, I have to say.

Went to a not-at-all-local show up in Mass. instead and got some handmade gifts for others and a couple for myself, like Mr. Sheep here. Not sure where I am going to put him yet but I couldn't pass him up!

  

 It's been an insanely busy month because beads, beads, beads, and more beads. Every day a new pile of beads made, packed up and shipped out. Thankfully, December is a little easier because that month has more to do with personal sales (gifts, etc.) than designers loading up for their holiday shows. Just keeping my head down and plugging away at it, trying not to think TOO much about where/when I'm going to knit up some gifts for Christmas. Heh.

All the pretty 'leafs' are gone for the year now. :*(

I enjoyed snapping pics of the nice ones in my travels. I love when they look like they are on fire.

'Stitches East' socks............put to bed. 

Trekking XXL striping yarn. Fruit Stripe Gum pattern.....again. 

It's so much fun I make have to make a dozen socks in this pattern before I'm tired of it. (Pair #3 is already completed, but not photoed yet, and pair #4 is in the very, very, very early stages of being completed.)

Tomorrow is a very exciting day because...

...I finally get to start my David's Tea advent calendar!

You have to get these the SECOND they come out if you want to grab one so I've been staring at this big box for a whole month now, trying to wait until December 1st. Soooo hard! I love advent calendars in general but one that gives you a little tin of special tea every day? Ho, ho, ho!  *fans self*

I got the winter collection at the same time to keep me busy or otherwise I never would have made it. Never. Ha! :)

(Not an actual Grumpy Cat. Sweetest, Gentlest Thing Ever Cat.)

Meisha is still doing ok, so that is a good thing. Her levels are worse every time we test for them (grr!) but she still doesn't have any major symptoms. 

 I got her a new doctor, someone who can devote a little more time/energy to a rare case. Did another whole round of various tests and there is still no cause to be found for her hypercalcemia. (It's certainly not for lack of trying, that's for sure.) The testing was great overall though because her kidneys and joints showed no calcification yet, which is AWESOME. She's the healthiest terminally ill animal you've ever seen! SO FRUSTRATING! @$!@$!@#$

*ahem*

I gets angry sometimes. Just saying.

Someone pass me a holiday cookie to distract me. 

See? I feel better already. Eating your feelings WORKS, guys. 

IT WORKS. Never forget that. Heh.

July post-ish.

(I never get tired of putting out the little stitchies from years past for July.)

 Hope everyone in the US had a nice holiday weekend. The weather here was dreadful for the 4th -just as expected with a hurricane/tropical storm passing by the coast. Torrential rain, hail, wind, thunderstorms, etc. Only off/on though so it could have been worse. And the power kept threatening to go out but it hung in there so I guess all the tree trimming the electric co. has done in recent years is actually helping. 

I had work to do anyway and he actually worked Friday/Saturday so I didn't mind the bad weather really. It all came together for a glorious, perfect summer Sunday so it's all good. 

Plus I had this to keep me company. What's that, you say? Oh, just my latest fugue-state, fever-dream, rabbit hole I fell into. It happens. You know, that thing you do where one thing leads to another leads to another, and you're covered in flop sweat and determination until you reach the very, very end of it? That thing.

I finished a Plum Street freebie and decided it was a good time to start putting threads away. 

I tend to pile up 'used' project floss in one zipper bag until there is enough to really make it worth it to sort it and start putting it back where it belongs (i.e. 4 cases of DMC, 3 giant rings of hand-dyes, etc) but I had a full bag now so off to be sorted they went. 

Then it seemed only natural to put away the 'newish stash' that was also around. Where it was quickly apparent that I shouldn't ever ever in a million years of evers be doing free patterns because I have enough PAID patterns to last me a few lifetimes.

After I stopped feeling a little ill from the OMGSOMUCHSTUFF feelings, I immediately started doing a (PAID FOR) pattern I had kitted up (SOME TIME A LONG TIME AGO) and....riiiiiight off the bat I ran into the issue that I was missing a stinking floss color. Well, that's not right. Why would I purchase all of the other colors but not this one? I must have misplaced it. 

So I started searching for it. The search didn't last all that long as I don't generally have a lot of projects in progress hanging around. (In fact, I only had 3 projects in progress and one of those probably doesn't count because I had already 'robbed' it of all it's floss ages ago and the linen has just two teeny, tiny candy corns completed. Things that can be ripped within 5 minutes like they never happened don't count as a work in progress, right?) But that didn't make sense. WHERE WOULD THAT ONE STINKING COLOR BE? 

So I dug in places it wouldn't be, just to be extra-specially certain it wasn't there. This searching took longer because it was nonsensical searching. Maybe it's under the sugar container! Could the bookcase have eaten it?!? Would looking downstairs behind the wood stove be totally crazy or just mostly crazy?!?!? 

(Nonsensical searching is the worst kind of searching because all possibilities exist at the same time and, therefore, must be searched or you are always going to have DOUBTS. Also, time is a circle. *twitch*)

And then I thought........maybe it's in my floss boxes but not in the right place. I have all my hand-dyes separated by company AND in alphabetical order.....but alphabetizing things, as we know, can be a teensy bit fuzzy whenever humans are involved. AHA! PROGRESS! There were some Weeks Dye Works in with Crescent Colours and oh ho ho, I'm on to something now. It is hiding in plain sight! To sort that out I would have to consult the Master List. 

Wait? Do you have a Master List? MS Word documents listing all of your floss by company that you can consult so you can easily determine what you have on hand? Well, I do. And the more I checked that the more it was apparent how TOTALLY FREAKING JACKED my data entry skills have been the last few years. The mistakes. They were plentiful. So I had to start ticking things off one by one, through hundreds of floss colors, and redoing the alphabetizing for each company and rearranging floss bags and.........

Here's where things get a little crazy. 

I used to use Bag It bags for my hand-dyes but they stopped making them at some point, so I ran out and started having to use Floss-Away bags instead. 

 

This would not be an issue but Bag Its hang from the bottom when hanging on a ring and Floss-Away bags hang from the top and this has always really, super duper bothered me because they ALL have to go ONE WAY or the OTHER. Mixing them is just...........it's wrong. I was just COVERED in the wrongness of it as I was flipping through my rings, trying to correct my Master List. So..........

250+ Floss-Away bags later ( that I, mysteriously, just HAPPENED to have on hand) I changed over every single Bag It bag to a fresh/shiny/new Floss-Away bag. While consulting the Master List, of course, so everything is just perfect now. Perfect, I say! BUT BOY HOWDY DID IT TAKE A LONG TIME TO GET THERE. Three days and multiple, multiple hours. (And honestly? Most of my Crescent colors were already on Floss-Away bags. These piles are just from Weeks and Sampler threads. FLOSS HOARDER. *ahem*)

I never did find that stupid, hated, fever-inducing Endive floss color either. I have to concede, at this point, that I never had it and, also, that I am ridiculous. Whoops! My bad. (It's on order.) Oh well. The weather was really bad and my stuff is, like, HYPER organized now so I guess it's all good. :)

No more kittens.

Because these....

...have turned into these...

..now that they are 1 year old this month. :)

Kinda crazy how fast time goes by! I suppose I should stop calling them 'the kittens' now, eh? I'm going to start calling them 'the twins' instead. They aren't technically twins but they WERE the only 2 babes in that litter and they still do EVERYTHING together so it works for me.

(See? I can do happy cat posts, too!)

 Thanks so much for the comments about Meisha, btw. She's a trooper, that one, taking the injections and pills in stride. Makes me feel we aren't doing the wrong thing by 'forcing' treatment on her. So long as she is happy, we will keep at it.

*waves*

 Oh, dear. Just not into this blogging 'thing' lately, I'm afraid. :(

Can't say it's for any particular reason either, other than general 'winter has gone on MUCH MUCH TOO LONG now' malaise that is probably affecting almost all of us in the northern hemisphere. Busy with work, yes, as always, but things are moving along as normal otherwise. 

Figured I should get in here before TOO much time goes by and I forget how to do it all together. Plus, I had a stack of  this hanging around that I'd like to put away:

Blogging or no blogging, I still pile finished things up to be photographed. It's like they aren't TRULY done unless their existence has been logged online in some fashion. That's a little sad, I think. I mean we DID 'exist' in our pre-online lives, didn't we? (And you can just shush if you are reading this and too young to have ever had a chance at a pre-online life, ok? We do not like young whippersnappers poking at our older selves. lol) 

Thanks to some tv-binge-watching (both seasons of House of Cards in EIGHT days! Eight!) I've actually been plugging right along on a bunch of things. Most of the individual photos I went for came out cringe-inducing awful though. Grrrrr. I only managed to take a decent picture of my newest pillow finishes:

Sadly, I did not put these 'together' in time for the holiday this year but I did finish STITCHING them in time. That has to count for.............something? I could only dig up two other appropriate smalls for this holiday so I figured it well past time I did a few more. The heart pattern is from a designer I saw on Etsy and the other two are freebies from The Primitive Hare. Used random scraps of linen and bits and bobs of lace and what not that I could scrounge out of my craft closet. 

I'll have to retake the photos of Most Hated Socks Ever and my L*K stockings. :)

I'm going to end this with another clover pic. A day late, of course, but I have a sweet spot for this holiday. For one, it's ridiculously easy to celebrate (wear green!) and comes with really tasty food and, two, I just plain ole like the color green. We need more fun, color-based holidays! :)

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*