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. :)

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. :)

Good news/Bad news

Good news: Knitpicks new Chroma yarns knits up quite beautifully. It's a great alternative to the (to me) scratchy, splitty Noro yarns that have similiar gradient coloring.

Bad news: I knit these in a size large for him, he wore them the other day, washed them and.............HOLY FRAKKIN' SHRINKAGE. :( I didn't notice the tag said 'hand wash', *ahem*, and all our knit socks go in the machine wash. (In a lingerie bag, always cold water, line dry. It works fine for MOST of the things I knit.) Needless to say, they no longer fit him. I have two more skeins of this, in the Fossil color, I will now *not* be turning into socks like planned. Grrrr!

Somewhat Good News: they still fit *me* fine (yay for having small feet!) but I really owed him a pair of socks and after knitting for two weeks on something for him..................I *still* owe him a pair of socks. *sigh*

(I seem to be having a small run of bad knitting mojo in 2011. Pfffft. Happily, my glass mojo and stitching mojo are still healthy. *knock on wood*)

New item up in the Bead Shoppe today.

Or rather - an old item that I haven't offered for a long time but it's getting some new attention because there is currently an article featuring Lori Anderson of Lori Anderson Designs in the current Bead Style magazine and one of the pictures in her article has these lil guys in it. It's been fun doing them up again! I never stopped doing them because I didn't like them - I just felt I had a lot of holiday beads that were redundant so I cut my catalog down a bit the last couple of years. (You know I'm always happy making things with little beady eyes.) Be sure to check out her site even if it's just to bask in the glow of the eye candy. :)

In other news, my computer is now fixed..................maybe. The third thing I tried to fix it, a check disk thingy, actually repaired the stupid ntuser file causing all the problems, though it took forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrever to do it. (Probably a good sign I need to clean my hard drive off a bit. I guess I don't need to save EVERY SINGLE picture I ever take ever ever ever.) So that was good but, ummmm, I've been too a'skeered to shut my computer off since then so I'm not sure what will happen when I do. lololol It may just be a temporary fix, you know? I know I'll have to shut it off at SOME point and see what happens, because there might be something still 'off' that will just REcorrupt that file but for the MOMENT I'm quite content to live in DenialLand. I've had a ton of orders lately which is a ton of emails, a ton of printing of receipts and shipping labels, etc. I can't be fooling with a 2hr repair job every day!  So for now I'm just putting it to 'sleep' at night. I might need a 12-step to get me to shut it off completely because it's turning into a bit of a phobia. OH NOES, COMPUTER TROUBLES IMMINENT, SAVE ME SAVE ME.

You know what today is?

It WWKiP day! Or, errrrr, daysss. (It's more than one day now? You only get one day if you call it knit in public DAY, people! What kind of weird voodoo math is this? lol)

So what am I knitting in public today on the first day of Knit in Public, err, Day? Nothing actually. Today is pretty much like every day this week: starts off a little sunny, off/on showers in the afternoon. So everything stays a little wet and a little bit dreary. Not weather conducive to dragging wool yarn around, in other words.

I kept my 'rule' of only working on the NeverEnding Scarf of Doom this week.....with the side effect that I sat around the last three nights doing nothing other than giving it a fitful glance once and again because I so am TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY OVER knitting on this thing but I didn't want to 'cheat' and work on something else. So I did nothing instead. (Which I really hate. All that wasted time. I'm much too ADD to just sit and watch tv without my hands in motion working on a project.) Technically it's 'done' because you can look at it and it is clearly a scarf, but it is not done because it's not long enough. At least it's not long enough for me. I like to fold my scarves in half and then throw the two ends through the loop and wear them that way. You do that with this and you end up with two stumpy six inch tails - I like a looooooooooong scarf. But if I keep trying to knit on this any longer I might go COMPLETELY INSANE. So I thought maybe wet blocking it would 'release it' some and get a little extra length out of it.

Nope. Still not long enough. I really hoped that the math, reason and facts were all wrong and it would wet block into the long scarf of my dreams. NOPE.
!!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$!@#$@$@$@#$

So do I just call it day because it is *pretty* enough without any extra length..........knowing I probably won't like wearing it very much because it's too short or.........suck it up and try to knit some more to make it longer? Decisions, decisions. I can only complete one swirl an hour which is a maximum of three swirls per night of working on it (but more like only two) and you need three to complete the pattern. Each new row of swirls gives you approximately 4" of length. So basically I need to keep knitting until I'm a drooling half-mad fool because UGH UGH UGH I DON'T WANT TO WORK ON THIS ANYMORE. This is what sucks about being a process knitting: when the process SUCKS you just want to kick the whole project into a ball in some random, dusty, long forgotten corner of your house regardless of how asinine that is. This is what sucks about being a perfectionist: you can't possibly do the above without thinking you are a horrible, weak, immature person and you will be forever haunted by your failing. DAMN YOU SCARF, you will not defeat me. *shakes fists at the sky*

The colors are really pretty though *not coming across in this picture) and it feels very nice after a nice long soak in Soak. So..........there's that. I don't dislike the scarf or the pattern - I JUST HATE KNITTING THE DAMN THING. lol This casting on 60, binding it off, weave the ends in, cast on 60 more.......so so so tired of it. I'm dying for something you just knit back and forth or around and around - SOMETHING NORMAL.

Arrrrrggggggggggh.

 I was doing *so* well with the regular blog entries there and then...........I fell off the wagon and now it's been over a week, A WEEK!!!!, since I've been around. For shame. It's mostly not even my fault. We've just hit the part of winter where I seem to slip into a coma. It's hard to write blog entries when you're in a coma, y'all. Just saying!!! So tired of snow, and cold, and dryness, and darkness, and dry skin, and snow, and this house, and........zzzzzzz. <--See? COMA.
There is big ball of fiery brightness out in the sky today that's, like, SHINING ON ME and in MY EYES and stuff, and it burns and makes me want to sleep even more. lolol
And I'm tired of people saying spring is around the corner because around here? Not so much. The trees don't even fill in completely until the END OF MAY.
Where's my 911 waaaaaaaaaambulance to cure me of my pathological state of whinehood?
Oh here he is:


Hmph. Anyhoo. I *will* be working on new beads this weekend, the work, it goes so slowly at the moment. *yawn* But I do need to buckle down, eh? I've been much more productive at night on non-bead stuff while watching tv. I finally finally finally finally finally finished up the 'finishing' on the batch of the Blackbird stockings I stitched up during November/December. (With the exception of the umbrella one - that one I stitched up last week.)



I'm determined to finish every last one of these up, all 36 of them, OH YES I WILL. With this latest batch done, I'm now up to................May. Ugh. So so so many months left to go. lol
I need to take a short break from it though for the moment because I signed up for a pin pillow exchange on Becky Bee's blog and I need to get that ready and mailed before the end of next month. (Not that it will take me that long to finish but I want to do it early enough to cover any 'issues' that may come up with  mailing because that would be my luck and I don't want to end up on the Blog of Shame for not completing it on time. Nooooooo, no no! Will not do. :))



And I started up my swirl scarf last night (for which I bought all the stuff for last October) but it's crap and I have to start over. BUT THAT'S OKAY. No, really. For one thing, the yarn is not changing colors as fast as I thought it would so I'm going to have alternate the colors manually for each swirl that I start vs. letting the yarn do it naturally. (Not at all difficult to change because each swirl is knit separate and then the yarn is cut to start another one. So instead of using the same skein, like I started doing, I'll rotate between the five skeins that I have to get a different coloration going for each swirl.) Also, I wasn't happy with the cast-on because I wasn't exactly sure how to do it and FAR BE IT FOR ME TO GET OFF MY LAZY ASS TO GOOGLE THAT SHIT BEFORE STARTING FOR REAL, so I winged it and it's, uhh, not so good. Too fiddly and too floppy and more than a little sloppy. But I know how to do it the right way NOW and, even better, since I purchased the yarn for this the Yarn Harlot knit/blogged about this same project last month or so which means 123412341234123 people were drawn to it because of her and I now have a gazillion brains to pick on Ravelry vs. the 10 or so brave souls who had finished it back in October. Basically, I can gather up all their tips  that they learned from their mistakes and HOPEFULLY not make so many of my own.  It's not as bad as all that though, so far. The swirls themselves, once you get past the hinky cast on, are ridiculously easy and quick to knit up. ONWARD I SAY!

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*