Blog Intrepid

July was a month of chaos. Largely because I was working towards (and achieved) my Project Management Professional certification. The “disturbing” side effect is watching how the project management training is affecting other elements of my life. I’m fighting the urge to create a WBS for my home remodel and project plans for the garb I want to do for Ren Faire in October.

I did manage to get two pairs of socks knit - finally knocking down two items from the list I posted at the beginning of the year. Well, sorta. The socks I knit for myself got claimed by my sister, but I imagine I’ll still be knitting socks, there will be another chance to knit myself socks.

I’m currently working on a sweater for myself, Blue Alvarez Designs’ “Licorice Whip” in almost the required yarn (that’s a first for me!) - Blue Sky Alpaca’s Organic Cotton. I’m using a color grown in “Pebble” - a tan & cream tweed. In a coincidental aside, it’s almost identical in color to the gifted fabric I’m using for a Viking Hanging Skirt for Faire.

Of course, the sweater is on hold. I’m hand sewing trim onto the hanging skirt, and I have Elizabethan garb in line next. I have plenty of time, as soon as I figure out how to give up that whole “sleep” thing. I’ve been threatening to bring the hand sewing bits to work…

Work, of course, is interesting. Market pressures are creating internal changes and communication issues are compounding the chaos. All kinds of fun! Well, maybe not all kinds…

I do need to work to reduce my stress more efficiently. Beer, while fun, causes weight gain and is really more of a delaying tactic than a mitigating tactic, and the yoga program at work has gone to “Hot Yoga” and I’ve no interest in stinking my way through the afternoon…

I finally finished my Mesilla - a few changes were made, mainly in color/yarn (of course) and the neckline - I opted for leaving the picot hem unfolded & used an I-Cord bind off. It gives a nice eyelet effect and the illusion of another purl stripe.

In other news…Dammit. George Carlin died.

Because I am that bored, and this blog is that neglected…

SCATTERGORIES…It’s harder than it looks! Erase my answers, enter yours, send it on to 10 people including the one that sent this to you. *Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following…*They have to be real places, names, things…nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for boy/girl name question.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Jayde
4 LETTER WORD: Jump
VEHICLE: Jeep
TV SHOW: Jerry Springer
CITY: Jersey City
BOY NAME: Jacob
GIRL NAME: Jessica
OCCUPATION: Jester
SOMETHING YOU WEAR: Jumper
FOOD: Jelly
MALE DOGS NAME: Jack
SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: Jewelry cleaner
REASON FOR BEING LATE: Jump-started the car

A year ago today I married my best friend. We’re still just goofy in love, I’m trying to figure out why so many people have bad things to say about marriage: I’m just not seeing it

The kids are off to Florida for the summer… I miss them terribly, but it’s kinda fun having a summer where I don’t have to worry about them.

I’ve got to get a photo up of my latest project. I had a top-down sweater (Mesilla, from Knitty) barely started before I attended my World Wide Knit In Public day event, after spending pretty much all of this past Saturday & Sunday knitting, I’m almost done: one sleeve and the neckline to go! The best part is that this is being knit from yarn that has been kicking around my stash for… oh, gosh, ages. Bought it to make a summer tank top probably 4 years ago, and I’m finally doing it.

There are two things I promised myself would never make it onto my blog. Of course, those are the two things that are creating the most interest right now – everything else is spent either recovering from stresses caused by one or the other, plotting responses to one or the other, or wallowing in denial.

The good news is, the circular shawl I’ve been working on is close to done. I’m doing the final border, but I’m about to run out of yarn so I’m going to rip out what I have, rewrite the lace pattern to use about half as many stitches, or find a new lace pattern, and redo the border. It’s only 1200 or so rows, so who cares? LOL. I have 1.5 balls of Andean Treasure to finish the border, so it’s gotta be narrower than the 17 stitches it currently is. (Sorry non-knitters, I’m sure the preceding was Greek…)

I don’t even have a kitten picture to update you with…

It always amazes me how long I can go without posting, especially since it feels like I always have a blog post or two ticking around in my head.

To update briefly from the last post: my sewing machine is sick, so no sewing until I replace the busted part; have done a grand total of two yoga work outs since the last post; I am doing better about my supplements and eating reasonable food.

As for the knitting update… bah, I haven’t touched any of the things on my list. I have knit several inches worth of a lace shawl not on the list, and with the recent release of More Big Girl Knits I have a few new sweaters I want to do…

I’ve hit some frustration with work. Oh, I love my job when I have something to do, but I wasn’t getting enough work from my boss, so I went to his boss (who used to be my boss – ah, the joys of restructuring), and ended up getting projects from three different people, all of whom thought I was absolutely swamped and in fact… I have nothing to do. I’m taking steps to improve my relationship with my boss, and he says he’s taking steps to be more involved with my work load and give me more projects, so this should be good. As I told one of my co workers (who has similar frustrations) I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. We can’t fix the problems with the department if no one is willing to support the party line, so I may as well take that step.

Well, goals. Goals are better, right?

• Must get started on Garb! We need Elizabethan stuff for Faire, I have barely 6 months to make four Elizabethan outfits!
• Must get better about exercising! Sick of being flabby!
• Most importantly: With all the health chaos I’m dealing with, I’ve got to get better about my supplements & diet. I eat so much crap

Argh.

So, update on the old resolutions. You may remember from The Knitting Post That I had a number of planned project for the needles. Here’s an update:

1. Isabella, from Knitty. I have the Hand Maiden Flaxen (silk & linen blend) to knit this. The Flaxen isn’t knitting to gauge. I’m on US 0’s and I can only get 22 stitches = 4″, the pattern calls for 27 stitches = 4″. Back to the drawing board.
2. Celtic Knot Stole. Sweetie gave me a skein of Schaffer Andrea for Yule, that’s what this is destined for.
3. Jeannie, from Knitty. Another stole. Yes I do too need two stoles. This one is in KP Essential (which is possibly lost in transit… I’m trying not to think about it). Yarn lost, replaced, recieved. That’s as far as this has gotten.
4. Socks, for me. Finally I miss knitting socks, actually. This pair is from the new Cat Bordhi book.
5. Socks, for a gift. See above
6. Scarf, for a gift. Two color entrelac, just to see if I can. This is a real pain in the you know what. Two color entrelac is a lot easier in the round. I did end up scrapping the entrelac pattern and knit MagKnits Orno Abaci out of Cascade220, it’s lovely, Son loves it, yay, done!
7. Reknitting Sweetie’s sweater (the one I did the steeking on a while back). It never did fit right. Frogged, the yarn is mostly steamed straight. I’ve purchased some Lambs Pride in black to do part of the reknit. Now I just have to, well, reknit
8. Reknitting my grey sweater. The yoke was just so badly done on this, it was unwearable. I think it’ll be another Bombshell.Also frogged, also mostly steamed straight, also waiting for the reknit

Well, kittens.

So, after moving into This Giant House, Sweetie & I decided that if another cat should come along and need rescuing, we’d get it.

Sure enough, along came a cat. Well, two cats. Kittens, no less. One of my co-workers got kittens only to discover that they were deathly allergic. Like, doc said “Get the cats out NOW.” He sent out a frantic email, and I wrote back “If no one else is interested, we can probably take them.” Sure enough, we got them that night.

Introductions!

The Girls

Smoky

Bandit

It’s so cute to watch them. They were raised with a dog, so they both growl, and Smoky barks. They’re both convinced that they are bigger than my other cats (hmmm, Kittens: 3 lbs each; Wanda: 4 lbs; Behemoth, aka Moth: 17 lbs; Ra: 17 lbs. Guess their math isn’t good enough to know that 3 < 17), so they will growl, hiss, bark, and attack on sight. They’re also both snugglers. Bandit is the curious one, Smoky is the brave one - that makes for some interesting exploring, let me tell you!

You’d think this would make a great lead in for some reenactment stuff, huh? You’d be wrong.

This week’s blogstalking assignment: All your needles.

This was a disturbing assignment for me. So much so that you only get one image:

Points of interest: At the bottom, there’s the huge brown work-in-progress, and you can see a grey swatch, both still on the needles? Those were my Grandmother’s, I haven’t done anything with them. The swatch is just cool, the brown thing? I don’t even know what it is. Too long to be a sweater, to wide to be a scarf, its just… brown. With white and yellow stripes. The red bit is a scarf for the boy child.

In the process of cleaning this mess up, I discovered some mildly disturbing stuff: I own a huge number of size 6 24” circular needles. WHY? Why do I have four sets of size zero double-pointed needles, all still in the bag? And, I think my mother is responsible for this, but: most of my knitting is done on relatively small needles (size 3 or less), so why do I have a pair of Lantern Moon Broomsticks? (size 19, seriously! I knit a garter stitch shawl on size 17s once, but that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to big gauge stuff.)

Wild and Crazy Dreams:
This may overlap with BlogStalking.

So, I was catching up on The Yarn Harlot this morning, and she had posted about a new sock pattern she’s working on. These socks sound amazingly fun to knit, fiddly without being lace OR cables, and I am thinking, I would love to do this. I would never wear these socks, and probably never complete the second, but… socks with a leaf inlay (truly! Knit a hole in the toe, knit a leaf to fill said hole, sew leaf into the hole!)? Cute grapes on the leg and leaves covering the ribbed cuff? The Tsock Tsarina is amazing! Oh, the pattern is Vintage

Whines
Not even wine! Whine! Ugh!

I fell Wednesday night, apparently I managed to really mess myself up. So now I’ve got really bad muscle aches all on the right side of my body. My chiropractor says “Yeah, so, you’re going to hurt for a while” *grr*.

I just ran out of my very favorite tea: The Tea Spot’s Earl of Grey - this stuff is like no other earl grey I’ve ever had. Yum! And, savoring the last cup until I go to the expensive store that’s out of my way but is the only place that carries The Tea Spot teas. (That sentence just made the MS Word grammar checker choke. Ha!)

BlogStalking
So, this episode of BlogStalking: What’s your worst habit?

Ugh. Must I? Ah well, I couldn’t come up with a better topic to volunteer, so I guess I gotta go for this one.

I procrastinate. I hate even admitting that this is a problem of mine, but it’s everywhere. I need to clean my bathroom, but you know, I’m busy until the second Tuesday of the week. I need to update my blog more often, but hey, I’ve gotta do…something… uh… City of Heroes, anyone?