Finally!

I finally finished something. The valances took a little longer than planned, but they’re done. It’s hard to see what they’re like, since I had to take the picture after dark, with a flash, but you get the idea. I also put up a page about my living room redecorating project. And no, I still haven’t set in the sleeves of my sweater yet. :P It’s not cool enough to wear it yet, anyway.

In other news, the spider seems to have found another home. We hadn’t seen it in a couple of days, so Denis destroyed the web, and it hasn’t been rebuilt. I really do hope the spider is living somewhere else and didn’t get eaten by a bird or anything, but quite honestly, as long as it’s not in my garden, I don’t care. :)

I didn’t forget.

I know yesterday was September 11th. I meant to blog, but couldn’t find the words. I still can’t. It hurts me to think about what happened. It hurts me more to see how commercial it has become, with everyone trying to out-do everyone else’s tribute. “9-11” is a brand now, “God Bless America” our theme song. I went to a prayer service and kept my TV off. I don’t need to see the towers fall again – I can still remember them falling. I watched it happen. There was no danger of the day passing without any sort of recognition on my part. And I didn’t put out my flag. It was raining when I left home, and despite what everyone else in my neighborhood thinks, you don’t put out the flag in the rain. I’m sure I’ve made myself very unpopular with my view on things. Oh well.

On a “lighter” note, what a very bizzare, almost creepy, coincidence that yesterday’s Lotto number was “911”.

Ahhh-Chooo!

I spent the weekend feeling stuffed-up and sneezy, with only enough energy to sit on the couch and knit. Darn. :) As a result, I’m two seams away from finishing my sweater! Well, and I need to set-in the sleeves. Ick. I think if there were someone who would finish my knitting projects – like the person who frames my cross-stitches – I’d be willing to pay good money to not have to sew things together. That’s the least fun part of knitting. I ended up with exactly enough yarn – despite buying an extra skein. Thank heavens I bought the extra skein!

I haven’t finished my window treatments yet, either. The panels have been up for over a week now, but I was stuck on what to do with the valances. I think I figured that out last night, though, and I just need to stop at JoAnn’s on my way home for a couple small items. If it works, maybe I’ll be able to finish those up tonight and post pictures.

Singing Needles

I took a break from the very warm, heavy afghan I’m knitting to go back to my sweater, which is all finished except the sleeves. It’s not hot enough out for the A/C lately, but it’s too warm to be sitting with 3/4 of a thick afghan on your lap! After using 13mm needles and two strands of yarn, using one strand of yarn on 4.5mm needles is like switching from little-kid crayons to big-kid crayons. And it’s faster, too! I’m done with one cuff and partway through the second just while watching the first half of the football game last night. I finally decided to do the cuffs flared, like the pattern described, since I won’t be wearing the sweater often enough to be annoyed by the excess fabric.

Evil unsolicited email

The “evil” song from Lord of the Rings is going through my head right now. (You know which one I mean if you’ve seen the movie). I just discovered a new breed of evil spam. Now, they use your email address as the “from” address, as well as the “to” address. You can’t block your own email address if you’re in the habit of cc-ing yourself in on emails, which I do somewhat regularly. And since they left the subject blank, I thought maybe I’d forgotten to put the subject in the last email I copied to myself. Pure evil. Not that I can complain that much – I have several email addresses, and I only get maybe a dozen spam messages a day between all of my accounts.

When I’m not crafting…

…I’m reading about other people crafting! OK, the spider has been at the top of my blog for far too long… Between being busy at work and feeling icky, I just haven’t felt like blogging. I think it’s just allergies gone very awry, but it still sucks to not feel well just as the weather is starting to turn fall-like and wonderful. So, I’ve been reading a lot. I found a book at my local needlework shop about a month ago, and hadn’t read it yet – the shop owner talked me into buying it, but it’s a murder mystery, and I’ve never really been into mysteries. (Except that one year in grade school when I read the entire Nancy Drew series and the Hardy Boys series…) Well, I started reading it Monday night, and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it – unfortunately, that was well after 1 a.m.. Yesterday on my way home from work, I stopped at Borders to see if they had any more books from the series and found two more – I’m halfway through one of them already. I had to force myself to stop reading at a reasonable hour so I could go to sleep. And, there are at least three more in the series that I haven’t been able to find yet. The main character owns a needlework shop, and reading about all the wonderful projects that people in the book are doing makes me want to craft – except I want to find out whodunit, so I can’t put the book down. What a pickle. :)

Abject Terror

Why is it that every year around labor day weekend we find something nightmarish on our property?!? Last year, it was the hornets’ nest. This year? A gigantic spider that they must have misplaced while filming Arachnophobia 2… It’s living in the bushes near the pool, and I almost walked into it while trying to water the peppers on the other side of the fence. There is nothing in this world that I fear more than spiders, except maybe gigantic spiders. Anyway, a brief visit to google helped me figure out that it’s probably an argiope aurantia, which is not poisonous. Like I care. It had better be gone before I get home, or I’m going to find someone braver than me to evict it. In the meantime, I’m going to sit here in my safe, non-spider-infested office and try to forget about creepy-crawly things.