Month: September 2003

Is it Friday Yet?

Sarah General

It definitely feels like Monday today. That’s the only problem with traveling over the weekend – I feel like I need a weekend to get ready to go back to work. Let’s see…I woke up with a scratchy throat (allergies, I hope), couldn’t find warm enough clothes (it’s cold out there!), couldn’t find my keys, walked half-way to work and realized I forgot my coffee (yes, it’s only next door – the bigger problem was re-navigating the bees crawling all over my driveway…after tree sap maybe?) and then managed to spill half of it because the lid was on crooked.

The trip was good, though. We went for our newest niece’s baptism. I came home with more yarn (surprised?), and several almost-finished little projects. If you ever have 5 feet of i-cord to make, the thruway and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the iPod makes it go quickly!

Molly and Murphy managed to survive without us. Molly stayed with my parents, and we boarded Murphy…he scraped his nose up a little, and seems to have barked himself hoarse. Poor little guy. I wish we had a better solution for leaving the dogs for the weekend – it would be impossible for my parents to take both of them, and he’s just a little too destructive to leave with friends. Thanksgiving ought to be interesting…

OK, I’m done rambling now! Back to work. :)

Crazy College Kids

Sarah General

So, if you were going to steal a tire off of someone’s car, would you be nice enough to replace it with your spare, and leave their hubcap? My brother went to head home for his first long weekend from school, and found that someone had done just that. I guess college parking lots are a bad place to park your car. Fortunately, a local friend of his that was going to ride home with him has a car on campus too, so they drove his friends’ car home.

I’ve never heard of something like that happening – I always thought that we had the special lug nuts on our tires to prevent the hubcaps from being stolen, not the tires themselves!

Of course, it’s kind of funny, in an odd sort of way. At least they tried to be nice by leaving the spare and the hubcap. If he weren’t going to such a small, expensive school, I could see how maybe a poor starving college student, desperate to get home for the long weekend, might consider that the best course of action. But if you can pay the tuition to this place, you can afford a new tire.

The moral of the story is: the world is getting a little crazier every day…

When All Else Fails, Start Another Project!

Sarah Crafts

I’m starting to feel adrift in an ever-growing pile of started projects and stash. This is not necessarily a bad thing! It just means I’ll have to keep track of things so I don’t forget which projects have deadlines.

Deb is the greatest knitting buddy ever – she stopped by Sit & Knit last night just to drop off her swift and ball-winder for me to borrow so I can wind this pile (which is only half of it) of yarn! I really need to get my own set of these lovely tools…but both my birthday and Christmas are approaching, so hopefully someone will take pity on me and I’ll find them wrapped up in pretty paper!

So, what’s this going to be? This is actually a project I can share! Too bad the picture I took of the pattern didn’t come out. Here’s a link to the pattern on KnitPicks, where I ordered it. I imagine a good chunk of this weekend will be spent winding the yarn and swatching for this project. There are at least, what, 90 knitting days left until Christmas? Those projects can all wait a few days, right?

Anyone Want To Sign My Practice Schedule?

Sarah Music

Band starts tonight. I should be excited, but I’m just worried…I’ve only played for a grand total of maybe 2 hours since the July 3rd concert. Ugh. I also had a “duck foot” added to my horn in the off-season. It’s supposed to transfer the weight of the horn from your pinky finger to the top of your hand. I figured that this would be a good thing, since after playing for a couple hours at a time (for example, rehearsals or concerts) my pinky finger would get all numb and tingly. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get used to it yet (maybe because I didn’t practice much?) and it’s soldered on, permanently.

Between that and the lack of practicing, rehearsal ought to be wonderful! Here’s hoping that the first rehearsal is very, very short. As in: hand out the music, and let’s go home!

Housekeeping & Confessions

Sarah Crafts

I changed the order my links display in the sidebar and added some new ones. There are probably more I should add, but since I was working on it late last night, my brain stopped working before I finished.

So, does it count as starting a new project if you just swatch for it? What if the intention was to start a new project, but you didn’t have the right needles – does it count then? If so, I have serious start-itis issues right now. And there’s a new local yarn shop opening up tonight…

Here’s my justification, though: we’re going away for the weekend, and most of the knitting I’m doing right now is secret Christmas-present-type-knitting…which I can’t work on where we’re going. All of the other projects I have going and/or planned are very pattern-intensive…not good for car rides or conversation. So, I think I might have to start something new just to have a project to work on this weekend. :)

Four Puppies and a Pot of Chili…

Sarah Dogs

Makes for good football-watching entertainment! My cousins brought over their golden, Casper, and their black lab-mix, Macy, for a play-date. We figured we had 240 lbs. worth of dog-bodies in the house. Black and gold fur everywhere!

All the dogs got along quite well, except that Macy and Murphy had a couple of little spats. Nothing got out of hand, though. Unfortunately, it was pretty much impossible to get a picture of the four of them sitting still…except when someone had treats in their hands.

There are more pictures of the furriness…forgive the overall blue-ish cast – not quite sure what happened there, but I don’t feel like running them all through Photoshop right now.

It Must Be Time To Go Shopping

Sarah Crafts

…Yarn shopping, that is! After all, I finished a project! I actually finished Janda at Sit & Knit on Thursday, but I had to wait until daylight and free time coincided to have Denis take pictures. He’s still not so sure about this two color thing, but I like it!

Of course, I celebrated finishing a project by working on finishing all of the other in-progress projects…well, not really. I started another one. (Big surprise there, right?) But, really, honestly, I’m working on Christmas knitting now. No more distractions! Until the new yarn shop opens on Tuesday, anyway…

Knitty News

Sarah Crafts

Yippee! I’m finishing Janda just in time – the new Knitty is out! Well, OK, I’m not quite done yet…one more side/sleeve seam to sew and 9 more inches to knit on the hood. (I’ve been doing the icky finishing work in between knitting the hood, so when I’m done with the knitting I’ll be completely done!)

I Stopped Procrastinating!

Sarah Crafts

What’s this?!? Both sleeves of Janda blocking on the guest room floor! Yay! I spent all day Sunday watching football and knitting. At first I had to force myself to work only on the sleeve, but then as I got closer and closer to the end, I couldn’t put it down! All in all, I knit about two-thirds of the sleeve yesterday…kind of makes you wonder why it took me so long!

I also felted my Kureyon bag, which has turned into a little itty-bitty purse. I think the 6+ feet of i-cord I knitted has become too short for both handles…I may need to go buy another skein of the yarn, in which case I’m going to buy enough to also make one of these multidirectional scarves!

Other than these little projects, most of my knitting from here on in is going to be somewhat secret…after all, Christmas is coming, and I have a lot of projects I should be working on. Unless of course I decide to start more projects for me!