Post 43

Finally made it to the boyhood home of Bill Clinton. yesterday was the worst day of travel I have ever had. My flight was of course delayed a little becasue of Denver and the weather, but then I did something stupid at the moment, but good in the long run. The flight was overweight and they asked for volunteers, and well, I sold my soul for the rock bottom price of $250 in airline vouchers. For this I was given the joy of a hunger headache because I never knew when the next flight was going to take off and instead of getting into Little Rock at 12 noon (or really 2:30 as my original was supposed) I got in at 5:00. I ended up getting dinner at Arby's instead of the Clinton Library as planned, and I missed the yarn store too :(. oh well, I'm here, the weather is nice, everything smells so good, and if I can't sleep well, my aunt the nurse gives me little mystery pills that put me right out, yea! The only project I ended up brign was the triangular scarf, and let me tell you, casting on 375 stitches with a massive hunger headache doesn't work well, so now I have to pull it out and start over. I'm hoping to have some time tomorrow to get in a back massage, I took in the water once (Hot Springs is famous for that) but it totally creeped me out. I just opened my gifts, the highlights were a garlic roaster and gift certificate to Knitpicks!

Post 42

Um, Snickerdoodles....

Real quick today, got lots to do. Worked a little late at work to make up for the two missing hours wasted by going to Big Bowl for a holiday lunch with our CFO, very generous of him, but after the holidays would have been nice. Had just to get a mani and pedi (grandma's one of those southern ladies who likes everyone to look good, hair, make-up, nails), caught the last hour of Stitch N Bitch but didn't knit due to nails, ran to TJ Maxx (they have the best cheap silver) to get the aunt a gift after she told me of the CD's she just bought, one of which was supposed to be a gift, and then I baked snickerdoodles. Still no idea which sock pattern to use on the STR tencel blend yarn, I'll figure that one out tomorrow while I pack.

Post 41

Thank-you secret pal you saved my ass. X-mas aka Festivus for the rest of us is a week away and I've been a busy bee all of a sudden. I'm not busy knitting gifts for family, but paid commisions. Had this lady contact my Knit Pimp, aka Karen, who had a bag of Colinette Point 5 that her mother bought 20 years earlier in Wales. This stuff was pretty, for the 8 year old daughter she had, mostly white with bright splotches of color. Crazy Colinette lady as I call her first wanted a sweater for her daughter, but after a long discussion about knitting sweaters for people who don't wear sweaters we choose a hat scarf combo. I wish I had the time to take a picture, but I only had the time tonight to drop it off. I could have taken an awesome picture with the new digi camera that my roommate bought me, yea! No longer will I use a camera with a rubber band holding the battery door closed. So back to the secret pal gift. I was sent two skeins of natural Cascade 220 (because of my love of Kool Aid dye), some really very pretty evil eye stitch markers (to keep evil spirits of jealous knitters away) and some yummy dark chocolate. I love the way the really dark chocolate breaks with a crisp snap...Well, I'm co-teaching a dye-to knit class next January at Lill Studios and need to come up with some samples of yarn for the dye teacher. As much as I love Knitpicks (which is were we will be getting the yarn), I wasn't in the mood to shop right now for it and have to pay shipping (I'm hoping for a gift card to the website so I can finally buy the multi-colored fair isle sweater featured inside) so it was perfect timing that two natural colored skeins showed up literally on my doorstep! I finally got my act together and made cookies, two batches, chocolate and mint chip, ummm. I go to my grandmothers house in Arkansas for the holidays and we always have chocolate chip cookies to eat, this year I thought I would save her the trouble and make them for her, sure hope I can carry them aboard the plan. Let me say for the record, I love the cookie scooper, it makes perfect cookies with no mess, add that to my Kitcheaid mixer and I'm in bakers heaven. Now a response to an earlier comment, Le Crueset rocks! Yes it's an investment, but take a look at the pots you see on Martha, Julia Child and Charlie Trotter use, if it's bright enamel it's Le Crueset. I no longer use Teflon, scares the shit out of me, enameled pots are like a precurser to teflon, nothing sticks to it and it cleans off easily. Now that I'm making a list of things to pack I have to choose knitting projects. I'm definately bring the Nancy Bush shawl from Scarf Style, but I need socks and I think it's time to break out and ball up the skein of Socks that Rock with 50% tencel that I've been hording since Stitches, but what pattern to use? Oh that's Bella taking her picture with Santa for charity at Petsmart.

Chicago recieved it's snow on the first of the month and it has been taking it's time melting every since. Because I haven't been feeling myself I've been trying extra hard to get into the holiday spirit. This is the first year I did any type of external decoration on the house. In the past I've not done anything because I just rent, but I couldn't help myself, I love the look of real greenery hanging from a wrought iron fence, very Charles Dickens of my, it looks even pretty with the snow.(it has little white lights too!) I hit the jackpot tonight at TJ Max. I go there every once in awhile, generally I don't find anything in the clothes I like, but they have a great silver jewelry and housewares selection. I'm going to sound like a 14 year when I say that I've been saving my babysitting money, but I finally used it to buy a huge lime green Le Crueset enameled pot for more than half the retail price, now I can roast with out having to buy those disposable aluminum pans, yea me! I was saving a little money on the side just in case I couldn't fix my iPod, it was ailing something bad last week, but I got it figured out so it's all good right now. I love to cook and I think this weekend is cookie time. I picked up some awesome copper cookie cutters at Sur La Table with the desire to practice my cookie decoration skills, I'll keep you posted. Slowly getting back into the knitting zone, I really need to work on this commision stuff that I'm using vintage Colinette yarn for, it's not easy making mittens for a 7 year old with thick-to-thin yarn, I'm up for a challenge I think.

My Apologies

When I switched my blogs awhile ago I made it a point to try not to bitch and moan and all that crap and just knit, this has left me to blog less and less. Well, I've not been myself the last couple of months and just last week I had an epiphany, it's my meds. I'm experiencing some wicked side effects from a medication I started to take again, I was off during a brief period in the summer between jobs, and when I took it before I didn't experience anything out of the norm. So I will start up with a new prescription next week and hopefully everything will be back to normal. Oh and on the knitting front, not too much, doing some commision stuff, nothing fancing, gloves and scarfs. I've not been inspired lately, which I hope is also a side effect that will go away.