Nice Pecker

Red-bellied Woodpecker

We have a bird feeder station in front of our big living room windows with a cat tree for our cat Miss Izzi to perch in and watch the action. Frequently we will hear Izzi chirping away at this bird - the Red-Bellied Woodpecker. I am not sure if it's the size of this bird or the way it swoops in and startles off the finches and other birds, but for some reason we will here our cat talking away to this bird.

Today I had the windows open and I hear this guy talking away. (Go here if you want to listen to what it sounds like - it's a great sound and the site is full of info on birds.) I wonder now if Izzi wasn't hearing this bird through the window and answering? Regardless, it's fun all the way around. Fun to hear our cat talking to the bird, and fun to watch this guy crawl around the feeder and pull out fruit and nuts to chew on.

Hooking Away!

We have a guest dog in the house this weekend. We are pet sitting my MIL's dog Minnie. She is just a ball of energy and she has been wearing us all out, but in a good way. Above you will see I was trying to crochet a little blanket for my cat while Minnie climbed all over me trying to see what was going on outside. Emma of course was calm and just hanging out.

 

Once the blanket was finished I placed it in Izzi's cat bed and she immediately curled up and went to sleep on it! She loves it and I was so happy. So often with pet knitwear (crochet wear?) I feel like you knit it for yourself - since he animal tends to not care one way or another. So to have Miss Izzi claim an item I knit for her was pretty wonderful.

Since her cat house has two beds I quickly made another one for her other bed as well. This is not the bed she spends as much time in, but I had the yarn and thought "Why not?".

 

I suspect she will love snuggling into both of these once Winter rolls in. As it is now still summer temperatures, she isn't getting the full affect I think.



Izzi! Duck!

We have a pair of ducks show up almost every spring. This year they discovered our bird feeder and have been happy to much away at the seeds all the other birds scatter. We have our cat tree in the window for Miss Izzi and she has REALLY enjoyed watching these large birds out in the front yard. We, in turn, really enjoy watching her watching them. Everyone wins!

Spice Kitten

Well I completely fell off the wagon. I made it half way through Knit And Crochet Blog Week and Fell off on Day 5. I didn't realize how long I would be working on each post! Friday night after a long day of work, grocery shopping and getting ready for a weekend of planting trees at my brothers house, I decided enough was enough. I looked at my hubby and said "Well, I can either blog about life or I can live life - but I can't do both!"

Here is a picture of my cat Izzi. I brought home this awesome spice organizer and set the box on my floor so my cat could have it. She LOVED jumping in to a box. As you can see - she is using her laser beam setting to locate any stray spices and DESTROY them as she hates a disorganized house as well. I am still plugging away at my house - bit by bit. Little improvements here and there.

Well - today is the last day of April and I am going to celebrate by cranking up my grill with some veggie kabobs I have marinading in the fridge. Seems like a nice way to say farewell to April.

 

Vacation! WOOT WOOT!

Emma and Izzi relax on their pet bed.

I typically take three weeks off a year. The first week in April for my Anniversary, a week in August for my husbands Birthday, and a week in November for my birthday. Which means I AM ON VACATION! Heck yeah! Sadly my hubby cannot join me on vacation - since he does not get paid time off in his job, but that doesn't mean we aren't going to have some fun this week.

I injured my wrist a bit from all the work I was doing on my "Fugly Blanket" (Apparently I cannot crochet for hours a day every day for weeks on end and not have my wrist protest! Lesson learned!) So I have not worked on any knitting or crochet for a few days now. It was really depressing as I really wanted to crank out more yards of scrap on my blanket! But I have been keeping myself busy enough that I haven't had time to be too sad.

Saturday after weight-in and work outs, we drove down to an outlet mall in Southern Minnesota and did a little shopping. I had a sales lady be so aggressive with me at one of the stores that I put my credit card back in my purse and walked away from my shirt (a shirt that I had taken the time to try on and make sure I really wanted) and left the store without purchasing it. I don't know why people have to be SO aggressive with the sales promotions, suggestive selling, etc.... It was insane.

The rest of our shopping there was pretty uneventful. We talked to a woman in one shop about knitting which was fun. And I purchased a little summer dress and a really cute vest at a store that I thought was way to young for me to shop at until I shopped at it. (Apparently dropping out of plus sized opens a lot of shopping doors!) And then we stopped at Bath & Bodyworks and got some shower gel and hand soap.

We also ran to Cabella's to look at their shoe selection for men. No purchases there. I had a few choice words to say about the Mini-donuts being sold at the entrance of the shop though. The smell was INSANE and I WANTED them. But I held strong and did not cave in. Go me! Go will power! I haven't talked a whole lot about my weight loss in here lately - but I am on the cusp of a 50 pound loss. I have been slowly slowly losing this weight and I feel like I really need to step it up. I am still overweight and still have too much weight on my joints. And the stronger and healthier I get the more I want to do and the better I feel - physically and mentally. The extra weight I carried for so long was really being carried in my heart and soul as well as my body. So I am feeling the weight coming off in every sense of the word!

To that end we went for a bike ride yesterday. I have a really nice bike that my hubby purchased for me when I graduated college. I have barely ridden it in the years I have owned it and have been a little fearful of it in honesty. I road bike A LOT in the first 20 years of my life. I would bike out to see my boyfriend when I was a teenager and he lived 15 miles away and over a lot of country roads. I didn't get my license to drive until I was 18, so I had to bike to get around. Anyway, yesterday we took out bikes out to a really nice bike trail in Cannon Falls, MN. It is a railroad track that they paved and it's a really smooth and easy ride, and it was a wonderful reintroduction into riding my bike. It was so easy in fact, that we put on 20 MILES! We road 10 miles down to the station in Welch, and then road into town and stopped at the ice cream shop and we split a Strawberry Smoothie. Which tasted like heaven! We sat out on the steps and watched the world go by while we took turns eating the smoothie. It was wonderful. Then back on the bikes and 10 miles back to Canon Falls where we parked our car. It was just the most perfect day. :)

We were both pretty quiet on the ride back home as we were both pretty tired. Today I am feeling it. My butt hurts and I feel a little wind and sun burn (because of course we never thought of sun screen!) and all my muscles have that lovely ache in them that speaks toward some really good use.

And now it's Monday morning and I am NOT at work and life is so very very good! YAY VACATION!

Lazy Girl

I have lots of stuff I need to get done lately. I have lists and lists of projects to get done. So much so that I found myself a little overwhelmed by it and found myself crawling into bed this Sunday and having a lazy day while I hid from all responsibility. I Generally try to be a grown up and just get stuff done - but every once in awhile a day off from everything is in order!

My dog spent a lot of time outside with my hubby while he worked on projects, and I propped myself up with pillows and worked on my Fugly Blanket. My cat Izzi curled up in the blanket at the end of the bed and spent most of the day just hanging out with me.  This is unusual since she is more my Husbands cat - but I enjoyed her company!

I had to poke her head a little to get her to stretch and say hi. She curled right back up and went back to sleep. I even dozed a little. With crochet in hand my head bobbed and the next thing I knew it was 10 minutes later. I felt like a really old woman who nodded off after tea! (But in a good way!)

Another shot a couple hours later. Yup - I spent all day in bed! It was awesome. You can see the yellow and white I was working on earlier at the bottom of the blanket. I have moved on to Hot Pink!

And you can see Netflix in the background. I am watching Stephen Fry in America. Really interesting! Although (of course) I wanted him to like Wisconsin and Minnesota more. About Wisconsin (The state I was born in and lived in for 30 years) he complained that Americans eat terrible cheese and that he couldn't believe that the water bottle he left in his car over night froze solid! (This was really funny to me.) And as for MN, he did travel on a road near where I live and it was nice to see familiar landmarks, but he pretty much talked about our Hmong community and then went ice fishing with a rich guy. (Most Minnesotans do not bring a fish camera with to see the fish in the water bite on their line.) I was laughing about this because the time I went ice fishing (once mind you and it was in the 80's) we had no power auger and it was just standing out on a frozen lake freezing our nubs off. In the show they drive up to their spot on snow mobiles geared up in expensive winter gear. It was funny. So of course I felt like we weren't represented very well, but it was still interesting.

It was a really fun day and I needed the relaxing, but now I need to get back to my various lists and get some projects done! Back to Reality!

Leap Day, Bad Weather and a Vest

It's Leap Day and I have to say it got off to a pretty rocky start. Our dog Emma freaks out about high wind, thunderstorms, rain, snow, sleet.... and is VERY reluctant to go out and do her business in the morning if any of these conditions are happening. This morning we happened to have most of these conditions all rolled into one. So I (still in my pajamas with garden gnomes, glasses on, and hair flying in 17 directions) throw on my husbands giant boots, tuck my gnome pajamas into the boots, put on a wool coat and cap and start the "Come On Em! Let's GO OUTSIDE! WEEEE" Game. This resulted in me standing out in a couple inches of slush, at 4:45 in the morning, with sleet/rain/snow pelting me and soaking my gnomes, while Emma circled the yard looking for some magic spot to go potty. This is how my day started.

Next I got to drive my car in this crap to work. This also sucked donkey balls. Seriously. Every time one of those trucks would drive by me on the freeway it was like someone opened a dump truck up on top of my car of slush. It was terrible. My hands and shoulders just ached from the tension of holding the car on the road with my mighty knitter hands by the time I got to work. My 30 minute commute took just over an hour. YUCK. AWFUL!

I really feel like I shouldn't complain either. We have had one of the mildest winters I can remember. Still. YUCK! Blessedly the drive home was MUCH better. YAY!

I have made a little progress on my vest. I am into the color work portion now and am anxious to keep going. I am still finding the pattern REALLY annoying. When I got to the point where I was able to join in the round I was finally given a stitch count. I was supposed to have 162 but I actually had 186. I reread the pattern to see if I could see where I picked up so many extra stitches - but I am at a loss. So I decided that I would knit a few stitches together to bring my count down to 180 which would put me one size up from where I wanted to be. Since this is the chest area and I am pretty busty, I think this will work out. Also, I know if I rip this thing out and start over I will not start over - so I am now in the "Winging it" portion of the vest.

In the back of my head a little voice tells me it's ok if it ends up too big because it's all knit in wool and if it's too fugly I can always felt it a little to shrink it up a bit. I have not yet decided if this little internal voice is a white hat or a black hat. We shall see!

Izzi snoozing the afternoon away.

Does anyone have any Leap Day Traditions? It didn't occur to me to do this until the day was pretty underway, but I thought I would see if anyone had any that they did on this "Extra Day" every year. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have it be a "me" day where you slept in, gave yourself (or went and got) a pedicure/manicure, maybe a massage if you like that thing.... I see possibilities here!

Get ye back January!

January is over and I rejoice! Although I have to say this was the warmest January I can remember. I am thankful every day for the warmer than normal winter. After last winter's 8 months of snow I thought I would go out of my flipping mind. So to have a very mild winter after that year? Yes please!

Emma and I are both looking forward to the spring and getting out and hiking trails and camping with my Hubby. Although I have to say we had some pretty awesome snow trails in the back yard last year with the feet and feet of snow we got. It was a blast watching Emma run the trails! She would actually build up speed and bank around the corners! Awesome to watch. 

I haven't posted much about my knitting lately, so I thought I would show my WIP's I am feverishly working on. Above is the Yelcho Feather and Fan scarf I am working on everyday at lunch. It's a great portable project. I am using Araucania Yelcho yarn to knit this. It's a pretty new yarn and there are only 6 projects using it on Ravelry at this point. I really like it! It's a thick and thin yarn with 60% Wool, 20% Mohair, 10% Nylon, and 10% Silk for it's make up. It's texturally interesting to work with and I love the colorway I chose.

My other big WIP is my Cedar and Spice and Everything Nice wrap. This is a free pattern on Ravelry (as is the Yelcho Feather & Fan scarf Pattern) and I am using a different yarn than the pattern calls for, so mine is coming out fairly dense and is eating more yarn than the pattern calls for. I am doing mine in Lion Brand Hometown USA in the color Spice and I really love how it's looking. I just hope when I am done it looks like a wrap and not a baby blanket!

I think it will be really warm to wear in the winters around the house. Maybe even when I go camping to wrap around me at nights by the fire. I have one more skein of yarn to add to this and I will call it good and bind off and think about buttons.

And I had to show my Izzi stalking my yarn while I took a picture. She is a wily one. I didn't even know she was there until I saw a little hand with claws extended reach out for my yarn. To be fair, I can't imagine many cats would be able to resist such temptation.

Monday in your face

Good Morning World. It's time for Insomniac Theater! Woke up at 1:00 this morning and could NOT get back to sleep. This always makes me so very happy. Nothing like starting out the week exhausted and crabby. **sigh**

I am pretty sure my neighbors don't appreciate my sleepless nights either. I put Emma out when I got out of bed at 2:12 this morning and she immediately ran to the very back of our yard and started barking like a mad dog. Nothing carries on a cold winter night like the sound of a dog barking. Then the sound of a tired woman in owl pajamas shivering in the doorway making kissing noises and whisper yelling "Emma!" and shaking the treat container. Yup. People know when I am up.

Then Emma curls up on her bed in the den while I amuse myself with the Internet, sighing a lot and getting excited for food every time I get up and go to the kitchen for more coffee. On a normal day when I wake up, it means the food will happen for the cat and the dog very soon. So when I wake up hours early - it's chaos. The cat has a timed feeder because she used to wake me up when she thought it was time to eat by standing on my sleeping form. Then the claws would come out when just walking on me didn't work. (ouch.) Then she figured out that I put my glasses on when I would get up, so she took to walking to my night stand and batting my glasses on the floor. That's when we decided to get a battery operated feeder.

 Here she is at 2:40 in the morning licking the empty bowl. She pretty much walks around glaring at me all morning because the food is not happening. Add to that I took her out of the bedroom where my husband is sleeping - so she can't go into that room. She will make the occasional walk to the bedroom door and claw frantically at it hoping she can get in. That makes for a fun game too. I will go and shush her away and when she hears me retreat and start typing again she will start back up.

Good times.

So that is what my Insomnia mornings look like. Add to that me wondering how early I can go into work for the day so I can leave early as I know I will be a wreck by around noon when I am up at this hour. I generally don't go in early on insomnia mornings - but I think I will today.

Insomnia days are just so hard. My brain is moosh. I can't generally knit much because I do bad things to patterns when I try. Any form of exercise is out. My diet takes a hit because I don't know when to eat and get confused about hunger and tired. (If I get up at 1:00 and eat breakfast at 4:00 do I eat lunch at 10:00 and and dinner at 3:00 and then second dinner at 7:00????) And if I go into work early THAT will throw everything off too. And if I go in early and come home early can I or should I take a nap or am I better off just going to bed early and trying to get a long sleep so I don't end up not being able to sleep a second night in a row? Meh. I know when I can't sleep it's going to be a long long day.

Wish me luck!

Checking in

I haven't been talking much about my weight loss goals and how things have been going. I am still working hard on my goals - but I have been struggling with the weight loss. When I weighed in yesterday (Zero loss/Zero gain) my weight watchers report told me I have lost 2.2 lbs in the last 4 weeks. Uffda. Something is not right here. They recently changed my daily weight watchers allowance from 29 points to 26. You wouldn't THINK three points a day would make that large of a difference, but it really has been throwing me for a loop. I used to have extra points every day, and now I am digging into my weekly allowance every day. Which has lead to me not wanting to track what I eat, which leads to only dropping 2.2 lbs this last month.

So I am heading back to the grindstone here. I have been exercising consistantly, but I am going to work harder on the food input and tracking. I am also going back to exploring recipies so I am eating some fresher foods that are more satisfying. As good as the frozen lunches I eat have been, they are still frozen meals.

I will also be taking a que from my Cat Izzi and trying to get more sleep!

January and February are always a hard time in Minnesota. It's cold. It's gray. There is no light. You feel like you are constantly bundled up and running from one warm area to another. We have actually had a very mild winter here this year, but it's still winter and it's still long, dark and cold. I know that affects my spirit. I am trying to not let stuff get me down, to take deep breaths, to slow down.

There will always be stressers in life. Always. So I need to learn how to shake them off and roll with the rough times. Something I have been trying to improve for awhile. It's not easy! But I am learning.

How is everyone else doing this winter? You all hanging in there? I know it's not winter everywhere, it's sunny and warm and awesome somewhere right now. I think New Zealand and Australia are in high summer now. Oh to be a Kiwi!

Maybe it's time to make an appointment to get a hair cut and throw some color on my toes. A little make-over might go a long way toward some much needed lifted spirits!

Where you at?!?

Time management is a bugger sometimes. I want to blog on a close to daily basis. Like 5-7 times a week. Lately I can barely squeak a weekly post in. I thought once the holidays were over I would settle down, but I don't feel like I can find a rhythm lately. It's tough.

I have been continuing to work on my health goals. I am proud to say I lost weight every single week of the holiday season and am now over the 40 lb loss for my overall weight loss and over the 25 lb mark on weight watchers. I often think about how much that weight is and try to savor it NOT being on my body anymore. So when I pick something up (like the 25 pound box of cat litter this weekend) and I am grunting away trying to get it into the grocery cart, I try and stop and say "this is how much you were walking around with on your body last August - and you dropped 15 pounds more to boot!" It's so easy to just see yourself as the same weight when you are slowly melting it off a pound or two a week. So I think it's good to step back and appreciate the enormity of the accomplishments.

Over the last couple of weeks I changed my work out routine and I now set a goal of 6 days a week. I do three days of tread milling for an hour session and three days of Zumba on the Wii (45 minute session.) I still love Zumba. Still smile while I am sweating my butt off. Love it.

And just so this post isn't all about me sweating my bum off, here are a few gratuitous pet photos.

 Emma is our dog and she is looking at me like I am a nutball for snapping her picture. You can see the curtain is parted - she loves to scope the front yard for raccoons and paper carriers in the mornings. (Not much else going on at this hour of the morning - you can see it's still dark out....) Izzi, our cat, is curled up in the heated cat bed and just happy to doze.

This is a day or two later. I think it was pretty cold out this morning. They were both curled up together in here when I came out for my coffee refill. (Please excuse the ghost eyes - it was dark in here and I had to use a flash.) My girls are just too cute.

Not a creature was stirring....

I have not forgotten about blogging - I have just been in full holiday melt down. It's hard work being full of Christmas cheer. My cat Izzi agrees with me and curled up under the Christmas throw I "won" in the gift exchange we did at my parents house this year.

We stopped doing a formal gift exchange and started doing an anonymous exchange where people bring wrapped gifts that can go to anyone and they get wrapped up and placed in a pile. We set the timer for 20 minutes and pass around three dice and shake once in the hopes of getting doubles. Every time we get doubles we get to take a present of our choice from the pile. (No unwrapping though!) When the pile is gone you get to steal the presents from other people until the timer rings. This is always interesting since there is always one gift that gets fought over rather fiercely and since nobody (except the giver) knows what is in it - it's fun to see what everyone fought over. Once the 20 minutes is up we go around in a circle and unwrap the gifts and then lay them out in front of us. When all the gifts are unwrapped, we play the dice part again for 10 minutes - and you get to take the gifts you really want. (And hope the gifts you don't want get grabbed by someone else.) The rule is you don't have to take anything - so that is pretty nice since there is some pretty yucky stuff people try and get rid of sometimes.

Gift certificates are fought over pretty hard. And then there are gifts like the throw above. I grabbed it mostly because I knew "my girls" would love it. My hubby was appalled that I took it - because it's pretty fugly and because we have blankets coming out of our bums. I take satisfaction in the cat curling up in it all cute like though. Vindicated in bringing yet another blanket home.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season! I am hoping to blog more regularly again now that much of the holiday shenanigans have slowed down.

Off to the Yarn Store!

So my need to make the Ovate Wrap created a needle need. The needles on this pattern are HUGE Size 19 Circulars. I ended up getting 40 inch length because I hope to use these again for stash busting afghans? Fantasies float through my head..... I also needed a size P crochet hook! Dang! That is a big hook! :) A few other items followed me home as well....

I picked up these 4 pins at the register. Bad photo.

Pin1: Sheep with a ball of yarn hanging off of him.

Pin 2: "I ate your grandma's knitting for lunch. (& it was crunchy)"

Pin 3: Lime Green with Skeleton holding ball of yarn

Pin 4: "Idle Yarn is the CATS play thing." [So. True!]

The yarn, Artful Yarns Old Western, was on discount for $6.00 a ball. I thought it would make nice mittens or hats. I see there are not many projects of this yarn on Ravelry and it's labeled discontinued. Still - It feels nice and I have never worked with Artful Yarns so I am happy!

My Three Needles. The HiyaHiya is a 24" size 6 that I needed to make the Citron eventually. I like HiyaHiya needles. They are way more affordable than the Addi Turbo's and they have nice flex in their cord. Paying for Addi's always kills me - but I know they will stick around for many many years, so I try and think of it as an investment. :)

I took this shot for a size gauge. The needle is longer than my finger and as round as a finger. HUGE! A fast knit indeed! I bet I could quickly knit a car cozy with these.....

Emma gave me the "Why are you bringing more yarn in this house?!?!" look while I unpacked and photographed my haul. I think she would have forgiven me had I given HER one of the balls of yarn to destroy, but that never happens (on purpose). Izzi our devil cat was sneaking up on Emma as I took this picture. She likes to attack and run. Charming little thing.

And that was my haul from the Yarn Store. This time I went to 3 Kittens Needle Arts and the entire haul was under $50.00. I had a 25% off one item coupon (for the huge addi) and a $50.00 Gift certificate from my mother-in-law for my Birthday, so it ended up a free trip! Sweeeeeet!

And one more thing....

I mentioned yesterday all the yarn goodies we purchased at the UMA Fall Fiber festival, but I neglected to mention one other little purchase that has been kind of fun. We picked up two felted balls for our cat Izzi. Well guess who keeps running off with them?

Yup. Miss Emma has claimed the cat toys for herself. The cat finds them interesting as well, but the dog has pretty much laid claim to them. Funny. Maybe I will have to bring a new cardboard box home for the cat. She loves it when there is a new box she can bite and jump into. Always cracks me up!

Friday and Life is Good!

And so it is Friday and So I am on VACATION and so Life is good! Wahoooo! I take a week of vacation a couple times a year and I always take the week my birthday is happening. This year it's working out that I will be off this next week and I am sooooo excited! Double blessing is my husband will be off work too! So I expect many fun things to occur in the next 9 days. 

It's hard to tell in the shot, but Izzi is snuggled up to Emma and has her paw over her head to block out the light. We turn the temperature down at night, so in the morning after feeding the girls they are starting to huddle for warmth together. It's always so cute.

Here is a picture of my new table top tripod! I picked it up at Wal Mart for $6.00 and am very excited to have a tiny and portable tri-pod! My big tripod is just a beast and I never want to drag it out. Instead I will balance my camera on crazy items hoping to get a good height. Sad! But no more!

And I had to test it out. Took me about 10 minutes to figure out the self timer (why I can never remember that...) and the light in my Den is rather awful, (Apparently I was directly under the light as I have a head shadow on my chest!) But I am pleased with how my tri-pod works! Notice the shirt? It's been in my closet for about 4 years. I have never been able to fit into it. I wore it to work today in complete comfort. :) Yay! Not sure if you can read it - but it says "Life is Good" under the pumpkin. Indeed!

Tuesday - Insomnia Fest Continues!

I am kind of getting sick of this. Yesterday I had a TERRIBLE headache and went to bed at 7:00 pm. Woke up at 12:30 in the morning and could NOT go back to sleep. UGH! Come on! So I finished knitting my KAL cowl and got caught up on this season's "The Biggest Loser". Then I went to work knowing I needed to cut the day short so I could come home and get a nap and try and be less of a Zombie and more of a Jenny. Of course this happens when my full timer took a day off and my other worker decided to call in. (Am pretty sure they planned this in advance since they decided to "Work ahead" the day before.....) Grrrrrrrrr.

So I went in and performed all the "Have to get done's" and then went home. Got back to sleep at 11:00 this morning and didn't wake up until about 4:00 this afternoon. Am trying not to think about what is going to happen tonight. (will I be able to go to sleep at a normal time? will I get any amount of sleep tonight?) And I still have my headache. Which is often a precursor to a cold. Think I will need to get some of those Cold Eeze products and take care of myself the next few days. I do not need to spend my vacation sick! :) Oh yeah - I am off next week on vacation! Wahoo!

The Girls were being very cute this morning when I was up early. Emma loves being snuggled in our old blankets and Izzi will seek out any heat source to snuggle on, so I get a picture like this every once in awhile. Too cute!

This is my KAL Cowl with all the ends woven in and it pinned out on my blocking boards. I really like this Yarn! It's

Vickie Howell's yarn for Caron Yarns called Sheep(ish) and it's cheap, soft and you get good yardage. I had not splits in my two skeins I used for this pattern as well - which is always a nice bonus! I will be making more projects with this yarn!

So this is the blocking method Vickie Howell recommended for this project. Apparently this yarn does not react well to steam blocking, so this is just a wet cotton hand towel that I pinned over the top of the whole thing. I placed this in the basement to dry over night and (hopefully) when I get home from work tomorrow and get through my work outs I will be able to get the buttons on and have it be DONE! It's in the 40's and raining here today - so we are hitting that time of year when knit accessories are a must. Looking forward to wearing this!

Monday Monday, La la, La la la la

Emma lays on her bed. Izzi attempts mind control of the dog from the hallway in the hopes that the dog will being her some food. No such luck.

Maybe if I jump up on the Females chair I can whisper in her ear to make the food come now.

FINALLY that evil cat went away. Now maybe I can get my nap in.

Wow. I am TUCKERED out today. You know how you have one of those Mondays where you almost need to just stop and breath in and out a few times in hopes that you aren't running around like a complete nut job? Yeah. Today was one of THOSE Mondays. Felt like my feet hit the floor running from the start. Uffda.

Am seriously thinking I might need a big ol' bubble bath and a glass of wine instead of whatever it was I was going to do. Tomorrow is another day, right?

Sunday Snippets: October 23, 2011

Sunday Snippets: A Snapshot of this Sunday in photo's with no other explanation's......