Monday, August 29, 2005

Holy cow!!

I actually finished a project. Ok so I still need to weave in the ends and block it but I'm done with the crochet part. I still have to figure out where I'm going to block the darn thing so bite me. I finished the first of Mom's doilies. It's too big to block on the styrofoam board I usually use. I'm probably going to have to block it on the floor in the corner of the living room. I'm just tickled that I actually finished the darn thing.

I've already started another one. This one is a pineapple doily with a whole shitload of double crochets in it. It took me a while to find one to do. I've got loads of old copies of Magic Crochet and Decorative Crochet. Man I really miss getting those magazines. Lots of the patterns are done in size 40 or 20 thread but well I'm cheap and I've got tons of size 10 thread. It's a pain to try and estimate what size they will in in size 10 though.

Don't faint, but I actually worked on my sweater the other night too. lol I picked up for the neck and knit a shitload on it while watching The Mexican on Saturday night. Unfortunately, I was lazy about doing increases and they looked like shit. I figured that it wouldn't matter if they were a bit open because the whole sweater is kinda open. I was so wrong. I ended up ripping back to before the increases. Yes I'm one of those nuts that takes the needles out of her work and just rips. I don't worry too much if the stitches get put back on the needles twisted. I have no problem working into the back of a stitch or simply slipping it and turning it.

I joined the mystery shawl along that was started last month I think it was. I had gotten the link for the second group and I decided I would rather do one that a bunch of people had already finished. Yup I'm a chicken. bwaak bwaak I've got some fingering weight alpaca. No I'm not really sure if I have enough. Do I care? No not really. lol I've got five 50 g skeins of petroleum blue yarn I won off of eBay. I know who the seller is and I know I can get more if I really need it. There is no yardage on the skeins, so that is why I have no clue how much I really have. And no, I don't know why I want a bright blue shawl. I need to figure out something to do with the yarn. hehe I don't want to use the Henry's Attic yet. I still have to dye it all before I use it.

Anyways, I'm gonna head off to work on my doily some more. I hope to get this one done faster than the last. Oh shush. I haven't casted on for the shawl yet. :OP

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Yep, I'm still alive

Hope everyone is doing well wherever they may be. I've been in lurk mode lately. I'm still broke as hell, but salvation is coming soon. I get a check on the 1st. My mom has been helping out too. She has put gas in the truck a couple times so I can get to Wal-Mart to get groceries and to her house so my son can visit.

I've got my fingers crossed on a possible job. There is going to be a quality assurance job opening up where my dad works hopefully. The woman who has the job now is in major need of firing. In the last 9 months, or so, she has missed like 57 days of work. Most of the time she hasn't even bothered to call in. I have no clue why they haven't fired her before this. I've had some experience with QA work and a friend of my dad's has put in a good word for me. One of the big reasons I want this job is that it pays $10 an hour. I could actually start putting some money in savings for the first time in about 10 years.

I'm also wanting to get a new car. I don't own the truck I've been driving for the last 2 years. It is my dad's. The car I had had way too many things wrong with it and it was going to cost more to fix it than it was worth, so my dad sold it and gave me the truck. This is the first time I haven't owned a vehicle in more than 13 years. This truck uses way too much gas. It is about 15 years old and has no muffler. I dunno why, but I have a bad track record with mufflers lately. My last car lost it's muffler twice.

I'm nearing completion on the crocheted doily. I would probably have it closer to being done but the last time I visited the folk's house I ended up doing yard work. Dad is taking all the cedar chips out of the flower beds. The people who owned the house before put the dang wood chips in on top of rock. Dad is trying to save as much of the rock as possible and it is making a total mess. I raked out the top layer of wood chips from about half of the front bed. I normally sit in the family room and knit or crochet while my folk's are outside. I've got bad allergies and I'm really sensitive to the sun. The front of the house was in shade the other day and I've been taking lots of benadryl so I figured I would chance it. hehe

Due to my castonitis, I started working on a preemie hat last night. Basically it is 8 rows of seed stitch and then 18 rows of knit before the decreasing. Of course I'm not following the pattern completely. It calls for size 3 needles and sport weight yarn and knitting it up flat. I'm using size 4 dpns and fingering weight yarn in the round. hehe I just didn't want to have to sew the cap up. I don't want a seam to bug the poor baby. I'm going to adjust the pattern to do different sizes. I'm not too worried about the size as preemies come in all different sizes. I'm thinking of doing some tube type socks for the preemies too. Either that or a short sock with a short rowed heel. We shall see.

Anyways, mail is done downloading so I'm going to head off and get some things done. Take care y'all.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Thanks y'all

Thanks to all of you that have left comments lately. If you hadn't already guessed, I'm a bit of a complainer. hehe When I'm up at night with no one to talk to I get a bit down. A friend of mine has been irritating me a little bit lately and it was starting to build up a bit. It isn't really her fault but I was getting annoyed. Basically I've just been a bit grumpy lately. No real reason, although being broke is not helping. I need to get some motivation and get some leaflets listed on eBay. I've got a bunch of cross stitch leaflets that are just taking up space. I haven't cross stitched in years and with my eyes getting worse it doesn't look like I'll ever really get back to it. As a kid I was cross eyed, so as I get older my eyes are wandering more and more. It really makes counting little squares pretty hard to do. Oh well, I've still got knitting and crochet. I like the feel of the yarn and thread anyway. hehe

As far as my various health problems go, yes I've had all the normal tests done. Thyroid, liver, kidneys and heart are all fine. My cholesterol is a little high and I try to stay away from sweets as my blood sugar is close to borderline. Nothing that needs medical intervention at this point. It is a good thing I'm not much into candy and such. Just give me a Snickers or some ice cream once in awhile and I'm happy. The last time I had my blood pressure checked it was a bit high, but that could have been because I wasn't feeling well. My bp is almost always on the low side of normal. Drives my mother crazy. :O) She has high blood pressure and is convinced that my salt usage is going to do me in. I tell her that if I didn't use so much salt I would prolly pass out from low bp. hehe

I'm still plucking away at my wrap. I've got an error in my last row that is giving me fits, so I'm going to put it down for a bit. I'm going to finish up the doily for my mom first. I've been looking for some knitted doily patterns just to try something different. Not much luck so far. I've got oodles of crocheted patterns though. So no worries on finding something to make on the doily front. I have no clue how many Mom wants though. We shall see.

Time to get it in gear and get some shopping done. oh joy

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Whhaaaaaa

I am soooo depressed. Bo Peep's is having a 15% off sale on all but the featured yarns until Aug 18. That means Cascade 220 is only $5.10 a skein. I soooooo want to buy like 2 skeins of green or blue for my felted bag that I want to make. Someday if I can just finish one of my other projects. I know you are thinking. Damn that is a great deal. Heck the store is based not too far from me either. It is actually the closest LYS that I've got. Well Ewe Need Yarn is right in Dubuque, but it is strictly online. Anyways, the depressing part is that I only have about $30 in my checking account. I also have only about $15 in cash on hand. That is all I've got for the rest of the month. I also need to fill up my gas guzzling pos truck tomorrow so I can get to Wal-Mart and pick up some meds. Gas just went up yet again. I think the ethanol blend is about $2.30 a gallon. For some reason, this part of the state has the highest gas prices. Ours are generally even higher than in Des Moines. That is just BS. DM is the freakin capital and huge, but the gas costs more here in the middle of freakin no where. Ok so Dubuque is actually considered one of the larger cities in Iowa, but still.

sigh

I so hate being broke. I'm always broke. It is times like this that I just want to bitch slap the boss I had at my last job. I was one freaking month away from paying off the car I had at the time. One freaking month and I would have been debt free. All I would really have to pay on was my credit card, but I didn't use that often so it wasn't too high back then. I was mere inches from being ahead for the first time since I was about 20. sniff sniff The bastards wanted me to start working 12 hour night shifts 3 or 4 days a week. I would be on my feet all night taping up boxes of bottles and putting them on skids. Oh did I mention that they wanted me to take a $2 an hour pay cut too?? Plus the kid was 2 at the time. His father has never been in the picture. He ran off with someone else when I was 4 months pregnant. So anyway, explain to me how I, as a single parent of a 2 year old, was supposed to manage working at night? What was gonna keep the kid all night and during the day when I was sleeping? That would give me just a couple hours to see the kid on the days I was working? Just why the FUCK was I supposed to have someone else raise my child? Yeah 4 years later I'm still pissed off about the deal. Arrangements for the kid weren't the only reason I couldn't do the deal either. Forget the fact that they wanted me to go back to the same job I started out at 9 years earlier and get paid just about the same wage. I can't physically stand for 12 hours or lift the dang boxes. Working there just killed my back. I've got major nerve damage and problems with the joints in my legs. No freaking way could I even do the job.

So here I am 4 years later. I class shy of a AS in Internet Administration. Unable to stay awake for very long during the day. Broke as shit. And afraid as hell to actually look for a job even though my welfare benefits will run out in like 6 months or so. Damn scary. The doctors have run every test imaginable and can't say why it is that I'm tired all the time. So they sent me to a shrink and counselor. I see the shrink every 6-8 weeks and the counselor ever 3 weeks or so. Like that is gonna freakin help. They say I'm tired because I'm depressed. Dumbasses! I got depressed AFTER about 2 months of not being able to freaking stay awake all day. Pretty damn bad when the real reason you put yer kid down for a nap is so that YOU can sleep for a lil bit.

Damn I'm being a whiney ass. All I really want is to be able to buy some God Damn Yarn!!!


BLAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Someone just please slap me. LOL

Friday, August 12, 2005

I am sick in the head

**sigh**

I always have some sort of game open while I'm online surfing. you see, I connect at a whopping 28.2k. My saving grace is that I have NetZero HiSpeed. It compresses all of the graphics for me. If I want to see a picture better, I can download it at full resolution. Anyways, pages still load pretty slow for me if there are any graphics. So I play games while the pages load or I have more than one page open. I'll read one while another is loading and then switch.

Normally I play SolitairesForFree. I think I downloaded it from Dowload.com. There are tons of different types of solitaire for me to play. I usually play Yukon, Canfield, and Capuchin. Although for about two months I played Backbone exclusively. If I'm not playing solitaire, I have Minesweeper open. I have a custom board set up. It has 99 bombs and is as large as allowed. I lose way way more than I win, but I still think it is a cool game. It took me awhile to figure out what the hell the point ways. Did I mention that I hate to look at the game rules? hehe It is more fun to just jump in and die a few times. :OP

My latest addiction is Tumblebugs. I downloaded the trial version from Yahoo and used up the free 60 minutes in one sitting. After the initial session is done, they let you play for 2 minutes at a time. Thank the gods it saves your game. I would restart the damn thing about 10 times before I got pissed and shut it off. Well a dear angel friend of mine that doesn't blog took pity on me and gave me the full version. I have some wonderful giving friends on-line. Anyway I've had the full version for about a week now. There are 12 sections to the game that each have 5 - 7 levels. I managed to beat the final level of the game tonight. :O) When I can't sleep I read or I play games. Or maybe it is that I don't sleep because I want to read or game instead? hehehe You pick. I so need to cut out the caffeine at night. Maybe I would sleep a lil better. I loathe taking the sleeping pills that the doctor gave me. They do knock me out but they don't solve the problem in the long run. ackkk No messy stuff tonight. I'm in a fairly good mood and I don't care to get serious. Hush damn it. I can be serious on occasion. Quit yer giggling. :OP

Ok, time to set up some more mail to download and get my happy ass to bed. Be well.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Yep, I confess

I'm a total chickenshit. Last week I was supposed to go to Borders at the mall. There is a group of ladies that get together to knit on the first Monday of the month. I posted on ICK asking who from the site was going to be there. Well, only one person responded and she doesn't live close enough to come. So I chickened out. Granted I've never met the ladies at ICK either, but the idea of showing up for the get together and imposing myself just scared the daylights out of me.

Ya see, people scare me. I'm always afraid that people are judging me. That they think that I'm stupid or too fat or too ugly. I imagine that people are thinking "What the hell is she doing here? Who does she think she is? She isn't good enough to be here." I think part of it stems from the way I grew up. I went to about 10 schools before graduating high school. In fact, my folks decided to move to a different town my senior year of high school. I went from being in a class with over 300 students to a class of 82. It isn't all that easy to fit in to a small town. My mother was ostracized because she wasn't born there. We lived in that town exactly one year before moving back closer to the city we lived in before.

Growing up, I didn't see the point of making friends. We were going to end up moving soon anyway. I often got teased because I wore a lot of hand-me-downs. My mom would often buy me boys jeans because they were cheaper. I also started developing earlier than the other girls I was around at the time. There were times I just wanted to slap some of the boys. I mean, excuse me for not wanting to wear a freakin bra at 12. My boobs weren't that damn big that I needed to wear one and they were uncomfortable.

When I first started high school, I was constantly teased and told that I was fat. I believed them. Now I look back at my pictures and I'm amazed. I was freakin skinny!!! I would kill to be that small again. There was a lot of abuse in my house at the time. I always felt like I had to hide. Always wondering what people would think if only they knew the truth. That didn't bode well for making friends either. As soon as I got my driving permit, I became my dad's designated driver. I spent way too much time sitting in bars with old retired guys. I made my dad pay dearly though. I think that I spent as much money on video games and chips as he did on booze.

I could go much farther into my neurosis but I think that is more than enough information for one day. One last bit of information though. My only friends are online. I have 3 dear friends that I talk to regularly on msn messenger and by e-mail, but I have no face to face friends. I did have a friend from junior and senior high school. She was my best friend for 13 years. I haven't spoken to her since June of 97. She just stopped calling and answering my calls. There is a lot of background info on that one, but not for now. Maybe another day.

I swear I will get back to knitting content one of these days. :OP I am still working at it but nothing interesting to show yet. Be well.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

grumble

I knew it was too good to be true. The people that were gonna buy my folk's house backed out. It seems that the park owner told them something to scare them. The realtor wouldn't tell my folks what it was though. On Sept 1 his contract will be up. Then a friend of my dad's is going to buy the house directly from him. I'm still ticked though. The park owner has been after my dad ever since his handy man attacked my dad and my dad pressed charges. My dad was about 53 at the time. He has had several small strokes and was in a horrible car accident about 15 years ago that broke both of his legs. He is in no shape to fight anyone. This guy attacked my dad and was hitting him with a broom because he was "stealing" all the lawn work jobs in the neighborhood. The truth is that my dad is a personable guy (to those outside the family) who loves to cut the grass and run his snow blower. He is out there all the time working on stuff and the other guy is lucky to go do the lawns like once in 2 weeks. Dad did a better job so he got all the work and the handy man just couldn't take it. And these are supposed to be grown men. HA Dad is nice to most people, just not his own family for the most part. I'm sure I've whined about him a time or two on here. Tonight I just wanted to swat him a few times. He was getting on mine and mom's cases for not being able to read his mind. The only one he doesn't yell at is the kid.

Speaking of the kid. I thought he would be starting school next Friday. No such luck. They are delaying the start of school for a week because the new addition is not ready yet. His teacher actually phoned twice tonight trying to get ahold of me. I just wish the bus driver would get ahold of me. I have no clue if the kid will have to transfer buses or not. I know last year the kids that went to this particular school had to. They have redrawn the districts though. There aren't many kids around here being bussed out to that school.

Not much of anything interesting on the knitting front. Still plucking away on the stole and sweater. I'm still on a yarn diet. whaaaaa Next month maybe I'll be able to buy some new yarn. I had to buy the kid some new shirts for school this month. Plus I took advantage of the no tax weekend and bought myself some much needed bras. hehehe Gotta keep the girls under control when I'm out in public. Don't wanna give any black eyes to anyone. :OP

Monday, August 08, 2005

Howdy

Holy cow! I'm actually staying home today. I haven't had a day where I just stayed home in like a week. The folks are all moved into the new house. All that is left is cleaning the old house and putting stuff away in the new one. The folks got great news on Friday. They sold the old house finally. It has been up for sale off and on for over 5 years I think. About 3 months ago they listed it with a realtor. The guy is a total dope, but he did find someone to buy the house before his contract was up. I think Dad was hoping that he wouldn't find anyone in time so they wouldn't have to pay him his fee. He got $3,500 to put 2 or 3 ads in the paper and have 2 open houses. During the open houses he sat in the living room and watched tv and drank soda from our fridge. I know that not all realtors are morons but this guy is a total dipshit.

I've gotten a few more rows done on my stole. I still haven't finished a full repeat though. I think I'm gonna sit and watch a movie later and work on it. I've got quite a few projects that I really need to spend some time working on. I think that once I get the first repeat done on the stole, I'll go back to working on my sweater. Nah, I need to finish the doily first. Then I need to finish at least one of the pair of socks that I have on needles all over the place. hehe

I also need to do an intense cleaning of my kitchen. The damn ants have attacked again. I was cleaning up a bit and picked up a piece of paper to find a huge pile of ants. I've got some ant traps set up but I guess they aren't in the right spot. I need to get some red pepper or something to put at the base of the house so they don't even climb in.

Ok, time to finish up some mail and then get some knitting done.

Friday, August 05, 2005

peek-a-boo

Once again I've been a bad blogger. I've been awful tired the last couple days. Getting up at 5:30 was not fun the other day. The seats in the bus were not comfortable at all. My poor butt was dang sore by the time we got to the zoo. The kid had a blast though. His favorite part was when the penguins finally decided to swim. He just thought it was so funny. I thought the lion cubs were pretty cool. There were 3 males and 2 females that were only 9 months old but I swear they looked full grown. We also got to see their parents in another enclosure. It was so cool hearing the male roaring. He kept it up for a couple minutes before settling down for a nap. All in all it was a great day. Granted I was pretty darn sore from all the walking though.

I got quite a bit of knitting done on the shawl/wrap. I didn't really realize that it is a 28 row repeat though. hehe It is a pretty stitch pattern though. It is pattern 273 from The New Knitting Stitch Library by Lesley Stanfield. The chart is a little confusing, but I think I've figured it out so far. I'm doing 12 repeats in each row. I'm not sure how long I'll make it. I just know that I want it long enough for me to wear. It isn't lacey enough for the future sis-in-law to wear at her wedding. Thankfully it sounds like my mom has impressed it upon her that I do NOT want to be involved in the wedding other than being a guest. They are having a very small wedding but I so do not want to be in it. The kid is going to be a ring bearer. He has no clue about the wedding though. We rarely see my bro and his gf.

I've almost got all the 9 inch dpns made. Well all but 3 are sanded anyway. My hands were getting pretty sore the last time I worked on them. I dunno if I'm going to take the time to wax them before doing the neck on my sweater. I so need to get working on it. I won't be getting much chance to work on it the next week or so. My folks got the loan for the new house and they have been moving and cleaning all week. The carpets are being cleaned today and tomorrow the furniture will start being moved in. I can't help move anything large, but I still intend to help. I love the new house. It has more closet space than I have living space in my house. hehehe

Ok, time to get ready to do some school shopping with my mom and the kid. She wants to buy him new shoes even though he just got a new pair like a month ago. shrug

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Off to the zoo

Well, we are all packed and ready. The kid and I will be heading out the door in a minute to meet the bus. Parents as Teachers is taking 2 buses of families to the Madison Zoo. The kid is looking forward to seeing all the animals. Oh, and no there will not be pictures. Sorry Jon. :OP Actually, I just forgot to borrow my mom's camera and mine is a pos. Oh well.

I'm off. Y'all have a great day.