Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The price of knitting

On the knit list, there has been a big discussion going on about how much to charge people for knitting projects for them.

I no longer sell any of my projects. I have crocheted a few afghans for people I worked with. They were fairly simple afghans and I was paid about $120 each for them. They were made using good old Red Heart yarn. Yeah I know. hehe But in my defense, I live in the armpit of Iowa. 90 miles away from the nearest store that carries wool yarn. Hell this was back before we had a Michael's or Hobby Lobby even.

I had tried to sell refridgerator towels at garage sales for $6 a set. No one would pay that much because it was a garage sale and they wanted their shit cheap. I only make these for my mom now. I don't have anywhere to hang them in my kitchen. hehe My fridge doesn't have a handle on it, just a groove in the side of the door.

I crocheted an afghan for my father using the afghan stitch. I designed the blanket myself and had a friend graph the image for me. It is huge and very heavy. It has Jeff Gordon's name on it, his number 24 and the nascar logo. I detest Gordon, so every minute of making this blanket sucked the soul right out of me. hehe

My dad keeps trying to get me to put the blanket up on eBay. I've told him that no one would ever pay how much I would charge for it. He says to start the bidding at $200. Yeah, whatever. I wouldn't sell if for less than $350. And I'm sorry, no one is payin that much for a blanket that I made like 2 yrs ago and that has been washed at least 10 times. If he keeps it up, I'm taking the blanket away and giving it to my son.

Now I need to go take a shower and take a nap. I'm one pooped chicky.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Holy stupidity batman!

Sometimes I wonder about the sanity of some people.

story

Please someone explain to me how the peace sign is satanic or anti-christ. How do people with such fucked up ideas get into positions of power??? Ok it may only be a home owner's association but power is power. I personally think that it is home owner's associations that are evil. I would never live in a neighborhood where some yahoo could tell me what I could or could not do with my own house and yard. It's bad enough to have a pita landlord bitching at me.

grumble grumble

I'm off to knit. Yarn is less likely to raid my blood pressure right now. hehe

Monday, November 27, 2006

Very cool

If only this would work everywhere.

A special thank you

to the person who invented power steering. TYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYTY

Have you tried to drive a car without power steering lately???

My arms are sooooo sore. I was so tired last night that I completely forgot to mention that my power steering died just as I was getting off the highway. I had to stop and back up and try twice to get the dang car into the driveway.

More than once my car has acted stupid and then been just fine and dandy. So this morning, I went about my business and took the kid to school. Still no power steering. It's only a 5 or 6 block drive but OMG it sucked.

So I figured that maybe the power steering fluid just leaked out. It's happened to me before. I took the car over to Wal-Mart for a delayed oil change and told the guy to check the PS fluid for me. I did some Christmas shopping while I waited.

When the car was done, I asked one of the guys in the garage to show me where the PS fluid was at so I could check it should the check gauges light come back on. Well the dipshit couldn't find the PS fluid at all. Makes me wonder if the other guy checked it like I had asked. Well, while he was looking for the resivoir, he discovers that a very large belt was hanging off my engine. Makes me wonder if they even changed the damn oil or just parked the car in back and charged me for it.

So, long story short, I spent the next 4 hours sitting at the dealership while a real mechanic fixed my car. Turns out that a tensioner pulley on the serpentine belt went bad. The bearing inside it froze up and started to melt. This caused the belt to fall off. Which is why I had no power steering.

So now I'm pretty much broke. It cost me $237 bucks to fix the car. There goes all the money I had saved for Christmas presents. I had just officially started shopping this morning too. Spent about $50 on the kid. I'm not so sure I'll be spending much more than that on his this year. I guess I better finish his blanket that has been hiding for the last 2 years waiting for the ends to be woven in and edge to be crocheted on.

I've got some Susan Bates sock needles sets that I'm gonna put up on eBay this week. And I've got some other circulars that are doubles. Maybe I'll list those too. Plus I really should dig out my old cross stitch books and get rid of them. I haven't picked up any cross stitching since I was preggers. hehe I'm not quite desperate enough to list any of my knitting books. They look way too pretty sitting on my shelf to part with them yet. Maybe some of my crochet afghan books can go. Only problem with listing things on eBay is that I actually have to dig it out of storage, which means cleaning of some sort. Man I hate cleaning. heh

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Sorry

I've become a bit of a bore as a blogger.

The last week or so hasn't been very pleasant. Nick decided to throw an absolute fit on Thanksgiving. For some reason he has it in his head that if something looks different then it must be poisonous even though his family is eating it. I spent most of the evening sitting in the family room by myself crying. I don't deal well with stress right now.

Nick and I have been fighting about food a lot lately. There are only a few things he will eat and anything else is total evil. I'm the one who ends up feeling sick and fighting to keep from throwing up. IBS just sucks!

I haven't been getting much knitting done. I don't know if it is how I've been sleeping or if I actually pulled something, but my left arm has been sore for a couple weeks now. It makes it real hard to knit when I can barely hold the needle. I think I'll try sleeping with the hot pad on it.

Sorry for no pictures yet. Yeah I'm lazy that way. Someday I'll get my shit together.

Monday, November 20, 2006

The job gods have smiled

Ok, so maybe they have just sighed a little bit.

The temp agency called and I've got a 2 day gig.

Over the summer I worked for a place that cleans up after fires and other such disasters. It would seem that the gods frowned upon some unfortunate soul and now I get to help clean up the mess.

Is it bad of me to hope that the mess is large enough that I'll be needed on Friday? Oh well, I'm probably going to hell anyway. lmao

There has been knitting. I just don't have pictures to share right now.

I did finally finish the hat for Rabbitch. In fact I've finished another one that should be good for a child. I've even started another one in red. Once that one is done, probably by the end of the week, I'll mail them off.

I also knit a hat for Nick. He was wearing a store bought hat and well it got a nasty run in it that I just didn't have the heart to fix. lol

I've also made a pretty dang good start on the fair isle sweater. Guessed which one yet? I've finished the first repeat of the second and third charts already.

The green socks are now the same length but I need to find my other size 1 addis cause 32" just isn't long enough for me to work two socks on. So, when I find it, I'll get back to those.

I'm gonna see if I can't snag Mom's other camera again. If I can, there will be pics this weekend.

Sanity

has finally prevailed.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Creativity

I haven't been feeling much when it comes to knitting. I have been slowly working on the second green sock. I can't seem to do more than a couple repeats at a time though. I've also cast on for another sweater. Yes, I know I have 2 sitting here that need to be worked on but well I'm a pita. hehe

I've been playing around a lot the last couple days with some graphics. As some of you may know, I make signature tags for people to use in e-mails. Well this afternoon I found a tutorial on making wallpapers for MSN Messenger. I had to do loads of tweaking to get a finished product that works right though. I uploaded a couple of my finished wallpapers to my tag site.

Check them out



I really like the kitty one. It is making me want to make some new Incredimail stationary. I don't have any of my stats uploaded yet. Maybe soon.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

OH for Christ's sake

I swear the people in one of the Yahoo groups I belong to have all gone insane.

One of the women has a signature line that includes:

January 20, 2009
America, please hold on!
The Bush Nightmare is almost over!
The list mom actually asked her in a group email to remove it. And a bunch of freakin hyenas pounced on it.
No politics, oh no, no politics here. None Keep it away Gahhhhh!!!
She hadn't posted about politics. I have no clue what the heck she originally posted about. No one would have noticed her signature line or said a damn thing until the owner decided to take her to task in front of the whole group.
This is a fairly quiet group that puts out maybe 2 digests a day. I think I've gotten about 9 of them today and roughly half of the posts have been out those 3 lines.
Over the years I've found quite a few things in this group to be a total pain in the ass. I've gotten in arguments with the owner over a few things too. But it is also the first fiber related Yahoo group I joined when I got back into crocheting.
I have no clue why some people feel the need to attack anyone that doesn't believe exactly what they do. God forbid they stand up for their beliefs. I say live and let live. sheesh
And now my friends I say:
January 20, 2009
America, please hold on!
The Bush Nightmare is almost over!

Monday, November 06, 2006

Unemployed again

Went into work tonight and promptly got walked out the door.

They gave no reason. When pressed I was told it was a "management decision". Yeah whatever.

I made sure that I let as many people still out in the parking lot know that I got fired. My little brother, who works there, is not happy. As if I am.

At least Mom said I don't have to pay on the car for right now. Cause ya see, I haven't bought the kid any Christmas presents yet. Good thing I was planning on a small Christmas this year anyway.

Oh well, cross your fingers that they don't give me too much trouble getting unemployment. I've already called the temp agency.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

the kid

I got back Nick's school pictures the other day. I can't believe I haven't posted them yet. lol


He was so proud of himself for not squinting or grimacing. The last few times his picture was taken he looked like he was constipated or something. hehehe


My little brother Nick gave me a picture of my nieces and nephew. They are all just too cute.


Left to right we have Breelle Lavina, Abigail and Isaiah Frazier. Bre is Nick's 10 week old daughter. Abigail is about 2 1/2. She is my oldest brother Russ's daughter. Isaiah is about 9 months old and the son of my lil sister Kelly. I have yet to see any of them in person. Unless you count seeing Russ carry Abigail across a parking lot while I was driving through. lol

Still no luck in getting my new hard drive to work. I may have to bribe Nick into visiting and having a look at it.

Now I need to go puke up my pizza and pass out.

sniffle sniffle

I put the hard drive in Nick's computer. Device manager could see it. "My Computer" couldn't.

I downloaded the fdisk utilities and put it on a floppy. Later on I'm going to disconnect my good hard drive and put the new one back in here. Then I'm going to try and format the damn thing.

This is just making me nuts because I'm normally so good with computers. I've taken umpteen classes on building and fixing computers. Hell at one point I could even program in C++. Somewhere along the line my brain is fried.

I blame it on the fiber. lmao

God I'm a dork

Well, I filched my son's computer from my folk's house.

I had to pick the kid up after work because Mom has an early morning appointment. Yes that means my child stayed up past midnight tonight. He was sound asleep 5 minutes after we got home.

I basically told Mom that either she lets me borrow the computer for a couple days or we would be visiting tomorrow afternoon. She gave in. hehehe

So I quick went in the basement and disconnected the PC and stuffed the power cord into my coat pocket. I had to practically climb over my son's tent that is set up down there. I have no clue why the heck this thing is still set up. It's been down there for over a week. Anyways, I tossed the PC in the back seat and hit the road home.

When we got home one important thing was missing. The power cord. It was not in my pocket. It wasn't on the back seat with the PC. It wasn't on the front seat either.

Sooooo the power cord is somewhere in my folk's house. Either it fell out when I was crawling over the tent and trying not to bang into the church pew (don't ask) or it fell out when we were getting in the car.

So if I can't get the damn hard drive to format right and then work in my PC, I'm gonna have to run over to my folk's house and find the dang cord. sigh

In actual knitting news, all I have to do is weave in the ends and the hat is done for Rabbitch. It will go in the mail on Monday. There is no way I'll be at the post office before 9am. I don't intend to be awake before 9am. lol

Ok, now I need to get my ass to bed.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Grumble

Well I finally got the hard drive installed. It took me a while to get my dang pc to boot with the new drive attached.

Device manager sees the drive and says it is working just peachy.

Unfortunately, My Computer can NOT see the new hard drive.

So I have a beautiful but empty 80gb hard drive installed on my computer that I can't do a damn thing with.

Anybody out there have any advice on how to fix this problem? I really do not want to have to burn all my crap off of my computer before reformatting. I so love drag and drop and move on. heh

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Gotta love

TigerDirect.com

I ordered a new hard drive for my pc on Saturday night. It was here this afternoon.

So tomorrow morning I'll get gusy moving all my crap off of this hard drive onto the new one.

I really wasn't expecting to get the new hard drive until Thursday. I'll definately have all my stuff moved by the weekend so I can reformat this dumbass pc. I've been having loads of problems with this damn thing for the last month.

Hopefully by Sunday it will be like having a brand new pc. :O)