I'm alive!

Just barely. Well ok, it's not that bad. I'm pretty damn sore though.

The limbs are a little rubbery. I woke up last night at about 1:30 and decided to head to the potty. All was fine when I sat up and put my right foot on the floor. All was fine when I swung my left foot onto the floor. The trouble came when I tried to stand up. My left leg was having none of that. No way was it going to hold my big ole butt up. Thankfully, I still had my right hand on the bed when I went to stand up. So I didn't fall. Just came damn close. Once I got my balance, the leg got with the program and I was able to walk to the potty. But for half a second there I was going, "WTF???"

Another thing that is pretty sore is the left arm. Went to pull my right leg up on my chair and used my left hand cause well the legs are a lil tired. Well, let me tell you, the cry of outrage that came out of my arm was none too friendly. I think lifting all that pipe yesterday made my arm think it was going to get a vacation today. hehe

I'm just a big ole pile of whiny bones and muscles today. I think about the only part of me that isn't in pain is the nose. And that lil booger is itchy right now. lmao I suppose that if I had gone in to work this morning, my body would have loosened up and stopped aching so much. But, it's my day off and I slept in. Didn't get up until 10 til 6. Felt like heaven. lol I swear that sounds so sick that sleeping in means gettin up near 6am. I have to be up at 4:30 on weekends so that I'm presentable for work. I do NOT wake up quickly or gently.

Ok enough of the work related whining. I really do like my job. The days are long and I average only 3 hours of awake time after work, if I'm lucky, but it isn't really that horribly dirty or hard. It's not real taxing on the brain. I won't go in to detail about what I do, but I work with pipe all day. I bend it. I drill it. Some of it is quite thin and some looks as thick as a leg. Some is quite long and some are relatively short. It's a very laid back work place. In the area I work in, on the weekends, there are only 4 of us. There are usually 4 other people on the other side of the building, but we rarely see them. Fridays have a bit more activity as there are people that work more of a normal 5 day work week that overlaps our 3 day weekend.

On the knitting front: no progress.

Ok, I did just knit 4 rows of clue 3 on the mystery stole. I'm having a bit of trouble concentrating on it. Plus, the needles are so damn small that it feels weird. I got used to large diameter pipes and here I'm knitting on size 3 circs. Can we say toothpicks? lol I did do some knitting on another project that is on either size 5 or 6 needles and the yarn is way the hell thicker than the stole yarn. But I only did maybe 10 rows on that.

I've signed up for Renee's next mystery shawl. How could I not?? I even ordered myself some JaggerSpun Zephyr for this one. I went searching for the best price and OMG can we say surprising?? (It's a vocabulary building day here at the house of Frod. :OP) I saw a couple places that were charging $60 for a one pound cone. UMMMMMMMM Not ready to spend that much on yarn right now. I have paid a good price for yarn before but daaaaaaamnnnn. I had already heard about Sarahsyarns.com before though. Probably through the mystery shawl group. Anyways, I picked up a cone of Zephyr in Apricot. I had been leaning towards the Lady Slipper, but when I finally went to order it, the color was no longer in the drop down menu. Guess someone else ordered it before I got up the nerve. And hey, how can you pass it up when she only charges $37 for one pound. Yeah, over $20 cheaper than some places. If I like this stuff as much as others seem to, I'll be buying all my Zephyer from her. I'm sure after I've been working a while, I'll be checking out the rest of her store.

I've finally given up on my Addi supplier. He obviously has dropped off the face of the earth. Frankly only a severe illness or death in the family can explain his total lack of contact with anyone. I emailed him over 2 weeks ago, I believe, letting him know that it had been a month since I had paid for the 2 sets of circs that I needed for the last KAL and I still hadn't received them. No response. So, I left bad feedback for him last week and opened a dispute on PayPal. After a week, still no response. So I filed a claim. I have bought from this guy for over a year. I have never had any problems with him. Well ok, last time he had to send a replacement because my needles didn't come. But it only took another week to get the needles all the way from Hong Kong. He has the best prices out there for Addis on eBay, but the last 13 feedbacks have all said that they didn't get their needles and he won't respond to emails. He seems to have dropped out of sight in the middle of June.

Looks like I'll be switching over to KnitPicks needles from now on. That is what I'm using on the mystery stole. They are quite nice. I did get one pair of cables and 2 pairs of tips. So far so good. I just love the flexible cables. Very comparable to Addi Turbos. Ya can't beat the price either. It's much easier for me to pay $6 or so for tips than pay $18 for one needle.

Oh well, I'm gonna go see what the kid is doing. There are some nasty storms heading through eastern Iowa, so I gotta keep an eye on the weather too. Supposed to rain all week and stay in the 80s. Oh Joy!! I'll post pics of the stole when I get clue 3 done. And I'll re give the specs on the yarn since someone asked about it. Otherwise, just go to YarnTreehouse.com and look for Bloom.

BTW go listen to some Flyleaf so you can have the same song going through your head as I do. lmao

Clue 2 done

I knew I would get it finished at some point today. It was just a matter of concentrating. Which is kind of hard to do with the kid bouncing around singing at the top of his lungs half the day. Plus, I'm supposed to be cleaning. lol

This shot shows the stitches a little bit better.

This one is a bit closer on the colors though. I'm just moving into the brown again. I guess I'm getting about 40 rows of each color maybe.

Ok, I'm off to go put more dirty clothes in the washer. Maybe I'll even put some of the clean ones away. hehe

Knitting progress

I just finished row 137 a lil while ago. Figured I would take some progress pictures for y'all. I've got about 13 rows left of clue 2. I should be able to finish it tomorrow with no problems.

Almost lost this picture. Uploaded it, typed and poof. It was gone. Shoot, the first time I tried to upload it, I couldn't understand why the hell I kept lagging out. I've stopped naming my pictures cause I take so many anymore and turns out the picture that I was uploading was one of the kid sitting on my bed. It's about 580k. Yeah no wonder I kept going poof. 28.2k is not a good connection speed for uploading pictures.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the tip of the stole is more blue than brown. I guess the orange t-shirt wasn't the right one to use as a background this time. I couldn't find the red one though. Must be in the laundry. Or on the floor. hehe

Here you can see the main motif in the pointed area. I'm torn between thinking it looks like a dragon or a goat of some sort. It really does look like there is a face there looking back at me. hehe

And here is a close up of some of the beads. Here you can really tell that they are different colors. They range from a flat silver to black and bronze. Some even have a blue tint to them.

I forgot to measure before I started unpinning, but I think it's about 20" wide. Right about what it is supposed to be according to the pattern. Total shocker. LOL I knit nothing to gauge. Ever! I always just fudge along. Shawls and stoles don't mater much when it comes to gauge.

Well, ok, the last shawl was a little disappointing. I suppose if I had used larger needles it might have been larger. But I didn't like the looser stitches. I will make this shawl again in a thicker yarn. I've even looked at a few yarns, but well, I haven't even been paid yet. lol I need to pay bills first and I've got lots of yarn in the stash already.

Anyways, I'm going to go finish up with mail and get my butt to bed. No use getting used to staying up late when I know I'll need to be in bed by at least 9:30 tomorrow so I'll be awake Friday morning. I'll post new pics tomorrow if I get the 2nd clue done. I'll use the white sheet instead of messing with colors next time too. hehe

A day late

I really had hoped to get clue 1 done yesterday. But there was an impromptu party at the park. A cousin of mine was home for the holidays and it was my great-aunt's birthday. So my aunt through a party at Eagle Point Park in Dubuque.

Here are a couple pictures from the bluff. If you click on them, they will get bigger.





A gratuitous picture of my lil monkey.


There are eagles nest on the bluff where the park is. Yeah, there was a reason that they called it Eagle Point. hehe Anyways, I tried like hell to actually get a picture of one of them. Mostly, they turned out like lil dots.





I've got more pictures from the park, but I don't want to bore you too much. hehe I'm going to be using them as the desktop on the computer I think. It was a lovely day. It was nice to finally get to see my cousin's baby. I even got to see pictures of her wearing the hats that I made her. Twas a tad big too warm for her to wear them at the park. hehe

After the park I was just too warm to knit. Had to put peroxide on the kids elbow as it was looking a bit yellow. Didn't hurt the fart one bit. I put some ointment on it and it is looking much better today.

We then spent the evening at my folk's house. We stayed to see the fireworks set off by the fire department. We didn't get home until midnight. I can't knit on the mystery stole unless I'm sitting at my desk thanks to the beads. So, I finished the knitting of the mystery shawl. No pictures yet as I'm in the middle of the bind off. I didn't have my beads with me last night in order to bind off, so I did 2 rounds on the big purple shawl.

But today, I got busy with the mystery stole and finally knocked out the first clue.

You can really see the color variations in this picture. The last picture made the point seem tan but here you can see it is more blue. I took the pictures on top of my red t-shirt to show off the blue.


Here you can see that the beads are different colors. They rang from a dark silver, to blue, to copper and almost black. All are metallic though.

Next clue will be started out in blue. I had a little trouble pulling the yarn out of the ball. It took me an hour yesterday to untangle it. Which is why it didn't get knit on while we were home. hehe Next time, I swear I'll knit from the outside of this sort of yarn ball.

Now I'm off to finish binding off the dark purple mystery stole. I'm about 1/5 of the way done. Pictures will be posted tomorrow I'm sure. Don't want to be blocking a shawl on my bed at this hour. hehehe

Blood and lace

First the blood.



Mr. Nicholas is not so good with his scooter just yet. He came in screaming last night that he didn't want to die. I tried to calm him down and let him know that he would have to bleed much more than that in order to die. Then he cried out that he wanted to live to see the future. I just about died laughing. hehe We have now agreed that he is going to wear his elbow pads and helmet when he rides his scooter.

And now the lace.



This is the beginning of mystery stole 3. I'm done with row 56 of 99 for clue 1. I'm just too dang tired and my head hurts too much to keep working at it.

The yarn I'm using is from Yarn Treehouse. I'm thinking the name of the yarn is Bloom and the color is CO3. It is a color changing lace weight wool. The colors change from blue to brown with gray and a little bit of orange/rust mixed in.



I'm using some metallic bronze beads I got from Wal-Mart of all places. I'm going to save the expensive root beer glass beads for a second incarnation of the mystery stole using black alpaca fingering weight that I've had around for ages. I won't get to that one for some time yet though.

I did work on mystery shawl 3 today. I finished row 163 of 172. I got a horrible horrible headache and had to put the knitting down. I was literally sick to my stomach and had to come home from Mom's. Nick was not happy about that. He was in a much better mood later once he started watching a tape my dad got at a garage sale today. My son was laughing and falling over watching classic cartoons from when my folk's were kids. Thought they were the best thing he had ever seen. If only it were so easy to entertain everyone. It would be nice to go back and away from the brain drain cartoons of today.

I'm gonna go have a drink now and see if this damn headache will go away again. Not sure what it is from. sigh