Even got a bit of knitting done

Not a whole heck of a lot going on this week. Short post this one will be.

Finished my lace ribbon scarf, after nearly an entire year. It's 8 1/2 feet long, somehow I'm not surprised it took me a year to get it done. But it is beautiful, and I love having it at last.



Now I've started on my invisibility shawl. Not crazy about the color, a bit too pink for me. I may over dye it, or I may decide it's not so bad after I get it all laid out. I am enjoying the pattern, so I'll try not to worry too much about the color at this point.

And I've just spent my entire afternoon re-organizing my flickr page, so please feel free to click on over and see how it looks. I finally paid up and got the pro account. There are definitely things I would do differently (it's hard to move photos around) but I do think it's easy to share photos from there and link them into my blog, so I won't complain too much.

Newest addiction on my list, twitter. Love it, do it all the time. Come on over & follow me, still trying to figure out how to get those cute little buttons on the side of my posts, til then, just follow the link.

Funniest picture ever of my newest addition, Jack cat. Love him.

Another lovely weekend with the DH. He took me to the chocolate festival in Old Washington. It was really more of a flea market where a few vendors had some fudge. I did have the opportunity to try a deep fried snickers bar, which was tasty, but I could only get down a couple bites due to the overwhelming sweetness of it. DH finished it off.

We decided to leave the "chocolate festival" pretty early on & headed on down the river to Augusta. Charming little town, even has a "yarn" shop. Okay, okay, it's a shop that's associated with an alpaca farm who has about 7 skeins of 3 colors of brown alpaca for $25 for 150 yards. I've never bought any due to the price, but this time they had some blue yarn at $6 for 125 yards so I got 2. Not much of a blue fan myself, but DH likes it, so he'll likely be the recipient of something blue before very long! It's very soft, as all alpaca should be.

There is also to be a bit of frogging on my Amanda Hat that I started earlier this week. I knew I could screw it up if I tried hard enough & sure enough, pattern's off by one stitch. It's only a couple rows, but I'm putting it off. Having this strange desire to knit lace...

Best weekend evah!

Yeah! This week was MUCH better than last. Well, really, it was just the weekend that was so great. So let's talk about that.

So this weekend Charlie took me to Louisville. The reason we went was to see Death Cab for Cutie (my most favorite band) but he was also a very good husband and took me to three different yarn shops while we were there. On Friday when we got into town, he took me to the Knit Nook. It's a very nice little shop, very helpful staff who even offered to order the Blue Sky Alpaca that I had bought on a previous trip and needed an additional skein of, of which they were out. I got this wonderful malabrigo while I was there, in addition to ordering the Blue Sky.

After that, we went to the hotel. It was only okay. I was impressed when Charlie told me he was able to get the room for only $40 on Hotwire, especially after I found out that they normally charge $100 for that room! It was clean, albeit kind of small, it did have free wireless access in the room! Then we went to Sophie's Fine Yarn Shoppe. It was a beautiful shop, lots of yarn, well organized. This staff was nice, too, helping me get to the shop that my GPS seemed unable to find. I picked up this lovely Arucania while I was there & plan to make the Amanda Hat with it!
It's so soft & smooshy! Not to mention a lovely, lovely green!

Next was the show. Well, next was actually dinner, and yes, I did take pictures of both the building & my food, but you don't need to see that. It was very tasty Mexican food, very fresh, very veggie. Loved it. So the show. The first opening band was Ra Ra Riot. I absolutely fell in love at first sight with these guys. They are great. They have wonderful stage presence, great energy, heck, they have 2 girls playing stringed instruments! I bought their cd while I was there & am really enjoying it. After that was another band called Cold War Kids that I really didn't have much use for. They were talented and all, just a little to angry and loud for my taste. But taking a break from the show allowed us to meet some interesting guys from Owensboro! Then it was time for Death Cab! They were fanstastic. They played all my favorite songs, and made me fall in love with some new ones. Here are some photos from their set.








And FYI - I took about 70 pictures that night. These are just a few, but you can go over to my flickr page (just click on one of the pictures to get there) to see some more. There are about 10 over there.

So the next day (Saturday) we got up and met my brother & his girlfriend for lunch. They took us to a really nice little Taiwanese restaurant called the Onion. It was really tasty and we ordered way too much food! After that, my brother & Charlie very sweetly agreed to take me to just one more yarn shop that wasn't to far away. We finally located Grinny Possum Fiber Arts nestled on a very cute little street in downtown. The shop was adorable & my brother actually got all excited that he was able to pick out his own yarn for the neck cowl I'm planning on making him! He eventually picked this only after being told that he couldn't throw the Baby Alpaca Grande that he wanted in the washer. This is supposedly superwash...we shall see. I also grabbed this beautiful manos while there I'd never seen that color before & I love it!

We spent the rest of the day shopping, and came home Sunday morning. And today I got to do my first S&B since October! It was great to see all my knitting friends again & I'll be able to do it weekly since we've moved the day to Sunday!

So here's to better weeks!

These things always come in threes

So, I've been away for a while. Occupied with what may be the worst two weeks ever. Let me count the ways these 2 weeks totally sucked. They are three fold.

#1) The power cord to my laptop (and only home computer) got completely severed. I noticed that it was shorting out from time to time, but mostly ignored it. Until I heard popping & cracking one night while on the computer in my front room. I actually thought it was rain. But when I got up to get something from the kitchen & looked out the window & saw it wasn't raining, I went back to the front room to find out what the noise was. And then I could smell something hot (you know what I mean, everyone does, but everyone always looks at me weird when I say something smelled hot.) I eventually traced it to the plug where the laptop was plugged in, which was scorched. The next day, Charlie said the power cord was completely severed & laying in 2 pieces in the floor. I don't know which was the cause & which was the result, but I got a new cord via ebay & we don't use that plug any more.

#2) My cat Steve blocked. Meaning he couldn't pee. Early that morning (8 am IS early for us 2nd shifters) he jumped in bed with me (totally normal) and growled (totally NOT normal.) I was half asleep & didn't think about it much. I went to work & came home, thinking everything was fine. About 1 am, he jumped in my lap & started breathing weird and kind of groaning. I sat forward in my chair & hugged him. He cried & growled again. I KNEW something was wrong now. Being the good vet tech I am, I felt his bladder & it was huge. I called work & thankfully the dr was still there. She said to bring him on in & we got him unblocked by 2 am. He had some high kidney values, but his electrolytes were pretty normal. He stayed in hospital for 3 days & by the middle of day 3, we took some more blood & everything had returned to normal. He's doing well at home now, he'll have a recheck with the dr next week.

#3) I got bit in the finger at work on Saturday. We had replaced an IV catheter on a cat that was having difficulty breathing. We got it in, but he had started to stress a little more than I like to see, so I put him back in his oxygen cage. I was stroking his fur, hoping to calm him down a bit. Suddenly, he lept up, latched onto my finger, and went completely stiff! He had gone into caridac arrest with my finger firmly clenched in his mouth. He held on for at least 10 seconds until he finally relaxed, I removed my finger & passed him to the dr. The dr did get him back, but only until later that evening, when I was there by myself, he went stiff and died. I couldn't get him back. I started taking some left over antibiotics on Sunday, but today when I removed the bandaid at work, pus started dripping out of the wounds. Figuring that this could in no way be a good sign, I went to the UTC down the street. The dr there said he thought it looked ok for now, but if I get any streaking or swelling down towards my hand, I'll have to go to the ER & get in lanced! He started me on some new antibiotics and told me to soak it in warm water to draw out the pus. And I will be following his directions to the 'T'. Lacing does not sound like my idea of a good time.

So, the only good news I have from last week is that Jack is doing well! He will probably get neutered tomorrow & hopefully go to the rescue soon! I love him, but he needs to find his forever home.

I hope to have some better news to post next week!

Birthday & a new baby

Trying to think of what to write about for the past week. I'm already half way through the next one, so it's getting harder & harder to remember what I did 10 days ago! Work is still work. While it's nice to have a job & be paid for being there, I'm finding it rather stressful lately. I think that I am there whole-heck-of-a-lot-of-hours so that's not helping. I also think that there is a lot expected of me & while my boss seems happy with my performance, the day to day of it becomes rather grating after a while. Clientele is picking up, we've got a couple new employees, so hopefully when I get enough staff trained up & stop getting so many questions, I'll start to feel a little better.

My birthday was last Friday. I had the best day you could imagine! It was warm & breezy, which was nice because having a March birthday means never knowing exactly what kind of weather you'll get. My friends Janet & Liesl were able to go yarn shopping with me (we went to Knit Wits which is a lovely little store!) and then we got sandwiches at a cute little deli near the shop. I came home after that to wait on my brother & his girl friend to arrive for dinner. Now I must admit I was feeling a little slighted that my own mother had not called me on my birthday. When Josh got to my house, I asked him if he had heard from her lately. He replied that he had not spoken to her in probably a week & didn't know what was going on with her. At that point I knew I wouldn't get to talk to her on my birthday since she was already at work. I was bummed. I mean, I know I was turning 29, but talking to my mom on my birthday & letting her tell me (as she does every year) how proud of me she is, is one thing that I always look forward to. And then someone opened the back door. I assumed it was Josh's girlfriend who drove up separately & kept knitting. But it wasn't. It was my momma! And that right there made it the very best birthday ever! We went to dinner at Indigo (which is quickly becoming a birthday tradition for Charlie & me) and just had a wonderful evening with my family.

So Sunday I acquired a new foster baby. His name is Jack & he may be the sweetest thing ever. A 10 year old girl sat on him & broke his pelvis. The family couldn't afford to care for him & were going to euthanize. Well, needless to say that an orange, 8 week old, face-licking, tail chasing, constantly purring kitten is currently residing in a cage in my guest room. He's freakin' adorable. He'll recover for a couple weeks here, and then be taken in by a rescue for placement in his forever home.

Hope everyone had a safe & happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's a square!

Not a whole heck of a lot happened this past week. Had a truly stressful week at work as the temperatures were on the rise, so were the number of people coming into the clinic in the evenings. Last Monday, I didn't leave until 1:30 in the morning. That's a long day!

Charlie's mom is in the hospital. They admitted her into the heart failure ward at Christ Hospital for having fluid in her lungs. After a few tests have been run, they are thinking now that it's just pneumonia, which is a good thing because we most definitely don't want heart failure.

In knitting news, I joined a swap on Ravelry to make squares similar to Ron's Blanket that appeared most notably in GoF. It's going well, I am able to complete a square in just under 2 hours, which makes it a wonderful mindless knit! Still completely & totally sick of the lace ribbon scarf so I'm using this as a diversion!

And then something sad actually happens

I have to say that I was totally bummed this week to find out that lead singer of one of my all time favorite bands, Barenaked Ladies, is leaving the band! Steven Page, ladies and gentleman, has the voice of a god. Now, let it not go unnoticed, that as of late Steve Page has fallen prey to some of the less desirable follies of stardom, and those are likely the reason for his departure from the other Ladies. But, I say forgive and forget. After all, how can you not love that voice?

In other news, I both cast on & even finished an object this week!
A lovely cowl that I'm really enjoying. It's dropped all the way down to 20 degrees here today, so I'm staying toasty warm! I really just had to take another break from that never ending lace scarf. I'm still working on it, & even though it's making me crazy I just keep telling myself that I have to be getting somewhere on it & this ball of yarn can't last forever.

Oh, MY Steven wants to say 'hi.' And yes, he is a name-sake of the afore mentioned Steve. I am that big a fan, and that big a geek.