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.

Re union & re knitting

Well, interesting week. Monday started with an event that should have been sad, but was really a ton of fun! My grandmother died late last week & her funeral was Monday. Weirdly, no one was terribly sad about it. (Maybe not weirdly, she wasn't a very nice person) It did give us an un avoidable excuse to re unite as a family. I hadn't seen all my cousins together in probably 15 years. It was wonderful to sit around, eat, drink & just catch up on everyone's lives! So that's a shot of all of us up there at the left .

Here's my mom with her 2 remaining brothers.
And here's another shot that includes a couple of kids!
I can't believe that any of us are old enough to have children of our own, bit it's true! Both Katie and Christie have a little girl each! Heck, Melissa has 3!!

As far as knitting goes....feels like I've been trucking along for EVER on this lace scarf & I'm not getting anywhere! That ball of yarn just isn't getting any smaller & it seems like I knit on it at every available moment. But my logic prevails & I know I must be getting somewhere, so I'm keeping at it. Hope to be done before too much longer, it really is a lovely project.

I did a bit of frogging on my cable & eyelet fingerless mitts. They were too long & I thought I could live with it like that. I could not. So I frogged down to where I wanted to re-start the ribbing, picked up the stitches & they fit much better now.

Charlie took me to the bookstore today, just for looking around & of course I bee line straight for any knitting books I can find. I'd read about Big Girl Knits on Ravelry but I'd never seen it in person. I cracked that puppy open & I was hooked. So much information, well written, very very very funny & on top of all that are some beautiful patterns! I made such a fuss over it (including laughing so hard that tears rolled down my face at the phrase 'super hero boobie mask') that I think he'll get it for me for my birthday next month. It's bookmarked anyway....

Newest pet - of the virtual sort

adopt your own virtual pet!

Well, I thought it was funny! He likes to be scratched on his head, or he'll chase your mouse around the screen. He'll munch some grass when he's contented. You can give him a special treat of hay or broccoli (I think it's broccoli, maybe it's more grass?) by clicking the "more" button. I think it makes him feel loved, so please feed Sheldon in case I haven't been by in a few hours. Bit of a bummer that virtual sheep only equals virtual yarn.....but also only virtual poo.....
so.....maybe that's okay.....

What's next?

So the mitts are done! They match the hat perfectly & I like them almost as much. The fit is just a bit off, I think because I knitted too much length after the thumbs. They are also scrunching down toward my fingers so I have to yank them back down every so often. But they are soft, moderately warm & will be perfect for those chilly spring days that are headed our way.

Now I don't know what to work on! Horrible, I know. My first thought is to get back to my lovely Malabrigo scarf that I've been working on since last summer. It's my first attempt at "true" lace and while I am enjoying it, sometimes I need a break from it because I really do have to concentrate on not screwing it up. This last break from it was just a little longer than it really needed to be. I am however open to suggestions so let me know if you think there is something I should be trying!

I think that last time I promised a soup recipe. Well, I'm not so great at coming up with things on my own. But I can follow a recipe! And this is one that we love. It's Rachel Ray's Tomato & Bean Soup. You get a lot of food for your money, it's great re-heated & nothing is better on a snowy night than a bowl of home made soup! The olive frittata from that episode is also quite tasty. Whip it up & enjoy!

Meet the crew!

Not a darn thing going on this week to talk about. Work has kinda gone in the crapper, we're broke & living on ramen noodles & I really freakin' hate all this snow!

I finished my hat, which I love. Wear it all the time! Now I'm using the cable pattern on a fingerless mitt pattern with a different cable to make mitts that match since I had so much yarn left over! Gonna love those, too!

But really, that's it. Kinda dull. So I think I'll introduce you to the rest of the crew. Yup. You guessed it. I have cats. And a dog. And I love them. And so will you.

First we have Zoe. She was the first to come live with us. Charlie wanted to get me something I'd really love for my 20th birthday, so he took me to the ASPCA to pick out a pet. I of course picked the cute, cuddly tabby kitten. And he picked her. We took her home the following day & I have been in love since. She is no doubt the most beautiful cat in the whole world. Her hobbies include being aloof, stealing food from your plate & sleeping with Charlie, not so much me. (She knows who picked her from the cage, I think. He's clearly her favorite.)

Next up we have Lucy. She picked us when she was sitting under my apartment window yowling one night. I went outside, she came running up to me, I lifted her into my arms & she hugged me! That was it, I was done for. Now, she's not the world's brightest crayon, I don't think. Her hobbies include growling and hissing at the boys (see below for said boys), chasing her tail & planning world domination with her only tool, her sparkle ball.

Finally we have The Boys. First came Steve (he's the joker) and next came Fred
who tends to be more serious. They are litter mates, and the story of how they came to me is long. The short of it is, I worked in a vet hospital and their mother was brought in still in labor & the owners wanted to put her down. I said no, went to surgery with the mom, she was leukemia positive & was euthanized & I hand raised the litter. When 6 weeks of age came I couldn't let these 2 go! The litter tested leukemia negative & the 2 others were adopted out. They provide hours & hours of entertainment for me & each other. Don't know what I'd do without them. They have hobbies that they tend to share such as licking each other, playing fetch, talking loudly at 2 am, taunting poor Lucy & walking across the mantle, the only place in the house where they are not allowed.

Last, but certainly not least, is my almost 11 year old greyhound, Jessie. I got her when I was clearing off the advertisment board at work. One of those "Free to a good home" ads. She was a trade with my husband for digital cable. Meaning that if I could get a dog, he could get digital cable. Win win situation for me, I'd say. She's a wonderful dog. Loving, smart, funny, quiet, really, almost another cat! Her hobbies include sleeping on the couch, sleeping on the chair, and occasionally sleeping on her dog bed. She doesn't do much else, but that's okay. She came from the race track so she deserves a life of doing whatever she wants. And if sleeping is what she wants, so be it!

And that's it, kids! That's the whole crew! I don't know what I'm going to talk about the next time I have a boring week. Perhaps maybe I'll post a recipe? I do like a good soup....

Magic it aint!

The magic slipper debacle has commenced. It took me the better part of the afternoon to untangle some lovely yarn that my cat had decided looked like a wonderfully fun toy (why can't I learn to put it away???) and wound into a ball. The easy part was the knitting of the sole of the slipper. Just back & forth & it was done.

Picking up the stitches was where I had the most difficulty. I am not that good at it, need more practice. But I finally got them all picked up and onto the needles to start going in the round.

From there it was pretty easy. Just 15 rounds and you're done!

The issue is that 1) I think the slipper is too big for a newborn and 2) I don't have enough yarn to make the other slipper! I suppose I could try one more time on smaller needles. Or perhaps she needs some burping cloths or something like that in addition to the hat I already have done? Babies burp up a lot of stuff, right?

So in the way of projects that actually have a chance of getting completed sometime in the near future, please see this lovely piece of knitting!

It's the Hermione Cable & Eyelet hat that can be found here. The pattern is free & very nice, but I'm loving it mostly because of the yarn I chose. There may be nothing better in the whole wide world than Debbie Bliss. Okay, okay, I'm a Malabrigo junkie, too, but this stuff is pretty sweet to work with.

I am also very excited to mention that one of the doctors at work has expressed an interest in learning to knit! She found knitty.com and says she fell in love with all the scarves. I offered to help her, and although she is a kind of "do it yourself" girl, she says she will come & ask for help when she's screwed it up too badly to continue. So yeah for new knitters!

Mmmm....food....

So Charlie and I (that's the husband of 8 years for any of you who don't know) decided that we hadn't been out to dinner in a long time and we needed it. I had just made a rather large paycheck (well, large for me, not large in the grand scheme of things, I'm sure) due to a few hours of overtime and 5 hours of work on a Sunday for which they pay time and a half. So after much debate, we decided on Indigo Casual Gourmet in Ft. Mitchell. Now, when Charlie mentioned going to this place, I initially rejected it. We tried to go there for my birthday last year. When we walked into the joint, it reeked of Applebee's in atmosphere. They were having some sort of game night, people were drunk and yelling at the bar, there was a 2 hour wait for a table & it just wasn't for us. I couldn't figure out why he wanted to go there, but he assured me it was not always like that.

And he was right. We got there around 6pm on Friday night and there were very few people in the place. We were seated right away at a table near the bar to which my only complaint would be that the heating vent which was right under my chair was blowing luke warm air at me, but my hand knitted shawl made up for that! The waitress was mostly competent, although I did ask for her choice on the menu and she did not seem to understand the question & just pointed out that "the vegetarian selections are noted with a 'V.'" I ended up ordering the basil cream pasta over penne pasta. I balked a bit at the price of $16.95 for a plate of pasta, but the good husband encouraged me to order what I wanted and I did! We also got salads, they have a wonderful soy ginger dressing, breadsticks and a couple glasses of wine. When the pasta arrived, I was a little sad at how small the plate was. I figured I would have plenty left over to take home at $16.95 but in reality I only packed up about 1/3 of it and that was more out of sheer will to do it than anything else! It was good, I liked it, but not quite $16.95 liked it. Maybe $10.95 liked it. The desserts were much more reasonably priced and I got a slice of carrot cake from Bon Bonnerie for about $4. All in all, it was a nice meal and a nice evening with the husband.

In other news (knitting news that is) I've just about finished up my friend Mike's fingerless mitts that I am making him to match his hat. He really liked the hat and I bought too much yarn so I thought I'd whip him something up to match. But I'm excited to finish them because after that I get to start on some baby booties for a girl at work who is pregnant & having a shower in a couple weeks. I'm going to use this Magic Slipper pattern I found on Ravelry & looks easy enough for a non-sock knitter to make. We shall see about that soon enough!

So it begins....

Well, it seemed like time to get my own. Blog that is. So here we go.

I'm not quite 30, been married for 8 years to a great guy, work as a veterinary technician at a very busy hospital, have 4 cats & a dog & I am a knitter. (Yup. Another knitting blog.)

But I hope it will be more than just a knitting blog. While it's a big part of my life, I'm also into food (vegetarian food at that), good movies (indy films anyone?) and I'm a bit of a geek (in the Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter vein of geek).

So I plan to just let you read a bit about my life on perhaps a weekly basis. Let you know if I've found any good restaurants, seen any good movies, or seriously screwed up any of my knitting (which happens more than the other 2 things, I promise!)

Drop me a line to let me know you've been here!