What's happinin' hot stuff?

While I have nothing to share with you here tonight, I assure you that there has been reading, lots of reading, during this past week of silence and some actual knitting happening tonight. I have several great books that I want to share with all of you out there but quite frankly at the moment I'm too tired to do poetic justice to them. Hopefully sometime this week I'll have a moment or two to share some of those with you.

Work has been invigorating but busy. I haven't been getting home until late and I've been too tired to pick up a set of needles. How sad is that?! Even with a book in hand, there were many a night a page was lost due to falling asleep.

The effects of the whooping cough is finally going away. A burning fiery sensation still remains in my lungs and an annoying occasional cough. But otherwise I'm on my way back to healing and breathing again. I tribute most of that to the fact that I spent many an hour this past weekend sleeping. A nice warm blankie and a running humidifier in a dark dark room does wonders for an ailing body. If only there were a few extra days in the weekend.

And a little shout out to my fellow House lovers out there... OH MY GAWD!!! TINGLES!!! GASP!!! I can't wait for two more weeks!!!

Keepin' busy

Life is full of all it's ups and downs and all the in betweens. It's to the left. It's to the right. It's up the middle and down the road and over the hill. The fact is life is just full. And lately it's felt fuller than normal.

But this week, unlike last week, I was able to fit in a little knitting to help round out the fullness.

I decided that my old college roomie needed some knitted dishrags as part of her Christmas present and so produced these two quick delights. With little knitting time available this week, I felt the need to complete something in one sitting. These did the trick! Each one only took me about 1 1/2 hours. I don't know what happened to the purple heart one. It came out nearly half the size of the summer sun. It might help to define the images if I would block it... we'll see if I get around to that. I have my eyes on a few more patterns to round out this set. This week I got to watch House and play along with the House Along gang and work on the cascading flowers for the felted bag I'm planning on giving my cousin for Christmas. I was so impressed at how complicated it began to look at one point and then coming out with a really cool flower. Can't wait to see how it looks once I have a few more of these beauties and it's all felted!

(Edited to include this little tid-bit that Stacey reminded me that I should include: The cool thing is that you are knitting an icord and then all of a sudden to do some kfb all the way around and you put the first stitch on one needle and the second stitch on a second needle. But I was having an issue with keeping 8 needles with stitches on them. They kept sliding through. So I decided to put them all on stitch marker thingies until I was ready for each petal which totall helped a LOT!!!)

As for the show... la-oving it!!! I'm so glad that the dork was kicked out. I never liked him and was just waiting for him to leave. The addition of a lust interest for House is intriguing. Wonder how Cameron is going to take this!

Last night I had myself a little dance party for 25 minutes as I pranced around singing "I'm gonna wash that grey right out of my hair!" Boy, that dates me doesn't it! Take a look at the results. It's called "Chocolate Peanut Butter". Yummy! Couldn't you just eat me up! But don't look at the double chin action happening there. I blame it on the angle and taking the photo myself. (humor me please) Instead, check out the awesome knit vesty thing I picked up at Target after work yesterday. La-ove it!

Gotta go... decisions to be made over watching Grey's and watching CSI. But definitely Without a Trace afterwards! Oh the decisions to be made!

Weekend WIPs

Yes, I know it's already Monday... but I promised a report on the WIPs and I'm just getting around to it... sue me! First of all I must share with you all the package I received on Saturday from my old college roommate. When I drove up to PA for her little one's baptism, I took her some fresh herbs from my deck garden. This explains the herb themed gifts:

You can't see in the photo very well, but the apron has "cloves", "nutmeg", and "ginger" embrodered on the pockets. For some strange reason, I was at Target the other day and I say they had some adorable retro aprons and I was tempted to get myself one, but then stopped and thought, "Why? Would I really wear it?" Answer, "No, but I really want one." I talked myself down... and I'm glad that I did! I don't know what I would do with two! However, I'm now planning on doing some bakeing for this weekend and I'll be trying out the apron. Included in the package was also a herb garden cook book, an herb keeper from Pampered Chef, and some little glass bowl like things that have a grated wire top thing to them. I have no idea what they are for... anyone??? The best part of the whole package was the wrapping paper. Jen made it herself. It's photos of her sticking her tongue out mixed in with balloons. This is why I love her!

Now I must tell you all about how wonderful the people at KnitPicks are. I have the Options sets and absolutely love them! I've been trying to make my way through all the sizes to try them all out. However, I was sadly disappointed when I got to my 6s. They kept slipping right off the circular thingy right in the middle of my knit and several (read many) stitches kept falling off which became a problem with picking them back up again and again and again. Anyway, after speaking with Chan, I decided to contact the lovely ladies over at KnitPicks and informed them of the issue. A package arrived from them as well, telling me to throw out the "damaged goods" and sent me a brand new pair of 6s!!! Now, what to knit with them?!?!?!

Sock report (and other WIPs):

Love the Monkeys!!! One down second one started ( but not photographed). Sarah and I went on a mini yarn crawl on Saturday and got many compliments on the colorway. All in the photo are the Tofutsies that I started and I think I'm gonna have to frog cuz I think I skipped a row or two already. Damn patterns that call for every other row as a knit and only listing the odd pattern specks! Although I'm not totally thrilled with the way the colors are working their way around the sock anyway. I think I'll put them aside and deal with them after the Monkeys and a few other projects are finished.
The Casual Bag is ready to call upon Super Neighbor for a lining job. I'm hoping that Kay and I will get together this week to shop for some coordinating fabric and she'll be able to wave her magical hands at it and whip up a fabulous liner so I can start showing it off wherever I go. I'm in love with the colors!

The Farmer's Market Bag is coming along slowly. I ran into some issues with picking up stitches, well, actually I read the pattern wrong - again. I think it's finally on it way - at least let's hope. But I'm really only working on it during House. Maybe I'm just so distracted from the show that it's effecting my knitting.

And lastly I took a few hours out of Sunday to knit up this quick red scarf from the Big Wool yarn Maddie gave me in the Red Color Swap and a drop stitch pattern from Dobrah's book she sent me. I also picked up an adorable pair of chopsticks to pin it together for a very stylish look. Call me a dork, but I love it.

There are a few other projects I've finished, but I can't show them to you just yet. They are for the PIF project and I'm hoping to finish all three and then post about them just before sending them out. Two are complete, I think. And I'm working on the 3rd.

Hope you've had a happy Monday... and just incase you didn't already know.....

My birthday's in two days!!!

Animal House

So it's not enough that my house currently looks like a pack of elephants ran through it, but I just had to cast on for a second pair of monkeys in none other than a vibrant yarn in Jitterbug's colorway Parrot. I adore this yarn and had so much fun a few months ago making up a pair of these for my Red Color Swap partner that I just had to take a second go at it and make a pair for myself! The color isn't quite as vibrant in the photo, but what can I say when it's getting dark so much earlier now and I can't get home in time for those great sun lit photo shots. But I think you get the idea.

Speaking of Color Swaps, of course I had to sign up again for this month - the color is ORANGE! And in my case, probably my favorite color is pumpkin (or orangutan) and am tickled pink, I mean orange, that I can surround myself with the colors of my dreams right now, hence my monkeys playing with the pumpkin and leaves (even if they are fake due to the lack of rain this year). Look for the upcoming Color Swap questionnaire coming soon.

Other news at the moment, last night I took some time to tackle a portion of the current mess I call my jungle, oh I mean home. Ya see, Honey is planning on a biking/camping trip down the C&O Canal trail this weekend and it would appear that he needed to get out all of the biking/camping gear we own and spread it around the house so that he could determine what he should pack for the four day trip. And then he went out and picked out some new gear and the packaging from all that is now mixed in with that mess. Enough complaining. I decided to do what I could about the sorts of the house and I took on reorganizing my knitting nook. (For those of you that don't know, I am a bit of an organizational freak and I tend to drive Honey crazy with trying to keep the house clean and organized.) Since I now consider myself to have an actual stash - not just left overs from previous projects, but real yarn waiting to decide what it's going to be - I figured I needed a better way to store it than in the basket. (see previous stash post here.) And now a corner of my dinning room (that never gets used as a dinning room) looks like this:

Ok, so the box of dishes and the MRI scans don't really belong, but it's getting there. If only you could see the items in the bag as well as that bottom drawer way off to the right where items lay in wait to be sent to swap partners and PIF lucky recipients! All in dew time, my dear. All in due time. And what is that I see? Are there two new knitting resource books there on the table? Why, yes! Yes, there are:

I plan on trying the whole knitting two socks at a time on circular needles with an up coming sock I have planned. We'll see how that goes. But for now, I must bid you all ado. The 2nd Episode of House will be coming on soon and I want to be all ready for it. I have my project all ready and waiting for me but dinner will have to come first.

Gesundheit!

Being sick sucks!

I've taught in the classroom for 8 years and very rarely was I ever sick. Usually just bothered by my own personal allergies (ya know from the bad ventilation systems in the schools) and sinus infections. But this year I'm not even in the classroom and I've had one head cold after another ever since school started! I wake up every morning not being able to breathe, a bucket and a half of snot coming out of every hole in my head, my eyes watering to the point of dehydration and I'm lucky if I catch all of this before sneezing it all over the bed and floor. (Watch where you sit and step just in case.)

Now Honey is also sick and between the two of us we've gone through two whole economy sized Kleenex boxes already this weekend. I'm all into reusing things so the empty boxes are now making great little havens for all the used germy snotty Kleenexs so they can all live happily together instead of all over the floor and coffee table. I've taken stock in Lysol for how much I keep spraying around the house to try to kill any germs hanging around. I've washed my hands so much that the soap is drying up my hands and making my fingers raw as I knit. Everything I touch needs to be disinfected. It's a good thing that I'm knitting felting projects and will be washed shortly. It's also a good thing that the weather is beautiful this weekend so I can open the doors and windows to try to air out the house a little.

For those of you from WW reading this, I'm totally off plan again this weekend. My body needs additional carbs at the moment to help soak up the snot in my belly.

On a good note, I did get out of the house for a little while yesterday to do a little shopping. I promise that I tried not to breathe on anyone. Picked up some nice felting yarn to begin working on my House Along project this week. (I missed last week because Honey had family visiting from New Zealand.) And Borders was having their teacher week so I picked up a few books for Christmas gifts as well as a few freebes they were giving to teachers and three great reads for myself.

No pics for today. The house looks like an Army-Navy store exploded in it. Honey is planning on taking a four day bike trip down the C & O Canal or something or other. I'm up to my ears in all his camping and biking gear everywhere. At least the snot rags are not living amongst the gear anymore.

House Along

A woman after my own heart, Michelle, has started something fabulous! Check it out:

Consider joining us as we knit our way through yet another fabulous season!

(Click on the House Along button to go straight to the fun!)