I Finally Made It

Happy Autumn! Yay! No more summer!

Before I get into the madness that is my life, let's look at some yarny goodness. It's not a lot, but it's pretty. I should have a lot more by next week. I'm happy to say that I'm doing much better with my yarn buying, although I haven't stopped completely. I joined a yarn club today by Jenny Boully (Woolly Boully), which I know I shouldn't have done, but I couldn't resist it.



This is by KnitFit Knitting in "Pink and Browns" and "Back to School". She's a new dyer for me, but when I saw the yarn, I thought I would give it a try. It was worth the chance. The yarn has great yardage, is soft as can be, and the colorways are gorgeous, especially in person. It will be a joy to knit with.

Now for a bit of business.

I said I would come up with my nominees for the Rockin' Girl Blogger award, and I've come up with five. I don't know if any of these people have been nominated before, but unless they have the button displayed on their blogs, I don't have any way of knowing unless I read through their archives. I love their blogs and feel they're worthy of the nomination. To top it off, I think only two of them know me LOL. Here goes:

The Adventures of Gladys & Harold Quimby
Crazy Aunt Purl (I'm sure she's been nominated at least a dozen times, but oh well)
Agile Knitter
Farm-Witch
Rabbitch

All of these ladies have copious pictures on their sites (with the exception of one, but she works an awful lot), are hysterical, post often, and are endlessly entertaining. When I read a blog, I look for someone who is honest, down to earth, has lovely pictures (although that's not as important to me - I like to read), and exemplify (to me, at least) real women instead of plastic Barbie dolls. I'll notify them later today (and hope they don't say, "Who the hell are you and what the fuck is that award for?").

With that piece of business out of the way, allow me to apologize for the lack of a post this morning. Yesterday and this morning did NOT work out the way I had anticipated.

Yesterday, I could NOT keep my eyes open. I had taken two of those magic pills along with a tranquilizer in order to help me sleep throughout the night. While they didn't do that, they had another effect. As soon as the sun came up, my eyes began to feel heavy. Before I knew it, I was sound asleep with my knitting clutched in my hand as usual.

I slept. And slept. And slept. Then I'd open my eyes for five minutes, ask Hubster to put on a pot of coffee, and fall asleep again before he could get the cup to me (and we have one of those high-speed coffee makers that brews a pot in less than three minutes). This went on ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT. Finally, at about 1:00 a.m. this morning, I was able to open my eyes and keep them open. I left my brief post (I don't remember what time it was), had to put together a voting poll for another site which has a contest going on right now (I'm the admin, so I had to put the whole thing together), and by that time it was after 4:00 a.m. I decided that I'd leave my regular post around 7 a.m. and knit until then. I knit until about 6:45 a.m. and fell asleep again. I didn't wake up until 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. ARGH! And I have so much stuff to do today. This was NOT supposed to happen.

One of the first things I noticed when I woke up was that my knitting looked weird. I'm used to dropping a few stitches when I wake up, but this was definitely a new problem. It took a few minutes to figure out, but then I realized that instead of using the fifth needle to knit with, I had simply moved from one needle to the next and knitted with the one I had just put new stitches on. No wonder the knitting was so tight! I picked out all the stitches, got them on the correct needle, and reknit them with the fifth needle. The I counted them. Uh oh. I had five more stitches on one side than I did the other. This was on the back of the sock right above the heel, so both sides had to be balanced. You'd think it would be easy to move a few stitches back, right? Maybe if I was totally awake (I should know better than to knit when I'm still sleepy). That little maneuver took 30 minutes to fix. Then I got to the next needle and noticed 14 stitches just dangling there. 14. I was ready to throw the whole thing in the trash (for the second time), but I kept at it. Success! They weren't even wonky or anything. Whew.

All my knitting disasters finally taken care of, I saw our porch light go on (it goes on whenever anything is moving outside - like when we drive up), so I got up and went outside to check on things. It rained yesterday, so everything was still wet and there was an enormous pile of wet, slippery leaves in front of the porch steps (foreshadowing). I made the mistake of going out there in my slippers and misjudged the depth of the pile. So I stepped down into them off the step and kept going down. And down. And DOWN. Before I knew it, I was sitting on my ass in the middle of wet leaves with bugs crawling in them. SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!!!!! I jumped up as quickly as I could (holding my hip because I had fallen sideways), my feet shot out from underneath me, and I fell flat on my back right back into the pile of leaves. Oh no. At least I didn't bring my knitting outside with me.

I finally discovered that it was a cat who had set off the light (even though it was daytime, it was very overcast), so I brushed myself off as best as I could and came back into the house. I knew we had errands to run today, so I didn't want to shower until it was close to the time we were leaving. I draped a sheet over the Monster (I actually keep one on there since SwissKnits had suggested it), but I didn't want to dork that one up. I washed my hands and set back to my knitting. This time, everything went according to plan. I'm close to the toe and anticipate finishing it tonight.

I'm still waiting for clearance on getting into Folsom Prison to teach the convicts (I think that's what they like to be called), so I won't be going there tomorrow. That's a good thing, since I have a bunch of crap I have to do. Tuesday we're driving to Sacramento for another pain doctor visit, and then Hubster is taking me to the Indian casino we used to go to all the time. I think I'll also pay a visit to the LYS in Rocklin and see the folks there whom I've known for 25 years since the shop was close to where I lived in the Bay Area. I'm hopingt the day is a nice one.

Another lovely thing happened (and this one IS lovely). I've had one person ask me to design some sock patterns to sell in her Etsy site, and another lady asked me to knit a pair of sample socks to put in her Etsy store and on her blog. I'm jazzed about it. I love being a test knitter and also being asked to knit samples for folks to put on their sites.

So that's about it. We're off to buy refills for the litter box (oh yippee), and then somewhere else that Hubster says we need to go to but can't remember. Then it's back home to work on my knitting again. I also have to do my homework for the TKGA show next week, but I have to buy the yarn for that tomorrow. I'm inventorying the Opal today, getting all my flutes out and put away so I can begin practicing, and by the time that's all done, it will be tomorrow. Sigh.

Maybe I should take two more of the magic pills so I can sleep through it all.