Happy New Years !

New Years champagne
Originally uploaded by Amy_Breen

I hope everyone has a Safe, Happy, Healthy New Year! We are staying in tonight, Angie has some friends over. my brother is over and 2 other friends. The menu as it stands:

Asst. crackers, chips and cheese
Black bean, Spinach, Artichoke dips
Fruit and Veggie trays
asparagus wrapped in prociutto
mini quiche lorraines
spinach in phyllo ( bought too much spinack)
mini crabcakes
buffalo wings- super spicy
macaroni and cheese bites ( ok I bought those)
potato skins
mini rice balls
salmon/dill/cream cheese in pastry
meatballs in the crockpot w/ marmalade, catalina and pepper flakes
carrot cake made in mini muffin tins
apple fried wontons
individual tiramiso in martini glasses ( grownups are spiked with starbucks liquer
cheesecake bites ( bought those too)

Asst soda, bought lemon drop, cosmo, mojito mixes to mix w/ club soda to make virgin drinks for the kids. Have all the makings for awesome margaritas, 6 different kinds of Sam Adams, anyone wanting wine or champagne better bring their own!

My rant on resolutions tomorrow!

Knitted Flower Project

My friend Catherine from Ohio had this on her blog this morning. Her friend Molly is going for her master's and for her thesis she is doing the knitted flower project and needs volunteers to knit a flower ( really an easy pattern and only uses 15 yards of yarns so you can use some of those little scraps we all seem to acquire ) and if you want but not necessary go on the blog and discuss kniitting habits etc. check out the blog. I'm gong to knock off a few flowers for her.

Felting updates

I needed a new bag in red - since Tony went from orange to red. So using the trusty Amanda's squatty bag from knitting daily I added in the black V.



I was going to use a black and white button, but when I was in Michael's today I saw some really beautiful red/black/white glass pendant beads. So I guess it depends on how big the loop felts up.


I also redid the dumpling bag from Fall 2008 Interweave knits. I didn't have the yarn called for, but I went with 2 stands of cascade 220 and one strand of lion wool. I also went up one needle size to 15. I used some thick shell rings that I really hope survive the felting process. To echo the 49er colors, I made the viney thing in goldenrod.



I was also going to through some white on as well, but while having coffee and dessert at Mara's with Grace this afternoon, I had expressed my concern that it would turn pink. She suggested I try the yarns in hot water together before felting. So I took the little snips of red and black out of the garbage and nuked them for 1 minute with some hot water and a piece of the white yarn




As you can see it did turn pink. A pretty shade of pink, but pink none the less. Pink - while appropriate on a Dallas Cowboy inspired bag, is not appropriate on a 49er bag. So I pulled out all the white, and will come back and make white french knots after the felting has dried.


Yes, I went to Mara's and had the most wonderful hazelnut mousse cake you can imagine. With what has quickly evolved into my favorite Mara's drink a large Cafe Dulce.. Yum. As usual I was late, and forgot to bring actual knitting. Grace was working on what I assumed would be a shawl in Noro sock. The way the colors were working together with 2 strands together was wonderful. i especially liked when the purple started lining up with the gold, gorgeous. I just love Noro's colorways, and Grace can make a gorgeous shawl out of twine I think.

Curt went out bowling, and Angel had been out with her fencing friends. I think after 7 days together ( ok Angie has been in and out with practice and a tournament and hanging with her friends) we just needed an afternoon away from each other! currently Angie is putting everything away in her room after "THE PAINT JOB" Before and after pictures will be posted probably this weekend.

Off to Shop Rite for ingredients for New Year's Eve. I'm looking at it as I survived 2008 yay! 2009 has just got to be better... right? ....... right?

Off-Season VJGC afghan update

Purple 26 square



Had to make a 41 ( Bobby LaBonte's new ride)



Red/yellow garter square



The purple/green square is going to need some serious blocking!

So as of now, I have 11 large squares and 4 small squares. I need a total of 20 large squares and 8 small squares, so I'm over the half-way point right now. I think I'm going to work on the 4 black/white checkered squares next. i haven't decided how to make them yet. I also attempted to graph a square for the 14. I used knitting graph paper, but as I'm not that good at following charts ( actually I'm terrible) we'll see how that goes.

Some Christmas Shots

Convertible mitts for angie



Pink cowl for Angie



Angel thought it would be funny to leave the bottle of Three Blind Moose we got Anna in the brown bag - she wasn't as amused.



My mom in the hat and cowl I made her



Rare shot of the elusive Anna's Joe



She has a garmin- 3 weeks to the drivers test!




Mr cool, aka Curt

Christmas Eve

It's been raining all day here. Washing away all that wonderful Christmas snow. There goes my white Christmas. I was so tired I slept until 7am this morning! I put in 23 hours between Monday and Tuesday to get everything done so that I could go on vacation starting today. The good news ? I don't have to be back until 4am on the 5th. i am done with work for the year! Love how that sounds! I wrapped all my gifts this afternoon, realized I forgot something for my sister's boyfriend? don't know what to call him. Trust me he is very forgetable. I thought about driving to the liquor store to buy something genericish, but I figured on Christmas eve they would be just as crowded as the regular stores. Plus I didn't want to put on long pants. Sooo, yes, I am regifting. A Borders gift card. I am giving out a bunch of gift cards anyway. Just was having trouble getting into the whole Christmas spirit mood, so didn't want to shop. i did make my mom a cowl, gloves and hat, my sister and sister in law cowls, my daughter 2 cowls and socks. I got some 3 blind moose wine for a few people ( I really don't know the difference between different wines, always take the waiters suggestions when we go out, Curt doesn't drink wine so I only cook with it at home ( ok the cook sometimes finishes the bottle) ) so I kind of go for either pretty labels or funny names. I got my father in law a hobgoblin ale pint glass and pint gift set - once again funny name. I got my mom some cans of french escargot ( I can't stand the canned, made from fresh I can get behind.) but she loves them. I think I actually spent more time in PetSmart than in the people stores!

Now I'm watching Ice Age and cleaning. What fun (sarcasm).. Dnner's in the crockpot ( whoever invented those should be sainted or knighted or something)

Anyway - check out this link to a great knitted Christmas poem

RIP

Navy Petty Officer Mike Monsoor



PO2 (EOD2)(Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Mike Monsoor, a Navy EOD
Technician, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously
for jumping on a grenade in Iraq , giving his life to save his fellow
Seals.

During Mike Monsoor's funeral in San Diego , as his coffin was being
moved from the hearse to the grave site at Ft. Rosecrans National
Cemetery, SEAL's were lined up on both sides of the pallbearers route
forming a column of two's, with the coffin moving up the center. As
Mike's coffin passed, each SEAL, having removed his gold Trident from
his uniform, slapped it down embedding the Trident in the wooden
coffin.



The slaps were audible from across the cemetery; by the time the
coffin arrived grave side, it looked as though it had a gold inlay
from all the Tridents pinned to it. This was a fitting send-off for a
warrior hero.

This should be front-page news instead of the crap we see every day.

Since the media won't make this news, I choose to make it news by
forwarding it .

I am damn proud of our military. If you are proud too, please pass this on.

If not then rest assured that these fine men and women of our military

will continue to serve and protect.

God Bless our Troops

Happy Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!! It has been snowing steadily here since about 6:30am. Wonderful white fluffy snow! (Of course coming from a woman who doesn't really clear snow except for on her car) Winter is my absolute favorite time of year! love the crispness, the cold, the way the light looks when there is a good coating of snow on the ground. The sight of Orion in the sky.

More Knitting

Bulky mitt #1 - courtesy of grace's pattern - check out needles54 on Ravelry for it. The only issue I had was that when seeming the yarn pulled apart, so I had to start with another piece. Now I need to make another one. They are for my friend Denise, who works in receiving and is always freezing. I keep telling her fingerless gloves will keep her a bit warmer and she can still use her fingers. Of course she's freezing when it's in the 50's so I don't know how helpful they'll be.




I started this square for my off-season Victory Junction Gang Camp afghan. It was coming out an 8 inch square, so I frogged it. i then started over a few times, but when I went up enough needle sizes, it seems to thin. So now I'm using size 10 needles and doubling the yarn - Red Heart Designer Sport in Lemon Zest. I am now a little over halfway on the new square, but no picture yet. My friend, BrenMichelle on Ravelry has designed squares with most of the NASCAR numbers on her blog woodhilldesignknits.blogger.com, check them out. This is the 43 for my daughter's favorite driver Bobby LaBonte (who of course, just announced he is leaving the 43 team) I pm'd her the other day to see if she is going to be making patterns for the 14 and the 39 ( Tony's teams) and she plans on having them up in January, so I can add them to the afghan. I am debating between the 11 and the 26 for my purple square, I'll do the 39(army) in green, the 14 (tony) in Red, a new Bobby square - 41 in red also (Target will be his new sponsor)



These are the favors Grace gave out at her get together on Monday. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Grace remembers watching me pick off the onions on my salad every week, since I always forget to say no onions, and she made her salad onion free! Such a sweetheart!

Snow!

We got about 5-6 inches of snow yesterday! YAY! Near my mom and my FIL's the snow turned to sleet so they have a slushy mess.. but we have real snow!! I left work early on Friday as I was finished with everything but the carpet truck ( we were getting some driver named Zeke - seriously I almost stayed to see what he looked like- I didn't think we had any Zeke's in NJ) And decided to let Dan unload it. It took me about 45 minutes, not that bad. It's kind of funny, around work they get significantly less snow and it tends to be warmer than where I live, fewer hills too. Yet the highways are in worse condition there than here. So I was actually in slower traffic in less snow. THe problem is when I crossed the "line" as I call it, the roads got better, but visibility was only about 200 feet. Still it's 22 miles so not that bad.

Some pic's out my balcony

General Updates

Sorry, there haven't been any interesting updates this week. I really feel like some kind of soul-vampire has been sucking the life out of me. Monday, I ended up leaving work late, but I made it to grace's before 3. Our little knitting group met up at her house instead of mara's this week for a Christmas get together. Grace wanted to have someone see her Christmas decorations. OMG! When I tell you Santa's house is not so decorated. Of course, me the dummy, wrote down the wrong apartment number at 3am, so I'm wandering around the complex looking. And I was on the opposite side from where the buildings are labeled! Finally I found it, and seriously - look on the right side and click on loving comfort knits, she posted pictures, Her place looked amazing! And I absolutely love her tree! Sandy gave me a tin of homemade really yummy cookies and mini muffins. Grace had party favors a skein of red angora/wool yarn, a green candle and a thread crocheted snowflake! I ended up staying a bit longer than the other 2, to finish my coffee and chatted some more. Grace's husband Tom had come home early, and the three of us had a great conversation. Grace had always told me that Tom and I would get along great if we ever got together. (blame carpet fumes). Thank you Grace!

The rest of my week went downhill. Tuesday was horrible , over 300 price changes. Left work late - again. Got home knit for a while, fell asleep on the couch. Curt came home sounding terrible, i told him he was getting a sinus infection on Sunday - did he listen - NNNOOOOOO!!!! Wednesday, I was moping around as I worked, the only plus being that about 120 of the price changes were key blanks going on clearance. So at least I could find them. But bending down in the little booth killed my knees. And could someone explain why bother marking down key blanks?? it's not an impulse thing, if you're getting a key cut you need a specific blank - you can't get a cheaper blank if it is wrong!! I went back to receiving before lunch and Dan tried cheering me up because it was carpet delivery day. Even the thought of a carpet delivery did nothing for me!! ( now you really know how down in the dumps I was)

After lnch I went back to recv, because we got an extra roll of vinyl that needed to be put in the rack. I heard the air brakes as I was putting on the boom. Then when i was grabbing the vinyl I heard the trailer bump and the air brake hiss again. When I didn't go skipping out the door, Dan figured it wasn't the carpet truck so came around to look outside. He let C in and said it is your truck cheer up already. I told him that even C with the 2 rolls and rugs wasn't cutting it. ( turns out I had 7 rolls) Ok, anyone who knows me knows that between 7 rolls and C I was in a significantly better mood by the time i left. (late again) Curt finally went to the dr and YES boys and grls he had a sinus infection...... told ya so! And was moping around, I did about half the laundry and went to sleep.

Yesterday, I only worked for 5 hours and went home. I was going to do a bunch of stuff.... nope, fell asleep until it was time to go get my nails done. made dinner, had to drive angie to her fencing lesson, and it was 930 when we got home, I went to sleep. getting the gist, sleep. I only do that when i'm depressed, I really can't even get into Christmas!!

What Website are you?

Yes, the fact that you are reading this means I didn't get around to posting today. Enjoy!!




Which Website are You?

Hey- I didn't come up as a dummy!

Your result for Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test...

Naturalistic

"This area has to do with nature, nurturing and relating information to one's natural surroundings. Those with it are said to have greater sensitivity to nature and their place within it, the ability to nurture and grow things, and greater ease in caring for, taming and interacting with animals. They may also be able to discern changes in weather or similar fluctuations in their natural surroundings. They are also good at recognizing and classifying different species.

'Naturalists' learn best when the subject involves collecting and analyzing, or is closely related to something prominent in nature; they also don't enjoy learning unfamiliar or seemingly useless subjects with little or no connections to nature. It is advised that naturalistic learners would learn more through being outside or in a kinesthetic way.

Careers which suit those with this intelligence include scientists, naturalists, conservationists, gardeners and farmers." (Wikipedia)

Take Howard Gardner's Eight Types of Intelligence Test at HelloQuizzy

Swap

I am actually posting this forward, just in case Bex reads my blog. I'm in a Christmas exchange for my Go Fast Knit Left (Nascar) group on Ravelry. Now I know I said no more swaps until after the new year, but I didn't have to knit anything so I went for it. unfortunately, I think on purpose on Min's part (the person setting it up) I got a Jimmie Johnson fan! Ugghh- that meant I had to go and buy something Jimmie Johnson ish. So I ended up buying a Christmas Ornament with Johnson and the 48 hood. I also got her a pound of holiday blend from Mara's - the coffee/dessert/now food place where my knitting group meets. They roast their own coffees and they are delicious. My favorite is mandeling ( can't spell it but can drink it) but they had none so I went with the Holiday blend. I also sent a bar of Jersey Girl chocolate (dark - it has antioxidants so it's healthy right?) and a skein of Classic Elite yarns Alpaca Sox. The sending yarn part was hard - the woman owns a yarn store. Truthfully I was going to try to find some handdyed in blue/purple but I forgot and ran out of time. But it is blue/purple her favorite colors so hopefully she likes it.





I put everything in individual zip loc bags, then wrapped the box in wrapping paper, then wrapped that in shopping bags and put it in another box, wrapped that in a brown bag (there was all kinds of printing on the box I found) taped the address labels on and taped the entire box. this box can fall in the ocean and not get the insides wet! i was also really paranoid about the packaging being compromised, so even thought the address is taped on, inside the first box is a postcard with her address, and inside the wrapped box is a Christmas card with her address on the envelope.

Christmas Spirit

Your Christmas Sprit Level: 95%

Your Christmas spirit is almost as big as Christmas itself. Christmas is definitely your thing. You celebrate Christmas with enthusiasm. You love every minute of the holidays. Your Christmas spirit is inspiring to everyone who runs into you during the holidays. You make everyone's day just a little bit brighter. And that's what the holidays are all about!

Do You Have the Christmas Spirit?

I know I said no more afghans

I know I said no more afghans and no more deadline knitting...... but, you have to understand - the Hendricks team has a bunch of knitters and other drivers have bunches of knitters, and then there's me - tonyfan to the core. And judging from last season's points, Tony doesn't have a lot of people knitting for him. But that's ok, i don't share well either.

Anyhow, there were apparantly a lot of mismatch squares left over from last season's afghan competition. ( I now have the island of misfit toys song stuck in my head - thanks a lot) So there is an offseason competition with the points going to next season. A bunch of people are working as teams ( it seems kind of unfair that the same sze afghan can be worth 4 times the points just because 4 people worked on it, but she who runs it gets to make the rules) But as we all know I don't play well with others ( seriously - if anyone can find my "permanent record" it's on there... whatever became of all those permanent records they threatened us with??) and no one is even close to here ( well Min is in Philly - that's 2 hours away ) andI believe she is moving next week because she couldn't disinfect her old apartment of the TLV that jumped off my packages I sent her. The square were sorted into bundles, easy, medium, hard (not knitting skill level but pain in the butt level) I told her to send me a medium. She swears she closed her eyes and randomly picked, but this was my bundle:



I don't know if you can tell, but there is a 20 knit into the orange square. What deemed or doomed this square to medium is the fact that Victory Junction Gang Camp's colors are red, yellow, green and blue. And there are no blue and orange cars out there. Now I am definitely not a denver Bronco fan, and while I am a long . long, time Mets fan, there is only so much blue and orange a person could take. I was in Walmart this morning buyiing laundry supplies ( shop rite doesn't sell purple snuggle) and I went over to their yarn wall and found this yarn:



The yarn goes red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. A true rainbow. So I'll make however many squares I can with it, then i'll make some green , red, yellow and purple squares. Then to work in the fact that there is a blue/orange square, I'll do green/purple, red/yellow. yellow/blue, orange/purple,red/green. And maybe a black/white checker in each corner . I think I need 20 squares(the ones I got are 10x9 so 4 across would be 40 and 5 down would be 45.

I have until daytona to finish, so that's 66 days, so 3.5 days per square and 6 for seaming.

Some times I wonder if Tony realises the things I do for him.....

A very gray, dreary rainy day. Blah. A good day to be at work ( can't do anything fun anyway) but would have been a better nap day! I'm so glad inventory is over i can't even tell you... but post inventory audits are going to take me over a week! it's funny all the rest of the people are all relaxed, its over etc. etc. The 5 of us are actually busier for the next 10 working days. (If you think I;m happy to see the carpet truck on a regular Wednesday you should have seen me today ;) On the bright side hardware is getting easier, I'm starting to figure things out.

Today, yes December 10th, my store manager finally signed off on my vacation for the end of the month. ( I only gave it to him in august - and the only thing seniority is good for in this company is if there is a vacation conflict, so i win HAA) So from DECEMBER 23 to JAN 5 I'll be on vacation!!! YAY!! ( I can never quit my job- I'm only a year and a half away from 5 weeks a year) Right now I have 4 weeks, I usually take the last week in dec. A week in Feb, a week in April and a week in July.

Due to the large number of hours I have already worked, I am only working from 4 am to 7am tomorrow, Yay! My plan is to take my mom out to breakfast, she lives a few miles from where i work. By the time we're done and I get back near home, the mall should be open for some Christmas shopping. Then in the afternoon, I'm meeting my knitting friends. ( I haven't knit at all in the last few days)

It's supposed to rain tomorrow also, as long as it doesn't get icy/sleety. I'd rather snow than sleet. quickly ducks to avoid everyone around here throwing stuff at me for mentioning the s word!

Hope you like it hott!

Your result for What Spice Are You Test...

A Habanero Pepper

40% Habanero, 0% Sage, 0% Thyme, 10% Ginger, 10% Garlic, 30% Curry, 10% Cinnamon and 0% Oregano!

Wow! You are hot!! You certainly know how to bring on the heat!

You can be domineering and overwhelming at times. You definitely like having your way. You tend to have a bit of a temper, but you are very passionate about life, love, and your way of doing things. Not everyone can take you, but those who can have a spice in their life that will never leave them wanting. You don't mind being the life of the party. You speak your piece and you also speak with confidence. You tend to not let anything get in the way of what you want or where you are going.

You live hard and you love hard. You have the tendancy to be a true and good friend. Lord help those that stand in your way or tick you off!

You definitely have a strong and distinct personality.

Take What Spice Are You Test at HelloQuizzy

Swap

OMG! I was in a swap for my Go Fast Knit Left group on Ravelry. ( I will post pictures of what I sent Bextra on Sunday when she will hopefully have it by then) Michelle's box was waiting for me on the stoop when I got home from the worst day ever.... it is now the best day ever!!

First off - I love penguins do you not love this paper?



Then since we all know I need to start using red yarn now that Tony has gone red...



I wish you could feel the yarn! It has such good hand feel!

And the bestest?? My officially first item of Stewart-haas racing!! ( The stuff Curt bought doesn't ship until the 10th)



I so want to wear the shirt tomorrow ( yes for all you Jeff Foxworthy fans I is a redneck) but we are doing physical inventory and I don't want to mess it up. Wednesday I have to wear a 49er shirt to casually rub it in to Carl that the 9ers won and the Cowboys lost. So Thursday or Friday definitely.

Thank you sooooooo much Michelle!!!


And this!!! Hidden under the tissue paper..

stash

For the past 2 days I have been trying to clean up. I have actually sorted ..umm... most of my yarn, by color except sock yarn which is together and some yarn bought for specific projects.



Still working on the rest- I got a cubie thing for mags books, needles access. sigh more pics when done. debating on before pics - too horrific.

I did get a comforter bag and pretty much filled it with partial skeins of washable yarn for next years VJGC afghan - only doing 1 or squares. seriously can't deal with that deadline again.



I did finish Angie's cowl



Right now I absolutely feel like crap. I have developed some serious stomach cramps. Watching the 49ers is not helping any. Took some immodium hopefully it kicks in soon.

No they're not done

no, angie and curt are not done with the tree. ( curt is just brut muscle - hee hee - angie wanted to do the tree herself this year)

So what have I been doing?? Well first I was up at 4:30am - wide awake - it's a curse - i finished Angies pink cowl. Pics soon, have to find the cable for my camera. I made breakfast (grits, eggs, bacon, coffee) then I had to run down to Livingston to see Lauren. Who is Lauren you may ask?? She is the lady that does my nails. She is awesome! I have only broke a nail twice since she's been doing them. (Both times she was on maternity leave were nightmares for my poor fingers) Yes, I broke/sheared one off yesterday. How you wonder?? Well, while I absolutely love the guy that normally delivers my carpet, I really think he is the only non-moron, non-useless, non-annoying, non-creepyyweird driver tht works for that company. So things have been slow, so they only have been working 4 days a week for like 3 weeks a month. ( still is 45-50 hours) But they keep giving him Fridays off! ( Ok he's been there a while and gets a 3 day weekend out of it ) But Friday's one of MY delivery days and I get one of the above implied moron,useless, annoying, creepy weird driver instead. So one of the rolls on the truck is a 12 by 61/2 foot roll- maybe 25 pounds tops. but rolled 12 feet long. So I ask the guy if he can grab the other side and walk it over to the special order holding cage with me - seemed like a waste to use a cart. Now if he couldn't handle this he should have said so- instead we get halfway there (it's only like 50 feet) and he dropps it, but twists it at the same time, taking half my nail with it. The profanities I issued forth with are not printable here. So she fixed it.

then I Came home and wrapped my Christmas swap gift for my Nascar Knitters group on Ravelry. I had to hermetically (zip loc) seal the jimmie johnson ornament I bought so as not to infect my house - shutter!! I will post more details and a pic next weekend in case my partner reads this blog ( I dont think so - she's never commented if she does - but just to be safe.


I have then alternated between posting on ravelry , knitting a sock and thinking about cleaning the living room. Sigh. Then I picked up like 5 things and I'm posting here.

Well no Britcoms on tonight (although celtic woman is on pbs) so I'm picking up fatburgers and cleaning this evening!

What color tree are you

So there are just too many Christmas quizes out there! But since the tree is going up today I leave you with:

You Should Have a Silver Christmas Tree

For you, the holidays represent a time of glamour and sophistication. You love to make things fancy - whether it's having classy decorations or upscale cocktails. While you aren't very traditional, you like your holidays to have a retro feel. You prefer to have a few decorations that have stood the test of time. You're not big on disposable junk. Your silver tree would look great with: Simple, bold ornaments You should spend Christmas Eve watching: Eyes Wide Shut What you should bake for Santa: Homemade cookies. You're not the type to wear an apron.

What Color Christmas Tree Should You Have?

ornaments

Since we're planning on doing the tree tomorrow i leave you with this:

You Are a Snowflake

You live for the winter - blizzards, cold nights, snowball fights! The holidays are just a bonus!

What Christmas Ornament Are You?

What can I say

Ok, we'll call this post a generic rant. I don't really have anything important to say, or show you.

It's cold and it's raining. I'd rather it be snow. I know most people would disagree, but cold rain hurts my knees and is so freakin dreary - how am I supposed to maintain any sort of a Christmas spirit?

I know I give off an aura of all-knowingness and invincibility, but really underneath all of it i am a real person, honest. I can't take on responsibility for everything and everyone. I don't want to make all the decisions, whatever i think best may be a sucky answer people!! This is a rant aimed at my husband, daughter, best friend, store manager, other mom's at Angel's school, customers, vendors... will someone else occaisionally step up to the plate??

I just had my workload doubled. seriously doubled. Why you may ask?? because they don't want the person who usually does the extra work doing it. The person with the least amount of work who spends 6 hours a day doing other stuff is needed picking up the pieces left behind by the other useless people in his department. No answer as to what's wrong with the other 2 people, no not when I'm around. The answer? You do a great job, you have your department running smoothly, you manage to run the people that don't work for you, you always pass audits, you have great numbers, we're sure you can figure out a totally alien department filled with doodads, thingies, whatchamacallits, thingamajigs and doohickeys. Oh and the one person who knows stuff in said alien department?? will have him clean up the tile aisle for you in your original department!! Which by the way they were going to give to someone else for 2 months and then give it back to me ( all wrecked and broke I'm sure) So then I had to battle the it's my department if youlet someone else defile it I don't want it back.. mine...mine... mine.. you get the not so pretty picture, so then he's like so you'd be happier with double the work ---- yes my rock head gets me in trouble, but dammit it's MY department. Plus my method of stress releif is to unload the carpet cutie - i mean truck. My truck. So in the last 2 days since this was dumped on me I have spent a total of 2 hours in my dept ( including the truck) and 14 hours in hell, i mean hardware. Ok today wasn't as horrible as yesterday but still hell.

noro shawl

Ok, maybe if I had swatched I wouldn't have frogged 5 times - different needles, different number of stitches. Maybe if i had actually read the directions I wouldn't have had to frog it the 6th time.



So when I got to around here I realized there is no way in heck I have enough yarn for this. This was all that was left at this point of the first skein



So that's when i read the label and realized there was only about 200yds to a skein,. I don't know why I thought it was 400ish. Of course I then also realized I didn't think it would be enough to do the shawl even if it was 400. So I had to pm grace (needles54) who is the most amazing shawl knitter, and ask. She says it is going to get bigger when wet blocking and I only need 2 more skeins, 3 if i want to do a crocheted border. I'm not sure yet. not that I don't trust her really, I'm waiting to get to the end of the skein. I figure since the 2 ends meet I'll use the same lot on the 2 ends and the 3 or 4 new ones in the middle. I really like how it seems to work out that every color change has it's own pattern repeat



Then - yes this is seriously masochistic of me, I was considering trying to line up the color breaks on the new skeins so the center part has wider stripes - like to end up 3 patterns per color, by knitting 3 skeins at once. (I'm trying to picture it in my head - boththe finished project and the difficulty in bringing 2 yarns up the side )

So my plan is to finish with the skein I'm on and then bring it in to Mara's with me on Friday so Grace can give me an in person opinion ( see it's not grace I don't trust it's my photo abilities)

Ria

Some picture updates

On thanksgiving my daughter found out my mom had a shopping bag full of smaller plastic bags that had all kind of loose coinage from around the globe, mostly from the 60's and 70's. my grandfather traveled all over the world as a chemical engineer for American Cyanamid and while he changed back bills at the airport he threw loose coins in bags that my greatgrandfather kept and gave to my mom. So my daughter went threw and picked out a bunch that were "cool looking" and she is going to try to solder them to a metal cuff bracelet as a souvenir from her great-grandfather.



Sarah aka horse dog. My mom's akita. Has the sweetest disposition you could ever ask for - kinda retarded though.





Angie ( both pic's on the left) at the NJ div of the US Fencing Association's under 20 qualifiers for the junior olympics. She did horrible. Her worst tournament ever. She was actually crying when she left. She knew what she was doing wrong, just couldn't fix it. I am terrible when it comes to crying. First off there shouldn't be crying in sports!! Second I try kinda lamely to stop the crying. When that doesn't work I really have to stop myself from yelling at the crying. Seriously - I am not the person to turn to when you need comforting. I don't take comforting well either - I just want to be left alone , or storm around ( or unload trucks hee hee) So I have no idea how to stop the crying, bad mom yes I am. So i told her, she hasn't been fencing since the spring and she blew off 3 lesson/open fencing sessions. She was competing against some of the best kids in NJ. Most of whom fence year round. Seriously what did she expect?? Well starting yesterday she has fencing practice at school Mon to Fri for 2 1/2 hours and she has lessons/open fencing tues and thurs night until meets start and then it's tuesday or thursday as the meet schedule dictates. She was on a mission at practice yesterday. She was soaked when she came home last night, so I guess it motivated her anyway.