Thank Ye Veterans

As cynical as I can be, I do always like to take a moment out of Veterans' Day to think about those people in my life who've served. There've been a few, namely both my grandfathers. Other relatives as well, but no one especially close to me. Until I met Bethany Carpenter. She was one of my roommates freshman year of college and remains one of my best friends. She went through ROTC and commissioned shortly after graduation as an officer in the United States Air Force with final marks in the top 10 perfect of all officers commissioning in the country that year. As someone with very little in the way of patriotism or political inclinations, it surprised even me when I cried like a baby during the ceremony. It finally occurred to me then how insanely proud of her I am.

So far she's been stationed in Texas for training and Japan for the last year. We've managed to keep in touch throughout then through various means, even watching the finale of our favorite show, Castle, via Skype.

In not too long, Bethany will be deploying to Afghanistan.

I can't think of anything coherent to say about it. Such a mix of emotions are involved... I don't even know what to say. But Bethany is my veteran. I remain intensely proud of her and thankful that people like her exist. So much so that it robs me of words. 

Semi-Normal

Power finally finally came back on around dinner time last night. I almost cried when we drove past and saw that the lights were on. The past week has been a blur of endless boredom punctuated by a few lovely moments. But mostly boredom.

We tried to stay in our apartment, but the lack of electricity and especially heat made us leave. We spent a few nights at my parents' house 10 minutes from our apartment and one evening at some friends' who only lost power for a few hours. We slept at the apartment... twice? We tried to spend Sunday here too (I think it was Sunday, they've all run together) and it was actually one of the nicest days of the whole ordeal. We'd been leaving Bosco behind and feeling horrible about it. He'd get a little playtime when we came to feed him, but not nearly enough. So when we came home on Sunday together and both sat down on the couch, he hopped right up between us (which he never does) and snuggled right up. Sometime later in the day, when the light began to wane, Boyfriend & I got into bed to huddle under the blankets and not only did Bosco join us on the bed, but he wanted under the blankets too! Our little family all huddled up together... it was lovely. But soon it got full-on dark and COLD and we packed up to go again. This time, we took Bosco with us. He was less than thrilled at the prospect, and hid once we put him in his new room, but as soon as he realized we were there with him he came right out and sat by us and played and was happy as a clam.

The hardest part for me was probably spending so much time in close quarters with my mother. We tend to butt heads pretty hard, and I feel like she tends to treat me like I'm a complete moron. I imagine it's more just typical mother-daughter bickering, but it''s still not super duper funtimes. It's a measure of just how cold we were lol.

But now we're home. Warm and cozy. No work for me all last week nor so far this week because power is still out over there, and now that I'm home I'm going slightly less stir crazy. I spent this morning picking up, responding to emails, running errands. Nothing terribly exciting. I made sure all of last week's TV was downloaded so I'm catching up on some of that as well. Just chilling. It's nice - despite not really doing anything last week it wasn't relaxing or fun at all. This, however, is.

I spent the week playing Pokémon Black (yes, I adore Pokémon. It's true. I can't hide it. So sue me. =D) and knitting, though more of the former and less of the latter. (My DS is backlit, and it was kind of the deciding factor in this situation lol). I did get my sister's Christmas cowl finished over the week & it got washed today and is happily blocking in a window. It's one-and-a-bit skeins of Mal Worsted in Verdes Esperanza, which is one of my favorite Mal colorways. It is, as always, delicious and soft and wonderful. I'm so addicted to this yarn. Love.

Pre-blocking!

I also started Boyfriend's Sister-In-Law's Christmas Slouchy hat. I'm making an Everglade (sort of... it's an interpretation) out of my first skein of Cephalopod Yarn Traveller in Stranger's Home, AK. I'm not as insane about the base as a lot of people seem to be, but the color is stupendous and I would work with this again just to have more of this color around.

LOVE

That's pretty much everything of interest at the moment. The goal is to get at least 8 more rounds knit on the hat today. Hopefully before I run out of episodes of The Voice to watch. Why is Adam Levine wearing shirts that look like they belong to a hobo? I love him... but really. Also, I love the crap out of Cassadee Pope. Loved her in Hey Monday, love her now. Love. 

Oh Sandra Dee

This is basically what's happening right now. But you probably knew that. =)

Had a great time at the Bergen County Harvest Festival on Saturday, but it got cancelled on Sunday because of the impending doom so I stayed home with my bff and we made chocolate chip cookies 3 ways: traditional, pumpkin, and monster cookies. Poor Bosco is losing his mind right now, meowing his head off. It's super annoying and at the same time I feel really bad because there's nothing I can do to comfort him. He's reverted to "SCARED OF EVERYTHING OMG DON'T EAT ME" mode and is thus inconsolable.

They did make us go into work today, though, which made me irate to say the least. How dare they have such little regard for their employees! The majority of towns in the county are closed today, and yet I had to go in? Seriously? They let us go early, but the drive home was still dangerous, especially for those of us who had to cross over a river to get home. The Hackensack River is very flood-happy and happens to be 2 blocks from my apartment building. I didn't dare take the bridge I usually take because it's quite low and made of iron gridding (and is super slippery even when it's totally dry). Instead I had to take the bridge that they closed half of for weight-bearing issues (joy!). This much longer route did allow me to see the extent of the flooding thus far. I could only see about 2 or 3 feet of the play structures in one of the parks next to the bridge. It hasn't even rained that much here yet! If they don't cancel for whatever reason tomorrow and think I'll be going in for another pointless four hours, they're crazy.

Whatever, I'm home now. Time for some TV. Maybe some Sims 3. Definitely some hurricane knitting. I should probably work on my sister's cowl (which is coming along beautifully, I should say) but I like to work on "selfish projects" when I stay home for some unforeseen reason and there's 3 skeins of Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande that are begging to be made into a scarf for moi. We'll see what happens.

Everyone in the affected area: STAY HOME. Seriously. Stay inside. Grab a book. Keep your flashlight handy. Make some tea. Mull some wine. Don't go out unless you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. Keep the roads clear for emergency personel and keep yourself safe.

The Quest for the Epic Nap

I'm so tired. I love this time of year: the crisp air and changing leaves. But the past few days it's just been SO GREY out that it's been impossible to properly wake up. And so I'm sleepy all day. Things in the office haven't been exactly easy this week either. There's always one drama or another going on, but I feel like they're compounded right now and all I want to do is to stay out of it. ...I'm just so thankful for the impending weekend. And this Vanilla Spice Perfect Energy tea from Yogi that is just phenomenal.

Everything is tagged and ready to go for the show this weekend and the weather is supposed to hold out before Frankenstorm hits Sunday night. Hopefully it won't be too stressful. :)

I think I'm finally making headway on my sister's holiday cowl as well. I had to frog it several times already, and I've been through several patterns. I finally decided last night that I'm just going to improvise. It's almost always the answer. The internet is both a wonderful and terrible thing for patterns. People like to just invent their own nonsensical terminology and it's infuriating, especially when it's a pattern that I've paid for. I find that it's almost always better to do it myself. This is a rant that will be posted and reposted in many parts a number of time. People and their patterns and their insane possessiveness over work that is in large part stolen anyway and their utter ineptitude at that plagiarism... epic amounts of ranting can be done on this topic. But I'll stop for now and instead reiterate my joy at feeling like I'm finally on my way to getting this cowl finished. Yay cowls!

I'm planning on taking an epic, epic nap when I get home, something which I am perhaps inappropriate amounts of excited about. Between that and my promise elicited last night from Boyfriend for a backrub this evening, I just really want this day to be over. Really truly. In the mean time I'll keep chugging my energy tea and try to not get a headstart on my nap.

A Personal Best

Well, it's a personal best. 9 FO's froms start to finish in 7 days. 4 hats, 3 headbands, a ruffle scarf, and a cowl. Granted, one of the headbands is meant to have some serious button embellishments, but it's only done blocking about now. Since I cast off last night before I went to bed, it counts. =) I feel like I could've upped it to ten, but I spent most of Saturday futzing around with the Sims (as I am wont to do from time to time) and yesterday was surprise birthday lunch/baby shower craziness running around, so I only got to knit for a few hours before bed. Whatever. I'm still pleased. None of them were sissy tiny little things, either. Not large, but not worsted weight crocheted snowflakes either. Though I did purchase some crochet thread... Next week. That will have to be next week.

Tonight I relaxed, played some Sims, and then ordered Indian food & caught up (almost, now we're only one episode behind instead of four) on Once Upon a Time with Boyfriend. Got in a repeat of my sister's giant Christmas cowl as well. It was nice and quiet, which is how I like it. =) Tomorrow is tagging night. Everything for the show needs its final embellishments & stuff sewn on, tags & labels added, and get written into inventory. This way I'm not running around at the last second. I mean, I will, invariably, be running around on Friday for some reason, but I feel that as long as I try to avoid most of the headless chickening I'll only get slapped with the minimum when it comes right down to it.

Now, my bed is calling. As is my kindle. And a large glass of water. Sweet dreams, fair internetz.

No Stopping Now...

<p>The whirlwind of FO's has slowed some, but not stopped just yet. Remember how I left my knitting at my desk on Monday night? Well I finished the hat I'd been working on and started a chunky braidy headband with half a skein of Mal in Pagoda. I had every intention of finishing the headband in no time at all as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, it too wanted to have a sleepover with my pen cup so the headband (and my Kindle, which caused much swearing) so it stayed behind last night. Which made me want to cry. But it was okay. </p>
<p>Usually Tuesday is my night to myself, but Boyfriend stayed home Tuesday and was instead absent last night because of an open house at his school. So I had my mac and cheese and settled down on the couch with some tv and two skeins of Swoon Fibers Lustre that I bought at the fiber fest to make a stripey chevron cowl. I poked around at a few patterns to see how most people did their increases at the top of the chevron, and tried one way. A few rows in I decided that I couldn't take how sloppy it looked, so I switched to raised increases and it looks much better now. There's still a few of the messy rows at the bottom but I'll tighten up those stitches with a pin and no one will be the wiser. The yarn is dreamy to work with; I don't even mind the thick\thin variations which usually drive me batty because it's so lovely. I'll have to post a photo once I get it blocked.</p>
<p>Otherwise nothing much is new. I'm not feeling my best, but not my worst either. I definitely picked up some kind of cold in Maryland. Ugh. But this weekend is looking fairly relaxing, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm hosting a KA swap tomorrow night with KYS on Rav, Saturday is nothing as far as I know, so maybe Boyfriend and I can go catch an early showing of Pitch Perfect, and Sunday is the baby shower, but since I'm not hosting, no stress for me! Hooooray. =)</p>
Hopefully tonight I can get all my FO's washed and/or blocked tonight so I can sew on tags and labels this weekend. And I'll try and finish the chevron cowl. These seem like reasonable goals. Although I have been summoned to dinner with my parents tonight, so that may throw a wrench in it. Sigh.

Poppin' Out The FO's!

My oh my, it's been a week. Naughty blogger, naughty naughty. I can't even remember what happened last week to keep me away! lol It wasn't anything important, I know that. I spun a little, knit a little... Finished Baby Anna's little Santa cap for my friend's baby shower this coming weekend. Some Mal Worsted in Natural & Rav Red. Easy peasy. But since Anna is due a few weeks before Christmas, I figured it would be perfect, if only for them to use in a photo to include with their Christmas thank-you notes. I also think it's funny because Anna's momma said that her Christmas gift to her parents & in-laws was a grandchild, so it's just perfect.

I CO my sister's Christmasy cowl too, though I didn't get much done on it. Other things... took precedent as the weekend approached.

We went down to Annapolis this past weekend to visit with Anna's parents-to-be and my law school friend in the area as well as Boyfriend's cousin at the Naval Academy. We went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival (Or RennFest, as they call it, which makes no sense to me because Renaissance... Weird.), which is WAY bigger than the one at Tuxedo, NY. The quality of the vendors was also outstanding. And everything was much more reasonably priced too, which was nice and made me feel less bad about Boyfriend paying for much of it.

It took forever to get home on Sunday, and despite my exhaustion I've since been on a crazy knitting kick. I finished the Ainara gloves Sunday night...

Then I started a quick simple cap from a ball of Moda Dea Tweedle Dee I had laying around. Got a few rows on that done before bed Sunday and finished it off that evening. When  I finished that I cast on a small-person cabley hat with my spare skein of Mirasol Kutama that I worked on through pub trivia last night and finished this morning...

And THEN I cast on a duplicate of a hat I made for a friend for Christmas in some Mal Chunky. I'm now 4.5 inches into that and expect to finish it this evening. I'm very proud of myself! =D 

I'm feeling a little concerned about my FO stock. The Fiber Fest cleaned me out way more than I anticipated it would, and so I'm just trying to knock out some bulky projects so give me a boost before the Bergen County Fall Harvest Festival next weekend. I have two more chunky headbands lined up after these, and after that a cowl. If I can finish all that by the end of the weekend, I'll be a little more comfortable. 

So it's good that this week is quiet so far. I decided to take a break from knitting to try and get an entry in. I'll have to wait until I get home to (finally) get my etsy shop back up to scratch (and to post this entry, apparently) which is what I planned on doing this afternoon because I left my thumb drive with all the pictures on it in my computer. Le sigh. 

Oh well. Just keep moving. I feel like I might be eating better, but my body's having another week of rebelling so it's hard to tell how that's going. I'm super restricted financially this week, which will actually make it easier to start with the "getting a better grip on my money" thing. I also feel like it's easier because I'm knitting nonstop and therefore not thinking about buying yarn so much lol. It feels really good to be MAKING again. Dyeing and spinning just aren't as satisfying to me. There's nothing like sitting down and turning string into something wearable and soft. I looove it. =)

Back to knitting. Hoping I can start the crown before it's time to go home. Two hours... Let's try and see!

Addendum: Left the burgundy hat in my desk. DRAT.

Waiter, Another Weekend Please

Still completely zonked. It's sad. I spent yesterday morning trying to get the online shoo back up but it was definitely a trial. There's still a ton of new stuff to add in, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it yesterday. I did get some work done on TeddyLion: he now has a neck and arm holes. And Tina's cowl and my first Ainara glove got finished at the fest. The second glove is probably a third done. And I cast on my sister's Christmasy cowl.  So pretty productive. But the end result is that I'm still pooped. I didn't get to make my pies either, though hopefully I'll get to put those together this evening.

I also went to the chiropractor for the first time ever. I'm pretty sure it'll be the last too. I was super sore all day yesterday and I feel the same as I did before I went to see him today. So that's it for that, methinks. Stupid Groupon.

I know this isn't the happy festival recap update I promised. It will come, probably this evening or tomorrow. I'm just in a cranky mood today and I want to be able to put some joy into it. Part of the crankiness comes from being tired and this being pseudo-Monday, and part from some irritating friends who were gungho about a little road trip planned months ago for this coming weekend but who are now ignoring my messages and dodging my calls. And part is from a little self-loathing. I really really need to get a better grip om both my finances and my diet. I sound like a broken record, even to myself, I just can't figure out how to make a change that will stick. With finances I just really need to cut down on my spending because particularly after this weekend's minispree. No more eating out or getting delivery, no more etsy purchases except for Christmas gifts, less swapping to cut down on postage.... that's easy enough. And it does play right into the diet thing. I need to get to the gym at least three times a week and stop eating irresponsibly. These are things I've said and started and tried and failed at a dozen times in the past few months. This time it just needs to stick. Needs to. I need to conquer this desire to do nothing but sit around and knit and nap and eat. Pure willpower. That's what needs to happen. Hopefully writing about it will help, and maybe I'll start up on Weight Watchers again. We'll see. But for now... pure willpower. =]

Now if only I weren't so tired...

Exhaustastic

I am exhaustastic. Which is exhausted but fantastic. The past weekend was a blur. I hope to write more in depth about the festival, but I don't think I'm clear enough to do so now. I went out with my last helper, my dear friend Alexis, for a cupcake at Crumbs, then drove her to her opera rehearsal. Drove home. Boyfriend & his friend came home with Indian food. Watched some Frozen Planet (which is awesome and worth your time, by the way). Updated my Rav stash. Again. And now I'm just kind of staring into space in a yarn-induced stupor. It's definitely not helped by the fact that Boyfriend & his friend are sitting around creating Pathfinder (read: Dungeons & Dragons) characters and debating which kind of dinosaur their character should ride. Which is confusing and surreal and as my mind is tired & in a suggestible state I'll probably be romping around on a dino in my dreams later. While knitting. And wearing a squid hat. ...it's been an eventful weekend lol. I'm eternally grateful to have tomorrow off. I'm going to go get lost in Rav pattern searches now, so that I may figure out what to do with my skein of mink yarn. Because I now own mink yarn. As Alexis would say, "Cray cray!"

My Point Of View

I wasn't really planning on posting anything today because, let's be real, I'm EXHAUSTED lol. Towards the end of the festival today I was finally succumbing to what I believe to be a hardcore allergy attack. Headache, nausea... It may also have been a migrane, because the blinkiness of the sun between the trees on the drive home made me want to die. After some restorative English Afternoon tea & Digestives (God, but I love the Brits) I was recovered sufficiently to peruse my purchases and update my rav stash. I was more relaxed than I have been in... a while. I put on some music, Boyfriend was working (read: playing a game on the computer), and Bosco was observing me from the top of the couch where he likes to perch...

Bosco did come to investigate for a time, but as he has yet to get over his crippling fear of yarn, he did not make it very far before retreating to the couch again.

When I finished taking my pictures in the terrible, terrible overhead light of my apartment, I slid myself carefully up onto the couch and used Bosco as a pillow. He's very skittish and nervous about a lot of physical contact with us, but for some reason he doesn't mind it when I do this. I love it because it does show a certain level of... trust? Not sure what the best word would be. He can just be so terrified of us sometimes for no apparent reason, and as he is a rescue with a history unknown to use I imagine that's his right. Which is why it kind of means something to me that he lets me cuddle up to him that way. I was in such a relaxed, magnificently peaceful place, and then a new song came on.

Ever have one of those moments when you're just kind of in the zone? No zone in particular, just a zone, and the perfect song comes on to capture the moment? It might not even be a song you would have picked to encapsulate this little picture frame in time, but when you hear the lyrics, and I mean really hear them in that moment, it's like the hand of fate reached out and altered the shuffle on your music player of choice to provide you with the icing on the gooey brownie of that moment. I had that. And it was perfect.

I feel better when I paint my days
With purple seas and left-out greys
Strange is just a different point of view

Life moved and I stopped to taste it
I drank it up 'til it left me wasted
But my rains have bled a softer red
Oh, you should see
The world inside my head
                                   --"World Inside My Head", Sister Hazel, Before the Amplifiers

Day 1 of NJFAF: Complete

Stupendous day today! I had such fun and met so many excellent people! It's just so much fun, not to mention relaxing, to be around so many people who GET my fiber obsession and yet who are different enough from myself and each other that lively and engaging conversations are to be had everywhere. From the tiny little boy with the shock of blonde hair and blue eyes that came right up to me and said, "This is a LOT of YARN!" to the elderly woman with the walker & dual hearing aides who, in between lamenting that she didn't do more knitting, writing, and reading when she could still see well enough was raving about her Nook and excited about cowls, everyone was awesome! I mean that truly; I do a lot of craft shows and most of the time attendees are politely disinterested at best. And I understand that a lot of that probably comes from the nature of what I sell. If you don't know anything about fiber arts, the yarn & roving is fun to touch at best and utterly baffling to most. And since everything I make isn't made of Red Heart Super Saver (no offense intended, it definitely has its place) and I can't sell scarves for $5, everyone who's just looking for a cheap Christmas gift for dad walks away too. And at your average show, that's 95% of people who come by. It's not their fault, and I've learned to pick and choose my shows carefully in recent years to minimize the perplexed looks. But this... This crowd, the attendees, the fellow vendors, the coordinators... It's only the end of Day 1 and I've already had a stupendous time. I'm SO PSYCHED for tomorrow.

I did manage to keep my spending under control (mostly) today. My neighbors have tried to sell me another spindle, but I'm going to try and gracefully give it back tomorrow as $50 on yet another spindle is really not in the budget. Especially when there's YAK to be had. I mean, come on. Srsly.

I'll try and post pictures on Monday, mayhaps. I'm really tired and tomorrow is another longish day, so I should get my little buttski to bed. I also need to give my darling Bosco some attention, as he's feeling miffed at being left alone all day. He's scared of yarn, so he just doesn't get it. He's super cute though. =D

Exhausted...

Given my long, sordid, and oftentimes ooky medical history, you'd think that a little blood draw would be nothing to me. But as the lucky genetic recipient of my grandfather's deep-set blood vessels, it's something I avoid if at all possible. No one has ever, ever gotten in on a first try: the number is usually more like four or five when all is said and done. Even talented and experienced flebotamists are stymied by my arms. And while I have no real fear of needles, my body freaks out every time they sit me down with the intention of sticking me with one. I've always had extremely acute physical reactions to stress; regardless of how zen or unstressed my mind might be, tears, panic attacks, spikes in blood pressure, and fainting are all possibilities in Angelaland. I don't even get upset, my body just goes haywire. I've even developed an allergy about stress: prolonged periods of stress will cause me to start breaking out into hives.

So, needless to say, my two-hour sojourn to the doctor yesterday was not pleasant. I remain anemic and exhausted and have a giant "bruise" in the crook of my elbow that still hurts, but hopefully this is almost at an end. Boyfriend was sympathetic last night and took me to our local bbq place. A full rack of ribs, veggies, coleslaw, and soda for less than $30. Can't argue with that. Especially when it's followed by Dairy Queen. I then finished tagging and labeling everything for this weekend and relaxed with the Azapa cowl before passing out.

I feel ready for the fiber fest. Mostly. The bulk of the anxiety is gone, now I'm just ready for it to start. Today is mandatory relaxation day. I have an appointment with my wonderful eyebrow lady and then to get my hair chopped off. If they have time I'm going to splurge for a mani-pedi too. If not, I'll just paint my toesies when I get home. Then it's catch up on tv and work on cowl/teddy lion time, and early to bed. That's the plan, anyways. This all assumes that I survive this day in the office.  Everyone seems to have lost their mind. Something is afoot, but I don't know what and if I don't need to find out that's a-okay. I'm just going to keep my head down and try not to take an anemia-induced nap. =)

Fiber Fest... She Comes...

I feel like I haven't fully come awake yet. Even though my extra large coffee from QuickChek is long gone and I've been out of been out of bed for over six hours now, it's so grey and wet and yucky out that I just can seem to shake my desire to curl back up in bed with my book and cat and read until I lapse into an awesome afternoon nap. Holy wow that's a long sentence. Anyway, it's making it very difficult to wake all the way up.

Not that I would actually curl up in bed if I got to go home. With the fiber festival less than three days away, I'd get back to prepping. Reskeining dyed hanks, probably. I'm heading over to my parents' after work where the bulk of my stock lives and taking an inventory of everything and hopefully getting the car packed up. This does mean I'll be driving around with my entire business crammed into my car for a few days, but it's better than having to get up even earlier on Friday to do it without my father's help. He's a packing genius and it'll be so much easier to just have him do it in one fell swoop. Sighhhhhh.

Current WIP Roundup
Teddy Lion: I really have to get back to this. Really really. It's just something I have to actively pay attention to. But the baby shower approacheth quickly! Damn. I've still got just the head done. This is my number one priority starting Monday.

Tina's Cowl: Frogged the slip stitch pattern because it just wasn't working out. The mock cables are going quickly and I'm thinking this will make a good project to work on at the Fest.

Azapa Crosshatch Lace Cowl: Threw this on the needles because I was in dire need of a quick fix project. This yarn is AMWRAZING. I'm definitely going to use this to start my first sweater. Got to get collecting! This is the perfect yarn for a cowl, though - lightweight but super soft and warm, just the slightest bit fuzzy. Once I finish Tina's cowl this weekend I'll knock the rest of this out.

Ainara Whirlpool Fingerless Gloves: I totally forgot about these. These too will come this weekend - what better place to work with my own dye job than where I'm selling it?

Homespun Tree Skirt: Ugh. I'll get back to this once everything else is finished.

That teddy lion is killing me. I have the day off on Monday (thank goodness, after the insane weekend I'll be having) and I'll just make myself work on it. Maybe put on some How I Met Your Mother reruns on Netflix or something. If I thought I could bribe someone to do it I would do it and happily, especially since it occurs to me that I have NO clue how I'm going to attach the ruff that will take it from bear to lion. Crochet, I guess. At the very least the pattern I'm using (Vera) is knit in one piece, so the "assembly" is really just weaving in ends, stuffing, and adding eyes and the ruff. No sewing on of limbs or heads or ears. Seamless. It's a beautiful thing. ...I hope.

Grumble grumble. I should go eat my apple. And make a price list for this weekend. And get my donation to the raffle ready. And probably a dozen other things. Fiber fest, though art both temptress and slave driver at once.

Freedom of the Blog

I swear I say this every time I "start" a blog, but I have confidence this time... Confidence and (I hope) fewer illusions about blogging grandeur. It may possibly also be that my persistent case of apathy towards pop culture is kicking in, though it's always hard to tell. I was in the thick of it during the height of Xanga madness but that was a personal journal kind of thing, a means of teenagers to connect and express themselves (at least in theory). The commercialism of it all has always both intrigued and annoyed me; people just get so <I>snotty</I> about their damn blogs sometimes! Maybe that's me being snotty though. After all, to doubt the veracity and worth of a work just because it may have been written from a smartphone makes me a hypocrite, n'est pas?

Because what I started to say was this: every time I start a blog or journal or chronicle of any kind, I always, <I>always</I>, be it a diary from the third grade or LiveJournal from college, promise myself I'm going to write faithfully. There were good chunks of time where I did, too. And I'm certain that, were I to go back through those volumes, most of the initial entries would read just like this one. Often, they were if not the last entry then one of only a handful before the inevitable end.

There's not really any obvious difference this time around. Just hope. And a feeling. The convergence of a few key factors. Work has slowed considerably since the madness and crushing insanity that is the summer at my office. There's finally "an app for that", one that actually seems to work. And... a feeling. It's probably about time. And so, here it is. My blog. Hopefully it'll mostly be about yarn and fibery pursuits (much like my hopes for life at the moment) but I'm not limiting myself to that. I find that I am much like a third grader not only in that I think farts are hilarious, but also that if I tell myself that I CANNOT do something, it makes it far more likely that either I'll do it anyway and feel bad after or that I'll just stop the activity altogether. So whatever. Yarn journal, vanity project, place to rant... I've given myself freedom to blog as the spirit moves me. Here's to hoping that it just keeps moving at all.  =)

Too Many WIPs...

I have too many WIPs. It's irritating me. Even though no pressure exists, I feel like their incompleteness is my fault and it's stressing me out. I'm going to rectify this.

I (drunkenly) finished my CashTosh cap at Tommy's last night, so that's one down. I'm going to finish my first FO for the Handspun KAL today, and that will be two. Then I'll just have these (stupid boring) fingerless gloves that I'm just whipping up in garter from some LB Amazing, the Lauca cowl, and Liz's fingerless gloves that I need to frog and restart. And I really want to CO Tina's cowl too. I have to cake that yarn first, as well as hank a TON more yarn for dyeing.... I need to get dyeing again or I'll get swamped... ...that may be it. I can do this. I can. Writing it out will help. Which is the point. Yes?