Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Ten on...what day is it??

I'll be damned it's Wednesday, isn't it. Well, here's my 10. I'm a day off...

10 Goals For This Summer 
A lot of these will seem similar to the spring to-do-list

  1. Finish the hallways: I've a little more mudding and sanding to do. There are some tricky issues with the upper hall that may hold things up, but I want them at least primed, even if I haven't picked finished colors yet. 
  2. Sew Little Miss a wardrobe. She's at an age where it will be easier to sew for her. She likes dresses, but she's also a climber and the two don't mesh well. I'm planning on making her some dress-like tops that won't catch on her knees when she's exploring. 
  3. Finish rearranging my work space. My boss built me a new storage unit and I've brought over my flat file. It is really starting to come together now into something that is far more efficient and even somewhat aesthetically pleasing.
  4. Not to get a wicked sunburn this year. 
  5. Participate in the Tour de Fleece....more on spinning later. 
  6. Overhaul my wardrobe...I'm done having minions and I'm through nursing. Now it's time to see what fits, what gets tossed and where I need to fill in the gaps. 
  7. Make jam...preferrably from fruit we've picked ourselves. My son lives on PB&J. I'll save a lot on the jelly if I can make my own. In my quest to keep the sugar tamed in our lives, I buy jelly that is sweetened with fruit juice...better for you, not your wallet. I'm hoping to make enough to last the year. 
  8. Grow a successful garden...a battleground between me and the rodents in my neighborhood. 
  9. Knit or spin everyday. I'm learning the importance of keeping my hands active, and why not get something pretty for my efforts. 
  10. Exercise. I'm starting physical therapy for my hands and legs because of the MS. The exhaustion is going to be my enemy in this area, but this is perhaps the most important thing on this list. 

And tomorrow I'll have an update with pretty, pretty pictures.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Ten on Tuesday

Today's Ten on Tuesday is a timely one. I'm on the verge of taking a bunch of time off to get a handle on some of the house projects. So, today's ten: 10 Items On Your Spring To-Do List.

  1. Power wash the house- It needs it. Bad. Lots of green stuff growing on our siding. It just needs to be done. 
  2. Wash the windows- after power washing, this is the next step. Luckily I have the type of windows that fold in for cleaning. 
  3. Sand and finish mudding the upstairs hallway- I just want to get this done. I'm tired of half finished drywall.
  4. Paint said hallway- then hubby can put up the fan.
  5. Finish the drywall in the main hall- this is where there use to be two doors and now it's a wall. I've got to make it look good and then paint it. It's going to be my main picture wall for all the old family pictures. 
  6. Finish power hook up in the upstairs- this is on my geek-boy's list since I don't play with electricity. But it's at the top of my list because then I can start finishing up there. 
  7. Work on the flower beds- I've started this. We're using the mulch created by grinding out our stump for the beds. We're creating a new one along the back fence line, and when we replace the other window well, I'll tie together the front bed and the back one. (how's that for a run-on sentence?)
  8. Replace the last window well- hubby has done the other two, so this might be more on his list than mine, but it needs to just get done.
  9. Raised vegetable beds- I need to figure out placement, build and then get it ready for planting. 
  10. Wash and put out all the out door paraphernalia- chairs, table, fire pit etc... basically set it up for a summer of fun. 
Lots to do. And lots more after that. I better get going. Especially on the projects leading me to having my own studio space. I have some big plans for the future, but I need my evil lair before I can implement them.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

And best wishes to my best friend who is off to give birth to her son! Good luck!

Monday, May 14, 2012

Update Monday

Let me just start off saying that the package of yarn arrived safely, but not after it had left the state to figure out where it needed to go. I really don't know what the mix-up was since the address on the package was correct. Watching the package tracking was sort of like watching the downloading bar progress and then jump back when you are really waiting on that information. But it came and here is what was in it:


DSC_0343 The yarn is more of a blue than the photo shows. It is Lorna's Laces Solemate and it is destined to be come Bigger on the Inside. Unfortunately, or not, this particular shawl isn't for me. I'm making it for my sister-in-law, who surprised me with an amazing Dr. Who inspired present for my birthday.



Yes. That is a stained glass Tardis candle holder. Which she made. So I think she deserves the first of these shawls that I knit. I'm about to the halfway point of the lace panel on the shawl. The pattern is a very interesting construction. You knit the lace section from one end to the other, increasing then decreasing as you go. Then you pick up stitches along one edge and knit the Tardis design down from there. I can't say that I'm really enjoying the lace section. It's an easy enough pattern but I just can't seem to get into the groove of it. Perhaps because I'm trying to do it while watching TV. I'll try listening to podcasts instead and see if that helps.

I'm liking the yarn so far. It's quite lovely to knit with and not turning my fingers blue while I knit, as often I find the deeper blues do. My only complaint is the condition of the skein. One of them wound perfectly. The other....

DSC_0349 as you can see, not so much. I don't know why this keeps happening to me. I'm not sure if I blogged about the Rios debacle a few years back. Two of my three skeins did this. It is as if when winding the skein they went the wrong way for a few rounds and then back again. My husband has spent several hours this weekend working on this. He's like a vampire with a knot obsession, a real vampire, not the sparkly kind.

DSC_0344I'm making headway on Gaia.
 I really like this pattern. I'm further along than the picture here shows, but this gives you the idea of how the yarn split up when I separated the knots. Oh Noro, why? But the nice thing is that I can follow this pattern when I'm completely drugged up, so that's good.

And why was I drugged up, might you ask? I had my first infusion to treat my MS on Friday. I finally got my test back and found it was safe for me to begin treatment. I was armed with my two shawl projects, a book and my DVD player with some Babylon 5 and Pride and Prejudice (wasn't sure what my viewing mood would be). I took the day off, not knowing how it was going to effect me. And it's good I did. The first six doses of the once a month treatment include an IV dose of Benadryl, in case of allergic reaction. Now I regularly take Benadryl, and it doesn't have much effect on me. Well, Friday was a whole different story. That stuff hit me fast and hit me hard. I had been reading the pattern for Bigger on the Inside, and suddenly it was just a blur of letters to me. I spent much of the infusion napping...well I spent most of the rest of the day (and night) asleep. To be fair I had been hit with a small stomach bug that struck down my husband earlier in the week. It took him a day or so to sleep that off, so I think it was the one-two punch that knocked me out. Either way I was next to useless. I guess we will see with next month's infusion.

Mother's day was low key, but rather lovely. From Little Miss I received a version of the handprints poem and her prints on some nice watercolor paper. From Little Dude it was a box painted and decorated (handprint on top) and the poem inside with a bracelet that he strung. My husband gave me some flowers and a package of smoked salmon all to myself.

We had our trees worked on finally. The damage from Snowpocalypse left them in need of major attention. We had a lot of hangers that would drop whenever the wind picked up. I was terrified to let the kids play outside. We joined forces with our neighbor so that the tree company could come out once with the heavy equipment. In the end, we each had a tree removed. I'm sad to see the lovely old red oak go, but it needed it. Our tree guy is one who prefers to keep trees, if it is safe to. So when he says it should go, I trust him. It ended up that this particular tree was rotting down the center from the top down and and bottom up. The hadn't quite met in the middle yet. But now we have somewhere to put the big pirate ship playscape in our yard.
Here's a few pics of the felling of our tree:

Monday, May 07, 2012

That horrible moment...

when you are tracking a package of yarn, yarn you are desperately waiting for and it says this:
Your item was forwarded to a different address at 8:11 am on May 07, 2012 in Another town, CT zip code two digits off. This was because of forwarding instructions or because the address or ZIP Code on the label was incorrect. Information, if available, is updated periodically throughout the day. Please check again later.

I think I'm going to explode. 

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Tickled Pink

I'm sorry about the lack of posting. Blogger has changed again and I'm totally lost...and apparently so is a post or two. I'm very confused.

So I want to thank those who donated to team Pirate Robots. I was deeply touched by and it means so much to me. By the post title you might guess that we reached our goal. Not quite but we came close enough that I went pink anyway. We raised $1,734 out of our $2000 goal. (You can still donate until May 25th.)

I'm loving the pink. I'm not quite loving my hair's reaction to the bleaching. The ends took a beating and now my hair is very easily tangled. I'll be getting a cut soon...and we may work some purple into the color. Little Dude loves it and has requested that it goes purple next. He also wants it blue for his birthday party.

Life has been a little bit of a whirlwind lately. I've continued to have numerous doctor's appointments and tests. I'll be receiving treatment at phenomenal MS center very near to where I work. This place is truly amazing. They have state of the art equipment for just about any issue you could have with this disease. The staff is very warm and welcoming. I keep saying how lucky I am. It sucks having the disease but when we caught it and the fact that I am located near such a wonderful treatment facility, I really am lucky.

Now I've just got to fight the exhaustion that comes with the disease. At least now I know why I'm so damn tired all the time. Of course chasing down two minions doesn't help in that area either. Little Miss is really taking off on the whole walking thing. She's now shifted to more walking than crawling, and a lot more walking without hanging on to things. And she's really perfecting her climbing. She climbs EVERYTHING. I had to pull her off the front of the stove the other day. And when you tell her 'No' she just turns her head and smiles. Luckily I'm immune to such wiles. I keep telling her that I invented that look. She's also not afraid to express her opinions (not my daughter?!?!). Yesterday I tried to put her back into her pj's after changing her diaper first thing in the morning. She immediately started to complain and point to her closet. So I stripped her down and then held her up to her clothes. Little Miss pushed aside clothing until she found the dress she wanted and then grabbed onto that. Mind you, she's barely a year old!!!! I'm in trouble with this one.

With Little Dude we are still having Adventures in Potty Training. Last night/this morning what had a major set back. He sneaked into our bed a some point in wee hours without my husband noticing. Normally that's not so much a problem but he slept so deeply that he peed in our bed. The bed I had just changed the sheets on (for the first time in longer than I'd ever admit). Not how one likes to start their day.

On the knitting front, I've been knitting, but don't have much to show for it. I started a Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman. In usual form I didn't bother with a gauge swatch and that came back to bite me, only because it is bigger than I wanted for the intended giftee. So I put it off to the side a day or so ago. I may continue on it or I may frog it.
What I did do, however was a little sit down with my Noro Kueyron Sock. I have a love hate relationship with Noro yarns. I think they are beautiful, but my god are they full of knots. I've not had a skein of Noro that has had less than two knots in it, which can really suck when working with their colorways. A friend of mine was knitting the Gaia Should Hug and came across a knot. She continued on and then realized that the next run of yarn had the color changes going in the other direction. This is the shawl that this yarn is destined for and when I initially wound the skein I ended up with 3 separate runs of yarn. It was very Goldilocks....I had the big ball, the medium ball and the itty bitty ball. So being the freak that I am, I sat down, rewound each ball and wrote down the colors as they would so that I could line up the color changes. Ok, a little OCD, but when it is the look that you want, go for it. I found that what I have isn't too far off and I should be able to make it work without too much variation from the intended gradation of color. The colorway is a lovely mix of maroon, orange, green gold, green brown and a deep and light purple.

I'm hoping to cast that on tonight.

The red vest is sitting alone until I have some coherent alone time to work the shaping on the top. My double heelix socks are...somewhere. I ripped back the cuff on the first sock and are staring to continue the striping pattern and teaching myself jog-less stripes as I go. I'm planning on a ton of projects because I've been listening to knitting podcasts and they are adding things to my knitting queue as well as my reading and watching queue. But another post about podcasts later. I must be off to liberate the minions from daycare.

Ten on Tuesday

I'm back for Ten on Tuesday.  Today's topic: 10 Items Pinned to your Bulletin Board. This would be have to be my work bulletin board since my studio is still in process of being moved.


  • Color sheet from the top three paint brands I use at work. I've recently learned that I must hoard these since they are no longer being made. Since our budgets are so paltry, I can't keep a can of every color in stock and rely on these sheets to decide on what I need to order for a show. 
  • A lovely drawing done by Little Dude. This one is purple crayon on newsprint.
  • A drill bit guide. Think knitting needle/crochet hook gauge tool, but for drill bits. 
  • The paint formula numbers for the black box theatres. Comes in handy when walls need repainting. 
  • Decimal equivalents chart-for the obscene amount of math required on the job. 
  • A list of the days daycare is closed....so I remember to take those days off. 
  • The list of shows we will be doing next season.
  • My work scarf for when it gets two damn cold in here. This is one I don't care if I get paint on.
  • Various business cards, contact info and phone numbers. 
  • A bit of inspiration in sign form: 
  • We the willing 
    Led by the unknowing 
    Are doing the impossible 
    For the ungrateful
    We have done so much
    For so long with so little 
    We are now qualified 
    To do anything 
    With nothing.

    That about sums up my job. 

    So not really fun, but a little snapshot of my workday.