Too Pooped to Party

Mom says hello but really she is just too pooped from her new job to do much posting about what she is knitting. She has been trying to finish a gift for a friend that she says she is over but I have a feeling she will use that pattern again another time since it's pretty simple. So mom sends her love and I am are watching her every move as she sits at the computer working on lesson plans for her new teaching job. Hopefully she will have a break soon. I know she would like to show you her latest finished project and give me a cookie too. Any hoo, I have to stand (lay) guard in case she needs us.

Love, Charlie

Gifts

I have been struggling for the past few weeks, well...maybe a month now to post on my blog. I have been knitting gifts for friends that I will be seeing in Philly in early August. I am getting down to the wire and I am trying my darnest to get the last one done. I have knit this same pattern at least 6 or 7 times now and frankly, I am over it. I love the pattern; please don't misunderstand me. I just need to move on to something else. That's why there hasn't been any pictures of what I have been knitting on lately. I could post pictures but they would look like this ...so I just haven't felt the need to post.

During all of this anxiety about getting these gifts done, I added one more part-time job to my schedule and am one class away from finishing another project. I want to post the pictures but will save that for after I have done the last class and have blocked it so it looks much nicer. So please hang in there with me while I try to juggle all the balls at once! I know you all know what it's like.

Deserved Reputation
Today is Friday the 13th. I never had a problem with that date...ever...until today. Every once-in-awhile my wedding anniversary falls on Friday the 13th. I have always considered that a lucky day for me. Today it was just sad.
Today I had to put Bailey to sleep. After a week of fightling Renal failure, the vet and I decided that it was time to let Bailey go. I had such hope for her recovering but the blood test said most of her kidney function was gone.

I got Bailey from the Animal Control here where I live. She had no hair on her and was covered with fleas and sores. She had by spayed and declawed and was wearing a little flea collar. Here, if an animal is picked up with a collar on of any kind, it spares their life for 10 days while they wait for Mom or Dad to come and pick them up. No collar, buys the animal 5 days. I found her at day 7. She was a total mess but grew up to be a beautiful cat. She was timid and very sweet. She rarely complained about anything. Moose used to love to pin her down and lick her from head to toe. That drove her nuts. Dog spit on a long haired cat; well it's just not pretty.

So here's to 10 wonderful years of hair all over my black pants, licking my eye brows backwards to help clean me up, smacking the dogs around when they behaved badly, and letting me brush you against your will. I will miss you but know there are others where you are going ,that will brush you to keep you from getting matted and some one to scrath under you chin just the way you like it. Safe journey good friend.

Show and Tell
Last week I was lucky enough to not have a client scheduled on Thursday when my usual knitting group meets at The Knitting Corner. Sandy has been coming to the weekly gathering for a while and over time I have gotten to know her and her projects. I feel especially close to this one...
I was lucky enough to be sitting at the table the day she came in wanting a group decision about the colors she should use on the Mason Dixon Log Cabin pattern. Of course, you know everyone at the table has something to say about it. I think we all did a good job in offering Sandy our suggestions. I think it turned out well! I think Sandy thinks it went well too... because she is doing another one. This is the baby version. I don't own a Mason Dixon book, but I did finally break down and order one. It should be arriving soon. I will dog ear that page for sure! Nice job Sandy, and all the advise helpers.

I ordered myself some things that my LYS doesn't carry and they came in the mail last week. I have already put some of them to work. These got used right away and I have to say that I love them and want to order more.

I used the cheese spreader to show how small they start out and how they expand to the size of your dpns. They are made out of a heavy duty cardboard. They yellow is the bottom of the tube. I wrote what size dpns will be inside the tubes. These might prevent me from getting skewered by a wandering dpn. They are from the KnitPicks catalog.


Since I am going to take a class tomorrow night where I will be knitting a lace scarf from a chart, I thought I would get me on of these. I love how it has snaps! Stay tuned for my class how and tell. Hopefully I can post it in a timely manner. I will also post what I have been knitting on pretty soon too.

Re-Purposing
I know there has not been very many pictures of what I have knit lately. I swear, I really have been knitting. I knit every day even if it's only a few rows. Some days just go like that. I am juggling three jobs and now have added one more to the mix. July 30th I will begin to start teaching on a trial basis at a local culinary school. I applied for this job months ago not expecting to teach until mid year next year. Well, guess what?? It will not be that long. So I now have 20 lesson plans to start on and will teach three days a week for a while. We shall see how this goes. If the school likes what I do, then I get to teach more. If they don't think I can cut the mustard or I am not comfortable, then I am back down to three jobs. Whew! Any way...I have been knitting.

I have also been building (well hubby did most of it, but I did help) a new place to store my knitting items downstairs. I love a two story house but I hate going up and down the stairs when I am in a hurry for something. So we took something that wasn't being used and changed it's purpose.

Here is a bare bones wine storage rack from Ikea we have had sitting in the sun room for months on end doing nothing. So I decided since hubby has re-purposed two other items for me, he could do this one too. So with an second investment of $50 I got a great place to store my downstairs knitting supplies. I love simple rustic looking items and this one fit the bill perfectly.


Here is the same wine rack with bead board on the back and the two sides. The shelves that would have stored wine were turned upside down to have a now flat surface to store things on.

Here is the completed project all painted and filled up. To give you some idea about how much more space I have; those two baskets on the bottom were purchased at the Maryland Sheep & Wool show in '06 and '07. They are large baskets. One is filled with spinning hardware and the other with roving.

Here is a more close up picture of the top shelf. I took some old plastic shoe holders that I bought from Target ages ago and re-purposed them too. They have drawers and are stackable. So one drawer has straight needles, one has dpns and Circulars. The other drawers are filled with sockyarns, and other do dads.

This picture is the second shelf and it holds one basket with some small roving and the other has spun yarn in balls. I have some larger bags of roving on that shelf too. My swift is folded up and laying across the top of everything.
The last two shelves are for books and of course more roving. The next one down are those great baskets you can buy at MS & Wool for $40.
There is one more shelf down below the basket shelf, but it's not as tall as I am going to have to find some smaller containers with lids. I would love to lay my swift on the bottom but I have small dogs who like to lift their legs on new things. So I would rather wipe of a plastic storage container than to have my swift smell like...well you know.

So I have been knitting and today I went to knit with the Thursday knitting group. I will post more pictures of what I have been doing soon.