Such a Slacker

Yep, that's me. I just realized how long it's been. Somebody should have smacked me way before now.

First off the important stuff. I'm a participant in the Traveling Shawl that's working it's way across the country being worked on by knitters in all fifty states. The purpose is to raise funds towards breast cancer research and hopefully a cure very soon.

For all the details and links and such, someone else put it much better than I can, so here you go:

• During the coming twelve months selected knitters from across the United States will be going Passionately Pink for the Cure® by working on the Traveling Shawl to raise funds for the fight against breast cancer.
• It’s passionate, because the need to end breast cancer is so urgent. It’s pink, because that’s the color we’ll wear to accomplish our goal.
• Participating is simple. One knitter from each state is adding six to eight rows of intricate lace knitting to a beautiful pink shawl that when completed will be raffled. To enter chances to win the Traveling Shawl make a donation of $5 or more to Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, the leader of the global breast cancer movement.
• If you’d like to contribute online, please use the link below. In return for your contribution, you’ll get a pink ribbon pin and the satisfaction of helping to move us closer to a world free of breast cancer. To enter the drawing, when you receive an email confirmation of your donation send a copy to travelingshawl@gmail.com . For each $5 donated you’ll be entered in the drawing for a chance to own the completed Traveling Shawl!
• Thanks in advance for your help and for showing your true colors by going Passionately Pink for the Cure.
• Donation page
  
• Follow the progress of the shawl and share the journey!
• http://traveling50statesshawl.blogspot.com/
• Here is a picture of how far it's been knit as of Saturday (12/20/08)

Raffle.. $5 for a chance to win the shawl.. Did you read that? wooohoooo.

Sometimes it gets a tad bit crowded around here to knit, so you HAVE to take breaks...




Sometimes you have to power through and do the sweater and beaded backpack anyway

Lots of cool stuff

If I were getting grades for originality of blog titles, it would have to be at least a D, but what the heck. It's mine and that's that.

I finished up the 'Hey Teach' from the Summer Knitty. It's funny. A really quick knit, easy to remember lace pattern and stash yarn, yet it's gotten more compliments than things that have taken much more time and effort to complete. Just goes to show that a good design shines through.

I've also joined a cooperative knitting effort. You can read about it here. When it's all done, it will have been to all 50 states with people from every state taking a part in knitting it. It will be raffled off to benefit the Susan G Komen foundation for breast cancer. It looks like the raffle tickets will be $10 each. For the winner, that's going to be a great deal. For everyone else, they should get a great feeling of doing something good for not a whole lot of money.

That's it for now. If I ever get around to putting batteries in the camera, you guys can see some pics.

Hi - Whatcha doin?

Good grief. Seems like we've been busy, but it's spinning our wheels. Which is ok, cause we do like hanging out with each other. Here's about as energetic as it gets:



That's two stubborn animals not about to give up the bed for each other. The cat is Friday and the dog is Skippy. Friday just doesn't look like her old self anymore. She's lost about 13-1 4 pounds and is now a downright svelte 15 lbs. I know, I know, it's HUGE. She really IS a biggish girl, but she's tall and long and carries it well.

As far as knitting goes, I've joined the MS4 knitalong and have finished clues one and two. So far it looks like this:



It's a bit of an odd combination, but to me it seems really 'fallish'. I'm using a fingering weight yarn called Breeze that's 40% alpaca and 60% wool. It just feels squishy and soft and warm. Just the thing for the cooler mornings on the horizon very soon.

There's been some random knitting. I'm working on a little backpack thingy for the oldest granddaughter. How many kids do you think will have a beaded purple alpaca bag? That's what I thought. Not many. Thank goodness the girl likes beads - and purple - and soft stuff. She's most surely a girly girl in every sense of the word. Not like her grammy at all.

Also sent out a few 7x9 inch squares to a local knitter who's working on a blanket for a family member from TX. I guess Ike hit them really hard and comfort items will be a real blessing for them while they're getting re-settled. It makes me wish I was a quicker knitter and could provide more.

FOUND!

The dog from the post the other day is home with his real family.

We found out where he lives. The people are great. He's loved and cared for as a part of their family. He'd just gotten out and gone visiting.


It's GREAT when things work out.

Look What Came to Visit

When we got home from the grocery store, this is what we found on our porch.



The dog, that is. We're trying to find his people. He's wearing a blue collar, is a kissing fool and will sit on command.

Anyone, anyone, Bueller????

Cowgirl Butterfly Astronaut Vest

Love the name of this pattern. I found it here. This lady has some really cute patterns, and I am so glad she chooses to share them out. My worst problem with making this was finding buttons I thought were cute enough. (I'm actually still debating).

The fine folks at Ravelry are holding Ravolympics (not sure I spelled that right), and I entered an event for making a sweater while the Olympics are going on. It's running a tad bit behind for two reasons. The first was company for two nights (which was great!) and the second was that I apparently can't count to 39. I did the same set of 39 increases a couple of times and didn't come up with the right number at all. After the second frogging, it's finally right and ready to move on.

Here she is so far:



Not much to look at yet, but hope springs eternal.

Finally, a few pictures

I told you that there really was some knitting going on around here. This is the baby sweater I talked about in my last post:

It's the Kipling Baby Sweater from Yarn Abuse.
That creepy stuff hanging down in the top right corner of the picture is my hair. My bangs are out of control and will probably stay that way for a while until they grow out to a more manageable length.

Here are the Spring Forward socks out of the last Knitty. They were a nice quick knit and the yellow colors seemed to fit them.

Last is a little raglan/lace sweater I made up as I went along for another baby girl on the way. It isn't laying too straight in the picture, but it hasn't been washed or blocked yet.

You can see that there are threads to be woven in, but all that is the last thing before the final wash before it gets gifted away.

There are more, but company's on the way and I'm out of time for now.

I SWEAR

well, I promise I'm still alive out here. You aren't supposed to swear and all that.

Anywho, life is rolling along as it always seems to do only with less and less time. It seems that most of the time is taken up with work (silly, because it's only part time), plotting the next little cute thing to knit for a baby that either has entered or will be entering our world soon, knitting a little bit of nothing (mostly socks) and dreaming of sleep.

Yeah, dreaming of sleep....

For some reason, sleep still eludes me on most nights. Not completely, there are still random two hour stretches where surely snores rock the walls and snorky noises wake the birds, but a stretch of 5, 6 or more hours strung together at any given time are just a dream.

It will get better, it always does. I get stressed, don't sleep, the stressful thing gets resolved then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.. Hopefully, by the end of this month, life will be rolling along with just normal stuff.

I have made several pairs of socks, but still need to graft all the toes. Perhaps when I run out of small needles it will get done.

There's a cutie patootie sweater that I got the pattern for here.
This little thing gets more compliments - probably because of the nice little structure details. I'll probably make it again, which is high praise for someone like me with the attention span of a gnat.

Maybe, hopefully, with a little luck, I'll remember to take some pictures of things and put them up here....

I got nuthin in the way of a title.

Bad knitter.. Bad knitter. Well, it's more a case of non-photographing knitter. I've finished up pair of simple socks, but haven't taken a picture yet. Also, there's a little cardigan-ey sweater I made early on in the spring and didn't take a picture of. (Some folks at a local knitting/eating Mexican food get together actually saw the beginnings of the sweater back a few months ago.) Ahh well. I'll try to dig out the camera and see if I can rustle up a couple that are semi-decent to put on here.

Speaking of the folks who were at the restaurant (yeah, I know, but it's a baby change of subject and it's my blog and I can be as tactless as I want) it was so nice to see people who don't give you the "look" when you're knitting. You know, "Hmmm that's odd. Wonder what that woman is crocheting? Maybe I'll pretend not to look in case she's embarrassed for doing something weird like that." THAT look. It was actually the first time in my life I've ever seen anyone else knit. How crazy is that?

The other good news is that my new needles should be here that will let me finish the border on the shawl that's been in the works forever and a day. PLUS, I got 10 skeins of a really pretty rusty red fingering weight (can't remember content and it's at the house and I'm not) that is asking very nicely to be turned into something for this fall.

So Laaaaazzyyyyyyy

Yep. That's me.

I've done nothing "blogworthy", so I'll have to bore you with the mundane.

I've been working along so slowly on the 'Secret of Bad Nauheim' stole. I think pretty much everyone else in the free world who was working on this stole finished weeks ago. Now I find myself at the point of picking up stitches around the stole to put the border on. My circ is too short for all the stitches to fit. How short? Waaaaaaaay short. I've got another on order, so at some point in time I will finish this. It looks like it's going to be gorgeous after it's blocked. ummm.. after I get the new needle, the stitches picked up, the border knit on and get it dyed a good color for the recipient. Heh. It's practically finished!

Friday Diet

Friday the cat has been on a diet and has lost a tad over 9 pounds. In the grand scheme of things 9 pounds isn't a lot, but when you're only about 8 or 9 inches tall at the shoulder....dayum.

She's lost one third of her total body weight. And she's still chubby! Her middle name has been Sumo for years and we're not yet ready to go through a name change yet. We really aren't starving her. (Ignore her yowling to be fed every morning at 4:00!) It's taken about 9 months and a couple of vet visits, but she's well on her way to finding out what the term 'catlike grace' means. Yeay Friday!

Another li'l thing that gave me a big loopy grin was a phone call from my sis. For a little background, you probably should know that every week, I make flyers for my boss. The flyers are pictures of animals that are ready for adoption at a local animal shelter. After they're printed up, off they go to local vets and groomers in the hopes some of their customers will see a pet they can't live without. Anyway, back to the sister call. She told me that one of her friends adopted a puppy from the shelter.. It's this little guy:

awwwwwwww.....

STILL ALIVE!

Yes...

I'm still alive out here.


It's been so insane and so many things have happened over the last few months. We moved from one state to another - which in itself is a major pain when you 'do it yourself'. I don't think we'll ever find everything, but the kitchen is set up, we've got beds and clothes and the pets, so the important things are done. Everything else is just gravy and we'll get to it at some point in time.


I gave away the chicken, because you really can't keep poultry in a subdivision. With the price of eggs going sky high, I'm wondering if I can't get a couple of hens and pretend they're some sort of exotic parrot or something.


We had fostered out the cats, and now have one (the big one at the top of this thing) back. She's lost 8 pounds and is down to a practically svelte 19.5 pounds. We're so excited at how well she's doing getting around and grooming herself that we're spoiling her unmercifully. She's actually turning into a yowling brat. The little cat was adopted permanently by a young lady who can spend a lot of time and give her undivided attention. We miss her, but it is a win for her since she's a very needy girl when it comes to petting and loving. I just hope she gets the occassional Cheetoh. She loves those things.


Best of all, we have a beautiful, gorgeous, perfect new granddaughter who looks amazingly like her big sister and her mother. She arrived a little early and was a little small, but is doing terrific. Of course I went over her with a fine toothed comb to see if there was any teensy tiny resemblance to me or my son anywhere. (I can't help it, I'm just weird like that!) She got her dad's curly hair and her second toe is longer than her big toe like mine. We are NOT going to mention anything about any sort of Irish temper! I will deny, deny, deny that she got that from her paternal side of the family.


The knitting has been so slow lately. It's just been tough getting back in the groove while going back to work and being overwhelmed with ch-ch-changes.... I'll get there, it's just slow for us old grammies. Heh..