silver lining

It’s my birthday and I’ll be sick if I want to…
Woke up this morning with a fever. Slept almost all day. Good times.

When I finally did wake up I found a cute box that Joe had left out for me to find with my birthday gift. I would have taken pictures, but, well, you’ll have to excuse that for today. I will, however, direct you to the website… I love it! I write a lot. Especially since we moved. Yes, I know you wouldn’t know that from the blog, but you know, it’s personal stuff. Stuff I need to get off my chest. Stuff I need to think about. Stuff that becomes clearer written down. So now I have this beautiful cover and my first ever Moleskine journal. It’s perfect. Plus, he left me a really lovely note inside and no, like my journals its not for public consumption.

So even though I woke up feeling like yuck on my birthday I feel loved. I received lots of Happy Birthdays and talked to everyone in my family, some of them several times over the day. It’s nice. Nice to know that people care and are thinking about you. Even if they are thousands of miles away.

Have a lovely day everyone!

why i don’t knit gauge swatches and stuff

So, I had all these grand plans to write a blog post last week about my trials and tribulations with this new stole I started knitting. How it suggested using a size 4 needle, which I didn’t have on hand so I swatched (yes, I swatched for a stole) and it totally lied did not work out at all. I went to Imagiknit twice and bought a total of 4 circular needles. I finally settled on size 5’s and started the darn thing and took it with me on our flight to WV this weekend. I should have know this story was not going to end well… especially since I flagrantly decided not to take any of the other needle sizes with me. I was so confident!

I’m sure you can see where this is going… on the plane I realized that the fabric was too loose and, you guessed it, the size 4, suggested needle size, was what I needed. You know, the one I left at home. This meant yet another knitting shop, this time Kanawha City Yarn Company, and success! The first repeat of the stole looks great!

Maybe not the greatest picture. Of course, this is about par for my picture taking abilities, especially on a plane.

As I mentioned, Joe and I flew to WV for a nice long weekend visiting our families. It’s so strange being so far from home. No longer a quick 4 hour drive for a visit, but a hard 8 or so hours flying across the country. It makes me appreciate them all the more! Hopefully we can get back for another trip before Christmas, but I’m thinking that’s not too likely…

On a lighter note, hello to you lurkers out there! It has come to my attention that more than two people are reading this here blog. When I say more than two, I’m thinking there now might be five. This makes me very very happy! So I’m going to ask a favor, por favor. I would love a headcount. A hello. Nothing fancy. Just a quick hi in the comments to let me know you’re here. One time. You can do it!

i should blog more

I won’t feel like I have much to say for a while, which is fine. Then I do and I still don’t blog. Doh!

So here are a few things I should have mentioned already.

• My friend Emily sent Leeloo these adorable toys!

They are super and Leeloo adores them. Especially their crunchy ears. Who can resist the crunchy sound? Not Leeloo. That’s who.

 

• My parents were here this past weekend and what does it do? It rains. Well, it rained on Saturday. All day. And since they were here for two days that means it rained 50% of the time. Pooh! So I didn’t get to do all of the things I wanted to do with them, but it was so nice to have them here! In lieu of touring the city, I helped Mom make potato soup with shrimp on Saturday and it is delicious. I’ve been taking it to work and eating it for dinner. Yum! I also made chocolate chips cookies, which oddly is the only thing I took pictures of…

Yeah, those aren’t the actual cookies, but my pictures of the actual baked cookies are not so great. Ingredients, that’s what you get.

 

• Um, I’ve been working diligently on my Cascadia sock. So hard to get a good indoor shot, but here it is… getting ready to start the heel. Oh yeah!

 

• I need to stay away from twitter. Why? Cause people tweet about all kinds of cool stuff. Like these. Thanks Ysolda… I just bought two of them. *squee*

 

• Then there is poor little Leeloo. She was spayed yesterday and I was able to pick her up today after work. She is tired. And sad. And probably doesn’t feel to hot. Which is why I feel so bad for laughing…

It really shouldn’t be this funny. Maybe it doesn’t seem funny from where you’re sitting. But she’s so understandably mopy and has that silly cone around her head and it’s so cute… and funny. I keep giggling. And feeling guilty. But I still giggle. It’s not just me, Joe’s laughing too. I’ve taken a thousand pictures, almost.

it’s christmas

It’s been a nice couple of days here. Last night we went to Yoshi’s to see Clairedee perform her annual Christmas Eve show and it was really wonderful! The music was great and we shared a table with a couple super nice ladies. Good times!

I realize today is Christmas, but even though I tried to make things festive and we ate cookies and pepperoni rolls sent from our mom’s and opened gifts it’s just not the same without the rest of your family. Now, don’t go feeling sorry for us or anything. We had gifts to open and I was able to use the ceramic Christmas tree my mom painted way back in the 80’s. Pretty!

And there’s always the Yule Holiday Log channel. I really tried to take a picture of Santa’s arm coming in and stoking the fire, but I just didn’t have the patience to sit around and wait for the phantom arm to show up again.

What was really nice about today is that Leeloo took a nap mid morning and I was able to get several pattern rows done on the shawl. I am getting really excited about wearing it, but that dang chart is complicated and if I’m not totally focused on it I tend to miss the yarn overs. Super annoying.

In the afternoon we went to see Tron Legacy in 3-D. Loved it! I thought they did a really great job in moving the story forward. Interesting side note, after the movie I mentioned to Joe that I was going to put the original Tron (from 1982) in my Netflix queue and he said it probably isn’t there. Something about Disney being embarrassed about it cause it was really bad. Hmmm… so yeah, not currently available on Netflix and I checked Amazon to see if it was available. So? Yeah, it’s available. But only from third party sellers for crazy prices. No one seems to be selling it retail. Check here for what I found. I find things like this intriguing. It’s like Lucas updating the original Star Wars. It’s just weird. You just can’t compare a movie made today to one made 20 + years ago. Things change. You can’t remake the past. Time to move forward.

Speaking of moving forward. I’ve also been working on my big Noro blanket. I happened to unfold it today, which apparently I hadn’t done in forever. Wow! It’s much bigger than I realized. Heh. I feel like I might be able to finish this thing up sometime in 2011. I guess that makes it a New Years Resolution.

oh, the weather outside is frightful

Yeesh! Quite the weather pattern we’re having here. We came back from WV to this…

Of course, WV looked like this…

Didn’t think my car was going to make it up that hill Saturday morning. There may have been some slippage on the way up.

 

This weekend was a special one. We celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary. Amazing! When I think about them being together for 50 years it just seems unfathomable. Yet, Joe and I have already been married for 13 years and it seems like no time at all.

I managed to take only a few pictures at the party, but the view out the windows was just lovely. And that cake was delicious. This was the wedding reception my parents didn’t have 50 years ago when they eloped!

I did manage to get a good picture of Joe after the toast.

It was a really wonderful weekend. The highlight was hearing stories about the two of them. Stories we had never heard before. As a child it’s sometimes hard to remember that your parents were once young and in love. Impulsive and daring. They were great stories!

random things and some food

Here we are in December and  I seem to have completely missed blogging about Thanksgiving. Of course, the entire thing was filled with nothing but pecan pie… maybe a little turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, really just food in general. Oh and did I mention family? I may not talk about them a lot here, but it’s really nice to get everyone together and just hang out at Mom and Dad’s. Maybe do a little shopping and did I mention eating? Good times!

I really didn’t take any Thanksgiving pictures since that seems to be brothers job. So here is a nice picture of the evening sky as we were headed home on Sunday. It was really quite lovely. A lot nicer than the image I caught here. The clouds were really amazing!

Then Tuesday morning I awoke to this…

Weird, especially when you drive to the corner, make a left and it’s completely gone. Not a speck of fog to be seen. Seems someone must have left the Christmas fog maker on next door.

Tuesday night I headed over to the monthly Charlotte Knitting Guild meeting and ate lots of food (I’m sensing a theme here) and participated in the white elephant game. Fun! I was the lucky person that ended up going first which meant I got the pick of the gifts at the end. I picked up this cutey patooty tape measure from Lantern Moon. I mean, a girl can never have enough tape measures.

So, that’s it for now. I’m still knitting on the baby blanket and I’m pretty sure I have finally passed the half way mark. Whoo! I’m starting to feel like it may never end. Just wait till I get to pick up all those stitches for the border. Awesome!