Crafty Kitty

Yes siree, that right there is a Lelah blocking.  Which means that I will indeed finish her in time for her to make her debut at Vegoose!  Woot!  I used Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool in what I'm pretty sure is Sherwood Forest, although it could be Calypso Green.  I ordered the yarn so long ago I can't remember which one it was and they both look kind of similar.  Anyway, it's green because that's my favorite color and it matches my eyes.  All I need to do tonight is sew some elastic in and that's that, which unfortunately cannot be done until after class this evening.  Boo to furthering myself through education.

So yes, I am leaving for Vegas with the boy on Thursday morning at the crack of dawn (aka 6:45 AM).  We are flying out of O'Hare which also means that we get to leave Madison at 2:30 in the morning.  We've been trying to decide whether or not it's even worth it to go to bed at all, but I'm hoping I can fall asleep early, like 8 or 9 to at least get some sleep in my system.  Neither of us are very good at sleeping on planes.  I plane on crocheting a baby blanket for my soon to be second cousin and the boy is going to use my laptop to try and get some work done.  We arrive in Vegas at 8:30 and can't check into our hotel until 3:00 so I assume we will wander aimlessly around the strip.  Man, these next two days better fly by.  All I can do is think about going!

Waking up at 5 in the morning to the sounds of your cat puking and then realizing that said cat is directly next to your head and is therefore puking in your bed.  And then, because of the aforementioned hour, instead of getting up to clean up the hairball, you just rollover and move to the other side of the bed and mentally remind yourself not to move back to the other side.

Damn you Blogspirit and robbing me of all the pictures that I have posted in the last month! Actually, perhaps I should say damn you hackers, as it is not entirely Blogspirit’s fault that they lost all my pics from the last month. But now I get to look forward to going back and re-posting a month’s worth of pictures this weekend. Lucky, lucky me!

Do you ever get the feeling like you have piled way too much on your plate and instead of things getting taken off the plate, more just gets added? Because that’s the way I’ve felt lately. And granted it’s not all work, a lot of it is play related, but I’m still feeling like there’s not enough time in the day for me to do everything I need to do to be a grownup. You know – work, clean house, do homework for school, be organized, have food to eat. The working and the school work have been going fine. Indeed I aced my last test in my class. And when I showed the boy my test with the smiley face and the word PERFECT emblazoned across the top, all he could say was, “This is college, you don’t get smiley faces anymore.” And to that I said, “I deserve that smiley face, dammit.” However, my organization and housework skills have gone way down the tubes and it is driving me insane.

I grew up in a house that was usually mostly clean. And this is because my mother used my brother and me as slave labor. It’s true - since I was in 3rd grade I would come home to at least an hours worth of chores every day that usually involved vacuuming, dusting and doing the family laundry. I know lots of kids have to do this, but my mother was a Nazi about it. But hey, our house was by far one of the cleanest I have been to. While I do vacuum weekly and occasionally dust, there are areas of my apartment that are dirty now that were never dirty at my parent’s house because these are the areas my mother used to magically take care of (or maybe it was those cleaning fairies she’s got – oh wait, that’s her on coffee). AND I CANNOT TAKE IT. That might just be my slight OCD talking though. And that’s just the downstairs which consists of the kitchen and the living room. Two weekends ago I was so disgusted by my own filth that I went nuts and totally cleaned everything, so the downstairs is doing pretty okay, if I can maintain the psycho cleaning spree I went on.

However, the upstairs which is my bedroom/craft area (which resembles more of a bomb of fabric and yarn) is a whole different story. It is a problem I cannot conquer myself, which is why I have enlisted the Nazi herself to come help me sort through it. I need a craft organizing wardrobe to store all my yarn plus the fabric that no longer fits in the storage bins that go under my bed. And I need to STOP buying yarn and fabric (good luck with that, right?). So a trip to IKEA is in order for the boy and I so he can get some bookshelves for his nerdy books that I keep tripping on by his bed and so I can get a craft organizing thing-a-ma-whosit-whatsit.

Besides the fact that my cleanliness, or lack thereof, has been giving me the shakes, I’ve been busy doing some fun stuff too. Last week I saw the Robbers on High Street on Wednesday at the Annex and on Thursday I saw Yonder Mountain String Band at the Orpheum. Robbers was interesting as there were probably a total of 30 people there and you could tell they were a little jaded that they were playing to such a small crowd. Yonder was packed as usual and they played for more than three hours. However, by Thursday I was so wiped out and tired that I got kind of sleepy during the last half hour or so (aka nodding off). It was still a rocking show.  They did an awesome Talking Heads Cover and it made me so happy!

The weekends have been pretty busy too. This past weekend I went to my cousin’s eighth birthday party. Our parents are sort of estranged and have been for the last two years and I hadn’t seen him since my other cousin got married a year and half ago and it’s not his fault that our parents don’t talk so I went. Plus, I wanted to introduce the boy to my two aunts. It was boring as hell and as I told the boy when we were leaving, “Now I don’t have to do that for another two years.” The weekend before, I went to Chicago to go to IKEA with my best friend (where I would have actually purchased a craft organizing thing-a-ma-whosit-whatsit had we a car that it would have fit in). We stayed with her sister in Chicago (near Ravenswood), who’s birthday it was, so we went out for a little celebration on Saturday, although my friend got a little annoying with the passive aggressiveness late in the evening.

So that’s where I’m at. In a week and two days I am leaving for Vegas to go to Vegoose with the boy and I cannot wait! At least with me being so busy, it has made the time pass by so fast that I can’t believe this trip is already here. I mean, we bought tickets in the middle of August and in a week and two days we’re off. It’s awesome. So now I have been feverishly knitting away on Lelah, in the hopes that I can get it done by next Thursday, so I can wear it at the show. My other major knitting goal is to FINALLY finish my mother’s shawl, as she will be coming to the fine city of Madison for a conference on November 1st. I have to pickup something like 198 stitches and then knit 7 rows and the shawl will be done. Then I just need to block it. So I NEED to get that done before Vegas because I have to give it to her right when I get back. I am also participating in a Beatles Swap on Craftster.org, and I have 4/5 of the stuff done, so I need to finish that up and get it mailed off before I leave. These are my goals people. They are now written in stone.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! So a few posts back I wrote about my friend’s Dad who got thrown of a horse. Well, he did actually pass away and my friend, of course, is taking it pretty hard. I’m all the way in Madison so there’s not much I can do, but I knit her the My So Called Scarf so she would know that I was thinking about her. I used Lion Brand Landscapes yarn and it took four balls to make it the size I wanted.

Lord does my secret pal know how to spoil me!  I must have received the package on Friday or Saturday but I was in Chicago for the weekend, and then yesterday I didn't make it home in time to go to the apartment office to pick it up so I had to wait all the way until today to find out what it was!  (And shhh don't tell anyone, but I left work an hour early today, partly because I wanted to pick the package up before I had class tonight).

I received three more pretty, pretty stitch markers and two balls of Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Brush, which I must tell you is some of the softest yarn I have ever felt.  Along with the yarn, she sent a pattern for a Swirl Hat (which I cannot wait to make).  And it's going to be mine, all mine!  The best part is that while I was in Chicago I bought a new patterned peacoat for this time of year and the colors match perfectly.  I realized it while I was sitting in class and I was all mad that I was sitting there listening to a dumb lecture instead of at home curled up on the couch starting this hat!

See how perfectly the yarn matches my new coat?

Thank you secret pal, whoever you are!  YOU RULE!

I do have some other knitting related news, but I have been so insanely crazy busy that I don't have time to talk about it now.  Hopefully I will get some time tomorrow to post a longer post of what I've been up to lately.

Yay for Secret Pals!  Mine sent me two very pretty green (my favorite color) stitch markers.  Which are the bomb diggity bomb.  I've just been using boring plastic ones and now I have some gorgeous beaded green stitch markers.  Here they be:

In other knitting news, I finished the first clue for the Mystery Shawl Along 2!  And it is turning out quite gorgeous.  I am using the Red Hat colorway yarn from KnitPicks.  It's very pretty so far and I can't wait for Friday and clue number two. 

And I also managed to finish the retro bed slippers.  I must yet again wait until Christmas to give them to who they are intended for.  But I know my Mom will like them because she always has cold feet and wants slipper socks for Christmas.  These are way better because they're handmade (and damn cute!).