A weekend in review

I learned something about myself over the weekend.  Apparently, I thrive on drama.  Let's review.

Moments before leaving the house to go to work on Saturday, I received a Facebook notice that a favorited band that used to play at most of my high school dances was having a reunion next month at a local bar & grille.  The notice had just been posted but already several friends had replied that they intended to go.  Now, understand that my high school was tiny.  Teeny tiny.  Actually, eentsie, weentsie tiny.  Tiny as in, there were 13 people in my graduating class.  So, getting four or five of us together at one time counts as a high school reunion.  I was psyched.  A high school reunion, a high school reunion that does not include a rubber chicken entree but does include a live band that will bring back so many fun memories.  Like I said, I was psyched.  And I went in to work all smiles & giggles & "Hey, how ya doing?" to everyone I passed.

I walked into work & discovered that all Hell was breaking loose.  Actually, that's probably a slightly exaggerated description but things were going wrong and some manual adjustments were being made that would cause some slight confusion and a bit more effort.  While the panic set in, I continued to tell myself that it would be fine.  We'd deal with it.  And we did.  But as days like that go, things continued to tank.  It was one of those Murphy's Law days that would leave even Murphy quaking in fear & confusion.  Everything that could possibly go wrong did.  And then things that couldn't possibly go wrong went wrong.  The theme park's slogan is about the customers having their 'best day ever' and occasionally when an employee is having a bad day, you'll hear them joking about it being their 'best day ever.'  Well, Saturday was so bad that almost every employee I encountered either asked me if I was having my best day ever or informed me that they were having their best day ever in that weird, giggly, a nervous breakdown is about to occur voice.  It was just one of those days.

And then I came home to one dog growling at the dining room door and the other dog doing her 'there's something wrong' bark rather than her 'Oh, goodie!  You're home!' bark.   My first thought was that a opossum or raccoon had gotten in through the dog door.  But no.  No such luck.

Big spider

After the day I'd had, I really should not have expected anything less.  It was a spider.  A spider so big, the dog was growling at it.  Normally, I kill bugs with Windex but this guy looked like he probably drank Windex for breakfast.  My solution was to put that 2-cup coffee cup over it (while the dog distracted it) and leave it for my dear sweet husband to deal with.  And if you're wondering, that's his sized 12 shoe.  Look how freaking big that spider is!  Holy Moly!

Somehow, I managed to get a little bit of sleep between dreams of monster spiders.  Sunday, I got up & did it all over again.  Things were still going wrong at work but I did at least have a working computer so it wasn't quite as dramatic as the previous day.  The biggest problem was the rain.

It didn't just rain.  It monsooned!  Actually, that's not correct either.  It rained so hard it made a monsoon look like a light mist.  And of course, my rain coat was a mile away in the car.  By the time I got to the car, even my underwear were wet.  And then I had to stop for gas and got even wetter if that's possible.  I was so wet the gas station gave me a free slice of pizza when I went in to pay.  Because of course their pay-at-the-pump thing was broken.

After a few scary hydroplaning episodes, I finally surfed my car home, stripped my soaking wet clothes off, put on some dry ones & fell into bed with soaking wet hair.  I woke up this morning looking like

Only curlier.

But the point of all that is.... all that drama was kind of fun.  Well, maybe not 'fun' but it was certainly exciting and made the work hours pass by quickly.  I never got any knitting done at work though.

But, I did finish a few WIP's (works in progress) in the mornings before work.  I already showed you these, but here are the Outlander fingerless gloves on a hand model and a hat I finished.

Faux cabled hat & Outlander fingerless gloves

I really like that cable pattern.  "That" being both the faux cable on the hat and the cable on the fingerless gloves.  The gloves look much more complicated than they are, as long as you don't forget how to count to three.  It's surprising how many times I failed to correctly count to three.  I'm blaming it on the spider.

blue faux cabled hat

I finished a blue faux cabled hat as well.

hand dyed fingerless gloves

And I dyed these fingerless gloves.  Actually, I dyed them late Friday night.  And that was a whole other bit of drama.  It was late, late Friday night when I was dying them and I'm blaming it on the hour.... but I stupidly stuck my hands into the dye bath without putting on gloves.  My hands instantly turned a nice bright magenta color.  And then I proceeded to get the dye on one side of my face as well.  So when I bounced into work on Saturday, not only was I grinning & saying "Hey, how ya doing?" to strangers, I was also a lovely shade of red that made me look like I had extreme blood pressure issues.  Like I said, Saturday was definitely a 'best day ever' said in the most sarcastic voice possible kind of day.

Anyway...  I was excited about the dye job though.  And it could have been worse.  I was using black dye so I could have ended up with gray hands instead of bright pink ones.

Anyway....  I turned this

brown and white tweed

into this

hand dyed fingerless gloves

And yes, it's sort of a mahogany reddish brown, not black.  Black is really made up of a whole lot of blue plus a little bit of red.  I'd been warned that black dye would most likely separate and I wouldn't end up with black fingerless gloves.  And I was cool with that.  I didn't really want black gloves.  I also didn't want those brown & white tweed gloves.  As you can see, the black dye did separate.  I have no idea where all the blue went but I ended up with reddish gloves and magenta hands.  I'm happy with the way the gloves turned out though and with all the drama & nervous sweating that went on on Saturday, by Sunday, my hands & face were back to their normal color.

And last but not least, I managed to knit a few more rounds on this slouchy hat.

#todayonmyneedles

And yes.  As you can see in the backgrounds of these photos, my desk is still the disaster zone it was last Monday.  In fact, it's even worse.  I have the feeling it will be November before I can call it truly organized and clean again.  It's just another bit of drama we'll have to learn to deal with.