Mad Hatters' Party

Can you believe another month has passed?  Wow! March zoomed past in the briefest blink of an eye.  And because today is the last day of the month, you know what's happening...  It's a Mad Hatters' Party!

Hats 13 - 17 out of 52

It's week 13 and my current hat count is 17 out of 52 finished and the 18th hat is on the needles.  I'd hoped to get a few more hats knit this month but...  My diagonal striped blanket has been receiving most of my attention.

 I'm a little, tiny bit worried about meeting the 52 hats knit in a year goal although I know it's way too early to seriously panic.  It's just that work will be going full time soon and full time means 60 - 70 hours a week.  And instead of the park closing after Halloween, this year's season lasts through December 30th.  In other words, my knitting time is about to be Greatly reduced.  I'd been on a pretty good schedule of starting a hat on Monday & finishing it by Thursday without much effort but March....  March's hats seemed to drag on and I had to consciously force myself to work on them.

The hat knitting is dragging because all I want to do is knit on the blanket.  It's such a mindless, relaxing project, I change yarns constantly, and I'm making a pretty good dent in the scrap yarn pile.  With all that going for it, I'm finding it extremely difficult to put down the blanket and pick up a hat.

Hat Tracker

But, like I said, I'm not too terribly worried.  I made myself a handy tracker and I get to color in a box each time I finish a hat.  I do love to color in boxes so I'm still motivated.  And no, the box colors have no meaning.  I've just been trying to use up some of the 40-gazillion  pens that I have laying around.  "Finishing" a pen (using it until the ink runs dry) is another weird obsession of mine.

Okay, you folks know Way too much about me!

Join me over at Maggie's NotAStation blog for today's Mad Hatters' link up party.

Three on Thursday

Do you have a TV Boy (or girl) friend?  You know, that TV star you would happily leave your spouse for if they ever came knocking on your door?  Timothy Olyphant is mine.  (Actually, I have a few but shhhh, don't tell Tim.)

Not to sound like a slug or anything but, I've had a couple of days off and I've spent them Knitflixing with Tim.  (He lets me call him Tim because Timothy is just so formal.) 

Timothy Olyphant from Santa Clarita Diet

He's also very accepting of my knitting habit.

First I watched Santa Clarita Diet.  Have you seen this show? It is SO ridiculous and I think it may be my all time favorite series.  It also proves that Timothy just gets better with age.

Timothy Olyphant in I am Number 4

Second, I watched I am Number 4.

Timothy Olyphant in Dreamcatcher

And third, I watched Dreamcatcher.

And while I could never tire of Tim, I'm now pretty much alienated out and ready to go back to work.

Join me over at Carole's to see other's Three on Thursday lists.

Progress

I'm finally making a little progress on both the knitting and reading fronts. 

Hat #17 out of 52

I started hat #17 and am only a few rows away from bind off.  It's a simple stockinette hat, knit with Hawthorne Vancouver from Knit Picks.  I just love this colorway.  It's a blend of all my favorite colors - turquoise, hints of grapey purple, reddish/brownish burgundy and golden greens.  And I'm going to have enough left over to knit matching fingerless gloves.  Yay!!

As for my reading, I broke my book monogamy rule.  I'm currently reading four books, which is unheard of for me.  First, I'm only a chapter or two away from finishing Weird Hikes, I'm about half way through Circle of Blood, I'm trying to spend 30 minutes a day (but failing miserably) reading Never Eat Alone, and just yesterday, I picked up Scar Tissue. 

Scar Tissue

I've enjoyed Weird Hikes and Circle of Blood is okay.  My Kindle recommended it because I liked the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.  Several of the Black Dagger books I devoured in one sitting.  Circle of Blood isn't holding my attention nearly as well, but it's still an okay story so far.  It's just moving at a lot slower pace and my expectations may have been slightly too high.  Never Eat Alone is encouraging me to leave my introverted bubble occasionally, so that's good.  And then there's Scar Tissue.  I'm excited to have stumbled across this book.  It's a biography of Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  I've been a Chili Pepper fan since the '80's so it's pretty much a given that I'll enjoy reading about Kiedis's life.

And best of all, my new eye glasses finally arrived so I can actually see to read! Yay!!

Makers' Monday

It's Makers' Monday and I've got nothing to show for it.

Back to work

Instead of knitting, or making anything for that matter, I've been at work.  This weekend was the season opener and the past week was a wild ride of getting ready for the park open and the first day craziness.  For someone used to spending their time snacking and knitflixing, the week was exhausting.  It's been great getting back to work but phew! I'm tired.  I will most likely spend today sleeping rather than knitting.

Hopefully you are able to handle the combination of job/life plus knitting/creating better than I. Please share a bit about what you've been working on lately.  Hopefully I can get my craft on through osmosis.  :)

Three on Thursday

Three things to do on a snowy spring day:

Six inches of snow on the 2nd day of spring

1.  Fold 100 loads of laundry while binge watching Grey's Anatomy.

Temperature gauge cowl

2.  Drink hot chocolate and knit a snowy weather stripe into the temperature gauge cowl. 

Daffodils finally popped up on 3/18/18

3.  Worry about the daffodils that just popped up out of the ground three days ago.

Makers' Monday

It's Makers' Monday and I'm happy to report that I am feeling Much better!  I have absolutely no stamina and my voice has that raspy sound like I routinely smoke three packs of cigarettes every hour but...  I feel better!  I can smell the Vicks, the scabs on my nose from blowing/wiping it so frequently are healing and I feel good.   Yay!

And because I'm feeling so much better, I had a low-key, weirdly fun weekend.

The fun started on Friday when Sarah and I went to the Southern Women's Show.  After the show, we stopped for a late lunch at Pop's Dogs and Ma's Burgers.

It's one of those local landmark places that I've always been curious about but never visited.  I have absolutely no idea why, but as a teen/young adult, I always thought of the place as being where the perverts hung out.  I pictured the interior as being dark and smokey and full of perverted old men, most likely without pants.  But when we asked Google where we should go eat, Pop's Dogs and Ma's Burgers popped up as an option.  We decided to be brave it and give it a try.

I'm so glad we did!  The place turned out to be THE quirkiest, weirdest place I've ever eaten.  And I'm a little bit in love with it.  The place (I really can't call it a restaurant.  It only has six seats.) is tiny and every inch is crammed with memorabilia and little oddities to look at and/or play with.

Honestly, I was a little skeptical stepping in but the food was good, the conversation with Ma, Pa and the other patrons was fun and interesting and we had a great time. No perverts in sight and I'll definitely go back again sometime.

Friday night, I started hat #16 in anticipation of a Saturday road trip to celebrate my last free weekend of 2018.  Mike and I planned to drive to Colonial Beach and eat a meal on the water.  Not a big trip, I just needed to see flowing water before I went back to work for the season.

Well, Saturday was cold and a little rainy and Mike didn't want to make the trip.  Fine!  I'd go without him.

Big mistake!  I thought I knew where I was going but doh! I turned onto the wrong road and ended up on a river 137 miles south of Colonial Beach.  Good Lord!  I've always said I could get lost in a phone booth, but ... 137 miles off course!  Good grief!

But it turned out okay.  So what if I didn't see Colonial Beach.  I saw a beach.  I saw flowing water.  I had good music to listen to and my weight in junk food to eat while I drove.  I found my way home eventually and Little Red and I had a fun road trip adventure.

And since I didn't actually make it to Colonial Beach on Saturday, Mike drove me on Sunday.  I got a little bit of car knitting on my diagonal striped blanket done, but mostly I just looked out the window at the passing scenery.

Of course, I drove all that way, on two different days, and never took the first photo of the water.  Oops.

So what did you create over the weekend?

Three on Thursday

Three Very random things for today's Three on Thursday list:

1.  Weather induced power and internet outages, illness and life in general have gotten in the way lately.  I've been Horrible with a capital "H" about responding to the comments left on the blog.  I apologize profusely.  I have read and appreciate them all, I just haven't always been able to respond.  I will try to be better about it going forward however.

2.  Regarding last week's favorite trees list...  Many of you responded that dogwoods were on your top three list.  I love dogwoods too.  In fact, they'd probably be my #1 favorite except.... The dogwood is Virginia's State Flower and as a child my parents had me convinced that if I even touched one, I'd go to jail.  I remember our neighbors had one in their front yard and it was a thing of beauty!  The gorgeous blossoms, the shiny, red berries, the pretty bark and low hung branches just begging to be climbed.... My parents preached that picking the blossoms (or leaves, twigs or berries) was illegal.  Harming the tree in anyway, specially the harm that might be caused by climbing it, was illegal.  I'm sure my parents instilled that fear of the dogwood just to keep me off the neighbor's property but....  A tiny bit of that fear lives on.

flickr.com

3.  The weird, random facts you learn from blogging is amazing.  My last post mentioned that my nose was so stopped up, I couldn't smell the Vicks VaporRub.  (I'm feeling much better now by the way.)  In the process of Googling whether it was Vicks "Vapor Rub" or "VaporRub,"  I stumbled across an article saying that to quell a nigh time cough, slather Vicks on your feet, put on a pair of socks and go to bed.

There's no way smearing Vicks on my feet could have anything to do with helping me not choke to death on gobs of post nasal drip all night long.  There was just no way!  But what did I have to loose?  I tried it.  

And you know what?  I slept like a baby!  I went to bed with Vicks smeared feet and a nose still so stopped up that I couldn't smell the Vicks.  And I woke up feeling about 1,000% better.  Now, I didn't wake up 100% "well" but I could breathe through my nose and as far as I'm aware, I did not wake up coughing and gagging a single time throughout the night.  Did smearing Vicks on my feet really do that??

Join me over at Carole's to read others' Three on Thursday lists.

Vicks or Vaseline?

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to post today.  I really don't have much to report.

Diagonal Striped Blanket

Knitting wise, I finally made it across the 50 inch base of the blanket and turned the corner.  And that's it!  That is all the knitting I've done.  Part of me is super frustrated with my lack of progress this week and part of me is pretty dang proud.  Despite this flu/cold from Hell (I think it's just a horrible, horrible cold and not an official flu) I've managed to knit 50 inches of fingering weight garter stitch.  I might not currently be capable of reading a pattern, and I have two unlabeled jars, one of Vaseline and one of Vicks VaporRub, and my nose is so stopped up I can't tell them apart.... but I can rock some garter stitch knitting!

As for my reading, did you catch that bit a moment ago where I said I wasn't currently able to read a pattern?  Yeah, well, I can't read books either.   Apparently the flu/cold is in my eyes as well as my nasal cavities.  I've tried and tried to read but my eyes just gush water (I hope it's water!) and my brain can't make sense of the squiggles on the page.   Currently, I'm typing this post with the zoom set so high I'm only getting five or six words to a line.  It's the only way I can tell what I've typed.  Pathetic!  (I also have no idea how out of focus that photo is so please ignore it if it's so bad it's making you nauseous.)

So, the point is, I haven't read anything this week.  But the squiggles are starting to make a little more sense and my eyes are oozing more at a slow leak pace than a full on gush so I have high hopes that in a day or two....

Makers' Monday

Well, the tables have turned and now I'm the one worrying about rat poison in my Tylenol.  I haven't been anywhere near as ill as Mike, but I'll admit that I get horribly martyr-ish when I'm sick.  Between Mike's moaning and my martyrdom, it hasn't been pretty.  In fact, it's been down right ugly.  On the positive side of things, we are both building some seriously ripped abs from all the coughing.

The weekend didn't present much time or the mental capacity for knitting.  Friday was consumed with an eye doctors appointment (The new glasses should arrive next week!) and a trip to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art to see the Terracotta Army display.  I made it though all that with only a mild occasional cough caused by a weird tickle in my chest.  But on the way home, the chills set in and by the time I got home, my temperature was just a click under 102.  I texted my boss to say I most likely would not be coming in to work the next day.  Always a great way to kick off the season!

marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com

An hour later, my temperature dropped back down, I went to bed and woke up feeling fairly good, except for that weird little tickle in my chest and a slightly more frequent cough.  I went to work, had fun being introduced to our new Agents of Shield style office.  Actually, it's probably closer to Firefly's style than Agents of Shield but what ever.  We've got some fun new toys to play with this year.

I got home and before I could even get changed out of my uniform, the chills returned and not 20 minutes later, I was having fever tears.  Does anyone else cry when they have a fever?

mitered squares

I tried to get some mitered square knitting done on Sunday, but I kept forgetting to do the centered decrease.  After the sixth or seventh time having to tink back, on one square, I finally gave up and decided to nap.  And I was so busy napping, I didn't even notice Daylight Savings.

But enough about me and what I'm not knitting.  Tell me all about what you are creating these days.

Anchors Aweigh

Thankfully, I have a new hat on the needles and it may be the only thing saving my husband's life.

So, I'll go ahead and say it.  I am a cold hearted b*tch. 

My husband has the flu and he may not survive.  I'm fairly certain the flu isn't going to kill him but I might.  The man is driving me bonkers BONKERS.  I mean, like stark raving, can I put rat poison in his Tylenol? insane.  I'll be down the hall and I'll hear his coughing and the bed creaking, and his faint little voice calling my name.  I take a big, giant breath of non-flu air and enter his room... and he proceeds to moan and tell me how bad he feels.  And when I ask him what he needs or what can I do to help him, he just moans and tells me he thinks he's dying.  And yes, I'm a cold hearted b*tch because my response is starting to be, "When?"

I don't do well with sick people.  Can you tell?  I specially don't do well when my loved ones are sick.  And I really, really don't do well when my big, strong husband is moaning.

About the only thing keeping  him safe is my hat.

Anchors Aweigh

I'm calling it the Anchors Aweigh hat because all I want to do is weigh anchor and set sail, away from this flu infested house before I catch it.  I start work tomorrow and I finally have an eye doctor's appointment this afternoon so I can get new glasses.  The ones I currently have are so old & scratched I can only see to read if turn my head all the way to the right and look out of the left edge of my glasses.  I'm so afraid I'm going to catch the flu and not be able to make the appointment.  And I'm starting to get this weird little tickle in my chest.

As for the hat, I'm hoping the design will look better after it's blocked.  I've never been super great with fair isle knitting.  I really struggle with keeping my tension even.

Three on Thursday - Trees

I'm a little worried about the knitting community.  I think this winter must have been awfully tough on the community in general because a surprising number of you showed an odd amount of curiosity over last week's Three on Thursday mention of my three favorite trees.  Even a few non-knitters wanted to know what they are.  So...

My top three favorite trees:

1.  A Christmas tree.  Duh!  But seriously, the plain old cedar tree.

photo courtesy of dailymail.co.uk

There's just something unbelievably magical about the way cedars grow in such perfect Christmas tree shapes.  Maybe I'm weird (who me??) but I get THE biggest kick out of seeing a perfectly shaped cedar tree growing in the wild. And they have those adorable, teeny tiny pine cones.  And the smoothness of their 'leaves' (I don't think of cedar as having needles) compared to their rough, hairy trunks.  And then there's their smell.  Is there anything on this earth more fresh, clean and exhilarating while making you imagine both cold, winter snowfalls and warm, comfy fires?  I have the best childhood memories of playing under the neighbor's cedar tree.  Even though I'd come home with sticky sap stuck in my hair and I'd cry when Mom tried to brush it out, my memories of playing under that tree make me smile.

photo courtesy of greenwoodnursery.com

2.  Crepe Myrtles.  There's just something special about any kind of tree that flowers.  Crepe Myrtles are not the prettiest of flowering trees (mimosa trees come to mind,) but they are my favorite.  They have that wonderful, pale, peeling bark and they come in so many different colors.  Oddly, I don't like the shade of pink in that photo, but it's my favorite crepe myrtle color.  Weird!

And once again, I have happy childhood memories of crepe myrtles.  We had two in our yard.  One was near the back door and a multitude of bird feeders hung from it. My dad was into bird watching and I have wonderful memories of sitting with him on the porch, watching the birds.  Okay, I was more excited about the squirrels than the birds but whatever. 

The second crepe myrtle was on the side of the house and it lived a long happy life, until one day when it no longer pleased the parental units.  I have no memory of why the tree suddenly had to come down but it did.  Maybe Mom just wanted more space to grow tomatoes.  Who knows.  But it was like some kind of zombie apocalypse tree because it refused to stay 'down.'  They poured hot water over the stump.  They covered the stump with salt.  They sprayed it with early 1970's weed killer (and you know that was some serious killer chemical!)  They even put a giant cement septic tank lid on top of the stump... and the tree continued to grow up around the cement. 

Okay, so I have no idea why a zombie crepe myrtle tree rates as a good childhood memory, but it does.  Maybe being the rebel child that I was, maybe my parent's exasperation every time that thing grew back gave me some small pleasure.  Who knows.  But I love crepe myrtles.

photo courtesy of thespruce.com

3.  And then there's weeping willows.  Once again, I have wonderful childhood memories centered around a weeping willow.  Growing up, there was an old, somewhat reclusive couple that lived across the street in what I always thought of as a mansion.  The house was much larger than any of the others in the neighborhood and their yard/property was easily five times larger than anyone else's.  At one time, the yard/gardens must have been something to behold but by the time I came along, the back yard gardens at least, had been abandoned.  It was all very Secret Garden-ish back there.  And I Loved playing in them.  And in the very far back of their property, behind a brick wall with a small, rusted metal gate, was a great big weeping willow tree.  Not often, but occasionally I was allowed to bring a few friends and go play in the gardens.  We'd always hide out under that weeping willow where it was shady and much cooler and do all the things a child does when hiding out in a secret garden, under a giant weeping willow.

It's odd that weeping willows remain on my top favorite list because honestly, they sort of creep me out.  Well, not sort of.  They do creep me out.  I still love the look of them but the noise they make....  The way the leaves rustle and twitch in the slightest of breezes...  It makes my skin crawl.   It makes me think of skeletons crawling across the floor, or some kind of Stephen King spider coming to get me.  Aack!  Just thinking about it makes me twitch.  But despite their horrible noise, I still love the way they look.  And I really do have The fondest memories of playing in that Secret Garden type garden across the street.

So what about you? Do you have a favorite tree, or three?  And more importantly, are you weird enough that your favorite tree also scares you?

To enjoy others' Three on Thursday lists, join me over at Carole's place.

The Diet

I've mentioned being on a yarn diet several times since the New Year rolled around and just about every time, someone has called me crazy, or mentioned how they'd never be able to stick to a no-yarn-shopping policy.

Recently I mentioned that while I had not come close to emptying a dresser drawer full of yarn, I did manage to use up a shoe box sized drawer full of little bits of left over yarns.  I received lots of Yays, high fives, You Go, Girl's and many, many Congratulations! Now you can go yarn shopping!'s.  And I appreciate the accolades, but...  I just don't feel right about it.  The goal was to use up a 'real' yarn drawer full of yarn, not that little shoe box sized drawer.

So, I'm going to stick to my yarn diet a while longer.

While the yarn diet is somewhat horrible, it's also somewhat fun.  I have to admit, I get a kick out of using up stuff.  Maybe (okay, probably) I'm nuts but...  squeezing the very last tiny bit of toothpaste out of the tube, using the last bit of ink in a pen, watching an over-stocked pantry dwindle down to emptiness...  It just makes me giddy.  I get The biggest thrill out of finishing things.  (Make note that I like to finish 'things' not projects.  Projects are Not things, which explains my UFO pile.)  So, as much as I am dying to make a LYS run, I'm enjoying watching my yarn supply slowly decrease.

And by slowly decrease, I do mean s...l...o...w...l...y decrease.

But besides watching my yarn supply get smaller, I'm also enjoying the resourcefulness of 'shopping' my stash pile.  I like having the 'use it up' attitude.  I guess that goes along with the thrill of having to use the hairbrush handle to push the last of the toothpaste out of the tube...  Whatever.  I'm enjoying using up my yarn.  I'm enjoying the creativity required to keep knitting 20/7 (I do usually get about 4 hours sleep a night) and only using what I have on hand to do so.  And of course, my bank account doesn't mind either.

So I'm sticking to my yarn diet.

And my diagonal striped scrap yarn blanket is helping me do that.

And all that garter stitch is the perfect accompaniment for a good book.  I can't remember who recommended it, but I finished and Loved An Affair to Dismember by Elise Sax.  I struggled with it in the beginning.  I had to read 20 - 30 pages before I felt like I knew the characters enough to care about them but once I got to know them, they had me laughing out loud.  In fact, at one point, I was sitting alone in a restaurant, eating and laughing out loud, laughing to the point I had tears streaming down my face.  Good grief!  Eating alone in public makes me uncomfortable enough, but to be sitting there, alone, and hysterically hyena laughing, out loud....  Mortifying!  But the book was great despite my embarrassment.

And now, I've moved on to Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi.  I'm hoping this book will help me get past my ridiculously shy, introverted awkwardness.  We will see.   After my public humiliation with An Affair to Dismember, I don't think I could have picked a more perfect title to read.

Makers' Monday

It's Makers' Monday!  Yay!

Boy am I glad to see this past weekend end.  All last week Mr. Weatherman kept talking about high wind warnings for Friday.  On Thursday afternoon, they announced schools would be closed on Friday.  They closed the schools in advance for wind!  I had to laugh.  I mean I know wind can be dangerous.  And I know that it has rained every single day in 2018 so the ground is saturated which adds to the danger....  But come on!  Virginia tends to be the laughing stock of the US when it comes to snow closings and now you're closing for wind?

Turns out, it was a pretty good decision because the wind definitely blew.  Friday was the first sunny day of 2018.  Actually it may have been the third sunny day but it felt like the first.  Sunny, with hurricane force winds.  Hurricane force winds that blew for a full 24 hours.

Power thief

This downed tree may not look like much, but it fell early-ish Friday morning, blocking us in and taking out our power line.  It doesn't look like much, but it's almost two feet in diameter and the other third of the tree, the top third, is over across the street blocking up the neighbor's driveway.

We have an excellent power company (I bet you don't hear that very often!) and they were able to restore our power after only about 12 hours.  Naturally, we had all gone to bed out of boredom not 30 minutes before hand.  Saturday morning, we all hopped out of bed bright and early, eager to play on our computers... only to find that while we had power, we had no internet service.  Dammit!

We finally got our internet back Saturday night.  On Sunday morning I finished catching up on email reading.... and discovered I'd just missed Craftsy's free weekend.  Craftsy had an All Classes are Free weekend and I missed it!  Double dammit!

Hat #14 out of 52

In my frustration, I started knitting another hat.

Tell me that knitting book isn't straight out of the '80's!

I'm using the shaping from a hat featured in The Sweater Connection and a simple fair isle design from a random stitch dictionary that happened to be within reach at the time.   And of course, I'm using Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes in Lake Ice Heather and Garnet Heather.

So, here's hoping you'll join me for Makers' Monday and tell me all about the free Craftsy classes you took, the wild weather you experienced this weekend and of course, what you're creating.

Three on Thursday

Today's Three on Thursday list may not be the most exciting list you've ever read but count yourselves lucky.  I was out running errands last night and racking my brain trying to think of something to write about for today's post... and all I could come up with was my three favorite trees.

Trees???

So here's my knitting stats for February instead.

1.  I've knit 13 out of 52 hats for a score of 19% complete.

2.  My Ravelry Challenge shows me as having knit 16 out of 60 items, for a score of 27% complete.

3.  The yarn diet.  I cheated one day in February and purchased yarn.  Technically, my yarn diet could be over.  The original, lone "rule" was no yarn purchased until I'd emptied a drawer full.  Technically, I have met that goal.  I've used an entire shoe box sized drawer of tiny bits of scrap yarn on my mitered squares and diagonal stripes blankets.  But the shoe box drawer was not what I meant when I set the "rule."  I meant a chest of drawers drawer full of yarn.  The yarn diet will continue.

Hmmm....  maybe a list of my favorite trees would have been more interesting.

Join me over at Carole's place for today's Three on Thursday link up.