Snippets

Shame on me!  I can not believe how long it's been since I've shown the blog any love at all.  I've been pretty busy doing a variety of things, many of which were blog worthy, but I never seemed to be able to find the time &/or energy to write the posts.  I haven't even had the time to read other peoples' blog posts!

In knitting news,since I last posted I've knit three scarves and knit & frogged one skein of yarn over & over & over again.  That skein simply refuses to tell me what it wants to be.  I thought it wanted to be a Hitchhiker scarf but it said, "NO!" about half way through.  We both thought it might want to be a scarf of my own design which was a looooong thin triangle like the Hitchhiker but with ruffles, but once again, the yarn decided against that.  I tried making it into a shawl, two different shawls actually, but the yarn wasn't pleased with either of those choices either.  Finally, I spoke sternly to it & put the yarn in a time-out where it still sits.

Next, I knit a couple of dish clothes, but I was so disgusted by the other yarn's behavior I decided not to knit at all.

Gasp!

Instead of knitting, I'm making felt Christmas tree ornaments.  Because you know, everyone wants Christmas ornaments in March.  I'm telling myself I'm preparing for Etsy's  Christmas in July hoop-la.  Besides, the ornaments could be used for other things because honestly, there's nothing particularly Christmassy about them.  They are just round felt things.  They could hang around the neck of a wine bottle or over a drawer pull, or hang off a zipper pull, or a keychain or even a dog's collar.  So yeah, I'm not totally wasting my time making Christmas ornaments in March.

On the non-crafty side of life, we went to the zoo with a group of homeschoolers.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this zoo.  The animals are so much closer to the public than at any other zoo I've ever been to and, best of all, you can feed & pet the giraffes.

I won't take the time to load all the photos here, but if you're interested, you can go check out my Facebook page.  Most of them can be found there.   And if you are ever having a bad day or just feel the need for some stranger love, head to the Metro Richmond Zoo.  Those giraffes are just the coolest and will cheer you up in an instant.  Watch out for the big one though.  He's a bit of a bully and a food hog.

Another activity I'd like to mention is that after a year of sitting on the couch whining about how I miss running, I've finally started running again.  Well, running is not exactly correct.  It's more like I'm back to my original slow stumble.  But one day soon, I'll be running.  I've only been out for a few runs so far, but I'm rather impressed with my progress.  Seems like I'm progressing much quicker than I did when I first started out a few years ago.  My first trip out, I only traveled about 1.5 miles & "ran" in 20 second increments.  My legs were definitely feeling the recent inactivity and tired quickly.  The next day, okay, the next two days, I could barely walk.  The second trip out was 4 miles with 1 minute spurts of running and my legs didn't start to feel tired until the third mile.  That time, it was my breathing and the knowledge that I needed to be able to walk the next day that limited the time spent actually running.  Since then, each time out has been a little easier & my legs have felt tired the next day, but not sore.  Yay!

Sarah dragged me off to see Hunger Games the other day and I have to say, I'm so glad she did.  I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  I'd loved the book, but I could only imagine what Hollywood would do with all the violence.  I was not looking forward to watching a bunch of kids viciously kill each other.  I was amazed at how well it was handled though.  The violence was sort of blurred & the screen shots jumped around from one shot to the next so quickly that while you understood what was happening, you didn't really see it happen.  It was a very pleasant surprise!

Besides all that, I've been on a reading kick.  I read a few more books from the Black Dagger Brotherhood series,   The Happiness Project, and some other book who's title & subject matter escapes me.  Must not have been a very impressive book.  I'm also still slowly working my way through The Principles of Knitting.  I can't believe I'm reading that huge book like a novel.  What a geek!  I'm learning a lot though, so I'll keep reading.

Besides all that, there have been many, many trips to various bowling alleys (will my son ever get his drivers license??) and Hubby has kept me unusually busy running errands for him.   And now, since I finally posted here, I'm going to go celebrate with ice-cream.  Can't remember the name of it, but it has peanut butter & chocolate bunnies in it.  Yum!

An Unnamed Post

Unfortunately, there's not much knitting progress to report.  I went for over 48 hours this week without knitting.   At all!  That is totally unheard of for me.  Instead of knitting, I read the fourth & fifth books in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.  Thank goodness I've been able to find a few of the books at the library because if I had to buy them all, it would severely cut into my yarn budget.  I'm a little worried about how I'll survive tonight.  I finished the fifth book this morning & will be picking the sixth one up at the library tomorrow.  How will I survive the night without a book?  Of course, I have several hundred other books on the shelves waiting for me, but I don't want to start one of those yet.  I want to finish the BDB series first.

Let's see, what else have I been doing to fill the time?  Several days were spent in utter immobile panic over how lengthy my to-do list was becoming.  For the first time ever, I sat down & made one of those four-zoned lists with sections called Important & Urgent, Important but not Urgent, Urgent but not Important & lastly, Not Important nor Urgent.  I had a little trouble placing a few items that I really want to accomplish in that last category, but if I'm honest with myself, neither of the things are important or urgent. They are simply things I want.  Other than that, the list was fairly easy to make and I can not verbalize the sense of tranquility that came over me once it was done.  I now have a very clear picture of what needs to be done and when.  Or at least, which tasks need to come first.  I have to admit, it's a bit of a relief to give up worrying about sending out my Christmas cards this week since they are neither important nor urgent.  And yes, my Christmas cards.  I'm a bit late.  Seems to be a not-so-new tradition for me.  For the last few years, I sent Christmas themed cards at Easter.

I've also spent a lot of time worrying about my growing butt & gut lately.  I haven't run in almost a year and I really miss it.  Apparently I don't miss it enough to get out there & do it, but....   But I do miss it.  I miss the post run calmness.  I miss the excellent nightly sleeping, I miss the energy it gave me even as it calmed me.  I keep telling myself I'm going to go back to running but something always seems to get in the way.  I was even dressed for it the other day but I had to go rescue Hubby who'd locked his keys in the car.    Actually, that one was probably the only real excuse I've had.  All the others were pretty flimsy.   The other night, I "ran" the grocery cart across the parking lot back to it's corral.  While that tiny bit of "running" left me embarrassingly breathless, it felt great!  It made my legs realize just how much they missed it.  So today, I went for a walk.  I know.  Not a run, but hey - at least I got up out of this chair.  My plan is to walk at least 4 times a week for a few weeks then start running again.  I figure if I start now, I'll be capable of really running about the time summer hits & it's 100 degrees with 100% humidity outside.  Something to look forward to.

Today's walk did give me an idea of something to knit though.  More about that in a future blog.

Just a quickie

This is just a quick post so that the blog knows I haven't totally forgotten about it.  I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted anything.  And worse, I can't believe I have nothing to show for that time.  I don't have photos of 15 recently knit shawls to show you, I haven't been on some exotic vacation & thankfully, I haven't been hospitalized.  Honestly, it's been a rather boring 10 days.

I have gotten a little knitting done in my time away.  I've finished a couple of cowls and am half way through a third.  I've read four books from the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.  Which frankly, is the main reason I don't have more knitting to show.   I don't have photos of the cowls yet because I haven't gotten off my butt to do the blocking.  Hopefully, that will be taken care of tomorrow.   I still don't have photos of the beaded shawl because the weather has been so bad.  It's either blindingly sunny or blowing rain & neither of those conditions allow me to take photos on my porch.  And since the inside of our house either has no natural light coming in the windows, has too much natural light coming in the windows, or has weirdly colored walls that don't look so good in photos...  I haven't had the opportunity to go into photography mode.  But again, maybe tomorrow....

I really need to buy/build myself a light box.  But....

Ugh.  Can you hear the whine in my voice?  Ick.

Meanwhile, and to get rid of the whine, I think I'll go have lunch with a good friend at a nice Mexican restaurant. Yum.

That was a first!

Last night was a first!  I woke myself up laughing.  I have no recollection of what I was dreaming, but I actually woke myself up laughing.  The deep, from the belly, spitting coffee all over the computer screen kind of laughing.  Very, very weird.  Way better than waking myself screaming, or worse, snoring.  But waking up laughing?  Very, very strange.

I also finished the basket weave scarf for my daughter late last night.  When I went to bed, she was laying on the couch in her pj's wearing it.  When she came down stairs this morning, she was still wearing it.  Either it's really cold in our house or she really likes the scarf.  I'll snap a photo if she ever gets dressed.

For now, I'm off to go spend an hour or two, or three or four reading.  I fear I'm about to totally abandon my knitting for a while.  I've discovered a new book series.  Actually, it can't possibly be new since I think there are 10 books, but it's new to me.  The Black Dagger Brotherhood by J. R. Ward.  Ever heard of it?  My SIL introduced me.  I'm not normally a big vampire story fan.  Ok, I know.  I've been totally obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently but I don't like it because of the vampires, I like it because of the romance, the action, the comedy and the sarcasm, not to mention I'm head over heels in love with Spike.  But the Black Dagger Brotherhood is good too.  I've only just started the second book so I'm not positive I'll like the entire series, but it definitely has potential.  Once again, there's plenty of action, a bit of romance, a bit of comedy/sarcasm and the sex scenes will make you sit up and say, "Oh my!"  The only problem is that the books' titles are enough to make a Harlequin Romance writer gag.  I may have to knit myself a book cover so that no one sees the embarrassing titles.  Thankfully, my library doesn't have many of the series so I'll be buying most of them - on my Kindle.  

Oh, and I love the vampire's names.  There's Wrath, Rhage, Zsadist, Vishous and well, I can't remember the others, but they all have great names.  Ok, I'm off to read...