Three on Thursday

I'm down to the wire on Sarah's blanket so today's Three on Thursday list will be short and sweet.  And perhaps helpful for me to get the knitting done.

My Top Three Favorite Shows to Binge Watch While Binge Knitting:

1.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer

What's not to love about Buffy?  She's a strong, independent teen aged girl.  She's nice, she's funny, and she's sarcastic. The show has action, comedy, romance and did I mention the sarcasm?  I Love the sarcasm.

2.  Gilmore Girls

Another fun show with nice, funny, strong, intelligent, coffee drinking sarcastic women.

3.  Okay, I'm cheating with Number 3.  Number 3 is a tie between three shows.  In no particular order because I love them all equally,

3A.  The Tudors

Henry Cavill is in it.  Need I say more?  But the story is good too and it's historical.  I can pretend I'm being educated when I watch it.

3B.  True Blood

Once again, a show with a strong female lead and loads of sarcasm.  And let's not forget Eric Northman and Lafayette.  Lafayette just may be my all time favorite movie character ever.

3C.  Weeds

Yet another strong, independent, sarcastic, coffee drinking female lead.  While the idea of mother & young kids growing and dealing illegal drugs together makes me cringe, I have to admit, I admire Nancy Botwin.  Life continually knocks her down and she continually gets back up and soldiers on.  Again, I don't always agree with her decisions, but I admire her strength and tenacity.  

To read others' Three on Thursday lists, join me over at Carole Knits.

I crack myself up

Most of the time I refuse to join the band wagon & knit That pattern that everyone else is knitting.  Or at least I refuse to knit it while it's popular.  I may knit That pattern a year or two after all the hoop-la has died down, but I rarely like doing what everyone else is doing.

Round 10 Stitch Blanket

But the popular 10 Stitch Blanket by Frankie Brown has been calling my name.  The blanket comes in several different styles, all of which are free on Ravelry.  There's the round one, pictured above.  There's a zigzag one and the rectangle one.

10 Stitch Blanket by Frankie Brown

Everybody is knitting the rectangle.  Everybody!  And for once, I wanted to join in the fun.  Except, I'm still not to the half way point on my mitered square blanket.  The mitered squares are knit with scrap, left over yarns and my 10 Stitch Blanket would be as well.

And the thing that was holding me back from starting my own 10 Stitch rectangle blanket was...  What if I run out of yarn?  I would be knitting two blankets, both made with scrap, left over yarns.  What if I don' have enough?  What if I run out?

I really do crack myself up sometimes.

So I went ahead and cast on my 10 stitches and started knitting.

Something's amiss

It was fairly obvious fairly soon that something was amiss.  I decided that I just didn't know what the beginning was supposed to look like and knit through another episode of Buffy.  By then, there was no getting around it.  Somehow, I'd missed a corner on the very first round.  I hoped I could just knit a random corner into it and maybe it would be okay.  It wasn't okay, but I thought I could knit a flower or crochet a granny square or something to sew over top of the center.  That would surely fix it.  I kept knitting.

Sometimes, I crack myself up.

Eventually, Spike left Sunnydale and I had to face reality.  It was about as likely that I could cover up that goof as it was that Spike had left Sunnydale to come find me.

OTN 02/06/16 10 Stitch Blanket

A bit of frogging and yet another episode of Buffy later and I'm on my way to having a nice, flat 10 Stitch blanket.  And so far, I'm no where near close to running out of yarn.

Fascinating Friday

Fascinating Friday is not all that fascinating this week.  I knew I was in a rut, but good grief!  My big, exciting thing this week was cold brewed coffee.

Cold brewed coffee and Buffy

Coffee at Barnes & Noble was the best I could do.  I literally did nothing else exciting or new this past week.  The cold brewed coffee was a new experience for me though and it's an experience I'm likely to repeat.  It's delicious!

And yes, I'm watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns.  Again.  I started watching the show for the 1,003rd time back during the big snow storm and once I made it to Season 2 and Spike's appearance, well, I'll be watching through the grand finale at the end of Season 7.

And, while we were at Barnes & Noble, Sarah found a copy of The Physics of The Buffyverse.

www.jenniferouellette-writes.com

So of course, I bought it.  So really, that's two new things this week.  I am smoking this Fascinating Friday thing!

Five by Five

We survived Christmas!  And of course, I hope you did as well.  It was an interesting holiday this year.  We escaped the holiday without having to make a single 911 call and there were no trips to the ER.  This year's drama was centered around the weather.  Well, and the baking.  All I'm going to say about the baking is that my awesome Thanksgiving baking karma did not hold through Christmas.  In fact, it pretty much bit me on the a$$.  Let's just say there were a few problems in the kitchen.  I'll leave it at that.

But the Christmas weather drama....  It rained.  It was hot and it rained.  And it rained and rained and rained.  It was so hot, my son wore shorts to Christmas dinner and the rest of us wore summer shirts rather than Christmas sweaters.  It was so hot we turned the air conditioner on in the house. And then there was the rain.  It wasn't just rain, it was RAIN!  It rained and rained and rained.  It thunder stormed for almost 24 hours straight.  Literally!  The thunder storms started around 10 a.m. on Christmas Eve morning and didn't stop until around 7 p.m. Christmas night.  Rivers, creeks, fields and yards flooded and trees fell.  It rained so hard on Christmas Eve that by late afternoon, you could ride around the neighborhood & hear three out of five houses' septic tank alarms ringing.  We pretended it was Santa's sleigh bells.

But weather & cooking drama aside, we had a very nice Christmas.  I managed to get all the gift knitting done.  Done in time to get them wrapped.  Okay, bagged.  Thank God for gift bags!  Anyway, the gift knitting got done, although not photographed, and I even had a few minutes to  cast on a #ChristmasEveCastOn project.

#ChristmasEveCastOn

Actually, two #ChristmasEveCastOn projects.  The first was a hat.  The yarn is Yarn Bee Dazzling in the Tropics colorway.  I don't remember buying it, but it was in my stash pile and it's sparkly jewel tones seemed festive and I thought it would be a nice break from all that brown & white gift knitting I did.  Why?  Why was every single gift I knit this year either brown or white?  Why?

Even though I was happy to knit a sparkly hat, I couldn't stop thinking about the yarn I'd balled just a few days earlier.

#ChristmasEveCastOn

Moment's before leaving to go deliver gifts and getting in the passenger seat of the car, with my daughter behind the wheel, I decided I needed something a little more special to take my mind off my baby girl driving us around in the pouring down, road flooding rain & holiday traffic.  I grabbed those green yarns, a pair of needles and cast on the Five by Five Cowl.

Five by Five Cowl

It turns out, the Five by Five is a super simple, quick to knit project.  I've already finished it and would have worn it, except it's still a little on the warm side.  By the end of the week though, in typical Virginia fashion, the temperatures will crash and it will be back down into the 20's where it's supposed to be this time of year.  And I'll be wearing my gorgeous Five by Five cowl.  Except...

Except this pattern was so easy and so much fun and I have about 1,000 different workable yarn combinations in my stash pile....  I may be wearing a totally different one by this weekend.

And let's not mention how desperately I want to binge watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer now.  Thanks for that, Five by Five.

Happy New Year!

Wow.  I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted.  Shame on me!  In my defense, it has been a rather crazy & unusual holiday season.  It was my first Christmas on Etsy and I went a bit obsessive there.  There was the fact that my kids' "letters to Santa" were digital this year.  And late, or at least my son's was.  He didn't give me his list until the 20th & of course I was waiting for his list to order everyone else's stuff.  It was also my first year shopping completely online.  I know.  Don't laugh.  I really am behind the times, but I have to say, it was awesome!  It wouldn't have been awesome if I didn't have a list of live links to work from, but having those lists, online shopping was awesome.  Of course, since I was ordering around midnight on the 20th,  55% of the items I ordered said they would not arrive before the 24th and the other 45% were due to arrive after the 27th.  I was dreading Christmas Eve.  My normal routine is to cry & scream in the kitchen while cakes fall, dogs jump up on counters and steal platters of food while my family act not much better than the dogs.  Also, we leave around 4 p.m. to head to my sisters and don't arrive back home until late.  I was expecting Mr. UPS Man to arrive with all those gifts somewhere around 3:30 p.m., smack in the middle of the worst of the crying jag.  Oh, and have I mentioned how much I HATE to wrap presents?  The thought of having 30 minutes to complete my crying jag, rescue my contribution to two Christmas dinners from the dogs, get dressed, and wrap all the gifts was adding just a tad bit of stress to my pour addled brain.

But that wasn't the worst of it.  There were two other issues.  First, I had a pretty bad reaction to a new medication and secondly, I discovered  Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.  I'd never seen Buffy before.  I know.  Once again, I'm behind the times & have apparently been living under a rock.  I'd always thought Buffy was some stupid annoying preteen show.  But I'll be the first to admit - Buffy ROCKS!   Anyway.... let's just say I became slightly obsessed.  I watched the entire seven seasons over the course of three weeks while totally ignoring my family, my blog and many other things.  I did however get lots of knitting done.

As for the reaction to the medication, ugh!  I have Rosacea & take medication for it and apparently, the country is experiencing a national shortage of Rosacea medication.  Weird, isn't it?  Anyway, the pharmacy  was out of my usual meds so they gave me something else.  I never read the warning labels because of that power of suggestion thing.  I'll instantly think I have every symptom on the list even before I swallow the first pill.  So, I took the new drug for a  month & went in to get a refill.  Meanwhile, about five days after starting the new meds, I started having some pretty weird problems.  I kept thinking of the coincidence of the problems starting close to when I started the medication, but there were other more logical explanations too.  First, I started having "girly" problems, but hey - I'm going to be 50 on my next birthday.  Time for some girly issues to occur.  Then the muscle spasms started.  First, it was in my neck & shoulder, but I had slept funny so a neck crick wasn't that unusual.  Then I started getting weird muscle spasms all over the core of my body.  Everywhere from my ears to my hips.  It was not fun and it was a little bit scary but I kept reminding myself that I'd been spending an unusual amount of time in a chair either at the desk or knitting, then eventually Buffy watching.  I wasn't getting any exercise at all so it was no wonder my muscles were doing weird things.  Then the lung cramps started.  They really scared me & I was pretty worried about a heart attack but the cramps would alternate between lungs.  One day, the pain was on one side, the next day, the other side.  Again, I chalked it up to no exercise and the start of holiday binge eating.  And then the GURD (or is it GERD?) started.  That was fun.  Nothing like vomiting every time you lay down while having a lung cramp that is preventing you from taking a deep enough breath to even blow your nose.  Again, I chalked the GURD/GERD up to massive holiday foods, specially late at night while I obsessively watched Buffy episodes.  Finally, it was time to renew my meds & this time I read the warning label.  Muscle aches, GURD/GERD, & stomach distress.  Oh yeah.  Except I think they could have used a better word than muscle "ache".   So, I called my doctor, got a different medication, stayed off all medications for a week (while my face exploded just in time for Christmas photos of course) and all the weird symptoms finally went away.

So, leading up to Christmas, things were kind of crazy.  But, the gifts all arrived in time, in fact, the last one to arrive showed up on the 23rd in plenty of time to get wrapped.  As for the kitchen related crying jag on Christmas Eve, it never happened!  My innards were still a bit tender & I just wasn't in the mood to bake much.  Actually, the thought of eating much of anything was still a pretty icky thought.  Hubby was a bit disappointed not to have rum balls but otherwise, he was actually happy I wasn't baking.  We both need to loose a bit of weight and having all those baked goodies around doesn't help the situation.

Christmas day rolled around & everyone seemed happy with their gifts.  I feel pretty bad for hubby though.  I had never wrapped his gifts & hadn't noticed it.  He didn't say anything about not receiving anything from me & I didn't give it much thought because we'd given each other new tires & a gym membership.  We weren't supposed to give each other anything else, but of course we each did.  Anyway, I didn't notice hubby hadn't gotten his gift until a few days later when I opened my dresser drawer where I'd had things stashed & found his stuff still laying there.  Oops.

But I got the best present ever.  Actually, I got two gifts that have me super excited.  One is a tote bag/purse-like brief case.  It's got room for lots of knitting, all my purse junk and my laptop.  I LOVE it!  No current photos of it.  Sorry.  One of these days.....   The other item came from my Mother in Law & for the life of me, I can't figure out how she came up with it.

It's a yarn bowl.  Sorry for the bad photo.  I'm not sure where I left my camera & that's taken with Photo Booth pre morning coffee.  Anyway....  I've heard about yarn bowls, seen pictures of them & thought it would be cool to have simply because I like gadgets.  But seriously, a yarn bowl?  A special bowl to hold your yarn?  What a waste of money!  Just use your knitting bag or a Tupperware bowl.  But I have seen the light!  This thing is AWESOME!  Besides the fact that it's hand made & pretty, it works amazingly well.  The yarn doesn't roll out of it, even when you hit a major snag in the yarn.  The yarn even seems to pull easier & more smoothly from the skein.  I don't feel like I have to keep  pulling the yarn out of the skein, it just flows naturally.  The bowl will also hold a stitch counter & a cable needle & when you are ready to take a break, you can plop your knitting into the bowl (it wouldn't hold a sweater, but it does hold a surprising amount of fabric) and have it all contained.  I LOVE this bowl!  Best invention ever.   The only problem I've had with it is that for the first few days, it kept giving me slight panic attacks.  I'd be sitting at the computer desk, watching Buffy DVD's and knitting.  I'd glance over, catch sight of the bowl out of the corner of my eye and go into panic mode because my soup bowl was too close to my knitting.  LOL  I have no idea why I kept thinking it was a bowl of soup.  If you are curious, this particular bowl came from here.

New Year's Eve rolled around and we celebrated in our traditional manner.  Hubby went to work, I took the Christmas decorations down (all but the tree) and the kids slept.  When I went out to take down the Christmas flag, I discovered that it was a gorgeous, gorgeous day.  I hung the snowman flag, said a little prayer that for once it wouldn't bring blizzards, mentally apologized to my husband & his business partner & took a break from cleaning.  Now, I'm sure you are wondering why I'm praying & apologizing over a flag, but Mr. Snowman seems to have super powers.  It's gotten to be sort of erie how our weather suddenly changes & the snow & ice hit as soon as I hang that flag.  Hubby has made me promise over & over again to never again hang it (apparently I like to break promises) and his business partner has offered me money not to hang it & threatened to burn it if I did.  Snow impedes their work flow so they aren't big fans.  Anyway, after hanging Mr. Snowman, I sat out on the porch & basked in the sunshine.  I was wearing a long sleeved t-shirt and actually got hot, almost sweaty!  It was that warm.  I never did check the thermometer, but it had to be close to 70 degrees.  Mr. Snowman is going to have his work cut out for him after all that warm sunshine.

For New Year's dinner, we (hubby) did the traditional grilling, but this year he didn't have to wear a winter coat, hat & gloves while he did it.  And as our tradition goes, we ate well then all went our separate ways within the house.  Twenty minutes to midnight, Hubby announced he couldn't stay awake any longer and within minutes, he was in bed & snoring.  The kids & I gathered to watch Dick Clark & the ball drop, we did our  New Year's hug & kiss thing then all went our separate ways once again.  Personally, I went back to trying to finish my book & gave a box of Oreo's a run for its money.  I was hoping to finish the cookies so that they wouldn't be here in the house today, but the Oreo coma struck before I could polish them all off.  Now I'm struggling with the moral dilemma of telling the kids they can finish them or hiding them for when I'm in serious "I Need Chocolate" panic mode.  Decisions, decisions.

Counting down

I'm counting down to lots of things these days.  Of course there's the Christmas count down, but I don't even want to think about that.  That counter thingy over there on the side says 24 days.  Yikes!  How can that be?  Think I could postpone Christmas by deleteing that counter?

I'm also counting down until December 26th when I'm going back to eating healthy.  My diet has been beyond horrible lately and it shows on my body.  I won't go into how much weight I've gained or how sluggish I feel.  Let's just say I'm looking forward to 12/26.  I know I could start now and probably feel a lot better about the fact that there's only 24 shopping days left, but....  it's just too hard to eat clean during the holidays.  I am, however, trying to make an effort to only eat the good, tasty junk and not to eat junk just for the sake of eating junk.   Judging by my recent binge on stale candy canes, I'm not making a lot of effort however.

Then there's the count down to the AAR Holiday Bazaar this Saturday.  It will be my first time participating in a bazaar as a seller and I'm a little nervous.  My friend Traci is participating too so I know we'll have a good time even if neither of us sells a single thing.  Of course, we'd have more fun if we sold everything, so come on out & shop with us.

I've been a bit obsessed lately with creating things to sell at the bazaar and have done no knitting for myself in ages.  Actually, I haven't knitted for me since I opened the Etsy shop.  I decided that it was time to start and saw the Hitchhiker scarf pattern mentioned on Wendy Knits and instantly fell in love.

Ok, so it doesn't look like much there, but I LOVE the pattern and the way the yarn is creating those stripes.  I'm using Patons Kroy Socks in the Clover colorway.  It's a very simple pattern which creates a loooooong, thin triangle that curves so it will easily wrap around your neck, scarf-style.  I think I'll probably make a zillion of these scarves before I'm done.  Because you know I need a red one, a green one, a blue one, a purple one, maybe a creamy white one, and of course, they'd also make great gifts for both the men & women in my life.

So, I'm signing off of here and going back to knitting.  And doing laundry, which is another thing I'm counting down.  Can anyone tell me  how one family creates so much laundry?  It's not like I have 18 kids.  We are a normal, four person family, but if you looked at our pile of dirty clothes, you'd think we had 24 kids.  Sheesh.  So, I'll go toss another load in, then I'll start knitting.  Knitting after I turn Buffy the Vampire Slayer on.  Have I mentioned that's my new passion?  How did I not know about this show?  Well, I knew it existed but I always thought it was the dumbest thing on earth.  But that was before I ever watched a single episode.  Now, I'm obsessed and it's all I want for Christmas.  Buffy DVDs.  Well, and yarn.  Buffy and yarn.  What more could a girl want?

Well, maybe a laundry maid.  Buff, yarn and a maid.  That's my Christmas list in a nutshell.