….>>>>>>>>>…..see? And I already sold something, too!

I better not get too cocky, or I’ll never get that wheel

So today I took some of my fiber & spun yarns to work so I could weigh them. We have a nifty expensive scale that weighs down really low and I’m too cheap to get my own.

Anyway, there’s a customer there that’s always bringing me knitting patterns and stuff that she brought from the UK, and talking to me about knitting related stuff. Since I had some of my yarn on hand, I took it out to show her (because you know, us spinners are always up for people thinking we’re cool because we make our own yarn, lol). I showed her some of my fibers too, and some of that was Tussah Silk that I had dyed up yesterday. It’s several shades of pink, with a tad of blue & purple (where it bled & blended) and some natural in there. She asked me “Silk? What kind of silk?” I told her it was regular, good, old fashioned, expensive silk. “Where does that kind of silk come from?” - Umm…a worms butt! Ewwwwwwwww! HAHAHAHA! (then she asked how many worms it took to make my 7oz of silk, lol I have no idea!)

So when I came home today, I finished spinning up some BFL that I started yesterday (gosh, it’s bright…I need to take pics). When I was done, I decided that I was going to spin up that silk. I knew it was going to be flighty because of spinning merino/silk blends, and those were only 70/20. This was 100% Tussah. Yeah, flighty. Very. Persian up my nose again. But…O.M.G…this is going to be PRETTY! I’m spinning it very thin, because I want a nice lace weight out of it. Right now it’s in the infamous ‘dental floss’ phase. I’ve only done a tiny bit, and have about 7oz of it (I gave 1oz of it to a lady who wanted to try it out a while back). It’s so shiny!

I wonder if the soysilk is going to spin similarly. I have 7oz of that as well that I dyed some funky ass green color. I know not to be disappointed in it right now though, because some of my dyeing experiments that I thought were failures actually turned out really nice. If it sucks, then I can always overdye it after I spin it.

I can’t decide if I’ll spin that next, or the Karaoke which has red, black, and a sapphire blue.

I just had to share about my pretty silk. I’m pretty darn excited about it!

Today is the first day of school! That means, every Monday (sans Holidays) I will have the WHOLE day to myself!

I dropped him off this morning so that I could see where his class was and meet his teacher. This year he has a regular desk, not tables that he’s had since Kindergarten. While we were waiting outside the room, a gaggle of kids were showing up that I thought to be in his class. A lot of them weren’t, but his classroom is connected to 2 others on either side, so they were a mix of the 3 classes. There was one boy, who was really, really, small. Like 4 year old sized. I thought to myself “Awww, poor kid is so short, his backpack is bigger than him!”. Then I heard his name - It starts with an E. And then I remembered that Joey had a bully in his class last year with that name, and that was him! I had to stifle my laugh for like 20 minutes. I mean, this kid is at least a foot shorter than Joey (honestly!) and probably weighs half as much. That probably explains his bully-ness. He found a kid weaker than himself, and who better than the strange autistic kid in your class, right? I asked that when the teacher did the seating assignments that she not sit them near each other because of that. E likes to call Joey “Rat Face”, because he sometimes has a tic that makes him squinch his nose. If I were a mean mom, I would teach Joey all the condescending remarks to make to a boy with a short mans complex. I know a lot, because I use them on the Boss Man all the time at work…”Sorry, he can’t come to the phone right now. He’s out representing the Lollipop Guild.”. or “I tried to find him back there, but everything is SO BIG and he’s so small!” or “Oh, he’s at the counter. If you look closely, you can see the top of his hair”.

Anyway, I spent all day dyeing some fibers yesterday that I’m going to spin up and attempt to sell. I have some soysilk, tussah silk, and some Karaoke (soy/wool) that I’m going to spin up, along with some BFL and some corriedale. I have some corriedale on the wheel right now that I dyed up when I went on the binge a few months ago. I have about 1oz left and then I’m going to try once more to navajo ply it. If I can’t do it this time, I will never again try to do it.

In a bit I’m going out to lunch with Michelle & my sister. We’re going to the Sizzler! Oh, how I love the Sizzler salad bar! And only $6, it can’t be beat!

And my deal of the day - they had lint rollers on clearance for 75cents. Refills were also 75cents. So now, I will have at least 150 days (if i only use a sheet a day) of lint free pants!! Between 3 cats and my love of everything fibery, sometimes I look like somebody scraped me out of the lint trap of a dryer.

Pattern is Sylvers Baby Mary Jane Skimmers. These were somewhat quick to make, but since I assembly lined them, they took about 5 days from start to finish. The only part I didn’t like is the DTC (double-treble-crochet) on the 6month size. I’m not a fan of a regular treble crochet, and when you throw a third yarn-over in there, it just really gets my goat. I have no issues with HDC or DC’s. They are my friends. They make projects go faster. TC & DTC though, they make life rough. Especially when I’m doing 8 of them and leaving the last loops all on the hook and my crochet hook starts to look like a knitting needle choking on cotton yarn. She also has a pattern that’s similar to Saartje’s Booties, but crochet. I was having such a hard time with Saartje’s (which I’ve decided to start spelling “Sargies” because I’m generally too lazy to look it up), that I decided that crochet was the way to go. I can make a pair in about 90 minutes. I still need to finish up the one’s I’ve done so far, add buttons and such.

Then there’s Katja!

I don’t know who it’s going to fit. Intended originally for Emily, but it might be too small, we’ll have to see. I made it with Frog Tree Pima Cotton/Silk blend. It was a nice yarn, though a tad on the splitty side. It was a quick knit, that I completed while sitting in the waiting room when I was at the hospital. I did the boobie parts at home, and those only took me maybe 45 minutes, the rest was done there.

I got my 4H swap package last week, too! I just took pictures of it today, but I’ve fondled the contents several times!

That’s the yarn, ain’t it BEAUTIFUL! It’s a 50/50 Wool/Bamboo blend. It’s so shiny and perfect! She did it navajo ply (which we all know I suck miserably at). It looks to be about a worsted weight, but I don’t know the exact yardage. I’ll have to look it up

She also sent some matching roving that is so absolutely lucious!! It’s all fuzzy, and soft, and cuddly, and such pretty colors like the yarn has. I hope I can do it justice!

And a real live WIP tool!!!! OMG, I can’t tell you how much THAT alone excited me! With a little card to tell weights and everything. And a little project bag, and some handmade soap! I didn’t get a pic of the soap because we’ve already cracked into it. I just LOVE me some handmade soap! A HUGE thanks goes out to SoapTurtle for making this a super swap! (I’ve had a lot of bad one’s, lol).

Now, riddle me this……

I really want a new wheel, but I really can’t afford one at ALL. I don’t want to sell my Fricke, though, so don’t even ask about that. What I was thinking of doing, is selling my handspun and try to save up that way. Do you think I should even try? I know that it would take me a while, but 6 months is better than never, right? My handspun isn’t the greatests, like Mrs. B or Elemm’s (Yes, you guys rock!), but do you think it’s worth selling? I could start with what I have, and I have a little bit more fiber that I can spin and sell..then use that to get more…and then either sell the dyed fibers or yarn I made from it? I really want a Kromski Sonata, and it’s $520. So far I have $4, and I’m probably going to spend that on cigarettes. So we’re down to -$2 at this point.

I’ve completely lost track.

I want to win THIS, so I’m doing an out-of-the-ordinary thing for me and posting a link back. I never win anything though, so this’ll be a long shot That would be adorable for Emily when she gets a little bigger! (For those who don’t follow, Emily is my BFF’s little girl)

I’m making some kick ass booties to give away to random people with babies. They are cute. But you can’t see until I take pics when I’m done with this batch.

I was in the hospital last week, and they wrote me a script for birth control pills. EH? They said it will fix all that ails me in the ‘woman’ department. Joey says “Mom, you have just WAY too many woman problems!”. Of course, he said this really loud in the grocery store when he asked me what the pills were for, lol.

He starts school on Monday. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

I finally took pics of yarn I’ve made in the last 2 months or so. Some alpaca, some merino/silk blend, and 2 BFLs (for my 4H pal ) Here they are in no particular order (because I”m lazy. If you wanna see stats, then get a Ravelry account for crying out loud!)

Umm..what else. Oh yeah, we’re getting one of them water dispenser machine thingies in my complex. This may not seem a big deal to you people with cars and stuff, but for us it’s HUGE. We have new management (again!) and I went up to the manager a couple weeks ago and said “Ya know, I would think you were the most awesome person in the planet if you got us a water machine here”. And a couple other tenants in the office at the time agreed. So, it should be here soon. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but as of about 45 minutes ago it still wasn’t here (5:20pm right now at home). Keep your fingers crossed. It’ll be like Christmas with quarters and gallon jugs! (we won’t have to carry water home anymore from 1 mile away! YAY!)

I have off work tomorrow because I don’t have anybody to watch Joey. Today was the last day of the B&G Club for the summer session. My sister is taking Friday off to watch the boys. At least I don’t have to watch my nephew tomorrow. I don’t like to punish other peoples kids, and he is the kind that you just want to smack in the mouth every time he opens it (he’s a rude, mean little shit!).

A customer of mine brought me in a huge bag full of books to read today. That’s a good thing, except they’re hardcover and heavy and I had to carry that along with a bag of groceries (including a gallon of milk) home from the store. That sucked ass. I’ll start reading them after I’m done listening to these audio books I have. I’m on 7 of 11 right now. This is a short one, at least. Only about 14 hours.

I want to buy yarn really bad. I haven’t bought any ‘good’ yarn (that wasn’t acrylic for that giant ugly blanket i made) in like…oh gosh…nearly a year I think. Well, I did get some fingering weight alpaca on sale, but I can’t remember what I got it for. I wonder what I can do with it? I’m going thru stash yarns right now trying to use that stuff up. I don’t want to get rid of it because most of it isn’t worth giving, but I can make quick gift type projects and stuff with it. I really want this. And I want a bunch of that Cotlin yarn. I can make so many cool baby and home things with it. I think I’m going to start a hidden jar. Or give money to my sister that I can’t use to pay bills with, or something, lol.

Since I have tomorrow off, I’m going to go take a nap, LOL.

November 1st!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!

This is Richard & Kahlan

I only have a nitpick about Kahlan. In the book, her Confessors dress is portrayed as being very simple. Quote from the book:

The dress she wore was like none he had ever seen: almost white, cut square at the neck, interrupted only by a small tan leather waist pouch. The weave of the fabric was fine and smooth, almost glistening, and bore none of the lace or frills he was used to seeing, no prints or colors to distract from the way it caressed her form. The dress was elegant in its simplicity.”

Here is the big picture from the official blog. Now, in this picture, it seems she’s missing that tan leather waist pouch that is so very prominent throughout the entire story line of most of the books. Also, that neckline? Hardly square. Too much Kahlan cleavage (She’s a virgin, ya know). The collar, the sleeves, the armband. Way off, here. But, I guess I’ll just have to deal with it, eh? Oh, and her hair isn’t long enough.

Note: In the Midlands, the length of one’s hair denotes social standing. The longer the hair, the higher up. No one’s hair is longer than Kahlans. Queens bow to her.

Richard, I think I can deal with. I’ve read a bit of the controversy surrounding his size/age, etc. I think his age is right on the money, and from the trailer I think he can pull it off. Even if he is a bit smaller than you’re led to believe by the books.

Then again, this is an adaptation of the SOT series. It won’t be word for word like the books, and will have creative liberties taken. Goodkind is part of the writing staff (duh, he wrote the books), so anything that I will see I will have faith in, because the original author thought it good enough to portray on my TV.

And for all you LOTR & Star Wars geeks out there - 3 of the other main characters will be portrayed by guys that were in either one (or both) of some of those movies Disappointed in Chase, though. I pictured him in my mind like Bill Fagerbakke (M-O-O-N, that spells Patrick from Spongebob).

So, now the countdown begins. I will watch this show faithfully every Saturday. I will DVR it. I will record it on my nifty DVD burner thing that I can’t figure out how to work and has turned out to be a waste of my $150 tax money. I will buy the boxed set if that doesn’t pan out.

Now, I will go and put on my iPod Shuffle, which is currently playing Chapter 37 of “The Faith Of the Fallen” by Terry Goodkind. Book 6 in the Sword Of Truth Series. This is my favorite one. This is the one where Nicci changes and Kahlan kicks a lot of ass. Then I’m going to go knit something that’s not a Log Cabin baby blanket that’s making my eyes bleed.

Literally & Figuratively. For certain reasons, I had to work an open to close at work the last 2 nights. I did it because I needed to, not because I wanted to, or because somebody asked me to. After the first night, my neck felt funny. I thought I was just getting a migraine back there, but then before I left work I realized it was just plain old neck pain. By yesterday morning, I couldn’t move my neck at all. I managed to force myself to work thru yesterday, about 15 hours, with this pain. Today it’s a bit better, I can move it more, but it still hurts like a bitch. I ended up not being able to work my shift this morning because 1) I’m so tired, I could barely function, and 2) My neck just fucking HURTS! I mean, I was toughing it out yesterday. Sure, I complained about it - that’s my nature - but honestly, I just wanted to crawl into a corner and cry it hurt so bad. I’m going to end up borrowing a bit of money from my dad to make rent. That makes me feel horrible because I’ve never, EVER, had to do that before. If I would have just grown some balls and made it thru today, I might not have to. But I just couldn’t. I’m a pu$$y. I’m gonna go back to bed. I’d still be there if Joey hadn’t crashed a computer game and locked up the computer, lol. (and I’m so tired, that before I posted this I realized that I almost made it a permanent page rather than a regular blog post, lol).

So I mentioned about a bookcase in my last post. My dad would have taken me, ‘cept he had his final radiation treatment on Friday, so he felt icky. Instead, my friends husband took me to pick it up, since he’s a professional mover and all. But he brought the blazer, not the truck. I was hoping it would fit, she told me it was about 7 feet tall. He said he’d make it fit, and it’s probably not that big. Afterall, she is on the very short side, so everything seems big But, it WAS big. HUGE. GIANT!

I had one of 2 places that I was going to put it, both in my ‘dining room’ area in the back of my apartment. On one wall or the other. I was waiting to see how wide it was (40″) before I decided. So I brought it in the house, and decided to put it along the long wall. But…it was 2″ too tall. My ceiling in the kitchen/dining area drops down about 18″, therefore there’s not enough headroom going up. I couldn’t put it in the living room in front of the counter/bar, because I needed to secure it to the wall. So I ended up moving my couch over about 2 feet (which DH is pissed about because now it’s off-center from our TV station thing, lol).

I got all my books together to put them away. It has 6 shelves, so I was saving the bottom 2 for my crafty books & mags, and the top 4 for the rest of my books. I thought I had kind of a lot of books, for someone who doesn’t read a lot, at least. Putting all of them away makes it look like I hardly have any at all, especially on this HUGE bookcase! I put all of my Webkinz on the very, very top. I filled in gaps on the top 3 shelves with my massively large (haha, 20) snowglobe collection, and some other small nic-naks. Then I put a couple pics of Joey into some frames and put those on there. On the bottom 2 shelves I put some of my coca-cola crap on it. Now it looks all filled in. Now I don’t have room for anymore books I could fit quite a bit more on the bottom 2 shelves, but I had to have the obligatory pile of crap on the 2nd shelf from the bottom, right?

If you order now, you’ll get a plate full of Cholesterol Lovin’!

Plus, as an added bonus, a few crocheted-in-30-minute pot-holders!

And a cute baby!

Who thinks I’m really fun!

My little name for her is MaraMara, and she’s my buddy. Her grandma and her grandma’s friends are my regular customers (because I”m the only one who signs there) and she’s been bringing her in since she was a week old. She gets so excited when she sees me, she just hops up and down and claps her hands! Yesterday she did her first sign for “yes”!!! There was a cranky old man behind me (Funny Cranky, not Mean Cranky) and I was saying & signing to her “Yes, he’s an angry old man, very angry old man, isn’t he!” and she clapped her hands and signed “YES!” Awwwwwwwwwww.

Tomorrow I’m getting a new-to-me big giant oak bookcase! Another one of my regulars is moving out of state - she’s only been here for a year but doesn’t like Arizona - and is giving it to me! I’m sooooooo ‘cited!

Bwahahahaha! My plan has worked! No offers to make my man-bits bigger. No more offers and links to purchase prescription medication below cost without a doctors note.

Now my life is complete.

I’ve been trying to work, when I can. When I can get extra hours. Having small anxiety attacks here and there about money, ya know. The DH’s hours will be going up in 2 weeks when the high schools go back into session, and that will help tremendously! I think that’s mostly my problem. His paychecks get cut in half during the summer, but for some reason I feel it’s my fault that we’re broke.

The Boss Man is contemplating on terminating the employment of a co-worker who shall not be named (glad she doesn’t have the internets! LOL). And instead of replacing her, I told him that I would take her shift on top of mine. Heck, we only get to work like 5 hours a day anyway and she comes in 2 hours before my shift is technically over (which in turn, makes me leave before the end of my scheduled shift and having me work only 3-4 hours a day ). So, I can take hers, and work - get this - a full EIGHT hours a day! Woohoo! Well, 9 hours not including my 30 minute break and my 20000 smoke breaks during the day ;).

I was asked on Monday to come in and close, which was my first time doing that, because somebody called in sick. I did, because I needed the money. Turns out that it wasn’t really to my benefit, because yesterday I was sent home early - I was dead tired, so that part was okay. But I was there for 3 hours and didn’t have ANY customers at all, so it ended up being a wash. Today, I asked the Boss Man to call in the 12 o’clock girl (not the same one that is about to lose her job), and tell her not to come in. He couldn’t get ahold of her, but I did about an hour later. So I got to work until 5 o’clock!! YAY! I still need to bust my ass and take hours and shifts were I can get them for the next week and a half, or we’re going to have bad rent problems *twitch* We always make it though, but it doesn’t stop me from stressing. {Customer Rant: My first 2 tables this morning were a total of 15 people. 10 at one and 5 at another. Between those two tables I made a whopping $5! By 11am this morning, I had $9 in my pocket. I was BUMMING big time. That’s when I told that girl not to come in. Thankfully, by the end of the day I had a whoppin’ $130 in my pocket! Thanks to me being on the floor by myself for 5 hours, lol. End Rant}

Joey still has another month left of summer vacation, and after the rent is paid I’ll be concentrating on getting his uniforms in order. I already have a backpack and a lunch box for him, I got good deals on them. If worse comes to worse, he still has a few shorts & pants, and a couple shirts that are nice and white that still fit him.

As far as the crafty crap goes - I just finished spinning the yarn for my 4H pal. I started to ply it last night, but stopped after a few yards because I was dead tired. I’ll get it finished by the end of this week, and after the 1st I’ll get some goodies to send along with it. I’ve also been trying to deteriorate my stash of Peaches & Cream dishcloth cotton. But instead of making dishcloths, I’ve been going potholder happy. 2 strands and an “I” hook and I can whip one out in 30 minutes. In the last week or so I think I’ve made like 15 or so potholders. 3 of them are here (because the one I made when I was 9 years old just wasn’t cutting it anymore), 4 are at work (because the cooks try to give us 3rd degree burns by heating up the plates before they put them in the window - though, they deny it), and the rest have gone to live here and there with random people I decide need a potholder. Okay, well, 4 of those are in my bag, waiting to go to random people I decide need a potholder. I’m down to about 30 balls of the stuff, and I can get 2 of them out of 2 balls. That’s a lot of potholders.

There’s something else I gotta do, but I can’t remember. I’m gonna go play the Sims. I need to get my man remarried because his wife got really old and can’t procreate anymore and I think will die soon. I’m playing without any cheats to see how many generations I can get them up too. The Sims 2 is a time suck.