Weekend Report

This weekend was fairly quiet.

On Friday, I came home to find my Knitter’s Treasure Swap package had arrived. It was very exciting. It contained the following:

• Three skeins of yummy yarn
• One big skein of Kool-Aid dye yarn
• Homemade stitch markers
• A sheep shaped bar of soap (which coincidentally, I sent the same one to her)
• A notepad
• A measuring tape
• Some Starburst
• 24 Hour Knitting project book
• Tea
• A handmade quilted project bag

This list is from the top of my head and I may have overlooked something. I am going to post pictures tomorrow since I forgot my camera today. Thanks goes to SwknitsMN.

Later that night, we watched Order of the Phoenix which wrapped up our Harry Potter marathon. I also worked on my sister’s Christmas present which was a bit of a disaster. I worked the first part of the pattern and got about 20 rows in when I was supposed to change colors and realized I had done it backwards. I knit brown where it was supposed to be white but I fixed it.

The screw up on this project just confirmed that I am a spaz sometimes when it comes to knitting. Take for example, the Easiest Baby Blanket for Melissa's baby. This blanket is worked with one strand of Caron Simply Soft in pastel variegated and one strand of Bernat Baby in purple. I was plugging away on it and got to where I had about a foot of the Simply Soft left and realized that I forgot about the border on the edge. It is supposed to have 8 rows of garter stitch but I don't have any more Simply Soft left. Well, no problem right? I'll just unknit it and put the edge on. Well, apparently I did not go back enough so it didn't work right. Instead it reversed the stockinette pattern on the wrong side. So unknit again, drop a stitch, pick it up before the whole thing gets ruined, and try again. Repeat same mistake. Finally, say "to hell with it" and put it down before I kill someone and move onto another project for the time being. (Interestingly, when I went through my scrap yarn for the new project, I came across another small scrap ball of Simply Soft which means I can continue making the Easiest Baby Blanket in the correct size.)

On Saturday, Princess Ivi and I got up and gave Nyx a bath after we picked a tick off of her. She was very good for her bath. She really liked being scrubbed. Then we took her to the flea market. This woman was there with upholstery fabric for $2 a yard. I found some really nice fabric to re-upholster a couch mom has for me. (We won’t do it until just before we are ready to move out.) The fabric is cream with turquoise, yellow and green wavy lines. I like it and at $2 a yard, you can’t beat it.

We also picked Nyx up a bag. She is so small and she is still skittish around people that we needed something so we didn’t have to carry her all the time. She liked the bag once she realized that we were still there beside her.

When we got home, I made chicken tenders with honey-chipotle barbecue sauce, fries and salad. (This is the dish Princess Ivi orders every time we go to Applebee’s and it was really easy to recreate.)

We watched...ummm....something while I worked on Marci’s gift and then I talked to her until the wee hours of the morning.

On Sunday, we went to Michael’s. I picked up some clearance wrapping paper with cute elephant’s on it and a few goodies for my envelope swap partner. Then we went to Red Lobster for my birthday dinner. It was tasty. Princess Ivi gave me a beautiful necklace she beaded herself and a little statue she painted. (The statue is one my mom made). I will post pics tomorrow.

After we got home, I did laundry, knitted, watched Last Cake Standing and went to bed.

My date with a cutie pie

I have been spending the last few evenings after work with a super cutie. A little dog. She is some sort of chihuahua. She does not yet have a name. She was rescued with three other dogs after my mom's boss saw them in the woods. Unfortunately, animal control was already on the scene and they wouldn't let her take them without her first having to go through all of the red tape. But they are home now. When they first came to us, two were pregnant and the vet said the puppies were so big that they would kill the mothers. Given the fact that they had been living in the woods for who-knows how long, we decided it was best for the dogs to not have the puppies. There are two white ones, a brindle, and a little brown one.

Princess Ivi spends her evenings with the littlest white one and I spend my evenings with the little brown one. They have now started eating in our presence which is a vast improvement. We are having better luck with the little white one as she will actually let you pet her but the brown one won't even come an arm's length away. But I am hopeful that her curiosity will soon outweigh her fear. She almost came to me last night. The boy who helps out came up and just the sound of his voice scared her. She started to run to me and got less than an arm's length away and changed her mind. Apparently, I was the lesser of two evils but she couldn't quite get over her fear.


I think by the weekend that she may let me pet her. I hope so.

When she is not so scared, I will snag a picture and post it.

A New Yarn Shop and cooking blogs

I visited Hank’s Yarn and Fiber yesterday. I was shopping for my swap partner in the Rachel’s Knitting Room Christmas Gift Exchange which I organized through elfster. I feel bad. The deadline to send the package is December 7 and I am mailing mine on December 6. However, given everything that is going on in my life, I am surprised I am sending anything.

Anyway, Hank’s is a wonderful little shop that used to be either a photo/camera store or a coffee shop. (I can’t remember.) Now though, it is a shop filled with a selection of yarn that is in the most beautiful colors. I fell in love with so many of them. There is also a nice collection of patterns, books and fleece. Oh, and they have some really nice handmade soap. I bought some.

I picked up a flier for an Introduction to Spinning class. I have decided that since I have all of that alpaca and llama fleece in my closet, I am going to learn to spin. I am hoping I can register after Christmas. If not, I will have to wait until the next class.

I have been working on the Special Olympics Scarf Project. I am over halfway finished. I was working on it last night and I felt very good about my progress and then I noticed a mistake. I had to undo about 6 rows so I could fix it but I will work on it more tonight and hopefully not make another mistake.

On a totally different note, I am in search of a dog. Preferably a smallish dog that would like to sleep with me. See I have been having night terrors for as long as I can remember (at least 10 or 11) and they can get pretty scary for everyone. My thought is that if I had a dog sleeping with me, they may be able to sense when I am having a night terror and will wake me up. Or if not, the dog will be a presence I can sense and it will help with the night terrors. I have spoken to sleep specialists and nothing else is working so I thought that the dog can’t hurt things.

My job is very boring. So on my downtime, which I have a lot of, I regularly visit the blogs listed here but I also search the web for more interesting reading. I have found some great cooking blogs which I have added to my favorites. One I especially like is Snackreligious . I think I like this one so much because I am a big snack food fan. When I think of snack food, I think of penny candy, those "french fry" shaped chips with Andy Capp on the bag, Poppycock, smoked almonds, soft pretzels with mustard...mmm, I am getting hungry.

I also love the variety of recipes on Tastespotting.

Here are a few more that I check out at least weekly:

The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Smitten Kitchen
Simply Recipes
The Good Mood Food Blog