So many hobbies!

Random Tuesday

1. The tomato seeds were planted Sunday afternoon and have already sprouted.
2. At my guild meeting Saturday, I met a woman wanting to sell some lamb fleeces from Texel/Dorset crosses.  I volunteered to scour and spin some of the fiber so she would have a sample to show.  I'm in the middle of spinning it now.
3. I am thoroughly sick and tired of rain.  I'm ready for some sunlight and some heat.
4. My trip to Maryland for some camping and R&R can't come fast enough.  If it rains, I'm going to be really ticked.
5. My daffodils are blooming.
6. This weekend will be taken up with cleaning and organizing my condo; my sister is coming to spend the weekend of the 27th.
7. There's a shelving unit in the basement that's rather worse for wear.  Worse to the point that it's listing very badly to the left.  I ordered a new metal shelving unit to replace it.  I'll be putting that together this weekend, too.
8. I need a bigger recycling bin!
9. The other day, while I was getting dressed for work, Tyr was on the bed, whipping around in a circle, chasing her tail.  I can't really convey just how hilarious it was.
10. I think I'm addicted to mangos!
    

Indulging My Inner Geek

My inner geek was indulged with a Doctor Who lunchbox.  The Doctor rocks!

So much adventure this weekend!  Saturday I joined Costco and learned... that place is dangerous!  I came home with enough peanut butter to keep me stocked for 6 months.  And I have more fruit (tangerines, kiwi, raspberries and blackberries) than I will probably be able to eat between now and this coming Saturday when I leave for Florida.  I'll manage somehow.

Sunday has been spent puttering around the house.  I've got two slow cookers going, one with Pork Roast with Cherries and one with Chicken and Dumplings. The chicken recipe is a new one for me.  It smells pretty good so I have high hopes for the taste.  My freezer will be well stocked after today.

I kind of feel like I'm in limbo with my bathroom out of commission.  I've got construction stuff in my livingroom and floor protectors running from the front door to the livingroom and through the livingroom up to the bathroom.  Thank goodness I still have a toilet.  Small favors and all that jazz.  I don't really feel like I can start something, like the market tote, because that would mean dragging out my folding table.  Since it's unlikely I'll finish the bag in one day (I'm pattern challenged), I don't feel that I can leave the table up because it might get in the way of the contractors.  The next four weeks are going to be strange.

Random Sunday

1. The green scarf will be finished but it'll end up as a gift.  I can't have anything around my neck - it itches too much.
2. I wore the red/orange shawl to my Guild's Christmas party and it was a hit.  Not to mention nice and warm.
3. My new toy this Christmas is a Nexus 7 tablet from Google.  I'm still figuring it out but already I have 4 books, a game (Angry Birds), 2 short stories and several apps downloaded. 
   
4. I may be getting a wireless router so I have WiFi at home.  The tablet uses WiFi to get online and currently I have to be somewhere that has it.
5. The cats have been spending a lot of time sitting under a lamp on the sofa table.  It's nice and warm there.
6. I have foolishly volunteered to make appetisers for Christmas Eve, breakfast Christmas morning and an appetiser for Christmas day.  I'll be busy but I'll be with family so it'll be fun.
7. The pansies in my neighbor's flowerbox are still blooming.  It's a wonderful sight when it's cold and gray outside.
8. It's amazing the amount of crap that ends up under the fridge if you don't clean under there regularly.  I'm happy to say, though, that I have finally gotten rid of the last of the fingerling potatoes that Tyr stole two summers ago.  I think the final count was close to 20 potatoes.
9. I'm in the middle of far too many projects and don't really have the desire to finish most of them.  I think I need to get rid of cable again.  I spend too much time on the couch watching the telly.
10. Yikes!  It's only two weeks until Christmas!  I need to get busy.
    

Random Thursday

Random thoughts for the day:

• the stockings are cut and awaiting assembly
• I hope they're big enough
• I have no idea how I'm going to put them together.  Hmm, must find tutorial...
• I'm getting 10 stitches to the inch on my socks with size 1.5 needles.  A tight knitter?  Who me?
• I found 3 potatoes, 2 paper wads, a milk ring and a piece of styrofoam under a bookcase
• The cats have been busy
• I hope I don't forget to bring the turkey with me to my sister's
• In lieu of having a holiday party, my department at work gave us gift cards.  Cool.
• I've had oatmeal with raspberries every night for dinner this week.  Is that weird?  It's really good oatmeal.  Honest.
• I found a small project bag on Etsy that I want.  I may get it for myself after Christmas.  Or, I might cave and get it earlier.  It's a toss up.
• I ordered this fabric in a fat quarter pack and it came today.  I'm thinking kid's quilt:
  

• How is it that it's just over a week until Christmas?  How the heck did that happen?
• Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone.

Progress

 

I started cutting each square into quarters Friday night and with my very first cut, cut in the wronge place, ruining two squares.  It takes much less time if you cut a stack of two or three rather than one at a time.  After uttering words that would make my mom say, "Rebecca!" I decided that maybe I should wait until Saturday after a good night's sleep.  So after remaking the two squares I screwed up, I started stacking and cutting, which gave me this:

 

Arranging and piecing will have to wait until next weekend.  The rest of the weekend I spent stitching down the binding on my contest quilt.  Honestly, I'm really tired of blind stitching edges.  I've got about a side and a quarter to go so I'm getting close to finished.  Of course, then I'll have to use one of those sticky rollers on both front and back to get off the cat hair and the fuzzies from the batting.  While I was quilting and manhandling the quilt, little bits of batting came off and got all over the quilt. 

And now a bit of random:

1. I really hate the time change!
2. I'm Team: Jacob all the way.
3. There are bulbs coming up in my front garden!
4. I bought fabric to make myself a Dr. Seuss pillowcase.
5. My dad's birthday was yesterday.  He's 82!  Happy Birthday, Dad!
6. And a kitten shot:

 

What is up with Blogger?

I've been having an impossible time trying to leave comments on blogs hosted by Blogger.  It either tells me there's an error or it navigates away to an error page.  If you use Blogger, I've been trying to leave you comments but it's just not letting me.  Frustrating!

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

A few days ago, I got the following fortune from a fortune cookie:  "Only the educated are free."  I think it's brilliant.  Think about it.

Random Friday

1. Guys who drive Corvette convertibles should not be driving 10 mph under the speed limit!
2. Due to a misspent youth, I know all the words and can sing the song Sir Robin's minstrels sang in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
3. Did you know you can sing nearly all of Emily Dickinson's poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas?"  Try it.
4. August in Michigan is supposed to be hot, sunny and humid, not rainy, cold and damp.  We're getting gypped out of a sunny, warm end of the summer.  It's supposed to rain all weekend.  We are not amused.
5. This has been the worst growing season I've seen in a long time.  My tomatoes have had green fruit for over a month.  They're not ripening.  My zucchini gave me 5 or 6 zukes and between going to work one day and coming home in the evening, died.  Only the beans were happy this summer.
6. It's possible that, in addition to being a Magpie in a former life, I was also a squirrel.  I'm really into stash building to prepare for lean times.  That might also explain my compulsive need to can and freeze summer produce.
7. When it's rainy, cold and dreary outside, all I want to do is stay inside, turn all the lights on and either knit and watch movies, work on a quilt, or bake something sweet and yummy.  Possibly all of the above.

I'm not dead

Hi, guys!  I'm not dead, I'm just on vacation.  I was planning on posting regularly but my parents' laptop is on the fritz so I'm at the library at the moment.  Anyway, I'm in northern Michigan at my parents' cottage and I'm having a great time.  I've worked on two beading projects, done a little spinning and I just cast on for Shawl that Jazz this morning... after helping Dad stack wood for the winter. 

The spring/summer canning season has opened with a bang.  So far I've picked about 13 lbs. of strawberries and 6 lbs. of rhubarb and made 2.5 batches of strawberry jam, 1 batch of strawberry-rhubarb and 3.5 batches of strawberry-rhubarb sauce.  It's been so cold her the strawberry season has been late so I'm hoping when I get home this coming weekend I'll still be able to pick more strawberries and rhubarb for more jam and sauce.  Next will be cherries, both sweet and sour, and the little chest freezer my brother gave me will start filling up.

I'll try and post again before the weekend.  Have a good one everyone.

Random Monday musings

1. No matter how many times I hear "Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel, it still gives me chills.
2. I got stung by a bee yesterday when I was deadheading the pansies.  Little bastard!  It hurt like hell!  On the plus side, my throat didn't close up so that part was good.  I drove to my parents' place with my finger stuck in a glass of ice water.  The damn thing hurt all day.
3. I've now been stung twice, but by two different stinging bugs, with no reaction.  Does that mean I'm not allergic to stings or do I have to be stung twice by the same kind of bug in order for my body to have an allergic rection?  Anybody know?
4. I can't seem to do Judy's Magic Cast-on correctly and I can't figure out why.  I get the initial stitches right but when I start knitting, it seems like I get something that looks like garter instead of stockinette.  I have no clue what I'm doing wrong because as far as I can tell, I'm following the directions correctly.  I'm clueless!
5. I think I may have freaked out the Yarn Zombie.  I left her a couple of comments saying I'd love to visit and dye yarn and wool.  She lives in Ohio... I live in Michigan... we're not too terribly far from each other.  She didn't comment either time and now she doesn't reply to my comments at all.  Looking at it from her perspective, I suppose someone who's pretty much a stranger asking to come visit might be a concern.  I'm sorry if I freaked you out Jacki.  I promise you I'm not a weird blog stalker person.  I just thought keggle dyeing looked like oodles of fun and we had enough common interests that we'd get a long.  Oops!  My bad!