Mmm… cake.

My grandpa turned 93 on Wednesday. There are pictures in my photo blog, but I had to share one because it’s my favorite picture right now. My mom and my Doodlebutt.

Got gauge?

I’ve never before in my life done a gauge swatch. Yes, I know… the absofreakinglute horror of a LYS Assistant Manager who hates to swatch, right? *rolls eyes* I’m just an impatient knitter… when I want to knit, I want to knit… not to knit a square that is going to be ripped out after I spend time making it. Ya know? I seriously crack up when people talk about doing swatches for socks. Seriously? *shrug* Anyway… considering the project d’jour is a shop model and really needs to be on gauge I’ll have you know that last night I did my first swatch. I hated doing it, and still don’t forsee a future of swatches made without bitching, but… I did it. I haven’t actually checked to see if I’m on track or not because frankly, I don’t want to know. I want to think that my gauge is just perfection and I can begin the actual knitting. Cause if it’s not okay then I’ll have to re-swatch and yeah… that’s something that pretty much makes me want to gag. Plus if that’s the case then I can’t knit tonight during Idol because I don’t have any other needles with me. By eyeballing it, I think it’s okay, but I’ve gotta check for sure with the appropriate tools later.

What am I swatching for, you ask? It’s a vest. Mountain Colors Foothill Vest to be more specific. Something I’d never ever wear (not a vest person… nope), but I’m happy to make the model.

Made a new kind of stitch marker last night… so far I’m liking them.

Also made two more I <3 Knitting pins for two of my girls who wanted them…

The pictures are kind of crappy, the colors are off… but you get the idea. I also made a glasses string for Sabrina…

Lastly… belated pictures.

Knit Weekend Revisited… Kristi stole my camera during the Night O’ Wine and took a few self portraits. LOL This is my favorite. And this was before the back surgery!

And a Knit Weekend isn’t complete without a picture of Kristi laying somewhere odd on her back. Remember the last one?

You’ve seen this Bergere de France ad in Vogue Knitting, right?

Yeah well Franklin can rock the swing jacket too… hehe…

Finally… a glance at another kick ass birthday cake crafted at the last minute by my SIL and me. For the non Star Wars people this would be the scene where Obi Wan and Anakin fight in Episode 3 and we find out why Darth Vadar needs the breathing machine and helmet thing in the future. Hehe… Wesley specifically wanted that scene on his cake this year.

Tis all for now.

Happy Valentines Day!

Photo ganked from an e-mail sent to me by Loopyarn.com

The geek in me

I decided to change my blog layout. The new header picture was taken by me last Spring Break in Daytona. Oh how I long to be back in Daytona… Mmm…

Needed: Knitting and Blogging time

I know I seriously need to update. It’s been a little crazy in my world as of late though. Not necessarily all bad crazy, just crazy. Kid birthdays, concerts, a broken car, winter storms, Drama, and job changes are just a few of the things that have kept me from blogging lately. I have more quotes from our knit weekend that I never shared, pictures of knitting WIPS, yarny goodness (have you fallen in lust with ShiBui sock yarn yet?), a great picture of Franklin in a sweater formerly pictured in Vogue Knitting, new jewelry I’ve crafted, and tales of The Shop as well but alas… I’m too tired to share them right now.

I will say though that I reallllly appreciate all of the support I’ve been getting from fellow bloggers, co workers, and customers who shop at The Shop and have congratulated me on my promotion. You guys rock. For those of you who don’t yet know and didn’t see it in Rob’s blog… I got promoted to Assistant Manager of The Shop and left my library job to be a full time yarn slinger. Wee! This is week three of the position and much fun is being had.

More soon… until then, happy knitting to you!

“I love tequila…”

Greetings from Grand Rapids!

The weekend is going by fast but with much fun. I haven’t been keeping very good notes for blogging purposes but I do have some pictures to share and a few quotes that will probably only be funny to those of us who are here. But yeah… yesterday after a few delays and one wrong turn we finally set out on the road for GR. Just before we got to our destination it began snowing and hasn’t stopped since. Plus there’s a wind chill advisory on top of the snow advisory so basically it’s damn cold and snowy. Snow can’t stop us though! Last night Marcia picked us up in Cabana Boy’s Pimp Mobile and we went to have dinner at a very cute bar-ish place that I think was called Big Bob’s or something like that. I really don’t know… It was in Gaslight Village though which was very cool and there really were gaslights.

After dinner we went to Rite Aid for backup alcohol along with stuff for Kristi’s contacts because her eyes were burning. She then proceeded to take her contacts out in the store and then was blind for the rest of the night because she’d left her glasses back at the hotel. To prove just how blind she was, at one point when we were at Marcia’s knitting her husband Cabana Boy walked into the room and Kristi thought it was Marcia. LOL Several margaritas, damn good guacamole, and much knitting later, Cabana Boy drove us home (he was the Sober Sister for the night… poor man). Kristi was asleep in record time, and Sue and I followed not too long after.

Today we woke up much to early, but took our time getting around and finally left around 11:ish. We stopped at Meijer for Starbucks, a corkscrew, and cold medicine. LOL Then it was back to Marcia’s to pick her up so we could head to City Knitting. Apparently Sue and Kristi are not the Walking Road Map that I am because as we were driving down Marcia’s road they were totally looking on the wrong side of the street for the house and wouldn’t believe me until Kristi called Marcia and she verified that I was right. hehe…

Anywho… we went to City Knitting which is a very cute store. I thought the prices of some of the the stuff was a little high compared to TB, but in all it was really cute. We’d planned on sitting and knitting for a while, but there was a huge group of women sitting and knitting so we couldn’t stay since there wasn’t any room. Instead we left the store after making purchases (I bought yarn to make a scarf with, pictures later… I left it in the car) and went to have lunch at this uber cute place called the Green something. Haha… I told you I haven’t been paying good attention to detail.

Lunch was wonnnnderful and after we were thoroughly stuffed we went to a coffee shop nearby called The Stray Dog to knit. I had a beautiful mocha (it was just pretty…), Sue had plain coffee while Marcia and Kristi had tea in these very cool tea things that amused us greatly. There was a really pretty bit of eye candy working at the shop too which we had fun watching.

From the coffee place we drove back to Gaslight Village to see a big art thingy that Marcia and Kristi think looks like a big va-jay-jay. *snorts* Sue took pictures. Finally we made it back to the hotel, put on jammies, and have been knitting and drinking ever since. I’ve successfully turned the heel and am on the home stretch of Sock #1 of the socks I was hired to knit. We’re on our third bottle of wine already with one more to go, oh and there’s a bottle of margaritas too but I think we’ll probably avoid mixing the alcohol types. hehe…

And now… pictures.

We knitted hats to donate to City Knitting for Knit Michigan. I made two…

A picture of our wonderful pizza from last night…

Kristi stole my camera during dinner…

Marcia’s pained look…

Sue giggling…

The Amazing Cheddar… Marcia’s doggie…

Looking for Marcia’s house this morning…

The cool tea dispencer thingy…

My pretty Mocha…

And check out how cool the heel flap is on this sock. Half looks striped (the left side) and the other half looks like hearts…

Last but not least, a few favorite quotes so far:

“Grandma got boinked on the boat…”

“I got boinked on the boat and had two kids…”

“I love tequila…”

“She’s going to be a Social Worker, bless her heart… She’ll probably be a better one than I am, the bitch.”

“I can stick my tongue up my nose…”

“His ass is just a crack and a hole…”

“Other Peoples Poop… OPP… I’m so not down with OPP…”

“Hang on I’ll be there in a minute, I’ve got to squee…”

“I’m so fucking sick of this sweater…”

“We don’t have people over very often…”

Wee!

Today is the day!

What day, you ask? Road Trip Day!

In t-minus 5ish hours Kristi, Sue and I will be en route to Grand Rapids to meet up with Marcia and a weekend of knitting goodness! Wine and snacks have been purchased, knitting bags loaded up, and warm clothes included to fight off the Artic winds. Wee! I can’t wait! Tomorrow we’ll visit the LYS in GR and maybe even leave with some yarny goods.

I’ve been on Devin Duty today and I’ve got another hour to go. He’s currently passed out on the floor asleep. LOL Little snot would not lay down even though he was uber tired and then I looked over and he was sound asleep on the dining room floor with his light saber. hehe

Anywho… stay warm and happy knitting to ya!

A bird in the hand

It was a slow night at the shop this past Monday…

Anyone who has read my blogs for a decent amount of time knows that I don’t enjoy birds. Certainly my “Scary Bird” video of July 2007 showed that when it comes to birds that they freak me out. It’s not so much that I dislike birds, it’s just that I don’t want them near me (and in the case of the previously mentioned video I obviously don’t like it when they make their Scary Bird sounds at me either. LOL).

I’ve had issues with birds since I was little. On trips to the zoo, the walk-through bird house always caused me anxiety and I’d try to get through it as quickly as possible without losing whatever group I was with. It didn’t dawn on me until my late teens that I could actually refuse to go through the bird house and meet the others on the opposite side… I was a little slow on the uptake apparently.

Considering this issue I have with birds being in close proximity to me, imagine my disposition when on Monday while working at the shop I hear, “There’s another damn bird in the store…” spring from Sabrina’s mouth. Apparently there had been a bird in the store last week too when I was, thankfully, not working. I wasn’t so lucky this time though…

So this bird is flying around the store. Flying, swooping and dive bombing dipping low basically freaking me the hell out. Each time the bird flew anywhere near me I let out a girlie squeak with a duck of my head. :o)

LuAnn, one of our newest TB employees, clearly isn’t afraid of our feathered friends because she decided she’d try and catch the bird for a safe release outside. She grabbed a blanket as Super Bird-Catching Tool and Lisa, another employee, says, “Not the Collinette blanket!!” Swapping her expensive tool for a less expensive one she then set out to track the bird.

Eventually the bird who I admit I felt bad for, as long as s/he wasn’t near me, flew right into one of the front windows and went down real fast. In a moment of sheer bravery, or perhaps momentary insanity, I went to the front of the store with the Bird Hunter to see if perhaps the bird broke it’s neck or at least stunned itself. We get up to the front and there’s no sign of Tweety whatsoever. I pointed out to LuAnn where I saw the bird fall (oh-so-conveniently between the window and the pattern folders). I tried to see the bird from the side while LuAnn perched with the non-collinette blanket.

You do know what happened next, right? *nods* Yeah, Tweety comes flying out from behind the pattern folders right over LuAnn’s head like a jet fighter. I may have swore, I may have squeaked, all I remember is jumping back several feet real fast to avoid Zogega** Then LuAnn and I laughed our asses off.

Tweety’s now flying around the store like a drunk airline pilot and hitting the walls, the lights, and occasionally taking a break to rest on the assorted sweater models that hang from our ceiling. Lisa meanwhile keeps mentioning that the bird has a brain the size of a pea and keeps telling me to calm down each time that Tweety dive bombed us.

At one point while I was helping Lisa with a yarn and pattern question, Tweety decided to hide on the floor under a spinner rack of yarn. Lisa swore the bird wasn’t there and was walking around the spinner to look for him. *nods again* Tweety comes flying out from under the spinner right over my head and I again ducked and covered.

Lisa says, “Kellie… walk this way…”

LOL the damn bird was on a model right over my head! Ahhh!

Eventually LuAnn and Lisa said they had the bird and took the blanket outside to release the little guy but alas… no bird. LOL I dunno what they thought they had but it wasn’t Tweety. He finally went through one of the vents and found himself stuck in the drop ceiling of the store where we heard him flying around and banging on the ceiling tiles. We didn’t have a return appearance so hopefully s/he got out somehow but the whole experience was certainly an interesting one. :o)

Yeah, I can totally do without every having a bird in the store again… mmmkay?

** An evil Bird Spirit called, Zogega, guarded the shore of an island from which the bad spirits made cannibalistic forays against the humans.

Countdown time… and a WIP

Countdown expired.

And currently on the needles… the Maple Shawl that I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before but hadn’t photographed.

Finally… the second picture of the year (the first one sucked LOL)… taken yesterday on the road (duh) home from Shawn’s house. We kinda got a crapload of snow on New Year’s Eve.

Holy Shiznit, it’s a FO! (and The Ugly update)

The Wee Warmers are finally done.

They took so long due to sickness, juggling two jobs, angry tendonitis, holidays, and more sickness that I’m not even going to have the chick I made them for pay me, but yeah… they’re darn cute.

Pattern: Wee Warmers by Knitting At Knoon
Yarn: Ornaghi Filati Biberon Baby Wool - 2 balls
Colorway: 601
Needles: US 3 dpns

I was also thinking the other day about something rather random. Remember all my posts about The Ugly from earlier this year? I don’t think I’ve ever really made a post about how it’s healed. :p I’m actually quite amazed at how good it looks. You can barely even tell actually where the burn was unless you’re looking… See?

Just a reminder of what it looked like at one point…

I really thought I’d have a much worse scar than that considering how bad the burn was and how freaking ugly it was… I still avoid the coffee thingies at The Shop though because they’re the same kind that resulted in this burn. LOL I can use them to dispense coffee, but to actually fill and move them freaks me out. Hehe… But yeah, it’s healed rather well. It’s still more sensitive than the rest of my hand, but all in all it’s pretty good.

Anywho… I have some knitting to get to so I’m going to head home. Happy New Year to you all! Be safe!