The joys of Ebay

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country," --Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC.

You gotta love good ol' Marion Barry. I'm so proud of my birthplace.

So this weekend I went shopping. I was trying to get out of the house and blow some of the illness off me, so I went here and there. I had to go out to Columbia to pick something up and then went to Pier 1 to look for cushions. While I was at the shopping center, I decided to go to Joann's to see if they had any size 1 circ's, since mine suck ass. They had no size 1's but I came across a very peculiar colorway of their house brand yarn, Sensations Licorice. I had purchased some blue Licorice a few years ago and still have yet to do anything with it. It's a very nice yarn but more on the pricey side for craft store yarn, and I just didn't have enough of it to anything I wanted to do. I tried for about 2 years to buy more of it but couldn't fins it anywhere. This year I found tons of it but never bought anymore of the blue since I've decided to make a hat with it. Anyhow, so I found this killer color. I bought all that they had in stock because I want to make a sweater with it, but I still am like 8 balls short. I checked online and they're out of stock as well. Boo. In my searching, I realized at some point that I hadn't seen any Patons Mosaic advertised. I was making a sweater out of it like 2 years ago and never bought the remainder of the needed yarn. I checked the Patons website and sure enough,the yarn is discontinued. I searched everywhere on the internet to try and find some leftovers. Found none. Finally, I saw a listing for some on Ebay in the colorway I needed. Long story short, I ended up getting all the yarn need to finish the sweater (11 balls) for like $17. Sweet.

Start the Insanity!!

I suppose the word "start" isn't particularly applicable when speaking of myself. A better word would be "increase" or, in this case, the proper term might be "Heighten insanity to an alarming level.....CODE RED". I shall break it down in list form:

1) I am STILL SICK!!! WTF!! I have now been sick for a week and 4 days.

2) I have absolutely destroyed both my office and bedroom, frantically searching for this....

DumDumDum...

3) I have begun studying for the GRE's, which I have to take in a little over a month.

4) I am still having minor issues over my sister's families recent acquisitions, shall we say.

5) There is a large meeting to be held at my home on Thursday morning. I have been trying to clean the house for about 3 days and have achieved nothing. I told my mother two days ago that I can go no further in m endeavours until she cleans up her mess, and she agreed. Guess who still has not cleaned up her mess??

For these reasons, among others, I have been sleeping less and less. I have not been making the best decisions in my sleep deprived haze as can be seen in this photograph.

Hello 6am McDonald's run.

I would like to say that I really don't have such massive cankles. Those would be my Opal Jaywalkers and my fancy Italian moon-walking shoes. I am aware that they don't particularly compliment each other. We decided to switch things up this morning and have breakfast before we went to sleep. You know.....we like to break out of the mold every now an again.

In knitting news, i finally attempted to photograph my finished Lady Eleanor, but pretty much failed miserably.

Pattern: Lady Eleanor from Scarf Style

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden #251, 11 skeins

Needles: US 9

Mods: I made it WAY longer than the pattern called for.

I also received this kick-ass yarn from Yarn Ahoy.

She does some of the most vibrant work I've seen. There's also quite an impressive yardage on these suckers. I believe the colorways are Nouveau Blue, Sour Berries and Chocolate, and Ablaze.

Always the optimist, I will take the havoc wreaked in my office as an opportunity to organize my old stash. Most of my newer stuff and sock yarn is in new shelving units, but the bulk of my stash is shoved (and I mean shoved, squished, pounded) into my plastic units in the office closet. Well...it was until I went on my mad rampage of destruction. Now it's just all twisted and tangled across the room. I'm off to clean!

Just when I thought I was safe......

I was sick as a dog on Sunday and especially Monday. I'm half surprised I even made it through the day alive. I wandered into work in the morning after camping out in my bathroom for about half an hour trying to gather the strength to walk downstairs and get my medicine. I was running so late that I didn't have time to call anyone and I had absolutely no voice so any call I did try to make would sound like a dying frog. I finally decided that my best option would be to drive to work and put a note on the door if I really couldn't hack it. By the time I got there, I decided that I just needed to sit so I slumped my way back into the office and just pretended that I was dead. Since I was there anyway and not going anywhere, I flipped the sign to 'Open'. Luckily for me, it wasn't such a bad day customer-wise. Around 2 I started getting pissed off call from my family because I wasn't in bed, so again I thought about putting a sign on the door and heading home. However, it became clear to me that the chances of my passing out behind the wheel were great so I just stayed there. I eventually was able to muster the strength to go to Safeway, where I spent an inordinate amount of time perusing the medication section before buying a crap-ton of drugs. I then proceeded to sit in the Safeway parking lot and down just about everything I could get my hands on. This elevated me to a level at which I felt comfortable driving home, but I stayed open until or normal closing time anyway. Then I slept a great deal. I thought I was getting better, but then yesterday I took another turn for the worse. Then today I felt fine except for a fair amount of congestion. As soon as I left work though, I got sick as hell again. Not nearly as bad as I was, but bad enough that I'm coughing myself into quick blackouts and the sinus pressure in my head is making it feel as though it's about to pop off my neck in a scene of epic nastiness.
In other fun news, my sister (formerly referred to as "the good one") informed us that they bought not one, but three fucking s-words. Those of you who know me well understand what I am alluding to. Two of them start with "ball" and the third starts with "corn". As though this was not terrorizing enough to me, they plan on breeding. This is particularly damaging to me because my sisters house was my safe house for when those who could never be called "the good one" visit. Now I shall never enter my sisters house again. As I was telling Carole earlier today in my rage, I can't even trust going over there and just not going into certain rooms. Her children are the sort who would drop feared things on my neck while I was sleeping just because i would be "funny" to watch me react in a freakish panic that may or may not involve me jumping out of windows. So, to my sister- Thanks a lot Sherry! Have fun getting someone to house sit when you all go on vacation!
No knitting content. I just haven't been feeling inspired due to my death-flu. That, and I now have such an illogical amount of yarn that I feel dizzy when I try to decide what to do. Due to this flustering effect, I decided I should go on a yarn diet. In true Lindsay fashion, I then decided that I had to buy some samples of Berroco Foilage to try out for a blanket that I've been wanting to make, then fell in love with a color of Silk Garden that's discontinued to make Klaralund with. I've since been scurrying about trying to get together 11 of them. Additionally,BMFA just put up their fall colors today and even after choosing carefully, I still want like 12 or 13 or them. NOW. But I didn't order any because I have a butt-load of yarn that I'm not doing anything with now. I don't have any group pictures that would be good for posting, but you can take a look at my flickr page (link is up on the left) to see some of the goodies I've gotten in recently.
That's all for now. Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still alive, albeit barely. Hopefully this bug will hit the bricks soon and I'll be able to get back into the swing of things.
Oh! And if I don't get to see some photo's of the Yarn Harlot yarn soon.....well, nothing really bad will happen but I must see that over which I've heard so much raving.

Bellatrix

Finally, I present you with my completed Bellatrix socks.

Pattern: Bellatrix from Socktopia.net

Yarn: STR Mediumweight in Hard Rock

Needles: US 2.5 circs

These socks took me a loooong time to finish. This was due entirely to the fact that I decided to try knitting them on one short circular needle, which I hate, hate, hate. I just couldn't get into it. It hurt my hands, the heel flap was a pain in the ass to do, and the stitches were looking all spread out. I was not happy. I stopped knitting the first sock when I was about 8 rows from the toe and just couldn't pick it back up. After a month or so I finally switched the stitches over to two circs and finished it up. I was a bit nervous about knitting the second one because I figured the stitches would be much tighter than on the little guy. It turned out okay though.

In other news- I am S.I.C.K. I thought my throat felt a little funny on Friday night. Saturday I woke up at about 3pm and my entire throat was numb and very swollen. Within a few hours I had the full on super-congestion, big head feeling, weak muscled nastiness upon me. I was half delirious throughout the night because of illness and heavy medication, but I got out of bed pretty early due to my nose continually running. I made an effort to make myself look at least normal and went to work. I was the only one there today and I had a class to teach. My students sat there with me for awhile and then collectively were like," Uhhhhh.....how bout if we don't do this today". So they went home and I sat the alone in misery. Now I am going to sit here at home in misery, but WWE Unforgiven comes on PPV tonight so all will be well. The Undertaker is coming back from an injury and nothing can stand between me and the Undertaker.

Work Horrors

Again, no actual knitting content. I have a nice little FO to show and still haven't taken pictures of Lady E., but I'm sick as a dog and really don't feel like expending the energy to plug my camera in and hit 'download'. So! Reading my comments from my previous post this morning brought back a rush of memories. It also made me think about how while the crazy people we have to deal with at the shop are indeed CRAZY, I have yet to be disgusted, personally injured, or bitched at for the time it takes to eat a multi-course meal. This most recent incident was , I think, the first time someones has actually yelled at me in my whole yarn shop working experience. In contrast, here are some of the highlights of my time with Silver Diner. And this is just with the restaurant customers, not with the people in corporate. That's another story (and in case anyone connected is reading this, almost all of you are wonderful but one certain person who happens to own the company is a bit on the spoiled brat side).

1) I once was seating a family and took them to the back room. As I was walking into the section, a man with another family started shaking his head back and forth at me, trying to keep me from bringing these people back there. I gave him a quizzical look while continuing to walk and he made eyes to the adjacent table across the aisle. I looked over and found that the father of that table had puked ALL OVER THE PLACE, and he and his family remained sitting there munching on their food like nothing had happened. YUM.

2) In a similar vein, I once ran food back to table in the same back room. I noticed that they had brought a great big lego box for their daughter to play with and thought that was nice. Later I went back in that area and happened to glance at the bucket again. FULL OF VOMIT!!. That led to a multiple hour ordeal where the family had decided to pretty much camp out there for the day, ordering desserts and having other people join them, etc. All the while, the sick little girl would just sporadically puke into the bucket. We couldn't seat anyone back there and the manager was new and didn't know if he could legally kick them out since they were paying customers. Nasty day, and that manager wasn't with the company too long.

3) Once an electrical wire broke in the food window and shot hot, hot sparks all over a friend of mine.

4) I had to spend the night in the emergency rooms with one of our illegal cooks after he chopped part of his finger off in the kitchen. I had all sorts of fabulous responsibilities!!

5) I can't even count the number of times parents just sat their ignoring their bastard kids as they literally ground food into the tables, seats, and windows....then just walked away after the meal leaving it for the workers to clean up.

6) The man who shit on the floor not once, but THREE TIMES. All on different occasions.

7) The dude who chased one of our waitresses down the aisle, knocked her over and physically attacked her right there in the aisle. She ended up getting paid off by the guys prominent father. The guy was mentally ill and was on a weekend pass.

8) New Years Eve drunks at 4am. Need I say more?

I'm sure there's much, much more but I just wanted to give a little taste of the wonders of my old job. I'd say my current job woes pale in comparison. Oh, and crazy lady didn't come back in on Friday.

Yarn shop fear

No pictures or anything of yarny interest today. Just fear of going to work tomorrow. For the most part, I either like or don't mind our customers. In saying "for the most part", I refer to just about everyone who comes in except for a small, small handful of people. Considering that 1) I'm not too much of a people person and 2) Customer service really isn't my forte, I think I handle the job well....probably because I'm high on yarn fumes the whole time I'm the shop. I also sometimes like to play the sociopathic game of trying to see just how nice the person at hand can think I am. Eh. It helps me pass the time. That, and sometimes I like to see how much water I can consume from the cooler.....but that's generally only on really slow days.
Anyhow, back to the work fear. As any of you who have faced a similar situation can attest to, it is a truly horrible feeling to sit around all day waiting to see if some terrible person comes in to visit. I had a bad experience on Wednesday. Big time bad, and the woman was C.R.A.Z.Y. I was in the back room getting my cell phone out of my purse. I came back into the front, planning on going to my car to plug the phone in. This older woman was standing in the middle of the room and scared the shit out of me. She looked at me, the exclaimed, "HelOooooo! Is anyone here?". Then gave an exasperated sigh and plopped herself down in one of the chairs. What happened next was a strange conversation (predominantly me listening to her). She was an odd bird and I wondered if she might be a drunk. I decided that she was just quirky and perhaps a sufferer of Parkinson's. The long ad short of it as that she had been knitting some baby booties about 40 years ago and lost the pattern. She wanted to know if she could bring the project in and have me tell her what she was doing. I told her that if it was a fairly simple pattern that it could probably be worked out. She asked me when the next day I was working would be and I told her Friday, but that we were open everyday and anyone there would have just as good of a shot at figuring it out. So then she leaves. A minute later she comes back in and asks me where the photo shop is. I told her that it must be in the section of the shopping center by Safeway,because there's not one in our section of the shopping center. This seemed to enrage her. She walked back out but kept the door open while he started yelling at me that YES, there IS a photo shop in this section and blah, blah, blah. I apologized to her and said that I'm not 100% familiar with the area because I'm not local, but that I was sure there was not a photo shop in our strip. That sent off a rant that included telling me that she doesn't care where I'm from ad that I've got to figure out what's what and get my act together. She also was referring to me as "girlie". So she finally let of the door and stood there for a minute making exaggerated hand motions at the shop. I was literally stunned. I took a few minutes to regain the sanity that she sucked out of me, then went to my car. When I was coming back in I saw her with her face pressed up to the window of the nail salon before she stepped back and started making the same " You're a no good idiot" gestures that she was making at our door. All I have to say is that I hope my perceived total ineptitude was so great as to sour her taste for our shop all together. I have a churning feeling in my gut that tells me she'll show up again, though. I just hope it's not going to be tomorrow.

Today's Activities

IMG_1250
Originally uploaded by knitglit

I finally finished knitting Lady Eleanor last night. I shouldn't use the word finally, really, because it implies that it took a super long time. I started knitting this eleven days ago I think. I had a goal of knitting one ball a day but I fell behind around day 7. I ended up using a full 10 balls of Silk Garden to finish the body and decided to save the 11th for the crochet trim and fringe. I did a little figuring last night and realized that I was going to need about 40 yard of yarn for the fringe. hopefully it'll dry up fairly quickly and I can get her finished up tomorrow. I was a little unsure about how to block the body because I need to add about 4 inches in width and was getting some conflicting advice. I ended up deciding to wet block it after giving it a soak in some Eucalan to try and remove the stink of dog. I picked up the Eucalan at Fiberworks this morning. Renee went through her new stock with me while I was there and she's got some really nice stuff. A cashmere/silk blend from one of those companies associated with Tahki, and a few wool/silk blends from various companies. I'll have to plan a project to use at least one of them. Anyhow, it's time to break out the pins ad get this thing laid out.

Far be it for me to criticize

But COME ON!! I yanked this picture off the Knitty Gritty website, btw. I couldn't find a picture of anyone actually wearing this hat, but if you take a close look at the styrofoam head you ca get an idea of it's fit. Hmmmm. Innovative.

Had to add this....

Somebody really needs to just chop off my hands and get my greedy little debit card away from me. Well, I suppose just the debit card removal would be sufficient without the hand chopping.....but then again, I may remember the number. Why has no one alerted me to Lisa Souza yarn before? Is everyone evil?? Just in case you have not been made aware, stick your credit/debit cards in the freezer and go check it out. Emerald City and whatever that Mars color is are absolutely t.o. d.i.e. f.o.r. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Stalled

I guess I've been knitting a lot lately, but I really have nothing to show for it. I'm juggling a few different projects and none of them are really going anywhere. In fact, I may even be moving backwards because as I was organizing things the other day, I decided that I want to frog my chevron scarf from Scarf Style because it's too thin. I felt as though I was making huge progress on Lady Eleanor, too, but now I'm kind of at a stage where I knit and knit but it doesn't really look any different. I'm experiencing those evil little thoughts in the back of my head about that project seeing as how I bought yardage to accommodate the pattern but I'm thinking I may have bought way too much and I no longer have the receipt. I'm getting mixed messages over how much people have actually been using to complete the thing, but it seems to fall within the range of 9 to 11 balls of Silk Garden. I have 11 and am on the 7th ball right now....already about to hit the end of the pattern tiers. I'm going to make mine longer since I'm knitting at a slightly smaller gauge and I know the length may be compromised a bit when I stretch the hell out of the width for bocking. I just hope I don't end up with a huge surplus. Anyhow, next time I'll break out the camera and show what I have so far.
Oh, and here's the link for the Hot Lava pattern.