Waiting in anticipation

I got my confirmation email for the March shipment (BMFA Rockin' Sock Club www.rockinsockclub.com) on Tuesday. As of today, it has arrived in Carlisle. Hopefully it will be there when I get home. If it's not, there will be no joy in Mudville :)

On another note, the list of conspiring appliances continues to increase.
The cordless phone in the bedroom only holds a couple minutes of charge. I wonder if I can get just the battery pack or if I need to buy a whole new phone......
The alarm clock, on the other hand, has been added to the conspiracy list for the sole purpose that it is continuing to work well.

7 Signs of Spring

1. It is light out when I go to work and when I come home.
2. The furry fiends are shedding again.
3. There are green prongs popping up in my garden.
4. I saw a poor schmuck dressed up as a Rita's Italian Ice on Friday.
5. The quantity of For Sale signs on houses increases.
6. You need to layer more when getting dressed.
7. There's no scraping of the windshield.

Knitting update

Well, the Queen of Beads socks are finally finished. And before the next shipment! I like them. They are for me. One of the ladies in choir told me that these are her favorites. I wore them Sunday to show off.

I was on a roll the other day, so I wound yarn. I wound quite a bit of yarn. The furry fiends were quite interested. They sat and stared at the swift and the moving yarn.

The Fair Isle pillow proceeds. If you look really close in the above picture you can kinda see it hiding at the bottom of the picture. I probably would have been more done, but I reached a point where I had to tink multiple times per row, so I stopped.

And, then I decided I was going to work on something else and I ignored the pillow for a week. I worked on it some more this past weekend -- both at the shop during the class and at home. It is going better now. I think I have gotten the hang of it. The one pillow has black yarn and some really eye popping Noro. I love how the color changes in that one. I'm thinking that the Scandinavian Star vest from Folk Vests would be good with the color changes. Anyhoo, here is the current pillow. There is one repeat left. I'm a little worried because the first skein of white ended one round shy of the middle.

Gift of Fiber

My esteemed parental units recently returned (last month) from a cruise around South America, including Antarctica. As they know us (my sister & I), they brought back yarn. Well, when my mother found the yarn, it wasn't any that she had ever heard of (Vicuna) and was hopeful that it was good yarn as she paid about $25 for it. There are five skeins.

Well, she gave it to us this weekend and also (finally) looked it up on line. Retail price of Vicuna yarn in the US is $300 an ounce. She bought 15 ounces. Below is my share.

Any ideas as to what to do with $2200 yarn?

Does this make sense to you

I was checking a file drawer -- this is the kind where you raise the door and slide it back along the top of the drawer, then pull the drawer out -- just to double check that what I thought was in it was. I'm on the hunt for more file space. Well, I couldn't get it closed. Sooo, somebody else had to close it. So, my boss asked how many drawers I had and then that I should have everything in the one cabinet with the broken door so we could get a new cabinet and all my stuff could be moved into it. And this gets me more cabinet room how?

What's in a name?

A rose by any other name is just as sweet. Shakespeare

It's not what they call you, it's what you answer to. I don't remember who said this....

When you think about it, how many people actually go through life with just one given name? Most people have some sort of nickname.

My given name is Kathryn. I went by Katy as a child. My first real job, switched to Kathryn. Around the same time, switched to Kate (for non-work). For my one current job, it's Kathryn -- when I started there was a Cate and a Kathy already. For my other current job, it's Kathryn in my email signature, but around the office, people call me Kat. Basically, I'll answer to any of the above, except Kathy. No offense to any Kathys', but I don't care for the name.
Anyhoo, I had a dentist appointment the other day, and the person who called me back must have been new, because she said Kathy. I gave her an odd look and said that wasn't my name. She said that Kathy was on my chart. So, when I was paying (darn insurance), I mentioned it and we found that the chart had originally said Katy and that someone had changed the t to an h and added a t. Very odd, and nobody there had really looked at my chart. Such is the problem with a dentist and staff that have known you since childhood!

This and That

The furry fiends are having issues. Their current rabies tags are bells. The bells are getting caught (on occasion) in the holder that their bowls are in, resulting in puddles of water and piles of kibble on the floor. So, I took the water bowl out of the holder and placed it on the floor (kibble on floor is less irksome then water on floor). The fiend or fiends played with the bowl! They moved it around and then stuck a paw in and tipped it. The bowl has since been placed back in the holder. They will simply have to deal. They do not deal well.

My storm door has joined the list of the malfunctioning appliances. It won’t latch unless I lock it.

I got the latest Interweave Knits magazine. I really like the fountain pen shawl. There are other patterns I like, but this one sticks in my memory. I fear my stash of knitting patterns is fast approaching the point of exceeding life expectancy. I already know that the cross stitch ones have!

I have finished one of the shawls with a deadline. This would be the Flower Basket shawl where the gauge was off. It has been blocked and is currently draped on my sewing machine table. The leaf shawl is now 2 repeats into the pattern. Unfortunately, lace is not a good traveling project. My current traveling project is the Rock and Weave sock. I have one band done and the second one started. I messed up the bind off somehow, I tried, but it still stayed straight. Oh well. One can’t be perfect. The October Fair Isle pillow is coming along. I finished the first repeat and the 2 divider bands. I also need to sew the buttons on the Nubby cardigan (from fall Knitscene) before I put it in storage for the summer. If I don’t, I know I’ll forget what the buttons are for and put them on something else and when I get the sweater back out, I’ll wonder why I didn’t put buttons on. (yes, I know the picture's sideways).

Power?

I have the feeling my appliances are out to get me. Or maybe it's just me.

• Camera -- my regular camera went kaflooey a couple of years ago, while on vacation of course. I have since gotten a digital, which worked fine until I tried to take a picture the other night and it told me the card was locked. I checked the manual and online, nothing. I then checked the card and there's this tiny little thing you can slide on the side. Now, why wouldn't they mention that in the manual?
• Toaster oven -- the toast is taking way to long to become toast. I fear it is near death.
• Crock pot -- My crockpot had a fight with the bread machine and lost. Did you know you can't get a new insert? You have to buy the whole thing. This has since been replaced.
• VCR 1 -- doesn't like to rewind, unless you put the tape in, push play, wait for it to start and then push rewind.
• VCR 2 -- has been eating tapes. Haven't tried anything lately, but will shortly.

Those are the main ones right now. I'm sure that they are conspiring at home with the other appliances for new ways to torment me.

On the other hand, I now know more about nuclear power then I have every wanted or needed to know.

Things that make you go hmmm....

I really felt the urge for a shamrock shake the other night. FYI, they are really good if you get them half shamrock and half chocolate. Yes, they can do it that way. Stick to your guns if they say no!
So, I went through the drive-through. I'm sitting at the window and I notice this sign on the window. Braille and picture menus available upon request. I can understand the need for braille and picture menus, not a problem. I do have a problem with Braille and picture menus in a drive-thru! The last time I checked, most people who utilize Braille do not drive cars and you need to be literate when you get a driver's license.

A co-worker mentioned they always use fat-free mayo. That is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as fat-free mayo. Mayonnaise, by definition, is made by beating egg yolks with a little mustard and seasoning and then, adding oil in a thin stream and beating the entire time until it becomes mayonnaise. This is along the lines of fat-free half & half. This fat-free craze is going a bit to far. If you compare the labels, half the time, the regular one will not only taste better, but will only cost you a few more calories.

I hope everyone remembered to order their Girl Scout cookies! We have a sugar-free chocolate chip cookie on our list. They are hard and relatively tasteless. If you read the nutrition facts, the Trefoils have less sugar per serving then the chocolate chip. They also added a Dulce de Leche cookie. It has caramel chips and a caramel drizzle on top. The drizzle is gross. Don't get them.
I wish they would bring back snaps. Now, they were good. They were either reduced fat or fat free. They were a crisp cookie that almost tasted like a ginger snap, but not quite. They also had a white icing drizzle. Oh well.

I put the furry fiends bowls in the dishwasher last week. This caused great consternation. Not only was there no food, but there were no bowls. Well, the dishwasher was still going when it was time for dinner, so their dinner went in the old bowls. The old bowls are smaller and don't fit in the racks that the current bowls go in, so I put the full bowls in front of the fridge (less then a foot away). 1 of the fiends dug in right away. The other one stood in front of where food was supposed to be with a most confused look on his face.