That crazy Mary Kay girl

At the last second Carrie one of my sister consultants called me to ask if I would be able to stand in for her at the Home and Garden Show at the Tacoma Dome. After checking with Brandon I told her that I would be happy to do so. It was really scary at first, since I am not a people person in any way (most of the time I avoid talking to people I don't know). After the first 30 min though it was really easy. So easy infact that half the time I was doing little dances to keep myself entertained; there is only so much standing right under the speakers that I can handle.

But I'm sure I worried a few people when I raced after an elderly couple, just because I wanted to know where they had gotten their bag from. It was one of the mesh bags that are so popular these days, with clips of newspaper cartoons on it. I had seen like 3 people walk passed with them but never managed to catch their attention. So when I saw these poor people walk past I ran after them, heels clicking on the floor, clip board flailing in one hand, sample cards in the other, yelling "Excuse me!" after them like they had just lost a baby, or an arm. The lady gave me the strangest look (I would have looked that way too if a sales girl was running after me) but laughed and patted my arm when I told her what I wanted from them....and then she and her husband (who had the most pretty blue eyes...is it sad that I noticed that?) argued about where they had gotten it. They agreed that it was from a booth at the Dome, but that was where the agreeing pretty much stoped. She said it was at a booth in the main entrance, he said it was at the other entrance by the hot tubs (dude, do you know how many hot tub sales people were there?). It was cute.

In other news, I'm pretty sure that I won't catch up with The Project...not unless I get help from someone else...which I might just do actually. A friend of mine, Cierra, has offered to work on the really simple squares for me. Which is cool...because if she can make like half of the one I need, and I make the other half, then I'll be at least cought up to the point that I can work on somethine else as well as on the squares. Like socks. Which reminds me to find all that sock yarn that I bought...and the one that my wonderful little sis got me for Christmas. *sighs* It's wonderful when your have enablers in your family.

Socks that don't look like fish

Explaining the title would be an entry in itself so I'll give you the short and sweet version. My first attempt at socks was with the instructions my Mother had remembered from way back when she used to still make socks. They ended up with feet that were way too big, and when my little sister held them side ways she laughed and said, "Sew the end top together, add a fin and some eyes and you have a pair of goldfish!" (The yarn was a really pretty orange).

Anyways, I finally bought a book that gave clear sock instructions; 2-at-a-time Socks. It's an amazing book teaching one the finer details of knitting socks on one pair of circs, so one never gets second-sock-syndrome again. It's amazing. The book suggested that for the sake of practice I should get different colored yarn, and it just so happened that I had two skeins of the same baby yarn in different in teal and blue-gray. I happily cast on, followed the instructions perfectly until I got to the heel, got really bored for about 2 weeks, and when I finally finished the socks I had a pair that looked something like this.

Since there were toddler size I made Aiden the boy I babysit try them on for me. If he hadn't refused to keep wiggling around the picture might have actually turned out well. Instead I got this

And after the sock fitting, which turned into an adventure of me trying to case Aiden around to put the sock on him in the first place (the child just has some weird issue with socks), it was some quality art time with Miss Nici. Here is a picture of what the kitchen looked like afterward. If you are a clean freak, please find a chair to sit in first before viewing the image.

It was a very productive day. If a bit messy.

Why can't time stand still?

There are so many projects that need doing, and for some reason time is totally against me and brings around a new day just when I think I'm making a dent in my pile. And the yarn stores are against me too, with their sales, and uberly soft yarn that turns out to be less expensive then I first thought.



So far I am 16 days behind on The Project. I managed to knit 2.5 squares yesterday in record time, and I felt really good about myself. So good in fact that I couldn't help but text Brandon that I finished even more squares. He wasn't half as exited as I was. And then our neighbors came over and deflated my bubble of success. When I told them both about my brilliant idea, Adam looked at the calander and said, "Aren't you like...16 days behind?" Thanks for the confidence boost...



Now I know that babies are usually born 9 months after conception, and so I should have been able to do simple math to figure out the general due date of Katie's baby. The "Your Nephew will be due in March" line should have tipped me off too. But instead I put wads of cotton in my ears and started humming really loud so I wouldn't have to listen to the the approaching deadline. The baby blanket pattern I had finally picked out was really cute, and I figured I would have pleanty of time -- I mean a baby blanket is totally dueable in two months, right? And now I found out that little Bengamin (her pick), is probably going to be early since he's bigger then they thought. This kids isn't even born yet and he's making knitting for him difficult.


I worked a little on his blanket today (the first 8 rows), and I came to the conclusion that if Katie is really expecting a baby shower gift from me other then this stupid blanket, she's got to be crazy.

If it weren't for knitting...

For the last 28 hours, I have been watching my friends children while he is doing his Army weekend thingy. And for the last 24 hours I have been supressing the strong urge to strangle both boys with the knitting in my bag.

Stephen and Aiden are 4 and 2. So you can imagine the trouble those two can get into when you're not keeping your eyes glued on them. Aiden tends to do whatever Stephen is doing, which leads to a lot of crying, getting scolded, a ton of tears, and the phrase "You're mean Miss Nici," thrown my way more then once. It's great! Ugh. Don't get me wrong, they're wonderful kids, as long as they play in their playroom, and don't get that wild hair up their arse that makes me want to pull my own hair out because it doesn't seem that anything I say or do is going to make them calm down. It's times like those when I want to kiss the person that invented TV and shows like the Wonder Pets, Go Diego Go, and Batman. I am forever in your debt.

Also, The Project is now 7 days behind schedule...mostly because I have discovered that most of the knitting patterns are lacey and thus the yarn I have been using won't work....since I'll lose any and all detail and it will just look like a bunch of regular knitted swatches. And I want to see that pretty patterns. Soooo I'm going to go and buy some fingering weight yarn and start all over again. Granted I'll have to knit like two squares every day just to catch up, but I think it will be worth it.

And then there were only two

Remember how I said that I had a feeling I would lose interest with The Project by the time Feburary rolled around? Yeah...well...it seems that loss of interest has come way sooner then I thought. xD I have block #2 done, #3 is on the needles and I'm almost done with it, and I still have to make #4 and 5 if I want to stay on track...not counting the other projects I have to still work on, like those sockies of mine. Ugh.

Mind you I also still have to: Clean the house, do some serious laundry, find something to wear to tomorrows MK meeting, work on a mosaic, and get my room into a semi organized state. I think that unless I manage to grow a second set of hands on my back so the knitting doesn't get into the way of everything else, I won't be able to sit down and knit those 2 and a half squares.

Oh! And you wanna know the kicker? I looked through the calendar, only to discover that some of the blocks are going to be lace work...how the heck am I going to do lace work with worsted weight yarn? Why don't they write a yarn recommendation on the back flap or something? Why does no one think of these things?! Argh!

The Project

For Christmas my Mother gave me a 365 knitting stitches a year calender. And as I was sitting there, flipping through the pages, totally thrilled that I had such a great referance, a thought occured to me; Each day I could knit a 4x4 swatch of the displayed stitch pattern and at the end of the year I'll sew them all together. And thus I started The Project.

Thus far, I have the 1st block done (the one for Jan 1st)

and only have 364 more to go. Block #2 is on the needles and I'll get that one done lickity-split, and #3 hasn't even been started yet. You can see how enthusiastic and on the ball I am about this Project. I have a strong feeling that by the time February rolls around I'll either have lost all interest, or I'll be so behind in blocks, that it will take me until the next year to catch up. Have I mentioned that I'm really bad about keeping up with things? Yeah...

I also started back up on knitting socks. Thanks to a great book called 2-at-a-time socks, it's not that bad this time. I'm actually understanding all the instructions, I'm not losing stitches and adding them where they really shouldn't go, and my friends 2 year old will have some hand knit socks to wear. In the end everyone wins.

Yes, I realize that their different colored, and that I'll have to make another set for the little guy, but the book said that for practice's sake it's best if I use two different colores yarns. And the book was right, as my fiance Brandon pointed out "You might end up knitting the stitches together and end up with one huge sock with two little openings."