Not a Knitter

That is what my husband says .. he's not a knitter. Oh, he knows how to knit and all .. but he's not a knitter. But this is what my 'not a knitter' husband knit lastnight. Double-stranded Tahki New Tweed in colors 14 (black with purple and orange flecks) and 27 (purple/black multi with orange flecks).



And .. why yes, that -is- an advance copy of Open Season. A perk for working for the movie studios is occasionally they send us goodies. :)

In my own knitting news, I have completed my first Red Scarf. I so want to keep it for myself, as despite being acrylic it is snuggly and soft and warm, and longer than I am tall! I used a modification of the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern, with only two cables instead of three because I wanted it to be nice and long and had limited yarn to work with. I think it looks lovely, don't you?




I'm now working on Red Scarf #2, which I will hopefully finish before January 25th so I can mail them off. I'm making this one out of Yarn Bee Italia - one of the many store-brand novelty yarns at Hobby Lobby, but admittedly one of my favorites. I'm using a pattern I found in a recent Knitter's magazine, one that makes it look almost like it's actually crocheted. It uses p4tog though, which is much more difficult than it needs to be. I'm managing though.





In that last photo .. you see the little skinny sticks, with butterflies on the end? Those are size 0000 needles. I need said needles for the bracelet kit my beloved got me for christmas. Yes, they are as tiny as they look, but I'm oddly excited to be knitting on them. :)

I love my husband.

He stopped at the store tonight for me, on the way home from work. and called to have me come out and help bring in groceries. When I got out there, I discovered he'd bought a few surprises for me ... three bunches of flowers .. including calla lilies, roses and my absolute favorite, sunflowers! .. and a pair of utterly adorable chiminea-shaped autumn pumpkin tealight holders. I'm so loved!

I'll take pictures tomorrow, when the light is better, because if I tried to take them now, they'd be awful. But I just had to gush before I went to bed. I love my husband. It took three vases to put out all the flowers .. because you can't cramp calla lilies and roses. Three! I have flowers all over the house now!

I have to work in the morning though, and I have a 4 hour day, because I have to put together a new fixture. Joy. At least things -seem- to be improving with the Spanish class situation. I've been asked if I mind my comments being forwarded to the department head, and the teacher himself has been much more communicative, and with moderately improved english. I'm still not pleased, but it's getting better.

Goodnight all. Sleep well. I know I will, with the sound of rain coming through the open windows, thanks to the deliciously cool weather. It's still expected to hit the low 80's during the days, but it's 60's at night now, and I am delighted with this.

I've been gone a long time. We had a death in the family that was a bit life-disheveling. Not that it was unexpected or anything, but it just caused a parade of visiting family and life was a bit odd for a while. On top of that, I started my new job and am getting things ready to start classes on Wednesday, so I've been busier than ever.

Friday was Jason and my anniversary. 5 years! Has it really been that long, already? He came home with flowers for me, unexpectedly I might add, and also had my car washed and vacumed .. which was a very nice gift indeed, since I never remember to have it done while the local detailing place is open.









Aren't they beautiful! He does so good when he buys me flowers. He always remembers I love sunflowers, for instance. And the delphinium were the same as the flowers in my bouquet. And I simply love the single yellow rose, and the snapdragons.


In other exciting news, we've been invaded again, but this time by something -much- cuter.





We have a mouse. Three actually, so far, unless it's been the same one sneaking back in somewhere. I'm not sure where they're coming from, as we don't keep the house so poorly that we'd have a hidden nest .. unless it's somewhere in the attic. We used to hear skitterings in the ceiling, so I guess that's possible. But I can't bear to use a poison or snap trap. I can't kill the cuties! We're gonna hunt some live traps maybe .. anything to keep Isis frum finding them. I don't want to wake up to little dead mousies left as tribute.

Busy and Hubbub

I'm beginning to get irritated with Bloglines, which is how I read the near 100 blogs I have found that I really enjoy reading. And no, not all of them post every day, but enough that it's frustrating when Bloglines is having 'issues'. Apparent;y, they did some kind of database maintenance on Wednesday and their servers are trying to 'catch up' or something. Which is just infuriating. But, I'll just have to grumble and knit and wait for things to settle down I guess.

I forgot to post my Saturday Sky photos, in all the hubub and busy yesterday, which I'll get to. It was pretty clear, actually. We'd had some rain, and so it was a little muggy even that early, but there weren't really clouds to speak of.



I just love using the Moasaic Maker .. especially since I don't have to use Flickr albums to do it. Yay!

My favorite shot from the ones I took. Just a couple fluffy clouds and lots of blue sky. And the trees outside my front door. Bradford pears and river birches .. though, we're not near a river so why they put them here is beyond me. Silly development.

The sun was -really- bright though. Can't you tell?


While I was taking pictures a plane went overhead. I followed it, trying to get a picture and wasn't having a lot of luck. Then I saw this and thought it was flying oddly. I soon discovered why .. it's a hawk. I've not seen many flying over our house. I see them around a lot, but not so close. A'course, this is a crappy picture of it, but you can at least tell that it's a bird.


Back to the hubbub and busy. Yesterday was Brandon's birthday, and on top of that we had our Weight Watchers meeting. We got the meeting done and Jason dropped off to work (I lost another .2, which I call good considering the feast I had a few days ago .. so not good for me, but cured a bad craving for fast food) and headed home. Through the meeting I worked some on the icord for Brandon's Booga, but when I got home I wanted to work on something that wasn't wool.

So instead I picked up my cone of Sugar and Cream in Ecru, and started working on the Promenade shopping bag.

I had gotten through the first three repetitions of the pattern stitch before we had to go and pick Jason up at the dealership on the way to go eat and bring Brandon home for a week.



As you can probably tell, something got screwy in the pattern. I'm fairly positive I started with the right # of stitches, but it wasn't working right, and I had to fudge around until I got it looking and working right, so the first three rounds of the pattern stitch stack in the wrong direction before I got the hang of it and made it work. I don't think it'll look bad, so I'm not bothering to rip out the progress.

The reason I got -so much- done was we went to get Jason at work at 6pm. He'd told us he might be a few minutes late, which was fine. We figured we'd knit in the car, and all would be good. About 5 minutes after we get there, a couple drives up in an ancient Chevy Silverado, walks in, and wants to buy a new (well, used, but new to them) truck then and there. Jason was the only other salesman on the floor, so he took them and got things moving. No big deal, shouldn't take too long. And we had our knitting!

An hour and a half later, they were still there. Not because they were being slow or obstinate or anything. Hell no. These folks with almost 800 Beacon scores were waiting very patiently for the couple that was in the finance manager's office .. who had by then been in there for 2 hours, and were reading every word and checking every term in their paperwork, and using their calculator to check numbers, and wanting this taken off and that taken off, and basically being every finance manager's worst nightmare. Poor Eddie.

I knitted through all of this. Sat with Brandon in the car, waiting. Knitting, and listening to my XM radio. Thank the goddess for XM radio! Somewhere around 8pm, we got really thirsty, and went to the gas station next door and discovered two new flavors of Diet Pepsi - Diet Pepsi Jazz, which comes in Black Cherry & French Vanilla and Strawberries and Cream. Zero calories, and incredibly yummy flavor, though if you don't like DIet Pepsi you might not like them. I love them. Yummo!

We headed back to the dealership and waited some more. Eventually, the annoying couple came out to start inspecting the car. And I mean inspecting. This woman was checking every miniscule thing .. finding barely perceptible flaws in the paint and shit. And this went on for an hour. An hour!!! Eventually, and by this time everyone was ready to leave but couldn't because of these idiots, they called the GM out. Will explained that he had a sick wife and three boys at home and that he really needed to leave, but the woman made him come out anyway and showed him every miniscule thing that she felt was wrong with the car. What a bitch! I realize that you want your new car to be perfect, but good Lord and lady, lady. She'd already nearly given Eddie a stroke with her behavior, and now she was pulling this with Will. I about wanted to get out of the car and scream at her to just take the car already.

But instead, I knitted, patiently waiting for Jason's customers to sign their paperwork so he could hand them their keys and shake their hands. Which he eventually managed. At 9:10pm. Now, I remind you, he was supposed to get off work at 6pm. So, I got a bunch of knitting done on the bag before we headed to dinner at Sakura, our favorite Japanese Hibachi Steakhouse. After a wonderfully enjoyable meal with a very nice family sharing our table, we headed back to Brandon's momma's home for cupcakes and ice cream. We finally got home lastnight around 2:30 am .. being followed by a damned drunk driver all the way down our street. This jerk was driving so recklessly Jason called 911 to report it .. only for the jerk to pull into our neighborhood! I need to remember to go drive around and figure out what car it was behind us, and leave a nasty note on their door. Tied on with i-cord. Just because I can.