Knotty Mouse

I’m ch-ch-changing the blog around again.. please excuse the mess. That nasty little upgrade hiccup seems to have botched my previous template.. and I’m waiting to attempt to reload the unedited version and start from the ground up again. I have a nasty combination of PMS, back pain, and a headcold..  I’m sure that the last little grains of sanity I was hanging onto are going to go right out the window on this one.

I promise that I’ll at least have something fun from You Tube for you tomorrow.. even if I don’t have any knitting to show.

For some stupid reason I was tempted by the WordPress upgrade that promised spell-check, toggle visual/html buttons, and numerous other things that would make my life sooooo much easier when it comes to writing blog posts.  I used DreamHost’s “one click install” and waited for it to do its thing. Unfortunately what it did… was completely eat my blog.

*runs away to scream*

Just a quick post to apologize for the lack of punctuation and capitalization in the comments I’ve been leaving on peoples blogs. Due to the amazing pain in my back for the last few days, I’ve been mostly reading blogs by standing at the computer for a few minutes at a time.. I’m not able to sit. If I do manage to sit down.. It takes about 15 minutes to manuver myself back into a standing position. I’m not having a good time. Right now I’m sitting on a stool at the desk.. so we’ll see if its ANY easier to get myself back to standing.

My husband left early this morning for business in Tampa, Florida for the next 4 days.. leaving me here with munchkin to fend for ourselves. Fortunately he left us some money for pizza delivery.. which I’ll be taking advantage of tonight!  The whole “not being able to sit” thing has pretty much ruined any chances of me plopping myself in front of the sofa with a movie and spending all weekend knitting..  

In an attempt to further throw a wrench into my works, I have to go to a parent-teacher conference tomorrow at Munchkins school during the day. They want me to come in and observe my son at “skill centers” to see the difference between his work and the other childrens. The point the teacher is ultimately trying to get at is that my son is not ready to go on to grade 1 next year and will probably have to ‘repeat’ kindergarten… and I’m cool with that. I think she’s trying to come up with a way to ‘break this’ to me.. so that I’m not disappointed.  I knew going into this year that because I chose to keep my son home with me instead of putting him in daycare that he would be behind the other children.. not to mention that he is close to a full year younger than most of the kids in the class (July birthday) and isn’t used to this school thing.  I’m not going to hang my head in shame or anything because my son isn’t “ready” to go on to the next grade.

I’m sorry to have to go this route but I’ve installed a spam filter with word verification on the blog. It was suggested to me by Restless Knitter (thanks!) and it lets me pick my own words… so you’ll never know what you’re going to get! Its also not one of those with the dark background and cryptic letters so it shouldn’t be too obnoxious.

My spam filter works well in keeping spam from showing up in my actual approved comments but my filter is FULL every day from all sorts of long-assed p8rn links.. and I’m getting tired of cleaning it out all the time. I’m also missing some peoples comments because it gets caught in my scrolling screens of ads for various drugs and all sorts of other things that I have no interest in what-so-ever. 

I’ve been doing some knitting lately on UFOs and am trying to get at least one project completed before I cast on for anything else. Right now I’ve joined on the third ball of Kureyon for the entrelac scarf I’ve been working on (Danica from Knitty) and have been knitting a bit every day. I’m sure that I’ll need all four balls of Kureyon to make the scarf a decent length and I don’t know what I’m planning on doing about fringe yet.

I also ripped back the purple Trekking sock that I started ages ago because it was too tight in the instep and was stretching the stitches. I frogged the entire foot portion and got it back to the heel where I added more rows so that the gusset would be larger. It was really aweful to see all of that work torn out but it would also be miserable to realize that I’d knit an entire sock that was uncomfortable.

This title came from one of the strange emails that I get as spam - and seemed rather fitting. Things were going well lately..  our budget was increased from husbands new job, I’m starting to get a bit of a handle on the house and the clutter, and Munchkin seems to be learning a lot in school.  Then yesterday.. life went backwards.  My husband called me at 710AM yesterday morning to tell me that he’d been in a car accident.. and totally wrecked the front end of the truck. It had been raining and he hydroplaned and smashed into the back of another SUV with a hitch.. and it was the hitch that did the damage to his truck.  The front grill, bumper, fog lights, and radiator are all down for the count.. as is the same quarter panel that was replaced when I was in my car accident 2 years ago.  He says that if it weren’t for the radiator.. the truck would probably be drivable.

Husband is fine though, and he is using his parents car to get to work and back until we can pay to get the parts ordered for the truck..  but the stress has pushed me to my limit and I’m exhausted. The impending bad weather and the thought of my husband driving a tiny car on the Atlanta highway isn’t making any of this any easier but I’m sure we’ll get through it.

Pattern: Fetching from Knitty
Yarn: Wool-Ease
Needles: size 6 dpns
changes: got rid of the picot bind off and used garter stitch instead. If I make these for myself I’ll go down a needle size because they are a bit too big for my hands but they fit Munchkin’s bus driver perfectly.

Um.. yeah. Hi.. I’m Mouse, the terrible blogger. I actually finished my first object for 2007 and sent it off to live with my son’s bus driver - and of course.. I’ve misplaced the camera somewhere in this mess of a house and can’t show you what it is. Why? Clearly because I suck. (you, in the back.. shut up.)

I’m basically posting because I realize that I haven’t since sometime last week.. and I don’t want anyone having a party mourning my loss prematurely. I am actually STILL LIVING..  (please stop thinking about how y’all are going to divvy up my stash.. its just rude with me standing here) but I’m trying to get some control over my absolutely hideous house. “How’s that working out for you, Mouse?” Not well.. but thanks for asking folks. I have managed to clean the master bathroom ( I just wrote “bastard bath”.. hmmm.) from top to bottom and spent the entire day on Friday basking in bleach fumes. Unfortunately the rest of the house looks like I had a visit from the Chaos Fairy.. but it IS a start.

Tomorrow is another birthday party for Munchkin’s classmates at Chucky Cheese.. at 10am. Please kill me. The only thing that is making it somewhat tolerable is the fact that the last time we were there they actually had some pretty decent pizza - and that World Market is in the same shopping center. Hopefully I’ll locate the camera under a pile of something tomorrow and get some pictures up here soon. Until then, I’m going to go admire my nice clean bathroom.

I’ve been thinking about posting for the last few days but was stumped by the thought of posting New Years Resolutions on my blog again this year.  I looked through last years resolutions and realized that I still don’t know how to read charts for lace or cables and that I didn’t do any charity knitting last year. I did give out prizes (stitch markers) to other bloggers charity drives and feel that I at least helped contribute to charity knitting.

Looking at the part of my stash that I can see (the rest is in the closet in bins) from my desk, and realizing that it has outgrown its metal cubes in the corner of the room is almost making me consider joining the “Knits from your stash”-along. Most of my stash is single skeins and leftover acrylic yarn and I don’t really have more than one adult size sweaters worth of a single yarn. In other words, I don’t really think that I should be admitted to Yarnaholic meetings just yet. I do however have entirely too much sock yarn and I don’t even knit socks! 

I think that if I were going to make resolutions, they would be more about my daily life and home instead of yarn stash and knitting. I really need to get organized in the house and get rid of my clutter/ excess things. Currently there are papers, toys, and clothing (mine) coming out of everywhere in the house and I’m about to lose my mind over it all.  I really think that I’m at the point where I simply need to get one of those shows (neat, Clean House, etc) with the personal organizers to come to the house and fix my clutter problem.  I’d even consider letting those people from “What Not to Wear” come in and attack my closet because of how out of control it is. I seriously need help here, people!

There were a lot of huge changes this past year with my son starting school, my husbands new job(s), my online shop opening, and my (short lived) employment outside of the house – but I’m relatively happy with the way things are going right now. I ended up leaving the job because I wasn’t getting paid at ALL and I wasn’t doing what I was hired to do- it was a serious case of something not being at all what it was advertised as.  I am rather unhappy about it simply because I was really looking forward to getting a new car within this month and getting my list of ‘needs’ (dental, medical, contact lenses, etc) taken care of in one shot.  I’m hoping that 2007 is going to be better than 2006, in all respects.

The Old Year

A Farewell

Where art thou going so fast, old year,
Where art thou going so fast?
There’s a tremulous sigh in the midnight air,
There are requiem whispers of wild despair–
Chant they a dirge for the past, old year,
The shadowy, vanished past?
What is thy record, to-night, old year,
What is thy record to-night?
There are lessons of life unstudied, untaught,
There are dreams of its schemes unwritten, unwrought,
And gleanings of bliss or blight, old year,
Time’s gleanings of bliss or blight.

Not unmeet were thy blessings, old year,
Blessings that brighten for aye!
There were deeds of charity, kindness and love,
Forgotten below, remembered above;
These, thy noblest incentives, old year,
Incentives that never die.

Snow-flakes are wreathing thy shroud, old year,
Winds wail thy funeral knell–
The seed time and harvest will come, as of yore,
And seasons return with their vintage and store,
But thou!—thy destiny!—death, old year
Pilgrim, ephemeral, farewell!

Mrs. C. I. Baker, Arthur’s Home Magazine, 1880 Annual

Happy 2007 to all of my fiber friends- both virtual and real-life.. Here’s to a great new year full of possibilities, prosperity, and of course.. more FIBER!