Finished my test knit sweater

I love to test knit patterns. I use semi-cheap but nice-ish yarn, and I knit the pattern. Especially if the pattern is a sweater. I like to work out all of the fussies in the test. Turns out I happened upon a pattern that test knit wonderfully, so I went out and bought myself enough of the yarn in my beloved Malabrigo, colorway frost grey, to make a nicer version. Though, to my credit, I did wear the test knit to work in public and got lots of compliments. Hopefully the Malabrigo version will be as yummy to wear as it is to knit. Burgundy sweater is the test knit, grey is the new version, needs sleeves and neck still.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Take a lesson from Mulder, lay back and relax today!

Knitters rock

So, another knitter on knittinghelp.com posted a pic of her newest fo (finished object) and because I am in a bit of a bind xmas knitting wise, I think she his brilliant. I wanted everyone to have sweaters and slippers, etc, but it turns out that even though I started xmas knitting in FREAKING FEBRUARY I am a bit behind on the plans. Needless to say, everyone is getting my own modified version of this gift.
no you can't see it, it's a surprise!

I had an idea

I had a thought yesterday. I thought to myself, "why don't I buy a real honest to goodness but fake xmas tree for us?". I haven't had a real (fake) xmas tree in probably 10 years. Not really since I left the house. For a while my mom did xmas trees, but then it got down to one year all she did was get a branch from outside and put it on a table with some decorations. A BRANCH. That was my last tree. When I was a kid we had a tree every year. Some years we returned them after xmas, but there was always a tree, always a theme, and always my own ornaments. (Mom, can I have the red and blue birds back now please?) Even when we went to grandma's, and she had the hugest most ginourmous tree because she had a 18 foot high entry room, we had a tree at home.

Here the last couple years we had one of those tabletop fiberglass ones that have a million different lights. No siree-this year I wanted a tree. I have a house, I have a room, I have enough $ for one on sale, and I know where Target and Michaels' are.

So I got a tree. I got a prelit 7 foot tree. Pretty clear lights, nice height and fullness, not even that hard to put together. Really. I got a huge roll of sparkly silver ribbon and wound that around the tree for garland, got a million tiny sparkly silver snowflakes and hung those, found a sparkly silver star for the top, and one silver ornament in the shape of the eiffell tower. For those who know our engagement story. Oh, and 2 birdees just like the ones I had when I was a kid, only in red velvet. Gotta have a theme folks.

Let's vent!

First of all, Itchy didn't need a stupid tooth extraction. He just had really bad gingivitis. To be fair, he did need the procedure to clean his dumb tooth, but what we didn't need was a big huge ordeal before hand because of said extraction. If he just needed his dumb tooth cleaned I would have put it off. But of course, no way to know until xrays done. and xrays can't be done with Itchy until sedation. Heck, xrays take an hour with Mulder, and all you get is blurry head and legs. So fine. But still. Clean teeth, ticked off as all hell cat, shaved leg, and $300 later, we have one heck of a clean tooth. They did clip his nails to an obnixiously short length while he was under, and it is kinda funny to watch him slide when he thinks he'll grip. And the fight with the bandage on the arm from the iv was funny. But not that freaking funny.
Work is ticking me off too. Nothing to do with the actual work, just that one of our main providers has outsourced their claim status to an actual collections agency that sees nothing wrong with hanging up and calling back 5 times and harrassing my receptionist to get me on the phone for some dumb non emergency billing crap, and then being rude as crap and pissing me right the fuck off. I am attempting to go through all the right channells to get them fired, or at least to get them to stop freaking calling me. That was 8:20 am today. And you all know that my HUGEST MOST GINOURMOUS pet peeve is repeating myself. Lets just say by the 13 bagillionth time I'm not quite so nice anymore. Which ticks me off. Because I like my job and I like 98 % of the people I talk to and I don't like having to be "firm" or "rude" to anyone when it comes to work. We're all just trying to do our jobs and go home people, stop being an asshole.
And what I thought I could stave off as a headache that came every day has turned into migraine from hell (see above for reasoning). I want everything to be quiet. Dark, quiet, just knitting and maybe the tv.
Please, please, please, when I walk into work at 7am (7am people!) do not let ANYONE accost me at the door telling me about the current must resolve right the fuck now crisis. I might just implode.

Socks, Mulder, Itchy and yarn

Over on knittinghelp.com, as referenced before, we are knitting 850 mini socks for troops for xmas. Because it's been 8 years,(!) a lot of people have been forgetting our troops for xmas and some people aren't getting anything. So we are knitting mini socks and sending them. Well, we have some milestones today. 2 weeks into the project, we have hit 300 socks! (my 7th sock was the 300th, but who's keeping track!) Some lovely women have bought xmas cards in bulk and are having students, friends, family, customers, and all sorts of lovely people sign 850 cards to go with the socks! There is a gradeschool class that is going to stuff a bunch of the socks with goodies. Nothing big, chapstick, candy, gum, etc, but gosh that's so cool. What amazes me the most is all one person had to do was reach out to one other person, who reached out to her friends, who reached out to others, and darn it all but people have redeemed themselves a bit in their extreme generosity. Knitting is not buying a sock. It is sitting for at least 1/2 hour doing something for someone else. some people are on their 30th sock. That's 15 hours people, 15 hours of knitting for someone else. Actually, knitting for someone else, for someone else, for the other person that requested help, 4th person removed. That's pretty freaking awesome.

In other news, Mulder decided to help with the knitting of the mini socks, and took some yarn he deemed unworthy and decided to kill it for me. See pics. I was happily knitting away, cut the yarn and set yarn on table to start to seam the sock. all of a sudden i see a trail of bright purple yarn leading into the kitchen, and hear a "plop". Mulder drowned the darn yarn.

Itchy survived the 1st part of his dental ordeal, the BLOOD DRAW. I sent DH to the vet with Itchy all on his lonesome because I had more important things to do, like visit Crafty planet for their 5 yr anniversary yarn sale! Apparently the vet is stinky and dirty, because Itchy came home and proceeded to clean himself FEROCIOUSLY for about 2 hrs. Then DH stepped on his tail. Poor little guy. Itchy goes to the vet on monday for the tooth removal. He does get to come home with me after work.

Oh, and did I say yarn????? Crafty planet is 5 yrs old, so they were having 25% off all the yarn this week. Oooopsies! I might have had a minor accident in there. I also think I am now a part employee, as they had crafty planet hoodies that Matt sold me one for 25% off. Seriously. they have this "frequent buyer" program where if you spend over a certain *not telling* dollar amount you get either 10 or 20$ gift card for the store. and there was the sale. and there was Malabrigo in colors they never had before. And they had Noro that I helped pick out for stock the last time I was there. Seriously. I walk in and Trish and Matt ask me what I like for the store. not kidding. They bring out a buying list and we talk about the pros and cons of each one. I couldn't make this shit up. So now I have the sweatshirt to prove it.