Thanks to everyone for their kind comments on the butterscotch yarn. It is wonderful stuff that I’m enjoying very much. The color spoke to me at Cummington and I went for it. It was either that or get into a three-way battle with Kristen and Rosemary. I checked the pattern and the yardage I got from the 4 oz will more than make the middle sized flower basket shawl in a fingering weight when I finish spinning up the second half. As for consistency, this is where I spout my new found appreciation and reliance on pre-drafting in getting an even result. Thanks Stephanie to your post, I’m now a pre-draft convert, having never really done it in the past.
Has anyone figured out yet that I have these lofty ideals of what my night will entail after getting the twins down and what I can accomplish? I’m pretty sure I post often, considering I am posting somewhere around lunch time, about things I did yesterday and what I’m going to do for the rest of the day. On a weekend, I can usually get done what I project I’m going to get done provided no unforeseen event happens, like the twins come down simultaneously with a mysterious 36 hour fever. Yeah, like that. Weekdays are just sheer speculation and yesterday’s blog post? More of the same.
There was the claim that I’d sew the shoulders on Mondo. Did that happen? Um nope.
There was also the specious claim that I’d get the icky skirt out of the closet and into the washing machine. Also a big fat not.
Is there a photograph of the sock? Nope. Not yet.
I did manage to finish off the first front piece of the Trellis cardi and did the three needle bind off to connect it to the back.
So what was it that distracted me from my being able to say today: DID IT?….
Two things. First, back to the hideous storage closet from hell that houses the water meter and master shut off valve. After the fun of the weekend, my landlord told me Sunday when I turned the water back on that they were going to install a valve in his unit so they wouldn’t have to pester me. Now since I’d already been troubled on Sunday, they didn’t want to trouble me any further and were going to do the work yesterday. Cool by me, if I’m out I don’t mind the lack of water and/or the strange dude hanging in my storage closet. The cats might get a little perturbed but they could hide in the bedroom and just avoid the whole situation. I liked it.
I didn’t like it so much when I got home and found a good bit of what had been IN the closet piled on my couch. Okay so it was a huge bag of fleece and the cormo roving from Wooly Knob (no I haven’t touched it – to spin – since um December?) and I can understand his not being sure where the hell to put it. Fine the couch it was. What really got me was that he took the bins of toys, kid toys and not my electronic "toys" and shoved them far into the back of the storage area, deep in the heart of what I call "spider heaven" (for good reason as that is what lives there in much abundance, spinning copious webs and eating the ants that come seasonally). Into this area three buckets of toys, including stacking cups, mega blocks, stuffed animals, are stashed. He’d seen the kids the day before so there was no question that little people lived there and these were more than likely their toys. Now the only reason I found these toys there was that I got curious as to their solution of making the shut off valve accessible to the other unit and peeked. I had to climb over a mountain of stuff that he did pile into the closet portion and discovered the toys behind the trap door. Stupid. It was shortly after that I noticed the lack of toy bins on the living room floor. Okay that should have been my first clue, but I ain’t always the most observant. The huge bags of fleece on the couch had me distracted. Sometime around then I noticed the trail of crud across the carpet. I nearly had a conniption. It was 8:45 (we stayed late at my folks house enjoying the pool and eating on the patio) and I had to clean the living room and rearrange the closet. Not to mention pulling out the bins of toys and making sure they were clean! I visited my landlord and vented a bit of frustration, to which he apologized pretty profusely. I’ll leave out the long stream of invectives I yelled as I smashed my head getting the toys out of the storage space. Twice.
Okay so that fun took me to about 9:30 at which time I turned me attention to this:
My nifty new Creative Zen Micro mp3 player with FM Tuner. Coooool. This geek loves new geek toys. Since I tend to use the kids’ table in the livingroom for pictures, you get the toys as an added bonus (not to mention the crayon scribblings on the table itself). I added in the skein of Louet Gems yarn for size. If you look closely at the box, right above the corner of the Zen itself, there’s a little label proclaiming this to be a bonus package where they added an EXTRA BATTERY. WOOOOOOO. That’s a $40 bonus, give or take your devotedness to finding stuff cheap, and if the battery has the life they claim, 24 hours of playtime. Sweet. I had to spend time playing with this bad boy, getting it charged, downloading music to it, and installing the firmware upgrade.
Tonight will be the night for more crafty bits.
I did manage to finally finish turning the heel on the sock this morning on the train. This is where it should fly again as I did that AND an inch of the foot in the stretch of about 45 min (when I wasn’t playing with Zen that is 
I think I’m going to modify the pattern and use my standard decrease for the toe. I ain’t thrilled with the short row heel and I don’t like the idea of sewing the toe to the foot underneath. I hate sewing remember. 
Craft on!
