Flash your Stash!

Yes, it's that time of year again. Time to haul out your little dirty secret or in many cases, their not so little woolly secret. I think it's kind of prosaic to have Flash your stash on April Fools Day. Kind of like a joke...I can't really have that much yarn stashed away??? So here we go. First off the IKEA storage units procurred at Stiches Midwest Last year.

In the Pink one we have:

• 4 skeins of Baby Silk
• 3 skeins of the Knitpicks Lace weight that I dyed myself in the blues and pinks.
• 12 skeins of Schachenmeyer Nomotta Micro Big Shine. Was gonig to be a tank once upon a time, now I don't know...
• 7 skeins of Cascade Indulgence. I don't know, I was kind of thinking Knitty's blaze, but it would be kind of blahh in cream.
• 14 skeins of Classic Elite Tweed in Marron
• 12 skeins of CottonEase saved from the Clearance racks.
  
  In the blue IKEA thing, we have the sock yarn collection of shame...
• 4 Skeins of Patons Kroy - Pink & Green
• Lang Jawool in Blues
• 3 skeins of the knitpicks that I self-dyed in various colors
• 2 skeins Knitpicks Simply Stripes
• 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces in Glenwood from Stitches Midwest last year.
• 2 skeins of Regia Cotton Surf - Purples & Reds
• 2 skeins Cascade Fixation
• 2 skeins Koigu
• 1 skein Moutain Colors in Barefoot Wildberries
• 1 skein Socks That Rock in Scottish Highlands
• 1 skeins of Tess' Super Sock Yarn
• 1 skein of Cashmere from Just one Yarn purchased at Stitches Midwest last year.
  
  Next, we have the rack, I salvaged from the kitchen, because it doesn't fit in my new kitchen...
  
  In this we have:
• 1200 yds Rowan Summer Tweed bought on a cone from Webs
• 3 skeins Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud
• 2 skeins of some green cotton boucle type yarn bought on clearance at Stitches Midwest.
• 1 undyed Knitpicks Sock yarn
• 1 undyed Knitpicks laceweight
• 2 skeins Pinquin Soft hair
• 2 balls of Pajola Alpaca
• 3 skeins of Wakiki
• 4 skeins of Esbeth Lavold Silky Wool
• 3 bunches of Roving for my spinning attempts. The drop spindle also lives in this storage.
  
  
  
  Then we have the chest that MaryAnn gave me. It stores all my double pointed needles, circular needles and knitting implements in the top 4 drawers and in the bottom, we have the following:
  
  
• 5 skeins of Llama Seta
• 1 skein Amalie
• 1 skein of Handspun Angora from my Secret Pal 4
• 2 skeins of Qifapai which is a cashmere wool blend. This is from my sockapal2za pal who sent it from China. We heart her.
• 3 skeins of Misc. handspun yarn
• 1 skeins Schelle Stahl Woolle and 1 skein of their Teddy yarn
• 5 skeins of Wildflower in 2 different colors
• 3 skeins Rowan DK cotton
• 3 half skeins of Dale Stork.
• Some miscellaneaous shiny yarn
• All of my sock yarn leftovers that I'm trying to accumulate enough to make monster socks. I probably have enough, but boy would they be ugly (the point of them I know) but I want to make them at least a bit color coordinate...
  
  Here we have an entire box of very old 100% wool yarn inherited from my great aunt. I figure it will probably be good for felting something, but haven't gotten around to it...
  
  And finally, the fox top full of yarn that I haven't yet found a place for. Leftover from a baby blanket, my dishcloth yarn and a skein of red hart yarn from a well meaning friend.

So there you have it, in all my glory. I will admit, it has gotten smaller. I've knit several of the yarns from Stitches Midwest last year. I've been finishing some projects up...of course, I'm going to Yarn Barn tomorrow and Maryland Sheep & Wool in May and Stitches again in August...OH MY!

Visitor's officially welcome

Yes, my tax refund was just burning a hole in my pocket, so I went out and bought a bed tonight. Yeah! I bought a queen for me and I'll move my full size bed into the 2nd bedroom. So, visitors will officially be welcome as of April 1st. Hurrah!

My first visitors will be here the next weekend. My parents are coming. They're taking the long way home from Branson by my place. Yippee. Now, I just have to find some place to take them...

"Your my best friend...and I love you..." was running through my mind all day. Don't you hate it when you get a song stuck in your mind first thing in the morning and now, 16 hours later, the song is still going through my head. Stupid Weezer...track number 9.

I realized as I sat there ating my pistacio pudding a few minutes ago that I had an inordinate amount of green food today. Green grapes with lunch. A few stray pieces of honeydew melon off a fruit platter at work. Guacomole with my quesadilla I made for dinner. Doc's hard limeade with it's slight green tinge to wash down dinner and finally, the pistacio pudding. How weird... I blame it on the song,

So, I move into a bigger apartment with two bedrooms, so, of course, I need a second bed so I can have visitors. I also need a dining room table and an entertainment center. Everyone kept telling me that I needed to go to Nebraska Furniture Mart. So today, I looked up the directions and went. It was unbelievable. I think it's actually bigger than the IKEA in Schaumburg, IL. It had almost too many choices. I couldn't think. I may have found a bed, but by the time I made it to where they where I was getting a headache. I was all to much. For those back in St. Louis, imagine that they put a Best Buy, Williams Sonoma, both Carol Houses, and Rothman furniture all in the same place. So, I went, but I did not buy. The only thing I ended up with was a Migraine, which I won't attribute to Nebraska Furniture Mart, because truthfully, felt one coming on and went anyway.

So, came home from shopping and went right to bed as headache was obscuring my ability to think and the light was hurting my eyes. Woke up 2 hours later, still had a headache, woke up again at 5:30 and still had a headache. Finally woke up at 7 and headache is mostly gone. Thank god.
I did do a little knitting this evening and finished sock #1 of my sockapaloooza socks. Yeah!!! I really like Grumperina's Jaywalker pattern in this Opal yarn. Will start the next one tomorrow and I should have them done by May 1st.

I had a super crappy day today. It's like all the weirdos and everything that could possibly go wrong did. Not personal mistakes, but technical frustration from things that did work and people who annoyed me. Maybe it was me, but my co-worker in KC and one I talked to in Chicago were having just as crappy of days. My co-worker asked where the full moon was... I was going to listen to a webcast this afternoon, and it probably would have saved me about 3 hours of frustration and a call to the help desk had I done that rather than trying to make this other program work. But enough about my crappy friday. Ever thing was okay when I came home because this was in my mailbox. Yippee. My
yarn came from Elann.com. Now, admitedly, only half of it is mine. The 4 skeins of Baby silk in Raspberry and the 2 soccotta yarns in purple and red and then there's the ribbon yarn that I bought last night that I just threw in. The pattern is mine as well. Mobious scarf. The other 3 soccotta and the 4 baby silk in aubergine are my aunts. You can't really see the aubergine, but it is the prettiest color. I'm totally in love. If I order again in the near future from elann, I'm buying some of that for myself.

My big plans for the weekend include shopping for appropriate clothes to wear on Fridays (business casual, but we can donate $5 to charity and wear jeans). So, I need some dressier casual tops to go with jeans. And, of course, furniture shopping. I've been told I have to go to Nebraska Furniture, so I think I'm going to go on an adventurous trip to find that. Wish me luck.

My spiral of shame continues...first shoes. Then yarn. Now, I couldn't help myself, I ordered books. Yes, indeed. I ordered Amy Singer's new book Big Girl Knits because, I am a big girl and in spite of what some designers think, 38" at the bust is NOT, I repeat for clarity, NOT extra large. Well, I was so excited, I ordered it before it came out, and of course, I needed to order something else so I could get my Super Saver free shipping from Amazon, so one of my favorite authors is coming out with a new books, so I tacked on Mary Janice Davidson's Dead & Loving it. I'm just hooked on her Betsy the Vampire books and I'm excited because apparently George the Fiend finds love.

I'm such a sucker. Beyond my incessent shopping...I mean. I've been tapped to knit a scarf for an auction for a March of Dimes auction for the St. Louis office. Yep, not even for an office I still work for, although thankfully still working for the same employer. So this will, of course, necessitate a trip to the yarn store for special yarn with which to knit the scarf, they were knitting there tonight anway and I was going. So, I bought some big thick ribbon yarn and I'm going to knit one of those drop stitch scarves.

I can't wait for the weekend. I'm going furniture shopping. Hurrah.

Shame...shame...shame...

I ordered more yarn tonight...

I couldn't help myself...

It was Elann.com. They had the Soccotta Surf yarn today. I got two skeins, Provence and Russo.

And since I couldn't just order 2 skeins, I ordered 4 more skeins of the raspberry baby silk. And since I didn't have any plans for the raspberry baby silk, I ordered the pattern for the mobius scarf on that page to go with it.

Then since I was feeling really guilty about buying more yarn...so I convinced my aunt to order 8 skeins as well...

I am so bad...I guess I should own up to buying 2 new pairs of shoes on Friday night as well. New dress policy in this office, had to have new shoes for summer. Sandals not allowed...

PS. The door in yesterday's picture goes to my storage closet. And the scarf should say it's a shawl...

This is how I spent my Sunday... Sitting in my knitting chair, listening to music on off my computer (TV sucked and I still can't figure out how to hook up the DVD) and knitting, of course...
It's a pretty crappy day here
KC. Overcast and cold. I did venture outside once to take more boxes to the dumpster. I also cleaned up the last of the boxes out of the dining room, so I'm getting some where. So, without further ado, here is the progress on the Feather and fan scarf that I started and frogged yesterday. Thankfully it is fast knitting. I just love the colors. They're even more wonderful in person.
I also worked on my Sockapaloooza sock for my pal. I'm still on the first sock. For some reason, it's going really slow. I really like how this Opal yarn is turning out in the Jaywalker pattern.

Oh, and a belated happy birthday to my brother-in-law Jason. I sadly have a gift for him, but forgot to send it out. It'll be on it's way soon! I need to find someplace to buy stamps other than the hotel concierge.

A yarn story...

There was knitting today!!! Isn't this yarn beautiful. Pinks and purples and greys to almost black. This is the Interlacements Rik Rak yarn that I purchased at Stitches Midwest last year. It is destined to become a feather and fan shawl. See
the progress I had made at one point. I absolutely love it!!!
The colors look awesome. You may have noticed my qualifier up above "at one point..." Yes, I did the unthinkable, I frogged it all. No, I didn't make some grave mistake other than not swatching and having it end up to be 4 feet in width... Umm a little more than I was going for...

Other than that, I finally put away all of the knick knacks I had piled up on my ledge for the kitchen. I needed it to hook the swift and ball winder too. I also moved my chair and ottoman into the sunroom. It wasn't really fitting in the family room anywhere and I had tried it several different ways, but I love it in the sunroom. Tomorrow is for picture hanging.

I was all worried about bowling, when I should have been worried about something altogether different. My day Monday started bright and early. I made it to the airport. I parked the car in long term parking. All is going well and then...I...took a really big step off the shuttle bus to the airport. So big, I in fact missed 2 steps and me and my luggage and my purse and my computer bag ended up in a heap on the concrete. I was, of course, mortified since the shuttle was packed with people. I picked my self up and went into the airport. It wasn't until I sat on the plane that I began to notice that "Gee, my ass really hurts..." In fact, truly, only the left butt cheek really hurt. Then, gosh, my palm really hurts. Gee, theirs a piece of glass stuck in there. The worst part, aside from the ginormous blue bruise on my butt is for the next three days, I had to sit in various conference session on my bruised butt. Ouch!!

I did go bowling, and other than being utterly embarassed by my score in the game (I broke 60 on the 3rd game and that was the highpoint) it was all good.

So, I'm home now. My plane from O'Hare was only 35 minutes late leaving...got to be a record. High point of the conference, you might ask?? The last session was on leadership and they played the video of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech" in it's entirety. From the minute he took the podium. I've read the speech in it's entirety but I had never watched him deliver from start to finish. Just seen the clips they show on TV. It was amazing to watch from start to finish. I even teared up. Half the room teared up. It was a so effective.

Where are the ruby red slippers when you need them??

So far since I've been in Kansas 10 days and I've lived through 5 tornado warnings complete with sirens. Yes, there's a reason a tornado plucked Dorthy up out of Kansas. The author obviously knew what they were talking about...and it's only March. The worst part is here, they totally pre-empt tv on all channels and you just listen to them go on and on and on about where the storm is. I want my TV shows!!! I don't care if the storm is spitting golf size hail in Moberly!!! That's half a state a way. UGHHH!!! It's been like this all day.

To continue my streak of learning and trying new things since moving to Kansas, I taught myself to hem pants tonight. Prior to this, I've conned my mom into hemming them for me. Isn't she nice?? Actually, must admit that I was resewing the hems that came out of two pairs of pants that I want to take to Chicago with me tomorrow, so you can see the dire need that spurred me to experiment with hems. I'm amazed. They seem fairly straight and you can barely see them on the outside. The inside needs some work, but who's really going to see that anyway.

Off to Chicago to work bright and early tomorrow am. Actually, it's so early it will still be dark. Why did I move 45 minutes away from the airport. Why, oh Why do I have to take a 7am flight. UGHHH!!!! Maybe I'll actually be able to sleep on the plane tomorrow. I'll be in Chicago through Wednesday evenings, so no updates until then. I should have lots to report...we're going to an upscale bowling lounge and those of you who know me, know this is a recipe for disaster...

And life goes on...

I thought that I would be a little homesick this first week, but I've been so busy, I haven't had any time to be busy yet. Work is going well so far. I like the people and I like the challenges. I come home at night brain dead and exhausted. I brought home a stack of stuff to read that is 3 inches thick. Ummm...yeah...I left it out in the car. It isn't going to get read tonight. Maybe this weekend.

One thing I must agree with is that there are some very good restaurants in KC. I've been out to dinner every night this week with either work people or, tonight, the KC knitters group. The food is fabulous. I had a KC strip steak with a blue cheese sauce last night. I had pan-asian food tonight and, for the very first time, tried Bubble tea. I've been kind of wary of it. I really don't like tapioca because of the consistency and everyone said the stuff in the bubble tea was just like tapioca. One person I was at dinner with described it like having gummy bears in your drink and she was pretty much right on. I liked it. It was fun to drink. See, KC is bringing about all kinds of new things in my life.

I really like the knitters. They seem like a nice group of people and I look forward to knitting with them again.

So, pair number 3 of socks finished this year. These are pattern #12 Seaweed stitch from Joy Slayton's Ribbing Plain and Fancy. The yarn is Knit Picks Sock Garden in Hydrangea. I like them. I wore them to Teri's house to watch the Oscar's yesterday right off the needles.

So, Of course, I had to start another pair of socks immediately. Another pair of Jaywalkers in Opal yarn that I've had since last summer, now, here's where an opinion is required. Should I make the Jaywalkers for my sock pal or should I use the beautiful Knitpicks yarn seen next to the Jaywalkers below??










Of course, I could make her the jaywalkers and give her the other yarn. Help me with my dilemna and let me know what you would do.

One last note - I love my friend Colleen. She was in town to visit her sister this weekend and invited me along with her family to go to Science City and brought me the coolest house warming gift a knitting teddy bear. I heart Colleen.

More unpacking and an outing.

So, if you scroll down and look at what my dining room looked like on Friday, you'll realize that this is a vast improvement. Now, I will admit that not all of those boxes have been put away, but they've been moved closer to their final resting place. The books are still waiting to go on the bookshelves. Clothes are piled in my room waiting to be hung up. Yarn is still boxed waiting to be released. The yarn will be last as I'll be hunting for my next project as I put it away.
Now for the real work, taking all the boxes to the dumpster, which is in a central location here at the apartment. I will become one of those people that drive their garbage to the dumpster. It was raining today, so I didn't feel like taking it out, so that's first on the list of things to do tomorrow. Get rid of the trash.

As I finish my frantic unpacking, my thoughts have turned to my next project. I have about an inch of my sock left, so I definitely need something new to work on. The sockapalooza sock needs to be started, of course, but I'm looking at something bigger. Maybe Blaze from Knitty. Hmmm. Will have to go stash diving to decide tomorrow...

First official dinner

So, I went to the grocery store. Bought everything I needed that I didn't have for my favorite meal. Pasta with Chicken, carrots & broccoli. A little Olive Oil, Basil & Parmesan cheese rounds it off. So, miracle of all miracles, I remembered all the ingrediants I didn't have on hand at the grocery store. Came home, made sure I had all the necessary dishes unpacked. Check. Cut up carrots, cut up chicken. Wine chilling... you get the picture, I'm going all out here. Chicken's cooking. It smells really good and suddenly I realize "Oh my god I haven't unpacked the Basil..." It was like a lightbulb went on in my head. I quickly stirred the cooking chicken and ran over and began frantically opening boxes. I know I have 2 things of Basil...I've got to be able to find one of them. I open box after box after box and finally, I come to the last box...and there it is sitting on top. UGHHH!!! My dining room really looks like a bomb hit it now.

Oh, well. Dinner was good...

I'm Here!!!

Womder of all wonder, I made it here...with only a little
drama. In this picture, you can see my wonderfully comfortable bed (NOT!)from my first night in my new home. I think I woke up every hour because my arm went to sleep or my hand went to sleep. Uggh. My furniture finally arrived today. I spent a good two hours playing Inventory Bingo - get a nice peice of paper from the movers with the numbers that the afixed to your boxes and you check them all off as they come in the door. Thankfully, nothing went missing and my furniture arrived in good shape. I spent most of the day unpacking and trying to get online. This is what my living room currently looks like. I had the movers stack all the boxes in the living room so I could unpack in one central
location. At this point, I've unpacked or moved about 40 boxes to their new home location. Isn't that sad.

Th journey has not been without it's drama or triumphs. My phone blew up last night. What you say??? Yes, it was shooting red sparks out of the battery housing thingee and then it smoked. No fire ensued, but it did kind of freak me out...

Now for my truimph, not only did I install DSL (as you can see I'm now online) all by myself with little assistance, I also installed an ethernet adapter into my computer. Woo Hoo. I only had to call for assistance in figuring out how to get the casing off the computer. I'm so proud of myself.

Tomorrow, cable guy and washer/dryer hookup guys are coming. More on my adventures in KC to come.