I'm feeling much better. Not quite 100% but I'm tired of talking about being sick so I'm sure everyone else is tired of listening to me talk about being sick. So I'm going to stop talking about it and move on. :-)

As if I didn't have enough projects going on, I think I have to make this needlecase. It's simple, no-sew, and very colorful - a triple threat. I'm going to make one for myself and one for my HSKS4 exchangee. I picked up some yarn at Michael's on my way home from work yesterday, and it shouldn't take long.

Can I just say though, it is RIDICULOUS that Knitty Gritty did an entire show on how to Crochet using a circular Knitting needle. It's a neat trick for a stitch or two, but seriously?!? Use the right tools for the job - a HOOK.

Moving on...

Someone that I know likes lighthouses... so since I don't have any stitching progress to show you guys, here's an old finish (circa 1996).

It's the Gibbs Hill lighthouse in Bermuda and it hangs in the hallway by the kitchen with some other vacation memorabilia type of things.

I'm back and better :-)

When Friday rolled around and I wasn't feeling any better I figured it was time to see a doctor about my *cold*. I got some antibiotics and a recommendation for OTC Mucinex, and felt much better when I woke up Saturday.

I wasn't sure if I was well enough to go to an engagement party for a good friend of the family last night, but the party was close to my house, so we decided my dad could take me home early and then head back to the party. I totally forgot that my friends JL & RM would be there. There went staying for just a half-hour!

JL's more of my brother J's friend, since they're the same age, but since our families are friends he hangs out with me and my other brother as well. RM and I are often the only girls in the mix so we've have become really good friends too. She and JL got married last Spring. She's pretty awesome: she reads even more than I do and she knits. RM's also the person who, if asked what she'd like as a gift, always replies "A pony." She's the only other girl around my age that drinks scotch, likes it, and also knows her stuff. My friend Sip once mixed the good stuff with COKE when my back was turned!!! Sip hasn't been offered any alcohol besides beer since.

The party was fun but I ended up staying for and hour and a half. Even though I barely ate anything, I felt pretty nauseous by the time JL dropped me off at home. It was good to get out of the house though!! Other than the doctor's visit Friday I hadn't been out of the house since Tuesday. Plus I had a great excuse not to hug everyone and their mother at the party.

Today was a very quiet day. Some cleaning and some stitching, basically. I worked on my Fair & Square exchange. One square is mostly done, and now I need to come up with my *signature* square. It *might* be ready to go out this week, but probably Friday at the earliest. I have a feeling it's going to be a busy week.

If anyone's in the NYC area and wants to see The Daily Show taping Thursday, I might have a couple extra tickets. Let me know if you're interested!

Make someone's day

I'm a big fan of speaking up when you have something nice to say (I try to keep my mouth shut if it's not nice, unless it's constructive, but that's a WIP I might never finish ;-). It doesn't hurt to put some more positivity into the world, right? And you really never know how far that little bit of positivity will go with the recipient.

I've been feeling kinda lousy this week (in case you couldn't tell from my whiny post Tuesday). Let me tell you, hearing from San and Jennifer that I make their day really, really made my day. They both read my blog and commentate regularly, which always makes my day, but this was extra special and just what I needed this week. Thanks guys!



Some of the bloggers who make my day are

Jennifer at Sweet Pea Stitches
Beatrice at Stitching with a View (she left the very first comment on my blog, and that made my whole week!)
Jenean, Neila, and Minerva Kwikspell (no that's not her real name) at HSKS4
Jacque at My Needles Delight
Anna at Stitch Bitch
Janet at 37 (stitches) in a row
Ranae at The Needle & I
San at AngelSan Creations

Thanks guys! I really like reading your blogs every day, and just want to let you know you have a fan here in NY.

There's a lot of other blogs that I like reading every day too, but I'm too tired to tag all 60-something of you individually... But you know who you are, I try to comment when I can.

Off to thank the non-blogging people who make my day. Good night!

I haven't left the house since Tuesday night. I'm still feeling unwell, but it's slightly less unwell than previous days. I'm okay with that. So far I've avoided getting anyone else sick. I think. My coworker A has come down with a sore throat but since she always works from home, I'm clearly not the culprit ;-) She called in sick today. Wimp. Or very smart of her. We'll see.

I'm not the only one on the DL in the house. Sky cut her paw on Monday when she and my mom were at the park. Tuesday she went to the doc and got a stitch and a snazzy looking bandage. She's really working the look - maybe she knows it's Fashion Week? Sky's being awesome, as usual. She's not eating at the bandage at all and she's walking around like nothing even happened. She even stopped limping after Tuesday night. What a trooper!

Speaking of Sky, my mom sent me a link to the cutest video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqbVbPvlDoM . J would kidnap Sky and go live in the city before letting her do something so *silly*, but that looks like a very happy dog to me!

I haven't done any cross stitching since last Sunday, despite some grand and ambitious plan to finish 2 things by this Sunday. That's what I get for planning! Instead I've been knitting. I find it much easier and quicker. With my short attention span and lack of focus, I wanted to work on something that's harder to mess up ;-)

The pattern is here. It's a really fun knit so far. First I did a rectangular base, then I picked up stitches all around the rectangle and I'm knitting it in the round on circular 16" size 8s. And you can kinda see the stitchmarker - I made it myself :-) For all you non-knitters that means I made a square base for the bag, then created additional stitches from certain loops on the base until I had stitches going all the way around the bag. So now I can knit all the way around the base and build the walls evenly as I go, instead of making 8 thousand little rectangular pieces that I'd have to sew together later (I hate seams. And sewing). If you squint really hard you can see the needle-bling, aka stitchmarker, that I made the other day.

It needs to be blocked (stretched out properly) in the worst way and I'm felting it, so it'll look completely different by the time I'm through. And hopefully not so... deflated.

Last week Jennifer posted about a good stashbuilding deal she found. $22 for a box of assorted needlecraft supplies from a going-out-of-business lns. Jennifer's always being helpful with PSAs and good ideas, so go check out her blog if you haven't yet. I'll wait.

Back? Cool.

My box came yesterday, and I really like most everything I got. There's a few things I know I'll never use though, especially the Christian stuff, so if you're interested in any of these let me know! I'd much rather send these things to a good home than have them lay about here doing nobody any good. (I'm not sure about international shipping but email me and I'll check with the post office how expensive it'll be)
Charland Designs, Holly Band Sampler
http://www.charlanddesigns.com/o/designs/hollybandsamp.htm

Designs by Lena Rose, Waiting Room Sampler
http://www.myspclstitches.com/PriceLists/images/LenaRose/DLR003.jpg

Coca Cola Santa Series #1, When Friends Drop In

Stoney Creek Collection Book 223, Prayers and Blessings (can't find it online, but here's a pic)


Email me or leave a comment if you're interested. I'll probably put more up later too.

If you're a fan of Jon Stewart, Conan, or Stephen Colbert they all had really, really funny crossover shows on Monday night... check out the Comedy Central clips here, then head over to Conan's website for the last segment.

That's almost all I got. I'll do another little post soon. Happy Thursday!

Shoulda stayed home

Yesterday I was feeling a little better but not good enough to leave the house so I worked from home. It was okay. I had a LOT to do and it was pretty mindless stuff, so it was for the best that I got it done on time.

Today I have an appointment in Manhattan that I really can't miss, and rescheduling would take forever, so I decided to work from the NYC office. BIG mistake. I'm coughing a lot so my throat hurts, and my nose is running even after taking a Sudafed (which I only take if I'm *really* sick because I hate meds). I really shoulda called in sick and gone back to sleep.

I don't talk to anyone in this office and I'm not even using the phone, so at least I won't spread my cold around :-/ But I really want to go back home and sleep...

Thursday night I went out to Karaoke with Other Kim, a friend from college, and M, a friend of hers from college. Other Kim, aka Kimberly, found a great little place in the West Village that's reasonably priced and has small private rooms, so the 3 of us had our own. I'm not a fan of those karaoke bars where you're singing in front of strangers and have to share the mike.

This was our second time going just the three of us, we went last week too. It was soooo much fun!, and a great way to end a busy, stressful week at work. We're going back next week :-)

Friday was crazy at work. I had 2 high-priority deadlines, and then JC tells me that the French team bounced back his report again, and asked would I take a look at it? It turned out that there was one glaring problem (which I caught and fixed), and one problem that took until 3:30 to diagnose... and I leave at 3 on Fridays. I didn't mind staying late, especially since the guy from the French office was at work still at 9:30 on a Friday night. My boss rocks, he knew I had to get home for for Shabbat so he took over troubleshooting so I could leave.

I didn't go straight home, I stopped at my Grandma's a couple of blocks away from my house. It was her birthday Friday, so everyone went over there with cake and cards and flowers. She's really out of it, but she seemed okay yesterday and happy to see us. She really liked the sparklers on her cake, so we relit it and resang happy birthday. She was joking a little and gave my dad a hard time. It was good to see her.

I called my LNS on Thursday night and asked them to mail me a couple of things I'd ordered, because I haven't had time to go out there to pick them up. Well guess what showed up in the mail Saturday! It takes me 30-45 minutes to drive to my LNS and I usually have to leave work early to do it, so I think I'll be ordering from them a lot more in the future. It was a small order this time - just some buttons for my F & S exchange and the LHN Iced Tea Threadpack. I'm doing the Tea threadpacks on 1 piece of fabric, and I'm considering finishing them as a boxtop for a teabox, if I can find a pretty wooden box that fits them.

This morning I woke up with a sore throat and the worst cold, so I canceled my plans to go meet my friends and see their new baby. Don't want to get a baby sick! I got an email from the French guy that they needed their report rerun, so I did that... and hopefully built a little goodwill towards the NY office.

There's a superbowl party on the UWS but I'm really not in the mood to take all those trains with my cold. Oh well, my dad's having some friends over here to watch the game, I can crash with them :-)

Happy Sunday!

I found a dress :-)

My mom & I went to David's Bridal after work. I literally tried on every BM dress that didn't have beading (because my hair'd catch). Long story short, I showed my mom JS's picks and she was much quicker than I to see that they wouldn't do at all. Even the one I thought *could* work didn't with the jacket on. A jacket is required because we need sleeves and they don't make dresses with sleeves anymore. Anyone else think that's a terrible idea?

We came up with 2 possibles and called JS to run them past her. Her sister, the MOH, had called dibs on my favorite (gr!!) and that the other was "the wrong fabric". It was a good thing I called though because JS mentioned a 4th option. I said I'd try it on and call her back.

Success!!!!

Not only is it passable, it looks great. It's what I was looking for and was frustrated that I couldn't find. I like simple lines, and it has the high neck I wanted, and it looks good with the jacket. And everyone's happy - Jill, me, even my mom :-)

Overheard in the office today

I'm teaching MZ to knit during our lunch hour. She's finally mastered the knit stitch :-) Anyways, we knit at her desk which is relatively high traffic.

Some dude walks past us, notices the knitting, and says, "Oh, do people still do that? I thought it was a dying art". Seriously?

MZ used to be in a different group, and one of the guys she used to work with stopped by to see what was up. He asked MZ to make him a scarf, so I offered to teach him to make his own scarf (I've taught some of the guys at work before). He'd been watching us for a while, so he was able to articulate exaclty why he wasn't interested:
"It's like tying your shoes. I don't like tying my shoes. No, it's like tying your shoes 1,000 times. With chopsticks."
LOL

Edited:
PS At least they didn't ask what we were sewing. Honestly people, can you really not tell the difference between sewing and knitting?!? I don't ask you if you think the Giants are going to win the World Series, do I?!?

I had the worst headache last night so I had to get off the computer, but I had 2 things to share.

Yesterday change for HOE arrived from Joanne. Look what I got!

In addition to the most perfect fob, she sent some floss and fabric to match. Thank you!!! I really like it! (Still trying to track down an email address for a private note of thanks)

If you thought the fob was nice, wait til you see it "on":


The design is called Bianca's Bouquet, and it matches my Bianca scissors perfectly! I love the bright colors too (in case you can't tell from reading my blog I'm a big fan of bright colors, and lots of 'em).

(I took this photo at 7 this morning so the light sucked - IRL it's way nicer)

Now, I know she was a little concerned about the fob because the string is off-centered or something, but I'm the worst at centering so I didn't even notice, lol. Joanne, I'll teach you my trick: take all your photos off-centered and lopsided, and then people can't tell if your work is off-centered too or it's an illusion ;-)

*^*^*^*^*^*

In other news, JS picked a designer and color for the BM dresses. I was really happy that she finally picked so we can get dresses and be done with it. Then she says, she also picked 3 styles from which we can chose. Nooooooooooooooooo!

JS and I have different shapes and different styles... so I was worried. Two of the options are strapless with Empire waists. Even though I prefer non-strapless, I can wear it (and have). It's the combination of
a) the straplessness that's not holding the dress up and
b) cleavage pushing down on the empire waist part
that has convinced me that
c) such a dress would be falling off me all night and
d) even if it didn't fall off, there's no way the neckline would start out, let alone remain, high enough to pass the modesty bar for photos and the chupah. Just no way.
That basically leaves me with one option. It's very much JS's style (similar to BM dresses she's worn in the past) but it's not my style of dress. It's growing on me the more I consider it though.

Since I was worried and had some time, I went out to DB after work to try them on. I was right about those first 2 not working. This 3rd dress surprised me. I thought it would be too low cut b/c of the V-neck, but the halter will keep the dress up higher, high enough. It even looks fine with the jacket on.

I'm just annoyed that I couldn't pick my own outfit. I think that there are enough constraints already (designer, color, length, must be modest), and we are all adults that have been dressing ourselves for years now. I would have been much happier picking 3 designs that I like and submitting them to JS for approval, instead of the other way around.

This [waves hands in the air] whole mess of unhappiness shouldn't be surprising. I think that until yesterday, JS has taken a very sensible approach to wedding planning, especially with regards to her BMs. She is very price conscious on our behalves, and even changed the color to Wine b/c she likes it better and it's a more reusable dress. So I think she's been everything *right* - until this dress-chosing idea she had, which to me seems very weird not to let people pick their own.

Now that I've had a day to think about things, it's more in perspective. When we were roomates, we'd always agree on 95% of things and then get into really heated arguements about the last 5%. We're both really stubborn about certain things, the stupidest things come to think of it, but it made us terrible roommates and great friends. I think this is the 5% of bridesmaiding that I think she is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY wrong about ;-) It's not worth a fight this time.

Oy, does that mean I've grown up? I hope not!

No stitching happened last night, I was on the computer for like 20 minutes and then got nauseous from my headache (a first!) . So I took some Advil (which I hate to do, but had to) and went to sleep ridiculously early. Feeling better today, but worried that the headache will return. :-/

Ttys!

No Megillah

I finished my fob for HOE! It's my first fob finish so I was really OCD about the finishing, glad I waited until the weekend and gave myself plenty of time. I'm happy with how it came out, and hope my mystery recipient is too :-)

Thank you guys soooooo much for all the advice on the Bronze issue. Ruth, your idea most closely matches what I'd been envisioning for Bronze, but everyone I'd asked IRL said 920. Thus the confusion. I ended up going with 920 because it matches my recipient's color tastes more closely.

Not sure if I can post a picture of what I'm actually using the stuff for. HSKS4 is a bit confusing. This is a swap that requires you to create a Hogwarts alter-ego, with the option to blog as your alter ego. If you have time to check out about 50 new blogs it should take you all of 5 minutes to guess my secret identity. But since there's no list of Muggle blogs for the people associated with the swap, I think I would be safe enough posting the entire contents of my swap here. Right? If my partner goes to the trouble of cracking my secret identity and tracking down my blog, she deserves the reward of knowing what's going to be in her kit. But I think that Neila would kick my tuchus if I did (she's in charge of us Ravenclaws for this swap and is doing a GREAT job). So I won't....

Part of the Sock Kit is a set of stitch markers. Of course I am making mine :-) It took forever to chose colors and supplies, but putting them together was a breeze. It's my first time working with wire and I'm definitely doing it again! I also stitched & felted a swatch of the kit bag I'm making. I love love love how it turned out, and it felted so much more quickly than the Bernat Felting yarn that I used for my pink hat! I see many more felted projects knitted with this yarn in my near future. Hehe, my HP powers are carrying over to real life already :-)

Speaking of wizardry... Shaina and I went ice skating again last night, this time at an adult-only session. It was super fun: no kiddies to trip over, only 30 or so people on the ice, and we got to watch some of the really good skaters practicing their jumps in the middle area. This one (really cute but 18 years old) guy was AMAZING, he was doing those twirly (axel?) jumps and getting like 3 feet of air. And they were either double or triple axels, definitely not singles. It was really amazing to watch! I guess it shouldn't be surprising that we have this kind of talent around, the Hughes girls are both from my town and skate at this rink sometimes. I wonder if we'll be seeing Mr Black Sweatshirt (well what else should be call him?) in a competition anytime soon?

Shaina and I both want to go back this weekend :-)

Chicken soup recipe

I don't cook meat often and have never made chicken soup, but this is my mom's recipe and it's pretty good.

1. Fill up a soup pot with water, put a chicken in, and bring to a boil on the stove.
2. When the water's boiling, my mom says to "skim the fat off, and any 'chicken crud' that floats to the surface."
3. Add 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery and 2 parsnips. You can cut them in half but no smaller, because you're going to be fishing them out later.
4. Tie a whole bunch of Dill together and put it on the top - you're fishing this out later as well.
5. Add salt & pepper to taste. Not too much!
6. Leave it on the stove for 2-4 hours. I'd say between 3 and 4.
7. When you're done cooking it, fish out the chicken and the veggies.
   
• The dill goes in the trash.
  
• Put some pieces of chicken in the soup when you serve it. Give the rest to the dog. (Sky enjoys chicken soup days :-)
• The carrots and parsnip are placed in seperate containers, and sliced back into the soup when you serve it. I don't remember if the celery gets served or not, but you might as well.
8. Matzah balls are made seperately (and usually by Grandma E). They are placed in the soup just before serving, but give them enough time to warm up.

We usually have chicken soup on Rosh Hashanah, Erev (the eve of) Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Pesach. The chicken soup is prepared a day or 2 in advance since there's a lot of cooking going on for those holidays. The soup goes back on the stove to warm before serving. We put the matzah balls in at that time to warm up - frozen matzah balls are not yummy. When the soup is served, everyone gets 1 large or 2 medium matzah balls, some veggie slices from a container on the counter, and sometimes some parsley on top, as a garnish.

Mom says you can put Chicken Consomme powder in for more flavor, but then you're making chicken soup from powdered chicken soup and she (and I) think that's silly.

Thanks for all your help with the Bronze dilemma!

Help!

Help a girl out...

What color is Bronze? I'm making a Blue & Bronze exchange package, and I have come to terms with the fact that I have no idea what color it is! It's some kind of brown, with some amount of yellow and red tossed in there, but when faced with a choice of yarns, fabrics or flosses I can't pin it down. I'm so embarrassed, but I really I'm not as ignorant as this sounds. I know all the crazy colors: mauve, aubergine, celadon, sage. I even know what color Coral is (and will argue it to the death with my brothers when necessary)!

Please use the internation color numeration system (aka DMC floss colors) and post a comment below. Put your 2 cents in even if someone else has already, because I've asked 5 people IRL and I've gotten 4 answers, so I am weighting by number of responses.

Thanks guys! Have a good night.

Edit:
PS Times like this it sucks to be a book purist ;-)

A long post about Knitting and Crocheting

Something's wrong with my computer. It keeps shutting down on its own immediately after Startup. Consulting the brain trust to see what my next step should be, but for now my laptop's MIA, presumed dead.

My HOE fob's almost done! Just a tiny bit of backstitching left, then beading and putting it together.

I recently (like last week) signed up for Ravelry. If you knit or crochet and aren't on Ravelry, what are you waiting for? And if you're a programmer with more free time than I have, could you please create a Ravelry for cross stitchers? The "Stash" feature alone would save me hundreds of dollars at my LNS.

The reason I mention Ravelry is, I've been looking for patterns for the HSKS4 swap. Part of the swap is creating a knitting bag for your partner, to hold all the goodies you're sending and the WIP as she or he makes her or his socks. After waaay too much deliberation, but really there were just too many options, I picked the pattern and hit up Michaels on my way home from work. The exact yarn I wanted to use was on sale, so now I *might* make my budget :-)

It's weird to be blogging about knitting, because my focus has always been cross stitch, but really I've been a knitter longer than a cross stitcher, and I've both knit and crochet more than I've cross stitched. I started knitting when I was 10 years old. I was going to spend the summer with my maternal grandparents at a bungalow colony in the Catskills, and I wanted to sit in the circle with my Grandma and the other ladies and knit with them. Well that January or February (c'mon, I was 10 but I remember it was cold out) they came over to our house and Grandma F taught me how to knit. My first projects were simple rectangles, but they were blankets for my toy horses so I loved making them. Not to be left out, my Grandma E made me a horse-blanket too - seed stitch with a crocheted edging, through which she ran a sparkly silver ribbon. I loved it. Forget the sparkly ribbon (which I also LOVED), I fell in love with seed stitch. I lay so... flat. And even. Moving on...

Grandma F and I knit a sweater vest for each of my 2 brothers that summer. She was a much faster knitter, so we'd work for a bit and then swap projects, so that they'd work up more evenly. That was also the summer I learned about 20 words of Yiddish. Fun times! Grandma and I would later go on to collaborate in stitching Tallis and Tefillin bags for each of my brothers for their Bar Mitzvahs. I'll see if I can snap some photos for you guys, they're pretty.

I knit on and off until high school, when I started knitting all the time. I had an hour long bus ride... plenty of time to knit. Then Grandma E decided I needed to learn to crochet also. I think she was annoyed that Grandma F taught me continental knitting (the one where you hold the yarn the correct way, in your non-dominant hand). All of a sudden I had my best guy friend (who was on the bus with me) trying to help me decipher the incomprehensible abbreviations in crocheting patterns - lol. Btw, I'm now really good at reading and executing crochet patterns, so thanks Ben!

Over the years I've knitted and crocheted lots of different things... afghans, ties, hats, scarves, mittens, shawls, pillows, doilies, a kipah, a bandage (in ecuador when we didn't have an ace bandage handy :), stuffed toys... and other things I can't think of just now. Recently I knit that wine cozy, I'm working on my first pair of socks, I learned how to felt stuff, and a few months ago I knit myself an afghan. And since you were so patient and read all the way through my second uber-long post in 2 days, your reward is some stitchy pics - hooray!



My most recent afghan


The wine cozy


My doily WIP

Ok, off to work on that scissor fob. Ttys!

Long post :-)

Argh, I completely forgot to mention last week that Pokua finally received my Fair & Square exchange! I was still in DC at the time (so my mind was elsewhere), but anyways, without further ado:



I picked up the chart in Paris :-) I forget the desginer, but the chart is called Cinq Couers. I was really torn about what to stitch for Pokua, but I saw that she stitched red (redwork?) charts for her last 2 Fair & Squares. So I figured it meant she liked them :-) They took FOREVER to get there so I was really worried they were lost in the mail or something. And obsessing over that dark possibility. And then I forget to post a pic for you. Go figure.

My parents were away for the weekend, so J & I had the house to ourselves. HD! I drove my parents to the airport Friday morning and got totally turned around driving to work because I tried to avoid the Cross Island. But we don't need to tell them that.

MZ, LN and I went for Raviolis again during lunch, and the obligatory stop at AC Moore. I mean, it is right next door. How could we turn it down? I bought some cheap sock yarn - I don't want my first pair of socks to be on Tofutsies because I know they will suck, and that's good yarn. And by good I mean expensive ;-)

Anyways, after work I returned some books to the library, then basically vegged: read books and avoided cleaning/cooking/contact with the outside world). Saturday was more of the same. Saturday night I was supposed to go to a metro stitchers meeting in NYC, but I goofed on the train schedule and wouldn't have made it there until 30 minutes before the event ended :-( So I called Shaina, and we went to a mall out on the Island instead. I picked up some books for 40% off at a closing Waldenbooks, including a book I'd been looking for: Charmed Knits. Harry Potter Sock Kit Swap anyone? Lol. I did an exchange at Borders because the Veronica Mars Season 3 (a very-much-appreciated birthday present from a dear friend) was damaged when I opened it. Luckily I had a gift receipt! PSA: Always give one, even when the gift is perfect, as this one was. I could've downloaded the messed-up disc's episodes off iTunes for $8, but it's soooo much nicer to just get a replacement. Anyways...

Shaina was hungry so we almost hit up the Ravioli place, but they were packed and apparently you need a reservation on the weekends. Which made perfect sense - that place is awesome. Next time - she's intrigued by my rave reviews :-)

Sunday J baked brownies, and in the afternoon we took them over to my cousin's. He had surgery on his nose to straighten it out so he could breathe through it. The poor guy's nose was extremely misaligned. J knows what he's going through, since he had the same surgery after he came back from his semester abroad in London. J got mugged one night walking home from the gym, and one of the two punks punched him in the nose and broke it. Once he was Stateside again, he decided he liked breathing out of his nose and had it fixed. I just think it's funny that of all the people in my family, the two least vain people have had the cosmetic-est surgeries.

Yesterday I stopped by Michaels to pick up some floss on sale, then headed out to the airport to pick up my parents. And that's pretty much it.


By the way, if you ever want to meet all the Canadians that read your blog post something nice about Canada, it sure seems to pull them out of the woodwork!

I love Canada :-) No really, we used to go all the time and it was a lot of fun! It's about an 8 hour drive to Montreal from my house, and until '06 we used to go skiing up there every winter break. This photo is from 2003, and it's my 3 cousins (the ones that live 2 miles from me), my brothers, my mom, our friend Josh, and me. There's 2 girls in the photo, so you can figure out which is which for yourselves. My dad's taking the photo but you can see his gloves.

On the crafting front... I worked on my HOE fob. There's one little part that I keep having to frog, for different reasons each time. It's getting done this week.

I also finished my wine cozy! I showed J and he seemed impressed with it, but bewildered that I would actually spend time making such a thing.
Me: Look what I made!
J: What is that?
Me: A wine cozy... like a gift bag for wine.
J: Oh.
Me: Like you give people wine, and you put it in this bag thingie. You want one?
J: No, what would I do with it?
Me: Yeah, I guess it's one-use only though. Hmm, that was a bad idea.
J:
Me: I know! When I get you wine, I'll put it in this bag and give it to you. Then you can give me the bag back, and I'll get you more wine.
J: There you go.
Side note: J and my mom like to drink wine. I got him wine from France for Chanukah, but it wasn't wrapped. He liked it anyway.

That's all folks, I'm gonna go work on my fob for a bit.

Thursday update

Work was a lot less fun today. There's a (very important) report I used to run that has so many finicky parts that something breaks every time you run it, so you have to check everything. Big PITA. Well it got passed along to JC about 2 months ago, which was fine with me, except that he's a little... technologically inept. He usually can't diagnose or correct any problems that happen, so I get called in to fix it. Which is fine, my department is very friendly and we all help each other out whenever asked, no glory hounds :-) But I just hate running the report, and I don't love getting dragged back into it.

Today was a really tough problem. It turned out that a field broke due to the new year, but it took us from 10-2 to figure out what exactly since there are so many finicky parts to the process, and we went through a lot of them before finding the error. So no AC Moore during lunch again. It felt really good to fix the thing though :-)

After work I went to my LNS. I picked up some fabric I needed, some blue fabric I didn't need but really liked, and a chart to stitch JF for her birthday. Haha, I now have 2 friends that're JF! I meant my singing friend. I also got a couple of Casey Buonaugurio charts to stitch on some sparkly pink fabric I'd ordered from Silkweaver. They just fit on the fabric I got! Can't wait to stitch them, they look like quick stitches.

Partner assignments for Round 5 of the Fair & Square Exchange came yesterday :-D I got Michele, and aside from being super friendly, we also have the same taste in cross stitch designers! I picked something to stitch for her in record time. And if I find something better in the next week or two it's no problem, because I'm planning to stitch it for myself too :-)

It was snowing and raining when I left my LNS but I had 2 more stops to make. I did a return to Best Buy and then stopped in at Borders. I went to exchange the Veronica Mars DVDs I got for my b-day, because one of the disks came scratched and wouldn't play. Thank goodness for gift receipts :-) I also found a new release by an author I like and picked up a Grey's Anatomy calendar for LN (she's a huge fan).

Off to go play with my new stash. Have a great night!

Behave or I'll knit you

Work was fun today!

So this morning my coworker and I were talking about Old Bethpage, a colonial restoration village on Long Island. His wife works there sometimes, and when I said that I'd like to volunteer there (because I love all the crafts & want to learn them :) he warned me to watch out for the unruly sheep. He has met Sky before, and she's the size of a horse, so I figure I can handle some sheep. Aren't they supposed to be meek?

Then I thought about it some more and said, "I could just knit them." He cracked up.

I was going to run to AC Moore during my lunch hour for some needles, but Karen, my coworker that got me started scrapbooking, *convinced* me to go out with a bunch of people from my department. Someone from the French office is visiting for the week, so we're trying to show him a good time. They take care of us, it's only fair to return the favor, right? We decided to go to a Mexican restaurant nearby and split into 2 cars. I ended up with Karen, MZ, and Christina. Three of us (not MZ) have been to one (or more) of the European offices, and the conversation turned to how they would drink alcohol during lunch. This turned into 7 of us (MZ was driving) splitting a pitcher of Margaritas and a pitcher of Sangria. It was a very fun lunch :-)

We got some work done that afternoon, but I made sure to wait a while before doing anything requiring thinking.

I shoulda known when they asked if I like to ski:

You're Canada!

People make fun of you a lot, but they're stupid because you've
got a much better life than they do. In fact, they're probably just jealous.
You believe in crazy things like human rights and health care and not
dying in the streets, and you end up securing these rights for yourself and
others. If it weren't for your weird affection for ice hockey, you'd be
the perfect person.


Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid

Fair & Square, Socks

My Fair Square exchange from Pokua arrived. She stitched me squares that she designed herslef, using elements of Drawn Thread charts. Aren't they gorgeous?!? Those big birds in the middle *must* be emus. Pokua also sent some postcards of Australia and a boomerang keychain. I hope that means when I lose my keys they will come back to me ;-)


In other news, I figured I should get ready for my sock kit swap by knitting some socks. I've been hearing a lot about South West Trading Company so I looked up where their yarn is sold, and found thepointnyc.com. It's a cute store in Greenwich Village, very little in a very Manhattan way. I picked up a pattern book, some Tofutsies yarn, and some tiny DPNs. I am all for supporting the small retailers of the world, but yarn stores make it tough - I could've printed a couple of coupons and got the same for about 1/3 the cost at AC Moore. And maybe it's an NYC thing, but the store is very small so selection's not great. I wasn't keen on the uber-beginner book but it didn't seem like they had any other sock pattern books. Whatever, I found enough to do one pair and Raverly will take care of all future patterns :-)

**** Updated ****
By the way, I ended up on a 6am flight Monday morning... which meant that I had to be up at 3:30. Is rocks, she drove me to the airport and everything! She got to go back to sleep for a couple of hours while some of us went to work. The morning went well but by 4 I was starting to fall asleep at my desk. I was waaaay too tired to post yesterday when I got home!

All in all, the DC trip was a complete sucess & I'm looking forward to going back. Probably in the summer so I can take the bike ;-D

Stuck in DC

I love those old colonial historical sites. I've been to Old Bethpage (on Long Island) a couple of times a year since I moved back to LI, and so when I planned this trip to DC I asked Is to go to Colonial Williamsburg with me. We went Thursday and had a great time.

You know you're in Colonial Williamsburg when you see this sign on the bathroom:

LOL!
We bought tickets so we could go into the buildings. We stopped into the Saddlemaker's and the Shoemaker's, both things they don't have at OB (since it's way smaller than CW) and learned some cool facts about colonial times.


Then we found this Colonial Garden. I'm used to NY winters, so I was surprised that there even was a colonial garden in January. A man working in the garden told us a whole long list of vegetables that grow in Virginia in winter since they don't have a *hard freeze* like we do.


See the little wooden stick hanging to the right of the door? It's attached to the top left corner of the door, so that when you open the door, the weight of the stick shuts it behind you. They use similar tricks on gates too. How smart were they??? (very)

Friday I had to work, but we still managed to do some shopping.... First Is took me to her LNS, Stitcher's Stash in Fairfax, VA. They have a great variety of fibers, and a lot of really pretty shop models on the walls. I got to see my *next* Mirabillia project (Bliss Fairy) all stitched up, which was so cool! As far as I could tell though, the charts were each about $1 more expensive than at my LNS so I didn't buy much... just 2 SNC threads for a Cedar Hills project and a cute Beer chart that will be perfect for my brother.

Next I dragged Is to In Stitches in Alexandria, based on a great recommendation. We were both astonished at how much they managed to cram into their store. There were soooo many charts, and they had the best fiber selection I've seen. They even had some pretty 18ct fabric for "Cooler Heads" that I've been searching for. I could've stayed for hours, but we had to get back home.

Since Is is my only stitching relative, we did a lot of stitching over the weekend. I did 2 of 3 snowmen heads on my new fabric, plus a ton of work on Ivy's skirt. Check it out!


I'm just getting caught up on emails/blogs/life, and a lot has happened over the weekend. I have a partner for the HSKS4 exchange! I won Daisygirl's blogiversary contest (she's one of my stitching/blogging idols, so major :-)! I'm going to be doing an exchange with Beckysc, one of my other stitching/blogging idols! w00t :-)

Then I got the call: JetBlue canceled my flight home due to impending snow and there were no earlier flights. So I'm stuck in DC tonight, and I'm going home first thing in the morning. Provided they don't cancel another flight or 10. Oh well, looks like Is will have to stitch with me for one more night. She looks soooooo broken up about it, lol. I'm just a little sad missing my wireless, and I need to get back to work but the good thing is that I can work anywhere I have wireless access, so I'm not in too much trouble with my boss. I think.

Anyways, I put my needle down long enough to blog a bit and now I'm getting back to it. Ttyl!

Status: Limited or no connectivity

I'm feeling very disconnected today. I usually spend most of my day with a computer, but today Is and I were out for 12 hours straight. I feel badly not posting about all our fun but the wifi isn't working, and I can't stand sitting here on the floor being plugged into the modem. Well I like sitting on floors, but the wire is killing me. It also would require me to dig out all the cables and wires so I can upload pictures, and it's been a loooooong day. So even though I have a ton of fun things to tell you, it'll have to be tomorrow. We're moving the modem to near a desk :-)

A demain!