Potpourri

My dad and my brother both came down with the influenza, apparently. However, because my mom is a ninja and reads the same interesting things that I do (because we have the same Facebook friends, in this case), they've all been taking elderberry, which, as you may recall, is a magic gypsy remedy against the flu and all other diseases ever. As a result, my brother's already back in school and my dad was only really sick for a couple of days and is now just dealing with hoarseness and sinus congestion but not actual flu flu.

I am buying elderberry extract immediately. For serious. Apparently it tastes delicious, which is how you know it has to be magic, because since when does medicine taste good? Since gypsies invented it, that's since when.

Yesterday, I bought a sweater at Target. It was $20 on sale for $15 and tomorrow, after I get paid, I am going back to Target and buying the four other colors that they had, because it is a delicious and cozy sweater, and I'm a sweater addict.

One of my goals this year is to knit a sweater. I'm starting out slow with the knitting projects, though. For instance, in August and early September I knitted one (1) fingerless glove. That was to practice cabling, which you should look up on our good friend google. I didn't make a second glove, but I meant to. Now I am knitting two (2) socks.. that is to say, I'm working on a sock and hopefully will not be so bored with it by the time it's done that I refuse to start the second. Inertia is strong in knitting.

But next, oh, next I will attempt to knit a sweater. I feel like there is some degree to which one is not actually a knitter per se until something of that magnitude has blossomed forth from the needles.

Once again, I am delaying my leave for work until the very last possible moment, which means snuggling in bed with the computer and my husband under our heavy pile of blankets. The house is freezing, because we still haven't figured out how the heat works. When I woke up this morning, my teeth started chattering as soon as I made my exit from beneath the aforementioned blanket pile.

It isn't that I don't like my job, and I love making money, but it's so cold and 7:15 is so early in the morning to get up and 9 hours is a long day and you can insert more whining here. It gets repetitive after a while, I know.

I will bottle it all up inside of me for the rest of the day, and nobody will know. Except for you.

My husband is not awake for over-coffee conversation, so a blog is in order

Once again, I am freezing and Dave is bundled up under three piles of blankets to continue sleeping until he chooses not to continue anymore, at which point he will get up. I'm snuggling in bed with him and the laptop for 15 more minutes, and then it's time to go to work. It was 40 degrees last night--Is it seriously time to break out the winter coat already? At 8:15 in the morning, it is 45 degrees outside, with a projected high of 65 for the day. Tomorrow, I am told, it will be 59 and raining. 59, I tell you! What am I supposed to make of that?

I have tomorrow off, which makes today Friday, in a metaphysical sense, and I am blissfully happy about it. Long weekends are the best, even if only working 24 hours in a week means getting paid much less than usual. I will cope, for the sake of an extra day of sleep to gird up my circadian loins before working 45 hours a week all through October.

Sock number 1 is about 50% done. I'm nearly finished turning the heel, and then it's just basic knitting until the sock is long enough to fit Dave's foot. The problem with socks, of course, being that once you get one done, you get to bask in your sense of accomplishment for like five minutes before you have to cast on and start the whole thing over again, and without the sense of curiosity and adventure that came with a new sock pattern the first time you knitted it.

I have decided that, at least as far as the Internet goes, people do not use outmoded exclamations often enough, by gum! I won't commit myself so far as to say that I will make an actual effort to use them (more) often, but if it occurs to me--if the spirit moves, so to speak--I will not resist.

After work, I will take some pictures of the cats, and of my jelly, and perhaps of the sock, and then there will not only be blog entries, there will be blog entries with pictures. By Jove.

By and large, the cats are fab. We've been dealing with some litterbox issues, which is frustrating. 98% of the time, everything is fine, but after we go to bed one or the other of them seems to decide that litter boxes are only for when humans are awake to see where you're excreting things.

I'm knitting Dave a pair of around-the-house wool socks, because our floors get cold. We experimented yesterday with turning on the heat and as far as we can tell, nothing happened. We've got steam heat, and it's been so long since I lived in a house with steam heat that I honestly can't remember how it really works other than turning the thermostat on, so I have no idea how to check if it's working other than the ambient temperature of the house and the relative hot-or-coldness-to-the-touch of the radiators, which have remained solidly chilly.

It's good that it's cold now, because if there's a problem with the heat, I'd prefer not to be finding out the first time it snows or something like that. We may end up just getting a space heater for the bedroom and dealing with the chill in the rest of the rooms, since everything is well insulated and the windows, at least in the front room, are new. The kitchen heats up quickly if you cook anything, which makes up for the cold in there, which really only leaves the dining room and bathroom, since we use the guest room almost exclusively for storage at this point. And, like the kitchen, the bathroom is small and enclosed and heats up quickly if you do something like take a shower.

Not that you can shower in there right now (haven't been able to for the last two months), because there's a broken pipe that gushes water into the basement and results in no water pressure, so we bathe in the tub, because the broken pipe only affects the shower head, and wash our hair in the sink. But the principle remains the same.

I love our house, but it's an old house and the property manager has 14 others to deal with, which means that even major problems sometimes end up at the bottom of a long list. Throw in the fact that he's been having some health problems and, well, it's been about two months since I had a real shower. The stove shorts out if you use all the burners at once (as I found out several times while making jelly this past weekend) and you have to go down into the basement and reset the fuse.

I love our house, and I love our life, and I love our cats. But, like the cats, who still sometimes forget what a litter box is for (but only occasionally), sometimes the things we love can be endlessly frustrating.

Like Dave, who is snuggled under three blankets and sleeping soundly next to me while I write that I have to stop writing this entry now, because it's time to go out into the cold and wet and go to work for 9 hours. Grumpity grump grump.

(That's not true, I'm not frustrated with Dave at all. Just envious. I want to stay in bed all morning.)

A nod of the head

I did, indeed, go back to Whole Foods today after church. Not only did I buy chrysanthemums and apples (macintosh, local-ish, in a paper bag, just like when I was a kid)--I bought a pumpkin! It's tall and skinny, although I ogled several short, squat ones too. Ultimately this one won me over due to its twisty stalk and the curlicue of dried pumpkin vine clinging stubbornly to it.

The pumpkin, along with two pots of yellow 'mums, is now sitting on our front steps. The third pot (they were three for $12) is purple, and has taken up residence on the dining room table.

But I'm not here to write a blog entry about that, or about the delicious faux-Indian dinner that we had last night and tonight (we love leftovers). Instead, I'm going to write some more about blogs I read. The blog I'd like to point you all to today is called Dollar Store Crafts.

If you like to craft and you like to not spend money, this is worth taking a gander at. Essentially the idea is that the author posts crafts that can be done for $5 or less in materials, most of which come from the dollar store.

But, I hear you saying to your computer screen, surely dollar store crafts are ugly. After all, have you been to the dollar store? Things only cost a dollar there for a reason.

Well, yes, the dollar store is not the typical location for buying exquisite crafting supplies, but the thing I love about this blog is that pretty much everything on it is something that 1) I can afford and 2) I would actually be willing, nay, happy to make and lay claim to.

So, check it out. Even if you aren't a crafter, you might enjoy seeing the creative things that people are doing on a thin budget.

Dollar Store Crafts

Arts and Crafts and Presents

Off the top of my head, I can think of three people we know who are due to be having babies in the next week to four months. There are probably more that I just don't know about yet or can't remember at the moment.

Well, I've always believed in celebrating babies, so I decided to make some presents.

For one, I made a blanket. It's satin on one side and flannel on the other:

For another, I used some leftover fabric from Dave's LARP costume and the blanket to make a dress:

More to come, but that's all for now.

Link

I think I've found a new favorite website. I seriously sat and read this blog for three hours yesterday (after I had all my chores done!). Now I'm spoiled for choice about which project to take on next..

Craft Gossip has something for everyone, no matter what sort of creative things you like to do.. or even if all you like to do is sit and fantasize about the creative things you will do someday when you can.

I'm excited about moving out of the "sitting and fantasizing" category and back into the "able to do crafts whenever I feel like it" category.