This is for Jodijill and Mr. Jodi

I hated Lady Gaga until I saw this:



Now, whenever I feel sorry for myself, I watch this video. It makes me happy.

And I was amazed to hear that two of the coolest people I know were unfamiliar with this mashup. I dedicate this to them.

Progress: Zero

Since Wednesday, I've been working on short-rows for the sleeve of my raglan sweater. Not working.

See that bump? There's one on the back as well. Those bumps make my arms look like I've got some sort of matching tumour on either side.

Refusing to give up, though, last night, I sat down with three episodes of Torchwood and determined to zip down the sleeve a bit and see how it looked:

Well, this is what the sleeve looks like now:

I'm leaving the idea of having a horizontal line where the yarn changes. If I buckle down, I can finish this weekend. Which is good, because I'm itching to get back to my Malabrigo cardi. Which I've ignored since all this finishing old project stuff started. It misses me.

My debit card fell down and swiped itself

Foolish me. I avoid malls for a reason.

I had to quickly run into one tonight to pick some stuff up from a friend who is employed there. And, I had ten minutes to kill before the bus arrived.

So, I spent that ten minutes trying on sunglasses.

I'm in love. With my smoking hot, summery self.

Here's the carrot

Once I figured out that I was in the mood to tidy, organize and finish some stuff around here, I promised myself there would be no new yarn purchases.

New yarn would be my reward for having an empty WIP basket and a cleaner, tidier home. And, I was feeling very, very strongly about that resolution.

Until last Saturday. I was working at my lys, and some new product caught my eye.

I was mature, I was responsible, and I did not bring it home with me. I did pet it for a while, though.

But I continued thinking about those delicious colours, the lovely sproinginess. I have a pattern in my queue that is just waiting for the perfect heavy lace weight or light sock yarn in a semi-solid. It will be my next project when my WIP basket is empty.

Last night, when I was at the shop again, and with a few glasses of wine under my belt, my resolve faltered.

Not one, not two, not three, but four new skeins fell into my shopping bag and came home with me:

I am a weak, weak person. I wonder where that stick is, now.

Umn, what do I do now?

I'm at the point, during this course of Finishitis, that I've finished all the easy stuff.

It's now time to turn to the hard stuff. Like a sweater I designed myself (like there's not a million top-down raglan pull-overs out there) and I stalled at the arms:

I want the multi-coloured part of the arms to stop at the exact same place where it stops in the body of the sweater. In a horizontal line. I tried some short-rows, and all I got was poofy sleeves. I am a woman with broad shoulders. I do not need poofy sleeves.

One of my knit night peeps suggested darts towards the underarm, front and back. That's intriguing.

Another said to just knit and see what happened. I liked that idea, because it was the simplest of all the stuff I've been considering.

All I know is, I've got beautiful yarn, a sweater that looks great, and no idea how to finish it. Just in time for spring.

If I am sick...

I don't ever want to get better.

This case of Finishitis continues. It feels really damn good to get some of that stuff out of the WIP basket (though somehow, the basket isn't getting any emptier).

Tonight's project was to finish socks that I started in January, 2008. Yup, I blogged about them here. J just turned 33. Oops.

I stalled on these because I had forgotten to note how many stitches I used for the heel flap, and was concerned about running out of yarn.

Finally, last Tuesday, running out the door for knit night, I grabbed them, thinking that it wouldn't really matter if the heel flap was done over 32 or 34 stitches, and if there had to be a contrasting toe, well, I could always give them to Dad. He wouldn't care.

Turns out, my heel flaps match exactly, and I have about 4 meters of yarn left. One is a tiny bit smaller than the other, but no one's feet match anyway.




I'm running out of old projects. What a strange feeling.

Procrastination is a wonderful thing

I was going to do my taxes tonight, because the last receipts came in today's mail.



And then, I looked at my shit-magnet of a desk, and realized that much work had to be done in order to be ready for tomorrow's visit from the cleaners.



So, somehow, in my wisdom, I pulled out every pattern I've ever printed or photocopied (legally!) and am now matching finished projects to ball bands, and separating things into several piles:

• Completed
• Queued (must make!)
• Favourited (very appealing)
• Instructional
• I must have been drunk
  

I am hole-punching all this stuff, and putting it in a binder (yay me for not ever throwing out school supplies. I've got enough binders and subject dividers to last me a lifetime).





The bonus is there's now enough room on the magazine shelf for, you know, actual magazines.





And now Scout is washing his bum while he's sitting on the pile. Nice.

Sometimes, I get so annoyed with myself

So, I have this reputation of being super-organized, and having everything in its place all the time.

Not true. Maybe that was true a few years ago, but not anymore. Underneath the lids of the carefully arranged baskets and spreadsheets that I constantly talk about, chaos reigns supreme.

I've been trying to update my Ravelry notebook with all the projects I've completed over the past year (yes, a year), and it's not fun, scrolling through the photo files, trying to figure out what I finished and when, how many stitches I cast on and what mods I made to the pattern.

Trying to find the ball band is its own world of heartache, because all the ball-bands are tossed into a basket, along with patterns, swatches and miscellaneous sticky notes. The task of matching up things that belong together is nearly impossible.

Also, why I feel the need to keep every single ball band that I've ever come across, I'll never know. Especially now that we have Ravelry to keep track of the details.

Of course, it doesn't help that my blogging has been less-than frequent over the past eight or so months.

I'm over-whelmed. I don't know where to start.

I know better. I really do. If I did this at work, I would fire myself.

Someone call 911

because I am on fire!

I don't know what's gotten into me these days, but if I ever figure it out, I'm gonna bottle and sell it. I'm finishing projects I started in 2004. Yes. 2004.

The road to hell

has Edgar laying in the middle lane.

Since I'm on a finishing kick these days, I dragged out some old projects, thinking I'd watch some downloaded videos and keep on sewing.

Nope. This guy

got in the way. I like to cuddle him as much as possible. The other two can go hang themselves, because they sleep with me.

A command performance

Tonight was one of our semi-annual social events for the office staff of Construction Inc. We were invited to enjoy the company's box seats at a local hockey game. As a supervisor, I had to go.

The invite went out more than two months ago (mostly because I made my displeasure about the short notice last time very well-known). Well, my colleagues are flakers. I don't even like hockey that much, but I was going for my free beer(s) and dinner of grease, served with a side of grease (which was delicious, except for the coconut shrimp. I love shrimp, but despise coconut).

So, it was noticed, in our not-anywhere-near capacity crowd of twelve, that I was extremely uncomfortable when a fight broke out. In fact, I couldn't watch it, and had a very compelling need to get more chips and dip at that exact moment.

I was ribbed a little for that, and that's OK. They all know that I'm just Dippy the Hippie working under-cover for the man.

I really blew it, though, during the second fight. The whole crowd was chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!" I had to shout as well, because it was a critical moment in the game.

I shouted, "Use your words, boys!"

Yeah. Not gonna live that one down, any time soon.

A cautionary tale

I thought I was hot stuff, last night, while I was sewing in that zipper.

Do you see what's wrong? Maybe not.

The zipper pull is on the inside. So, I've torn it all out and started again. The moral of the story: do not attempt something new while drunk and watching an extremely compelling video.

This little episode reminds me of one my favourite quotes:

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning.

Catharine Aird

This motto has served me well.

I'm a learnin' somethin' new!

And look who was hanging out with me while I was learning new things! He even continued hanging out when I went to get my dinner (and was chased to the basement five minutes later. Baby steps).

Oh. Apparently I haven't grown

I went to the dentist today. As is my usual practice, I did a wee bit of shopping (my dentist is in a mall, and I made the second and third DVD purchases of my entire life) and wandered out to the bus stop, just as the horde of people getting off at five were walking to said bus stop.

I glanced at a guy who was clearly looking at me.

It was my ex-husband.

We both looked away, pretended we didn't know each other. A bus stopped. A bus that I could have gotten on.

He got on it.

I waited for the next one.

The fucker owes me money. I wish I had the guts to make nice so that we could get around to talking about that.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the moral high ground is expensive. And more than just in the wallet sense.