Phew!

Well I'm all organized... all that's left is to pack it all in the car (where is the boy when you need him to do some heavy lifting?) But it's dark out now, and there are absolutely no lights where my car is, nor does my car have an interior light in the hatch... so packing will commence early tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I'm dosing up on Advil (killer headache) and sharing with you all the lovely presents I got today.

First... a present to myself.
Some lovely Australian opal beads finally arrived in the mail today. There is a great seller on Ebay who has beautiful gemstone beads - but the opals are particularly hard to get. It's not unusual for the auction to skyrocket waaaay out of my price range. But I managed to get these at quite a reasonable price a few weeks ago. They are quite small but the fire in them is AMAZING. I'm going to make myself a pair of chandelier type earrings with them, I think.

Second... a present from Mom...

This one is a real present too!A skein of Skinny Bugga from the Sanguine Gryphon. For the uninitiated, the Sanguine Gryphon along with others like Wollmeise and the Plucky Knitter are like rock stars are of the hand dying community. Their stuff sells out in minutes, and sometimes its ridiculously hard to get a hold of. I tried once, failed and said "screw that!" There is a lot of other yarn I can spend my money with very little effort.

Mom however, has infinite more patience, and finally scored four skeins... one of which she gave to me! And while I won't lurk on the internet waiting for an update, I will say this is GORGEOUS yarn (merino/cashmere blend) and her dying is beautiful. I do understand why people want it.

I was planning on taking both the fan shawl and my sock to the show tomorrow to work on , but I am sorely tempted to wind this up tonight, and cast on for a new sock tomorrow. I'll keep you posted on my progress to resist that urge.

And finally... another present I bought myself

For most people, impulse items are things like gum, a chocolate bar, or a bag of chips... for me..... it's a dragon stuffie. I was in Hallmark buying a birthday card, and this awesome guy was near the cash register... the picture doesn't do him justice, but I didn't have time to get a better one because my battery was dying. I have a small collection of dragon stuffies and as soon as I saw him I knew he had to come home with me.

And now there is a strange smell coming from my kitchen that I must go investigate. I think Dave put something in the recycling that should have gone in the garbage...

So, if you're around Hamilton tomorrow, stop by Gage Park for the Pagan Harvest Festival 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. Hope to see you there!

Never enough time

I use to roll my eyes at my mother when she'd say "There are enough hours in the day"... and it's amazing how quickly that changes as you grow older.

I could use at least another 8 hours to each day and it probably wouldn't be enough.

Here it is, less than 48 hours before the show, and I've barely done anything toward getting organized and packed.

Oh I have lots of inventory, I've been slowly building it up over the summer, but it's all over the place, nothing is priced, I have no business cards, brochures, signs....

Today the intention was to leave work early (around 2 or 3) head up to mom's pick up the yarn, and come here and get organized.

Well, I worked until 5, got tom mom's about 6, and she asked me to stay for dinner. Now if there is one thing I miss about living at home, it's Mom's cooking. Oh, living rent free and having disposable income were great, but I wouldn't move back home just for that.... but Mom's cooking... yeah that might tempt me.

And tonight, it wasn't even really her cooking... she bought a roasted chicken from the grocery store and threw together a salad... but even store bought chicken tastes better when she buys it.

So anyway, by the time I played with Ladydog (I'm not allowed to sit at Mom's until I throw the ball at least 100 times), played with Mom's new Wollmeise (she wouldn't even let me sneak some out in my purse), ate dinner and packed up the yarn it was 8 p.m.

I got home took care of the kids (they hate getting dinner late, no matter if there is still food in the dish) read my email, read my blogs and now it's almost 10.

So no organizing for me. I'm going to have a hot bath, put my feet up and do a few more squares on the crackghan.

I'll just leave work REALLY early tomorrow!

Why I am a strong supporter of natural selection

Normally, I like to keep this blog about knitting, dyeing and other artsy things... but I have to share something I experienced today.

As many of you know, in addition to the Wandering Cat enterprise, I have have two "real" jobs. Well one "real" job and another job whose purpose was to "get me out of debt" but has turned into "keep me in yarn and shoes". In Job #1, I'm a writer. In Job #2 I'm a receptionist for a car dealership.

This interesting little experience happened at the dealership tonight.

The phone rings

I answer, "Good evening (insert dealership name here)"

The woman on the other end says "What?"

I repeat: "Good evening (insert dealership name here)"

She says "What's that?"

I reply "We're a car dealership"

Woman: "Well what did you want?"

Me: "Umm, you called us."

Woman: "No, someone called me earlier and left me a message."

Me: "Okay, well I'm the main receptionist. There are about 25 other people in the building. Who did you want to speak to?"

Woman: "I don't know."

Me: "Was the call for sales or service?"

Woman. "I don't know."

Me: "Did they leave you a name?"

Woman: "I don't know."

Me: "Well what did the message say?"

Woman: "The message?"

Me: "Yes, you said someone left you a message..."

Woman: "Oh. I didn't listen to it. I just called the number back."

Then there was a long pause as I let her figure it out for herself...

Woman: "Well I guess I better listen to the message."

She never called back.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

As the title suggests... I'm a liar. I did not get one single project finished this weekend, as promised earlier... and I can't even blame Dave.

In view of the cooler evenings we've had lately, I opted to finish the fan shawl over the socks. Considering all the time I've had to knit this weekend (Dave and I barely left the house for once!) it should be blocking right now. But it's not. It currently looks like this...
There are only 4 half fans (only 19 rows each) and five rows of garter stitch edging left. Probably less than 3 hours of knitting.

So how come it's not finished? Well there were several idle hours of not knitting... just lazing around watching movies. Normally I knit while watching movies, but as the evenings wore on, I just had no drive to pick up the needles and keep knitting.

And the other reason is....Despite Miss Peno's best efforts to keep me from working on it... I can't keep my hands off the damn sockghan! It's addictive! I think I'm going to start calling it the crackghan.

Both projects are modular, but unlike the fan shawl, I don't seem to get bored with the crackghan. I think it's the fact that each square is a different colour, where the fan shawl is just more and more and more of the same.

So, there are only a few hours left before bed time, I could finish up the last few fans... but I won't... I'm off to get my mitred square sock yarn fix...

Sale! Sale! Sale!

Just a quick note....

Mom updated the store yesterday with the sock yarn we just dyed. And, in honour of all our hard work this summer, we marked down the sock yarn 10 % for Labour Day Weekend.

My favourite colour(Witch's Britches) has already sold:But there are still many other lovely colourways, including....
Twilight

and..Blackwatch

Have a great weekend

I love you Royal Mail

I love Royal Mail so much... I think I want to move to Britain (oh, and for the castles, and history and all that cool stuff too....)

Why do I love Royal Mail so much? It's fast.... look what it brought me in just a week... all the way across the Atlantic!15 beautiful balls of Regia Silk 6-ply in the loveliest shade of dark forest green. Yeah... I know I said I was going to stay off Ebay... but $2.12 a ball... how do you pass that up, people? (Plus I bought it with money made from selling some of my jewellry so it doesn't really count). I was thinking I'd make a cardigan out of it... but for now, I'm just going to go fondle it for a while.

ELEVEN!!!!

I haven't had a whole lot of knitting motivation this week... as mentioned before, I'm so close to finishing two projects, but I have no desire to pick either of them up.

But this weekend is a long weekend, and Dave and I have no plans, so I've decided to make it a UFO long weekend and commit to finish at least one of them.

But I can't decide which... the socks, or the fan shawl. So tonight, I worked on the sockghan while trying to decide. (yes I am entirely aware that I probably could have completed one of them by working on it tonight instead of the sockghan, thus leaving the weekend to finish the other, then have BOTH projects done... but what's the fun in that?)

I still haven't decided which project to finish, but I did get another row done on the sockghan...

.... and look it's a whopping 11 inches long! (that's 74 squares).... only 55 inches (370 squares) more to go.

Actually, I am loving this project. Unlike many other projects I've worked on it doesn't bother me that I'm miles from being finished. I think the variety of yarn is keeping me from getting bored. Each square is almost like casting on for a new project... and I have so many great yarns to choose from.

But, as I said... I'll be putting this away for the weekend, and by Tuesday, you should see a finished project on this screen!

Oh, and before I forget... Mom and I got into the dye again the other day. It's drying now, but there should be some new colours up in the store again soon.

... and one last thing.... on Saturday, September 12th, I will be vending at the Hamilton Pagan Harvest Festival. This year, I'll be taking the yarn, as well my jewellry.... so if there is something on the site you want... you might want to get it soon, as it might not be coming back from the show.