In Which I Learn Something About Our Postal SystemMail

So about a week and a half ago I ordered more yarn (like I need more yarn, I know). Then I put off writing a new blog post until the yarn had got here so I could talk about how pretty it was and what I was doing with it.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

Every day I would wait anxiously for the mail to get here and then be very sad when it didn't contain any yarn. A week after the yarn had been shipped I went on the website I had ordered from and finally figured out how to track my yarn. I then found out that my yarn had been in Dallas. Then a couple of days later it somehow ended up in North Carolina. Our postal system at work.

So my yarn finally came in yesterday over a week after it had shipped from Ohio. I had ordered a gorgeous emerald colored bulky yarn for a shawl. Why did I need this yarn? I'm doing a Knit-a-long Read-a-long with a group of knitters who like Jane Austen novels. Right now we are reading Sense and Sensibility and the shawl fits into the category of something romantic and beautiful that Marianne would knit. I am also continuing on my sweater for something that Elinor would knit.

My sweater, Nebulous, is going rather well. I have all of the back done and am about a quarter done with the front. It will be beautiful. I am taking both Nebulous and Marianne(my shawl) with me to D.C. whether or not I will actually find any good knitting time. I finished D.C. last Sunday and have been giving it a trial run all week. It is a very good bag, possibly one of my favorites of the ones I have knit. It will not hold a huge knitting project, but it will hold enough. The frogging and starting over paid off in the end.

In other news, my cousins from Birmingham were here this past week and I taught Alex, the one closest to my age, how to knit. I don't know if she'll keep it up or not but she did seem to enjoy it. And I love to spread knitting wherever I can so I was very happy.

Now I'm off to have lunch with my friends and pack for tomorrow.

In Which I Get More Yarn and Find a Place For It

I had a very productive last couple of days.

It all started on Tuesday when I was looking in my room(which was rather messy) for my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. I hadn't found it on my bookshelf so I went to look in my nightstand. Among other things in my nightstand that hadn't seen the light of day for years I found a book that my mother had bought me many years ago called Organizing From the Inside Out. Since I still didn't have TKAM I picked it up and started reading.

All of the first part seemed rather familliar and I even found some notes I had made tucked into the pages. Tuesday night I finally got through the first part and was ready to get to the part of actually orginizing my bedroom, which at that point I was determined to do.

At that same time I got an email from my mom that the Halfknits (A charity knitting group made up mostly of homeschoolers that I used to be involved in) were having a yarn sale. Apparently someone had contacted them and wanted to donate all of her yarn.

Why would anyone do this? Well it turns out that for some reason this particular lady was going to marry someone who wouldn't let her keep her yarn. Weird, right?

Anyway, the halfknits had all this yarn and they couldn't use it because they only use machine washable yarn for their projects. Thus they were having a yarn sale on Wednesday night. I was of course planning to go.

So, now we're to Wednesday. Despite my plans for Wednesday, first I had to go to work for the last time for a month. I had left work early the previous day so I was really hoping I'd get to stay for a little while so I could make a bit more money. Of course, when I showed up there was nothing to do. Nothing at all. I stood at my station talking to Patty about the new system we were begining to try and then Amy(my boss) came in and I was pretty sure that she was going to tell most of us to leave. We had a meeting about the new system we're implementing (which should be all set in by the time I get back) and then she did tell most of us to leave. At least I got to stay for half an hour and get paid for it.

So I came home and got started on my organizing project. I read through the chapter on one's bedroom first (I always read all the directions before I start), and began. The first step was to sort, so I took everything out of my nightstand, desk, under my bed, and where ever else I found stuff and sorted it into many piles on my bed and the floor next to it. A couple of hours later I was ready for the next step. This step was to get rid of stuff from each pile. To go through them and decide what to keep, what belonged elsewhere, what to give away, and what to toss. Awhile after that my piles looked much tidier. One of my worst piles was my stash. I had long ago planned to be a knitter without stash. So I have no idea how my stash got to be so big. I went through it and got most of my old acrylic I had bought for baby hats and a blanket I was never going to finish and set it aside to give to the Halfknits. At this point I had been working for about 4 hours straight and my mom was coming home so we could go to the yarn sale. A good time for a break.

Now I've heard about these yarn sales where people are getting rid of some or all of their stash for outrageously cheap prices, but I'd never been to one before. I had heard what might happen so I went and got 50 dollars out of the bank so I could spend no more than that. I got there and there were 2 bins and a whole dining room table loaded with yarn. It was awesome. I began to sort through it and start a "maybe I'll buy this pile." after awhile, when I had sorted through most of the yarns I looked into my maybe pile. There were a few skeins of hand dyed ribbon yarn in there that even on sale were $15 a skein so I set those aside and even after that my pile came up to $64 rather than the $50 I had planned to spend. My mom however told me to get the yarn and she would cover the difference. She's awesome.

So I went home with less yarn than I had gone with (I had a lot of acrylic) but I was very happy. After watching a couple of tv shows with my mom, I had to put most of my piles of stuff away somewhere if I wanted to sleep on my bed that night. I had decided that my desk is really the place I do most knitting that I don't do in public so my desk has turned into a Knitting and DVD zone. My chair across the room is where I'll do my homework and studying, and My current books are kept by my bed.

I'm not entirely done, but I feel so much better now that I have most of my room organized. I have to talckle my bookshelf and closet separately and I also want to do my bathroom which I can barely use for all the stuff I don't know where to put right now.

Now if only I had the money to buy the extra containiers I need....

TTFN!

P.S. It's Friday the 13th!!!

"I dare you to move."

In Which I Get Yarn

It's been a big week as far as knitting goes.

After anxiously waiting for yarn on Thursday and Friday, sitting watching the mailbox until the mail came, I settled in to do the same thing on Saturday morning. During the week the mail comes to our house around 10:30 so I wasn't planning on waiting too long. I had just started a really good book and was willing to wait.

10:30 came and went as did 11:30 and 12:30 by around 1:00pm I decided to take a break from my vigil and eat lunch. After lunch the mail still wasn't here.

I had a birthday party to go to that night, and deciding that I should leave the house before I went stir crazy I went to Target to buy a gift and my mom came with me. On our way home we ended up behind a mail truck and I thought it would be rather funny if that particular mail truck was headed to our home and had my yarn on it. We continued following it and sure enough it did stop in front of our mailbox. We sat in the car behind it and I watched to see if there was a large padded envelope with our mail.

There wasn't.

Rather sad, because I knew I would have to wait until Monday at that point I went home and finished up some flowers I was knitting for the party that night. Later, about an hour before I was going to leave, the doorbell rang. I went downstairs wondering who it might be and to my surprise it was the mailman back again with an envelope full of yarn for me! I probably could have hugged him at that point, but he was already going back to his mail truck.

I was even more surprised when I opened the package and saw that it was my sweater yarn which had shipped a day later than my purse yarn, but I was ecstatic. I quickly cast on for a swatch (yes, I was very good and actually swatched for my sweater) and was happy to quickly get gauge. I had decided that I had good gauge at just a couple of inches in, but I wanted to finish the whole swatch and wash and block it so that i could see how it would do.

Of course by this time it was time to go to my party, where I didn't get a single chance to knit. After the party a couple of people and I went to IHOP because we know one of the waiters working the graveyard shift there and I got about another inch done while we were there. I got home around 1am and finished up the swatch, washed, and blocked it so it would be ready by the time I went to church the next morning.

At church I cast on and began the whole sweater. It was so exciting. In the past week I've gotten almost the whole sweater back done which I noticed is much faster than I used to knit.

Of course after a week of being very single minded about my knitting I've become a bit distracted. I am trying to finish up my bag D.C., which I also finally got more yarn for, I want to knit a change purse because I got this handy card holder which is replacing my wallet, and I was commissioned to make another bookweight that I want to have done by Friday when I see the lady who wants to buy it again.

Oh well, all is going great in the world of my knitting and I'm even finding time to clean my room (mostly knitting induced mess, I didn't know I had this much yarn!)

Check later to see how the sweater(Nebulous) and D.C. are going - I promise pictures next time!

"Tell the folks at home what you're doing, Roger."