Year of Change.

2009 was a year of Change.

At first I didn't think it really was. After all, 2009 was feeling a lot like 2008.
I still had to get up every morning and go to a job that I hated.
I was still too tired at the end of the day to do what I wanted to do.
But then change creeped in.
Layoffs became more and more. The ground felt very shaky.
I in effect, started a new job. True I stayed at the same company. True, I still answered the phones, and did tech support for people who should never have a computer. True, I was still underpaid. But I still had a job. For which I was thankful.
In 2009 I gathered around me some people whom I truly count as best friends. Sure, I can't go over to their houses for tea at any time that I want. But they are there for me when I need it. We have our virtual Stitch and Bitches (Crystal, I can't believe how adept we both are at typing and knitting at the same time lol). I get random and high-larious messages of key singing on my phone (Yeah Marissa, I'm looking at you.). I have friends that I'm already making plans with, to wreck havoc upon London (Yeah Kels and Jo... London isn't going to know what hit them when we come around!).
I started a business (as it is), and have loyal customers, who have become friends.

I reconnected with family, even if thanks to facebook.
My sister cousin came to town and I actually got to spend time with her.
I've seen my grandfather more this year than any year in the recent past.

My wonderful Hunny2Be came to town, and though the universe decided to be mean to us... We managed to have a wonderful time even still.

I lost my job, which was the best thing that happened to me.
I've been able to pick back up my writing, which I had unfortunately had to put down due to that hellish job.

As of last night, I roughly outlined the last part of the novella. I'm almost done I think. No, it's not the original word count I was looking for, but that word count was only for a contest that I didn't get to enter into.

I don't have any New Years Resolutions.
I have goals that I've been thinking about setting for myself, that just happen to fall at this time.
One goal, to finally start working out more and more.
One goal, finish my novella.
One goal, write every day.
One goal, start learning another language.
One goal, knit and finish my Doomsday Cardigan in time for the wedding.
One goal, get more prototypes dyed up for my business.
One goal, start organizing my stuff for the move.

See these are not resolutions. These were things I've already been planning.

For the majority of 2009, my year sucked.
Then it started to get better.

My finances suck. My car broke down, and I got a speeding ticket that will cost me an arm and a leg all in the same week.

I'm determined this next year will be a better year.
It will also be a year of change. A big move. A wedding. A Marriage. I'll be going to school, even if it's just free classes till we can afford proper school. I'll be pushing to get my work published. I'll be getting my official business licenses and be all official with the govt. I'll be doing everything I can to help get Hunny2Be into the political position he wants.
It'll be a scary year for certain. But a year I look forward to.

I hope that everyone is having a good and safe start to the new year.

2010 Allons-y!

'Twas the night before Christmas, my way.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and I'm spending it in quite the mundane way.
Mum is in Denver, having driven her there just yesterday.

Snuggled on the couch in blankets and socks
Trying to avoid the numbness in my 'tocks.

Words glaring at me from inside it's file,
of angels and demons and a foggy British isle.

On the telly it's whispering Ghosts and Jennifer Love Hewitt,
Ironically, as I write this, just started the episode "Holiday Spirit".

Knitting sitting unknit,
A shawl almost done, simply just waiting for me to finish it.

The shower is being avoided, due to the indoor crisp winter air,
Frankly I don't want to get sick with wet frozen hair!

Homemade GingerRoo Cheesecake and Oatmeal Chocolate Chips are drawing me in,
Which is evil and wicked and an unavoidably delicious sin.

This little ditty has gone gotten rather long
Avoiding the real writing I should be working on.

So once this episode is over, avoidance is gone.
The shower, the dishes, and back to writing shall be done.

It'll be a quiet couple of nights, just Pan and little old me
So to everyone a good season, and I end with Allons-y!

Productive day

Yesterday I made a decision.

I was sick and tired of not having a writing space.

Laptop on the couch was just not cutting it. Specially since I cannot write with my mother doing her thing around the house. This is not her fault. I do not blame her at all. I certainly am not the only writer who needs a quiet space where they can shut the door and be away from the world and enter into their own world.

I had avoided having a computer in my room... well for the entire time that I have lived in this house. Over three years now?

Why? Well... possibly having had my computer less than 2 feet away from me at all times in my previous bedroom, and by that statement I don't mean I'd move it around, I mean that the room was just that small and crowded. Also the fact that I suffer from insomnia and having a computer in your bedroom is one of the factors that doesn't help. Also I know I'd end up getting up when my insomnia hit and turn on the computer. All of that are just some of the factors.

Now that it doesn't matter if I have insomnia or not (which, I haven't had a bout in a long while), I've decided the only way I'd get some writing space and not have to have it on my bed would be to setup a desk in my bedroom and put my mom's antiquated and slow laptop (which isn't a laptop even more so than the one I am typing on now. Mum's laptop has a display that is dying. So it really needs to be hooked up to a monitor (which I have all the tools for) at all times, or it's not usable. Don't even get me started on the battery or lack there of. Which this laptop also shares that little joy.).
So I spent the mid morning/day creating a tornado in the upstairs.

Had to move a small chest of drawers, small bookshelf (as opposed to the large bookshelf that also needs to be moved but I've decided to do it at another time), even smaller bookshelf, and a piano. Not to mention all the crap on the floor in front of all those objects.

Then, had to move a futon mattress out of my way as Mum and I haven't put it in it's proper place. Lets just say it was in my way most of the time. This went INTO my bedroom basically where all the crap I just moved came from. You will see the logic soon.

Then, had to uncover Mum's sewing desk. (We had discussed this prior to me doing it)
You'd think this would be easy. Not at all. Did I mention there was a shelf on top of the desk? And lots of sharp pointy things.

Now one thing I forgot to mention, was that the upstairs loft was in complete disarray to begin with, so really I had no place to put all this stuff.

Had to next take apart the sewing desk so that I could get it into my room. Thought that moving the desk into my room would be simple. Not so much, as of course it was too big to slide in the door.

I get the desk in the room. I slide the futon mattress out of the room back just in the walk way.

I put the desk back together.
I get the desk into place.

I have to now uncover my computer desk of all the sewing crap I had just buried it with.

Ah.. the dust. Considering I hadn't worked on that computer upstairs in over 6 months (power source failed.... ) there was many inches of dust on the desk and everything on it.

I spent at least an hour cleaning everything.

Mind you, the can of compressed air had run out, as Hunny2Be had used it all up (or nearly all... I had one squirt of air left) when he took the hard drives out of the two desktops from the desk (remember the failed power source? he ripped out the hard drives so that he can recover all the info off them back home since I don't have the tools for that.)

So I get most of the computer accessories cleaned and hooked up. I uncover a path to the stairs so that I can go find Mum's laptop, and the docking station for it. Oh my god. Since the docking station had been sitting in one spot basically since Mum moved in (under a chair out of the way) I kid you not, there was a coating of dust so thick on it I had to take it outside and blow the top layer of dust off before I could even think about taking a rag to it to get the rest off.

Got everything plugged into it. Started having issues. Mouse didn't want to work, neither did the keyboard.

Even outside the docking station the mouse didn't want to work, but the keyboard did. So it took me a long while to find another random mouse in the house. I swear it wasn't even the one I was looking for. How many mice do we have in this house!?!
Either way, it worked.

At this point in the saga, the laptop is hooked up to the monitor, the keyboard, and the mouse. But not any of this is running through the docking station. I feel rather cruddy and gross so I call it quits for the day. Hop in the shower.

The upstairs is still an absolute mess, but right now I don't care.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can get the laptop connected to the internet. (I'm not kidding when I say this laptop is old. Do you remember those giant red NIC ports that you had to plug into the computer? Yeah... it's got one of those. Not to mention if my router is locked for direct connection as well then I'm screwed, as the key for my router is in the hard drive that Hunny2Be had to take with him to recover. I can't remember what setting I had my router on. We shall see.) If I can't get it connected to the internet, it's no big deal as the plan is just to use it for writing. But it'll be a bit of a pain as occasionally I do have to go research something. I'll survive though.

Tomorrow Mum and I might tackle the sewing area. Though if it doesn't happen before she leaves for the next bout of House sitting, it's no biggie. I've got a path from the door to the stairs, and I have access to Pan's food. Also we don't have any houseguests coming to town, so honestly the only person who would be hassled by it would be me, and right now I really don't care. I'll just be happy to have a writing space.

Mum has cheesecake baking in the oven. Tonight is just gonna be leftovers. Remington Steele season 2 is on the telly.

I am frankly exhausted. So I'm done for the day.

Still had my headcold all day, and the dust hasn't helped, so unfortunately didn't get to go to Jes's party today. I wouldn't be very sociable right now though with how tired I am...

More knitting updates soon!

Gretel Lost in the Poppies

Been meaning to post this for a long while now but it got lost in the limbo of drafts for the last month.
And Drat. I just wrote an entire post and it got eaten by the wireless connection. Sigh. Frakking internet. Lets try this again. It won't be nearly as witty or insightful as the previous one.

Project: Gretel Lost in the Poppies
Yarn: Fresh From the Cauldron "Field of Poppies"
Pattern: Gretel by Ysolda Teaque

I absolutely love Ysolda. She is a 20something student who manages to make a living off of her designs.
Ysolda will make it into the Hall of Great Knitters.
Elizabeth Zimmerman, the GrandMamma of Modern Knitting is in that Hall.
Stephanie Pearl McPhee will make it. Not necessarily because of her designs (I'll be honest, I'm not familiar with her designs) but because of her voice in the knitting community. Stephanie leads Knitters Without Borders (which donates to Doctors Without Borders), she has been on a late night talk show because of the fact that she started the term "Kinnearing" (or Kinneared) (Greg Kinnear and the host called her to talk about it) - which if you are not familiar is the act of inconspicuously taking the photo of someone. Generally a celebrity. Which I myself Kinneared Howie Mandel in Vegas during my last trip. I didn't even know about the term at the time.

I digress.


I have learned a lot thanks to Ysolda.

I learned to "Trust Ysolda." If she says do something.. Don't over think it. Just do it. (Actually I learned this on another project from Ysolda.. but it worked on this one as well)

I learned how to do a Tubular Provisional Caston. (Come on.. you know you wanna say it like a surfer. Tubular dude!)

I learned that no matter how many times I do the Tubular Provisional Caston (which I have done a lot now), I still need to watch a video of it each time as I don't trust myself enough to do it from memory yet.

I learned how to do Twisted Cables. Which are not easy. But also not entirely hard. But they can be.

I learned not to do Twisted Cables when I'm tired.

Oh... and did I mention that this was my first project with cables??? Yeah. It was. Awesome huh?

I learned that I will be making many of these hats as I love them.

I guess thats all for now. Hopefully this will post and not get eaten. (I'm also going to be smart and copy it into a word doc first) (And thank goodness I did that.. as yes.. it got eaten since it still thought firefox was offline.)

Antiquated Regality

I'm a horrible blogger. I realize this. I used to be so good about it. But I've gotten lazy about it.

I've been really meaning to post a blog the past couple of days, but then things just come up.

Well, now I've got a major headcold.

So this shall be quick.

Guy's Christmas Pressie (which he now has, which is why I can talk about it)

The scarf is called "Antiquated Regality"
The reason for that, is the yarn is called "The Antiquated"
And the stitch pattern I used was "Snapes Stockings" and well, to me the combo just seemed a bit regal.

I wanted to knit Guy a masculine scarf that could be worn with both jeans, or when doing more special outings such as political functions.

So there you have it.

More updates hopefully soon, as well as the discussion about Guy's trip out here.