Invasion of the knitters

Got to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot) last night at Borders bookstore in Madison.

It was an impressive bunch of knitters:

The Harlot is just as entertaining as she is on her blog. What a wonderful woman! We got signed copies of her book:

And photo ops:

I finished one of the fingers on the right glove while waiting for her to speak. She's holding my glove and I'm holding her sock.

While the day started and ended well, the middle part was not so good. I took vacation in the afternoon so that I could get down to Madison earlier. Little did I know I would be spending all afternoon at the vet's office with Churchill. He has a terrible bladder infection and he could not pee at all. The poor baby was in so much pain. When the vet had him under he said he had to ventilate him because he was breathing poorly. He's home now--at least the peeing problem is better. Of course now he has special food and medicine in addition to his regular insulin.

Oh and gas prices went up again too.

"This is a good place for a stick up" is apparently the oil companies new mantra:

I say it sure is a good place for a stick up because these prices stink.

I'm Madison bound

I'm going to Madison this afternoon (well, she speaks this evening, but I need to get there and find a seat) to see the one and only Yarn Harlot at Borders Bookstore. I'm meeting Paulette, who is at a bargaining unit conference for our union there. She rode down with friends this morning. Yippee! I don't have a sock that I'm knitting (the Yarn Harlot likes socks--on DPNs) on but my gloves are still in progress.

On Saturday I was in Neenah for a convention and to try and make my day a little better, I stopped at Yarns By Design on Main Street on my way home. I bought the pattern for "Waves in the Square" shawl (you can look at it here). I also bought 2 skeins of Handmaiden Mini Maiden 5o% silk, 50% wool yarn to make it with in turquoise:



Still didn't get the Easter stuff down at home. There's always something else I end up doing. Maybe I'll have time on Sunday.

Paulette made it home from New Hampshire okay, where she was organizing for our union, AFSCME. She didn't even have time to get to a yarn store, which she is sad about. Apparently there are a lot of yarn stores in New Hampshire.

One down

The left glove is finished:



I began the right one last night and have 1 repeat done.

Jeffy could care less. He wants me to stop playing with the sticks and string and take him outside!

It's getting there!

My left glove is almost done:






Woo hoo!

It's still spring-y outside. Currently my computer tells me it is 62 degrees out there. I see by the radar that we are about to get a thunderstorm--right when I go out to my car to go home for lunch.

Huh, it's Monday already?

Man, does the weekend ever go by fast sometimes.

I found circular needles at Iris. Phyllis made me sit down and try Addi lace needles. I am normally a bamboo needle person (Paulette calls me a needle snob because I usually hate metal needles), but those worked so well with the yarn I am going to make my shawl out of, that I bought them. I like the pointy tips and they are not really slippery like I thought they might be.

I also bought a stitch dictionary. Now I can design my own stuff. Oh joy.

Paulette and I got the yard all raked on Sunday. I started digging the garden beds along the really long fence line (our lot is 125 feet deep and the fence runs for most of it. You do the math. This means removing the grass that is there first. Paulette wanted to go rent a small rototiller, but I don't want to do that so close to the fence line. I don't want to risk disturbing the cement the posts are set into. Not after all that work.

Jeffy enjoyed his time outside as he usually does.

My gloves are going well. I have 3 1/2 fingers done so far. Soon I'll have a left glove.

No clever title today-sorry

It's almost 4:30 and I get to leave work soon!! I'm tired of cataloging books now.

Progress has been made on the lace glove--after frogging it to nothing once. Notice the picture is taken against one of my newly painted aqua bedroom walls.

Here are some of the daffodils from my front garden:

The real question in my mind is when are the pink daffodils going to open?

Here are some views from the filming of "Public Enemies" They kept us pretty far away, so there wasn't really much to see--but here it is anyhow.

I took the last picture because I thought it was cool to see a Universal Studios truck in Oshkosh. The public library is in the background.

Weekend plans include going to Iris for size 3 circular needles in 16" and 24" long for my lace shawl and perhaps taking the Easter stuff down. Oh, and cleaning. Bleh.

Happy Library Week!

Today is a good day because it is National Library Workers Day. Have a bookmark!




Enjoy and use your library!

Aqua

I love aqua. My two newest aqua things are:

1. My freshly painted bedroom(notice Churchill on the bed by his blankie). This set me back about $79, with all the assorted accessries, such as dropcloths, etc. I guess it was worth it, because the walls just glow now. I want to paint the living room/dining room with a pretty sage green now. When I put the new heat register in, I saw hardwood flooring at the bottom of the pile. Some day I'll refinish the floor in there.



2. The lace gloves I am making (for those of you interested, they are the Vanalinn Gloves from the book, A gathering of lace").



Not to be outdone, Jeffy demanded I take his photo also.



The cats had a close encounter of the puppy kind yesterday. Paulette's niece and her husband came over to go downtown to see the movie making stuff and brought Ernie, their golden retriever puppy with them. Ernie is the cutest fluffball. Lots of people wanted to pet him. Paulette says he is the reason we got to talk to the construction supervisor of the movie, because him and his wife wanted to steal Ernie and take him back to California with them. Anyhow, when Alison and Tim were in the house with Ernie, Jeffy ran and hid behind the sofa, in typical Jeffy style. Churchill, on the other hand, did not. In fact, I had to stand between them because I think Churchill was going to show that dog whose house this is! Apparently we are not getting a dog any time soon.

Welcome to "Oshywood"

Oh, man, the city is just crawling with people today waiting for filming of the movie, "Public Enemies" to begin filming tomorrow downtown. It was a crazy scene of looky-loos today on Main Street and Washington Street. We talked to the construction supervisor of the movie, Michael Diersing. We got the filming schedule out of him when the best times and places to see something would be. All thanks to mentioning our IATSE Local 470 friend, Steve Dedow's name to him. The Green Bay news stations said they don't know the filming schedule. We're not sharing. Heh.

We also talked to a woman who had driven 5 hours to come and watch the filming. Crazyness!

No Johnny Depp sightings so far.

These are fake rubber bricks they are putting down on the street. This is Main Street. It never looked so good!

Main Street.

Fake billboards covering the modernistic fountain in our old looking downtown. It's an improvement-can we keep it?

More Main Street. The pawn shop (store next to "Allan Yee Cleaners") is Satori Imports, the local head shop (cleverly hidden as an import store). You wouldn't know it now!

My most favorite sign of all:

This sign is in a window down one of the side streets where there is supposed to be a soup kitchen. No wonder people were poor during the depression. Damn, I'm glad wages have risen since then.

Didn't get much done knitting yesterday because of the bedroom painting, which is done.

My scarf is done-y bunny and so is the week

Sorry about the semi-monosyllabic-ness lately. I have been so freakin' busy after work that I'm exhausted.

Last night I was up until 1am. I made a display for church all evening until about 11:30PM. (I have to make 1 more that's identical this evening-we have two worship sites) Then I decided I needed to do laundry yet. To keep awake until the laundry was ready to rotate, I got ready for bed and then I washed and blocked my scarf. Here it is:

Isn't it pretty?

I started the aqua lace gloves I am making last night as well.

I am going to paint my bedroom tomorrow since the weather forecast is for snow. Here's the paint sample:

The color I'm using is in the middle. I am going to Menard's this evening to buy Dutch Boy semi- gloss paint, spackle, drop cloths, blue painter's tape and a new heat register. I'm trying to replace all the heat registers in the house with new ones when we do something in the room. The ones we have now are old and icky.

Mayber Churchill will climb the ladder when I'm painting. Don't laugh--he's done it before!

Yippee, next week all I have in the evening besides knit night is our union meeting on Thurday right after work. It's about time. I feel like I am never home in the evenings any more. The cats are all upset because mommy isn't home much.

It's Wednesday

It's kind of a blah day. It was cloudy out the last time I looked. It's 37 degrees. All I want to do is be in my jammies at home. Knitting.

My scarf is coming along--only 2 more pattern repeats and then the garter stitch edging and I'm done. It's as long as I want it.

Last night I wound yarn for lace gloves.

Don't have a picture of it right now. Oh yeah, speaking of pictures, I did promise to put those Oshkosh movie pics up, didn't I?

I'm feeling a little better...

For the record--I'm still pretty upset about my friends skunking me, but now I have a plan (My AFSCME friends are upset too--do ya hear that, G?). Apparently now it will be one of who knows how to campaign better. I thought about doing what they're doing with some other folks, but I'm going it alone because I still want to have friends at the end of this-perhaps unlike some people. We'll see what happens.

Anyhow, Oshkosh is all abuzz with the filming of Public Enemies here soon. Main Street is being all dolled up in 1930s style. The first Saturday of the month art walk was insanely crowded with people down there to see what it's like to be in a Hollywood set. It's pretty cool, actually.

I'll post pictures of it soon.

My Sea Silk scarf is about 12 inches from the end. It's taking so long because I keep having my actual life cut into my knitting time. :(

Wow, it's been a week...

I can't believe it's been a week since I've posted. A lot has happened since then.

I only had one meeting last week for church (which made lots of extra work for me in my spare time-sigh). I need to learn to not volunteer to do stuff for church sometimes. I suppose it could be worse.

The rest of the week, from Thursday on, well, has not been so good. I had a terrible fight with my friend and I very upset about it. Politics is a rough and tumble sport, but it's worse when you have to run for convention delegate against friends. I hope we're still friends at the end. My union friends are helping me campaign against him and his coalition, all of whom are my friends. I'm sorta sad about the whole thing, but will feel much better when I kick them all in the can. I hope my plan works.

Even my knitting has not made me feel much better. And to think I helped him get into office in the state assembly. I don't even know if I want to help him any more right now when he has to run again later this year.