It's always something

The election stuff is keeping me pretty busy.

The icing on the cake this week is that we have an unwanted visitor in the basement. A squirrel is down there. It has sprung the live trap 3 times now without being caught. It has one more day before we call in a professional (purely because we have no time to wait for someone to come tomorrow). Beware, Mr. Squirrel--your squirrelly days are numbered. Pack your bags and get out NOW!!

I have 5 repeats done on my fall lace scarf. I would have more done, but the election stuff is sucking up most of my time. Only 7 more days.

Always time to knit

Even though I am really busy with the campaign stuff, there's always room for knitting! I finished my fall gloves:





I also started my fall leaves scarf on Saturday:





I didn't know how this yarn would knit up into lace. The yarn is thick and thin, but so far this is complimenting the lacy leaves pattern. It looks kind of rustic. Hopefully it blocks well, so that the lace pattern is more visible.

I would be remiss in my campaigning duties if I didn't urge everyone reading to GO VOTE NOW!! I voted at our city hall--it's fast and easy and you will avoid the possible long lines on election day. I was out of there in 5 minutes.

My car is fixed--it only costed about $140--not bad. I also don't have to worry about losing my muffler now, which would have been a lot more expensive to replace.

It's time for politics

Paulette and I are now on leave from our jobs until two days after election day to help with local and national campaigns. There are always a lot of events to go to once it gets close to election day. Yesterday we went to a "Vote early" rally at UW Oshkosh where John Kerry was speaking on behalf of Barack Obama.

After the speechifying he led the crowd down to City Hall where folks voted early. (Paulette and I voted on Monday). Gordon Hintz, our 54th Assembly District representative and Jessica King, who is running for the 18th Wisconsin Senate District also spoke (they are both our friends).

We were there with our brothers and sisters of (mostly) AFSCME Local 579.

There is lots of work to do. Ugh. We helped run a literature drop last Saturday at the Dem. headquarters in Oshkosh. It was a long day.

On Sunday my family came to Oshkosh to celebrate my mother's birthday (which is actually the 18th of October). Happy birthday, Mom!!

The fun never stops. Yesterday when I was coming out to my car at the grocery store, I noticed the strap holding my muffler on was hanging off. I pushed it back over to sort of hold my muffler and now it's in the shop getting fixed. I'm currently trapped at home, since Paulette is at a Labor/Management meeting in Fond du Lac. Hence the writing on my blog.

I am up to the fingers on my last fall glove. Yippee. Maybe I'll get to wear them soon. I also need to type out the pattern, since Paulette wants to make the same gloves. I hope I can decipher my handwriting so that I can do that. She has kindly volunteered to be my test knitter. Knit Night is tonight--nothing gets in the way of Knit Night. We will be DVR-ing the last presidential debate, which we will watch later.

Random stuff

I am moving right along with my fall gloves:

The pattern is a mutant hybrid combining of parts of two other glove patterns with the slip stitches on the back of the hand my own addition. It's going better since I decided to take the one apart that I had started on size two needles when it was nearly this far. I'm now using size ones.

This is the suri alpaca lace weight yarn I bought at the alpaca farm on Sunday:

Here are my fall socks, all finished!

Jeffy wanted to say hello!

A visit to the alpaca farm (and leftovers)

First, the leftovers.

Here's a picture of Gail who just finished her first sock from our knitting group last week Wednesday:

Doesn't she look proud?

Paulette and I went to Apple Orchard Alpacas farm on Sunday, that Patti from our knitting group runs with her husband.

Here are pictures:

Isn't the baby cute?

They also have some llamas. Below is J Lo the llama.

All the cool kids are doing it...

Apparently there is something in the air that makes one replace windows in one's home. In today's Yarn Harlot post she is all excited about replacing a window in her home. I can relate. On Thursday last week I helped my brother in law replace the window in my bathroom. It opens--it closes! Woo hoo!

He also fixed the bathroom walls in the shower area so that Paulette and I could replace the tub surround. I put new pretty molding around the window. Here's what it looks like now( click pictures to make bigger):

The window is OPEN!!

Isn't it beautiful?

Unfortunately, now the rest of the bathroom needs help. We are planning on putting wainscoting on the rest of the bathroom walls yet this year and repainting the bathroom. And maybe putting in a new medicine cabinet (we saw a nice one at Lowe's yesterday that wasn't too pricey). The last things I want to do in there is change the light fixture above the medicine cabinet and perhaps put another light in there as well.

I finished my socks, which I need to take a picture of. Been kind of busy with the remodeling. I started my gloves that I am making up the pattern for (well, not totally making it up by myself--I'm combining a couple of patterns and adding some other stuff).

Birthday shopping

Paulette's birthday was yesterday! She chose shopping as her activity du jour. We went to Iris Fine Yarns. I bought yarn that I didn't need, but have been wanting to buy:

The above is Ozark Handspun Opulent. I liked the silver sparkles in it.

This is Rowan Cocoon.

I am going to make both into mittens, with the Ozark Handspun being the cuff of the mitten and the Cocoon as the body.

I also have a picture of Diane with her first sock from last week's Knit Night:

Doesn't she look proud?