It’s been a busy week, but I don’t have much crafting to talk about. I had three days off in a row this week (almost a vacation!), so I decided to do some catch-up since the ice storm threw us all out of whack.
The first day I was off, I decided to do some re-arranging. So I put my fabric stash at the top of the closet where my sweaters were, put the sweaters in another closet, and put my shoes at the bottom of the closet where I had my fabric stash. Then I put together another DVD storage cabinet to replace a larger shelf unit where we had DVD’s stored in the living room. I put that shelf unit in Hubby’s room to store books that keep appearing from UPS almost everyday!
Before Christmas I bought a new TV cabinet to hold our 42″ flatscreen TV that we’ve had for three years and it’s been sitting on my coffee table all this time. I’ve been looking for just the right cabinet, ever since we got the TV, that wouldn’t cost us a fortune. Finally, I found one at (guess where?) Wal-Mart! It’s really exactly what I wanted! The only problem is, it comes in a box and that means I would have to put it together. Hubby hurt his arm several months ago and isn’t supposed to lift “anything heavier than a coffee cup”. So I went after the cabinet, had the guys at W-M put it in the truck for me, and it stayed there until this week. I opened the box in the truck and brought each piece in the house one at a time. Then I got hubby’s screw drivers and started putting the thing together. To make a loooong story short, something that was supposed to take one person and 1 1/2 hours to put together took one person and a day and a half to put together! I did it though, and with the help of hubby, we got the TV and the DVD players put on it and everything plugged in again and it looks fantastic sitting there! I love it and I did it all by myself!
I helped hubby outside one day cutting up and clearing some of the limb mess that was left over after the ice storm. We didn’t have too much of a mess, except for the pine tree at the back of our lot. The ice came from the north, evidently, and striped all the limbs from top to bottom off the north side of the tree. It came down on his shop and the lean-to of my shop in addition to the yard area in between our shops. With the limbs, pine needles, and ice combined, it was a solid mass of ice. Like a huge ice cube in our back yard! I stood on the mound of ice and using a stick from the pile, started chipping away at the ice mass on top of the lean-to. I worked at it so long, I thought my arms were going to fall off. Hubby was busy sawing up the bigger limbs and making a pile of the smaller limbs and pine needles to throw into the chipper later. What makes all this even worse is it’s all in the shade on the north side of the shop, so even though the temps got into the 40’s, the sun didn’t hit any of it, so there was very little melting going on. What a mess! I was pooped when we came in later. I fixed a simple supper and rested pretty much the rest of the evening.
In between all this, I read the book I was telling you about last week called, “A Good Yarn” by Debbie Macomber. It was very good and she even includes a sock pattern made with circular needles. I’ve have to try that. I haven’t been making socks very long, but the ones I’ve made so far were on dp needles. I really like making socks because it’s a project that can be done in a short time, and you wind up with something pretty and useful!
I’ve also been working on my sweater that I started last week. I dropped a stitch and had to frog it for several inches. I know what you’re thinking–why didn’t I just pick it up. Welllll, this yarn I’m using is a little defective, anyway the skein I’m using right now is, and the fuzzy was missing at several places on the yarn. So it left this very thin area of yarn. I tried to run the fuzzy back on the yarn, (it was bunched up in places), but I wasn’t happy with the way it looked. Finally, when I discovered that I’d dropped a stitch, I tried to pick it up. But it looked so bad, I just shut my eyes and pulled it off the needles and started ripping it out! So now, I’m re-knitting the several inches that I frogged.
I found a pattern from Coats and Clark’s web site for some striped socks made with their Strata yarn that I want to make. Last night at work, I found the yarn, so I’m going to make them. I got the color called Confetti. It’s very bright and colorful!
That’s it for this time. Keep those needles clicking!
