Finally Escaping!

Before I get into my news: "Isn't this the cutest damn baby in the whole wide world"? I know I'm bias because she's my kid but damn she's so cute. :~)

WooHoo! Shawn has graced me with some good news today. We are finally getting outta here. We've been stuck on this base since April 1999. We're not sure when or where we are moving as of right now. The only thing I can say for sure is that by this time next year I should not be in Idaho.

We're shooting for either Albuquerque, NM or Great Falls, MT. They also have an opening at Vandenburg which is in Lompoc, CA but I'm not willing to move back to Cali. It would put a strain on our already strained finances and I would be forced to cut my yarn stash money....Aaaah nope not going there, must fuel the addiction.
Sorry Mama, I know you'd like us to go there but we are going to shoot for New Mexico. 12 hours is better then 18. :~)

Knitting Updates

This is what I managed to knit today, between this afternoon and the knitting time that I squeezed in tonight while watching Lost. At least the season is finally picking up. :~)
I've got about 2 more inches to go on the sock before starting the toe...Yippy! The unfinished blue hunk of yarn is another swatch for The Walker Treasury Project.

Also go check out the 2nd Quarter Loopy Ewe Challenge. It's definitely worth it.....baby hats for orphans in China and fingerless mitts for girls in Russia. This quarter is charity knitting from your stash. Considering the fact that I don't have much of stash this should prove to be interesting. Sheri did say that if you didn't have the yarn to knit up the challenge to let her know in a note on your next order and she would donate some yarn for the challenge.....How cool is that? Sheri is awesome!

On another Loopy note anyone who made it into the Loopy Ewe sock club this time around be hearing more about the Loopy Ewe Sock club here in a few weeks. I so can't wait. It's my one and only, not to mention first sock club. Although I plan to rectify that by getting into the Socks that Rock sock club next year. I'm living vicariously through everyone's Rockin' Sock Club this year. :~) I already warned Shawn that I was signing up. :~) Good hubby that he is nodded his head agreeing with me. He knows when to agree with my madness....lol. Actually we agreed that it would be my big Christmas present this year.

I've tried talking nicely about Fedex today so here's hoping that my box from Knit Picks gets here soon. :~) Do you here me Mr. Fedex man, Please give my mailman my box so that he can deliver it to me.....please, please, please! OK, now that I've gotten my patheticness out of the way. Is patheticness a real word? If not, it is now. :~) I need to get on the phone with Webster to make sure it makes it into the next printing of the dictionary.

I think I pretty much covered everything so I'm off to bed to catch some sleep. Here's hoping that Bree doesn't decide she's hungry at 5 am again. She's been doing that off and on for the past week or so. I never know if she's going to get up or not. At least she goes back to bed after she's eaten.....could be worse, she could decide it's playtime.

Stupid Flickr

Back in January, when I signed up for Socktopia I created a Flickr account which you need if you want to post your sock photos for Socktopia. According to Flickr it would take about 2 weeks for my account to be reviewed. If your account hasn't been reviewed you can't link your photos to your blog.....they won't show up because they aren't made public until the account has been reviewed.
Well of course I also need my Flickr account so that I can post the photos of the swatches that I make for the Walker Treasury Project. You pull your pic from the group using a link to the photo uploaded on the Flickr site.
Can you see where I'm going with this. Yup that's right 3 months later and my Flickr account still hasn't been reviewed.....WTF! This means that I have to wait for my account to be reviewed before I can post to the Walker Treasury Project site with my swatch. Well I can post to the site but no one is going to see the photo in the blog post. I've sent Flickr an email asking why my account hasn't been review and if they would kindly review my account because I really need to have full function of the damn thing. I just got an email in from Flickr stating that they would try to get back to me within the next 3 days.
Well I'm off to find dinner and calm myself with some knitting. The pic above is of course the swatch I can't post about till Flickr gets their heads out of their butts and gets my account fixed. For anyone interested in the Double Basket pattern (pg 18) from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns, Book 1.

My Knitting Tonight

Here's what I accomplished today. I finished up the cuff and started the heel earlier today when I was riding my exercise bike. I managed 7 miles this afternoon. I finished the heel and started the gusset. I've only completed a few rounds of the gusset.

Aaaaaaaah! I want my box from Knit Picks. Darn them Fedex people. They are probably reading my blog and saying "Haha we'll hold her box a few more days. Let the impatient wench suffer!". I want my needles so I can get my Monkey socks done and in the box for my swap pal. The socks will take me a whole of maybe 10 to finish which will be right at payday so I can get a few other goodies and shoot the box off into the mail. She needs to receive the box by 30 Apr.....thankful my swap pal lives here in the states so a Priority mail box and she'll have it in 2-3 days.

I've been running across a lot of people who really like the Panda Cotton from Crystal Palace. You all know how much I had problems with it. I'm actually thinking about trying it again. After reading about how Wendy, Sheri, and Momma Monkey like it I'm beginning to believe that maybe I need to give it one more try. Maybe I just got a crappy skein of yarn, it happens, right? So I think I may buy another skein the next time I get some yarn from The Loopy Ewe and give it a try again. What's it gonna hurt?

I have another thing to celebrate. We took Bree to the doc to have her weighed in, which they've been making us do ever 2 weeks. Bree is not a 13 lbs, 14 oz which is just enough to get her little midget butt back on the stupid chart they use to keep track of her growth. So now we don't have to go back until next month.....woohoo, 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks. :~)

Dyson Give Away

I read about this on Nell's blog and since I'm a joiner I decided to jump into the contest for a chance to win a Dyson. Hopefully this doesn't back fire on me. :~)

Here's the site if you all what to check it out.

Quick Update, Then Bed

Here's what I did tonight. I worked up the first swatch for the Walker Treasury Project. It's the Double Basket pattern from the first book. I've got to block it tomorrow and try to get a good picture in natural light. I think the next swatch will be one of the cable patterns I picked. I've got 8 other patterns that I'm going to knit up.

No sock knitting tonight. I'm going to work on my sock tomorrow while I'm riding the bike. I know I say tomorrow when it's really later today, but I haven't gone to bed yet so I'm still in yesterday. OK did that make sense to you all or was that the ravings of a mad lunatic?
Most of you have wondered who I manage to get anything done. Well here's my secret.....I can function pretty good as long as I get at least 5-6 hours of sleep. If I hop into bed around 2 am I'll get about 6 hours of sleep. :~)
I'm a night owl so I've had to learn how to live without 8 hours or more of sleep top that off with having to deal with a baby waking in the middle of the night to eat.....you get use to it or at least I did. :~)
I'm trying very hard to resist the lure of the Loopy Ewe right now. I've got over $50 in my shopping cart.....lol. Hey what's a girl to do when she gets an email saying her account has been credited $5.....lol. I want some Louet Gems so I can start my Gothic Spire socks. I've heard great things about Louet so I'm wanting some plus I have 3 of Cookies patterns that are saying "Knit Me Woman, Knit Me Now!!!!" and of course all my yarns here are handpaint varigated or stripey which are no good for knitting up those type of patterns. Thus the call of the Loopy Ewe.
I've managed to snag all the Monkey and knitting goodies for my swap partners box, now I just need to get some food and drink goodies next payday and get the darn socks knitted up. I'm waiting on the needles I ordered from Knit Picks......we all know how slow the shipping is but I'm toooooo cheap to pay the extra $10 to expedite the shipping. Can't complain too much when you only pay $3.79 for shipping. What I ordered would have fit into a $8.10 flat rate priority mail box and I would have had the stuff by now. Fedex is saying Friday now instead of Saturday so that's good. My stuffs just sitting in Denver and has been for several days now.....wonder if they'd let me go down there and get it. Of course by the time I got done paying for the gas I might as well have paid the $10 to expedite the shipping.
Gas prices are back up again. We're at about $2.60 - $2.70 here. What are you paying for gas per gallon? I can only imagine what it will be when we go on vacation in June *sigh*! I don't want to peddle a bike 350 + miles to my granny's house.....lol.

I've Got Pirate, Argh!

WooHoo! What a wonderful mailman I have. Lookie what he dropped off on my doorstep this morning.....Yarn Pirate! The two colorways I bought are Rosie (in the middle) and Panama (one on the right). This is the stuff I ordered last week when Sheri updated the shop. The Yarn Pirate sold out really fast. I missed Georgia's etsy shop update the other day. She has a new color out called "Pretty Pirate" that I wanted to get. It's only going to be available in her etsy shop so we won't be seeing this one at the Loopy Ewe. I'd also love this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.....I could probably go on and on. Her colorways are gorgeous. She's going to be dying full time so I'm quite sure that we will all be seeing more Yarn Pirate soon.
I also got a hank of Scarlet Fleece in the colorway Irish Eyes (on the left). I love this yarn. It's super squishy and is going to make some great socks. I also bought a set of the Stitchkeepers....they are the little green caps in the pic. Oh I love them. I'm going to be buying some more next payday. I love how they keep all of your needles together. I've never had stitches fall off of my needles when the socks are stored in my WIP bins and baskets but I have had the needles snag on other things and pull at the stitches. Here's a pic of the sock I worked on last night with the stitchkeepers on them. I've got about an inch or so to go on the sock before I start the heel flap. I'm going to try a different heel flap this time instead of the standard slip stitch heel flap I normally do.

And now I leave you with a picture of my fluffy, lazy kitty, Skitz. We bought her a new basket yesterday so that we could have the other one to put the dogs toys in again. Not that Zeus will leave the toys in there for very long. He's worse then a little toddler when it comes to his toys. If you were to drop by my house at any time there will be at least 3-4 Nylabones throughout the house at any given time. :~) I gave up picking them up because I put them in the basket and in 2 minutes flat he has them out again. We just try to keep them kicked to the side.
Well I'm off to go knit for a bit. I put in the stitch patterns that I want to do for The Walker Treasury Project so I figured I'd go start on of those. :~)