sherriknits

It continues to rain and big brother had some fun with photoshop today.  This happened to make one little imp very angry because he is NOT superman, he is spiderman.

It gave the rest of us a good laugh anyway.

It’s been a totally lazy day.  I have accomplished some knitting on the Lucky Lurker sock but I won’t bore you with a picture of that. 

We’ve been discussing some tentative wedding ideas and doing some searching…and I’ve been reading a little bit.  I have a lot of bookkeeping to do in awhile but I just couldn’t do it earlier today.

The Mariners went out of the season with a win, which was really nice and a little emotional.  Of course the fiance was flipping back and forth between the Mariners and Seahawks so I didn’t see any of the post game show, which is really ok because I was distracted anyway, would have gone upstairs to watch if I wanted.  The bride-to-be was gone co-leading cell group for middle-school girls.  It was just a lazy, pleasant day.

And now back to that sock.

I woke up to beautiful sunshine.  I knew it was supposed to rain today but it was so nice and dry out.  I turned on the news while getting ready for work and all I heard was … storm coming, if you have anything to do outside, get it done early; flood warnings; wind.  Living in the Pacific NW, it is believable.

We haven’t seen much wind yet, but rain we did.

In case that looks like blue sky…

I’m watching one of the last Mariners games…I hope  a certain person doesn’t have on her Mariners socks because we’re ahead!

Today was one of the most fun days at work.  It was busy all day (yea!) and I had 2 calls within minutes of each other from old friends who live out of town and were driving down and wanted to stop in.  Fun!  I also had some other friends stop in.  It was the kind of day I love having a business.

I did get started on my 2nd Lucky Lurker sock but didn’t get too much time to knit today….too much visiting. 

Last night #1 daughter and hubby asked if they could meet us at Johnny Rocket’s in Olympia.  They wanted milk shakes.  It was not the greatest of experiences but we had fun meeting them anyway. 

She and I ran to Best Buy and she got one of the new Nano iPods.  It’s really cute.  If you’ve been reading here for any amount of time, you may remember my horrible experience with my iPod and Circuit City.  Best Buy has an extended warrantee that if you have any problems at all, you bring it in to them and they replace it IN THE STORE ON THE SPOT!  Guess where I will shop from now on.

I am off to do some knitting and watch the rest of the game.

Before I leave, I’ll share the results of a quiz I took today:

You are a Knitter, with the capital K.You are never found without needles and yarn in hand. Your favorite place is the yarn shop and you can never seeme to leave without buying needles or wool or a pattern or those fantastic stich markers. Darn yarn fumes.Your stash of yarn is the kind that spills out of closets and is taking over the house. And it’s still growing. Beware of SABLE (Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy). You may need to bequeath yarn to people in your will.Knitting is a lifestyle for you, not just a hobby. You do it for fun, to make presents, or to cool off. We need more of your kind in the world. Go start a knitting club at your school or local coffeshop.
Take this quiz!

I used to not like the colder weather until I started knitting again.  Funny now how it’s something I start to look forward to.

I bought a publishing program called Ecto and if I end up with duplicate posts here, it’s because I have been having a heck of a time figuring it out.  This one finally made it over here but the other night I sent out a test post and it showed up sometime in the night and Carol asked me what the test was for.   lol….let’s hope all my duplicate posts don’t start showing up somewhere! 

Last night I finished my first Lucky Lurker sock sans heel.  I didn’t have my pattern with me so I couldn’t finish it completely and if I can ever get this post online, I will finish it tonight.  This was a fun knit and I do like the yarn.

I didn’t have my pattern, but I did have my new sock club yarn for the Yarn 4 Socks October sock so I cast on that one.  Lovin’ this yarn, too.  I had to go down a needle size on this one, too.  Since it is an 11-stitch repeat, I had to try to figure out how to decrease it still by more and did find a way to do it.  I am really confused why I need to do so much reducing on most sock patterns.  I am getting 8 stitches to the inch and it is still too loose.  Do I just like mine tighter than the pattern calls for?  My feet get claustrophobic of they are too tight in the toes, but I find if they are looser through the rest of the sock, they wear out too fast.

We haven’t seen the boy on here for awhile but he did want to show off his new watch.  He is loving telling time on it (digital) and we think it was $1.78 well spent by sis.

Edited to add:

The first Lucky Lurker Sock is done.  I like it.  It is a little bigger than I am used to, but I can wear it with my clogs and they will be just fine. 

Trying to get a picture was nothing short of funny.  I am going to have to find a sock blocker that I like.  The dear daughter was taking pictures and laughing hysterically because I pulled up my skirt so high…she got a picture that looked like the leg lamp on Christmas Story.  She was just sure I should post it on the blog.  haha

Remember my 7 random facts about myself last week?  Look what hubby bought from a little boy at church tonight.

$2 a pound…fresh picked.  Everyone was chewing on them raw.  My first bite brought me right back to that conveyor belt I worked on in the cannery 33+ years ago.  hmmmmm (sorry, I nearly gagged)

I got my new shoes today and I love them.  I can’t believe I ordered them yesterday at 2:45 pm and they came from Louisville, KY to WA and I had them before 11 am today!

They’ll look way cuter with hand-knit socks. 

I also got Ecto blogging software and if I ever figure out how to get it to go to the server, I’ll be thrilled…it’s so easy to use otherwise.

I lost my debit card today somewhere between my backseat of the car to the front.  Don’t even ask, I don’t know where in the world I put it but I had to cancel it today on the chance it fel on the ground and someone got it in the few minutes before I noticed it gone.  I stood on my head trying to see under the seats of my car and tore my purse and everything else apart but I just can’t find it.

After a trip to the bank to return the checks I got yesterday that say 4herri instead of Sherri (think they proofread it?), I am wondering if I should just stop spending money for awhile.  lol

I knit about 4 rows on my sock cuff and frogged 3 because I tried to fix a split stitch.  lol   Fast knit, will be wearing them soon, I hope!

Oh my, I have had my nose buried in bookwork all day today.  For the past 2 months, my computer woes have continued and today it finally kind of came to a head.  I could not get my home computer updated because my work computer has no way to get data out that will communicate with my home work computer.  Last month, I was carrying home the work computer to do the work.  This month, I just let myself get way behind because I didn’t want to figure it out.  I finally figured out a way I thought was ingenious (back up the data to a flash drive, put the flash drive in my laptop, burn a cd, put the cd in the home computer and transfer the info)…well, it worked but…the work computer was never updated at the end of last month so I still didn’t have what I needed.  I ended up calling our programmer who took my home computer to his house, updated it and inspected the usb drive that burned up my flash drive last month.  This is a new computer.  He found no problem which leads me to believe it was our hub that did all the damage.  So, that computer sits on my living room floor by the door waiting to be hooked back up so I can do that bookwork.

In the meantime, I spent the entire day wading through my own shop’s bookwork that I have neglected.  I feel close to crazy right now. 

lol

So…last night and this morning, I did get in a bit of knitting while my brain was turning at what to do.

The Lucky Lurker sock is coming along.  It’s an easy knit as long as the stitch count is right. 

And I am still considering if I want to knit this sweater.

 The only hard part of this one is that it’s hard to see at night.  I have made a few mistakes in knitting the wrong row, but didn’t get too far so it was easy to frog back.

We went for a little drive yesterday to get some ideas of a wedding location.  We’ve had a few ideas but here was one idea.

I honestly think this one is out of our price range (a ballroom upstairs but they do knock off a lot for having an alcohol-free event).  It’s an hour away so not sure we want to do that but will keep it in mind.  It made for a great Sunday drive and when we were heading home, the sky was beautiful.

It felt like there was going to be a thunderstorm, but we never saw one.

But, what did this girl have to do today to relieve stress?  Shopped for shoes!  Actually, I need new shoes for work and I had seen some I really liked in black and today looked online to see if they came in brown and tada!  They should be here Wed.  If I like them, you’ll see them then.  They will be great for handknit socks!

Ok, back to the grind.  I told hubby I felt like crying I was so tired of this.  He had to go back to work tonight, too. waa waa

Still working on the Lucky Lurker sock…progress is good but I got a little off this afternoon and stopped for awhile.  I didn’t get much knitting time in today but was too busy talking so I decided to work on the sock later.

I did start a ’swatch’ on a sweater.  For all the knitting I do, I have nothing to wear other than socks.  I am not going to put pressure on myself, but I fell in love with the Minimalist Cardigan in Interweave Knits and tentatively started it.  I love this deep red in Cascade 220.

(yes, I was too lazy to go find somewhere to take the picture so I just did it in my lap.)

Lauri started a group in Ravelry for Fly*dyed Fanatics.  She graciously let me be a moderator.  I went over to her house tonight and we made a banner and a badge for the group.  There are others out there because within no time, 3 people had joined the group.  The other day I started a group for my shop, too.  There is no end of fun over there at Ravelry.

Before I started my sweater, I spent an evening looking at all the sweaters others have done, read their comments, looked at what yarns were used and what people liked and changes they made.  It’s amazing how people will share their experiences and how easy it is to find the information!   Oh!  And until October 15, you can order the Beta t-shirts!  My order is in!

It was a beautiful day even if it was cool.  We were supposed to get rain but it never came.  Of course, I forgot again to get a picture…but the moon really was beautifuly tonight!

It wasn’t quite dark even though it looks like it was.

We had fun last night.  The bride-to-be and fiance and #1 son and girlfriend all met us in Olympia for dinner.  We had pizza and fun.  We were finishing up and who should walk in but the fiance’s family….he comes from a family of 9 kids.  They had just been to the movies and had never been to the pizza parlor we were at.  They had seen our car on the street and thought we were at Pizza Hut next door and they thought they’d just go to Brewery City Pizza and let us be.  It’s funny because our kids had never been there either.  (good pizza and nachos!  great salads, too.)

Yesterday afternoon, 3 of us at work decided on a whim to go get our nails done rather than lunch.  Two of us went over first because they scheduled us for 3 and 3:30.  I went 2nd and he started on mine and buffed a bit and then said I needed to soak (remember my taking off my nail tips myself a few weeks ago?  and remember I said it wasn’t a good idea?)  He got out a bowl, filled it with stuff and stuck my hands in the bowl with a towel over the top and left me to go do my sister’s nails.  I felt like I was in trouble.  He indicated to my sister that I was.  lol.  Sooooo…they got their nails done and there I sat, learning my lesson, and they got to sit and talk under the drying light while I got mine done.  :(  I opted to get tips again and then when they get to the point my last ones did, I will have them removed (properly) and give my nails a rest for awhile.  I love the tips and wonder if I should ever have gotten started on it. 

I didn’t get a lot of knitting time in today.  I had a huge project at work (thanks, Bunni, for the help!) and then tonight I spent too much time on Ravelry.  I volunteered to help out with the LYS database and ended up in a chat with Casey and Jessica for a little while.  How fun was that?  (take my word for it, it was.)

I did get a little done on the Lucky Lurker sock.  I got up past the afterthought heel mark but one teeny little section about an inch back got off on the pattern and even thought I tried to drop down and fix it, it just looked bad so I tore it out.  No big deal, am almost back to the heel area again.

Sorry for the poor photo, it’s late and the lighting wasn’t great.  I am loving this yarn and I think Angi does a great job.

Had a funny experience with the smoothie this morning. 

I opened the freezer to get the bag of bananas I froze the other day.  I pulled out a ziploc bag and thought…this does not look right!  It was FISH!  (and I have no idea when we put those in there!)  I looked all over and no bananas.  I finally looked in the refrigerator and after much confusion, I finally found them in one of the drawers and they were all soupy.  hmmmm.  I refroze them but I bet I don’t use them because they will just be a block of yuck.  (the smoothie was good, though!)

This is just par for the course with me….

I need to quit reading blogs and looking at yarn.  It is costing me money!  haha

Actually, I stumbled upon this designer as she was designing this sock and I saw many variations before she came to her final pattern.  It was fun to watch the process and these colors are totally me!  I decided for once I was going to remember to take the picture before I got excited and wound the yarn and was sad that I had to bring it home because I thought that was where my camera was.

But no…my camera was in my bag at work all along.  I know I didn’t need to tempt myself to start one more thing anyway.  I forgot to mention that this is the October Sock Club yarn from Yarn 4 Socks.  It was only a one month purchase so I think it was worth it.  Love the yarn!

I’m still really tired today.  I think it may take a few days to get caught up after that lost night’s sleep.  I stayed home from church tonight and the little imp and I went to get a burger at our favorite little local hamburger stand.  Grandma treated us both and then we came home and each grabbed a couch to veg out on. 

I’ve been playing on Ravelry tonight.  There is no end of fun there and if you haven’t signed up yet, you really should.  You don’t have to put any more stuff on there than you want to but it is amazing what information is on there.

The little bride-to-be may want a little lace shrug depending on the dress she chooses and I found a cute one there and put it in my queue just in case.

I didn’t think I’d ever like being tagged, but I have had so many fun little emails from people after they read my little facts about myself.  If you ever get tagged, give it a try.

Outta here for now.

Ok, I was awake until 6:30 this morning.  I fell asleep as hubby was leaving for his Bible study.  Needless to say, I have not been terribly productive today, I wondered if I’d make it through the day.  I always seem to get a second wind in the evenings, though…so I guess this is a good way to blog today.

I did knit on my lucky lurker sock today.  I’m getting close to the heel…but wasn’t terribly ambitious.

It is raining this evening and I got soaked going to my car.  My poor lucky lurker sock was laying in the mud puddle when I was trying to unlock the car but no harm done.

Anyway…I was tagged by Mary, who never ceases to keep me entertained on her blog. 

The rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

Facts about me:
1. I used to travel with my husband and his rock band.
2. I was almost voted shyest in my class but came in 2nd because so many people didn’t know who I was because I was so quiet.
3. I worked 3 days sorting green beans in a cannery until I woke up and saw beans moving across the sheet in our bed.
4. I hate beets and cooked carrots.
5. I would have been in John Wayne’s movie, McQ, but ended up on the cutting room floor.
6. I love old black and white chick flicks.
7. I am a night owl.

Tagging 7 people.

1. Theresa who takes beautiful photos and knits beautiful things.
2. Lmilla who made a really cute shifter sock for her car.
3. Lauri who knits and knits and forgets to blog
4. Dipladyknits who is a fearless knitter and enlightened me as to what a pop-up camper was
5. Nauti Knitter who lives on a boat and made the most interesting felted clogs I’ve ever seen
6. Carol who I think is still waiting to get a new computer so she can upload pictures of her knitting
7. Psyched 2 knit who is having too much fun over at Ravelry these days.

OK, you’re it!
(Don’t feel obligated to pass this on. It’s not really my thing either.)

A month or two ago, I had one of my customers email me and ask me if I’d ever heard of a yarn called Duet.  It was a really fun email because she told me that a year ago, she had stopped in my shop and I had encouraged her to try knitting socks with 2 circular needles because she must have told me she couldn’t do it on double points.  She emailed to thank me and tell me she’d been happily clicking away ever since.  She then told me that when she was at Stitch n Pitch, she’d met one of my friends.  She mentioned my shop (!!!!) and my friend said that she knew me.  How fun is that?

Well, she asked me about this yarn and I did an internet search that ended up costing me some money!  lol   It so happened that Angi was advertising her Lucky Lurker Sock Club and you just had to be on her site in the little windows of time that sign-ups were open.  I checked that link a few times and then one of the times, it was actually open and of course I had to sign up!

I also had a fun email exchange asking her about carrying her sock yarn.  She’s only a one-woman operation right now so she can’t wholesale to any more retail stores, but she said she would definitely consider me when she gets some help. 

Anyway, during vacation, I got my little welcome kit and about a week ago, I got my first shipment.  The fun part of Duet Sock Yarn is that you get a solid color for the heels and toes.

Excuse my sloppy photography because I forgot to take any pictures when I received the package and now am trying to squeeze everything in.  She does a great job of packaging everything so sweetly.

I love my new little measuring tape and the little bag to put all my little goodies in.  I’ve been lurking on the site for awhile anyway because I just love her web design. 

The sock is knitting up fast although I did have to go down a needle size…she recommends a 2 or 3 and I had to do a 1 and still do less stitches than she called for.  She says 52 and I am doing 48.  I am really beginning to wonder if I really am an average knitter.

Anyway, I am having fun and will do my first after-thought heel.  I’ve been hesitant to post about this because I’m not sure everyone has received their yarn yet, but I decided not to put it on Ravelry yet and just show it here.

The new bride-to-be and I and of course the little imp went to Olympia today to look for a wedding planner.  We had fun and I think the little imp did, too.  We stopped at Target and he found a dvd he’s really been wanting for $5.50 so I treated him to it.  We had his little dvd player so we set him up at the table at Barnes and Noble.  I rarely go there in the daytime and it’s kind of a fun treat.  While the girl looked at piles of planners, I wandered around and found a smoothie recipe book.  I’ve been looking for one for ages that had things in it I would actually drink.

She was in a hurry to get home, but I did manage to run into the health food section of Fred Meyer and grab a few things like wheat germ and nutritional yeast (and green tea, which I hope I can drink…NOT a tea lover here).  I was pretty proud of myself for being so quick, not getting distracted and looking for other things, going through the self-checkout and not needing help to weigh the bulk items..and get back out.  She wasn’t impressed, thought I took a bit too long.  oh well.   lol

We had a fun day.  We stopped at the grocery store on the way home and I tried to keep the brakes applied as the little imp insisted on driving the shopping cart.  I saw a mom of a special needs kiddo in produce and tried to say hi as we raced by her.  She just smiled in understanding.  We even managed to get the silly boy to say hello to the checker he snubbed last week.  Hard stuff working on manners these days. 

Back to the knitting, I think I’ll work on the hat for awhile before bed.