5 needles and a kitten

I'm on the home stretch of finishing this nashua leaf yoke sweater for a coworker. The buttons are handmade by me out of polymer clay and I need to put a varnish on the back of them and then sew them on. I've already sewn in the loose ends on the sweater. This lovely coworker of mine just happens to be a labor nurse and didn't realize she was pregnant until she was 20 weeks (that's halfway through) pregnant because she felt something like a baby moving (this is her third baby).
I used size 7 dpns on the arms because they just seemed too skinny otherwise. They looked ill-proportioned on smaller dpns to the rest of the sweater.
The other picture is when my youngest son Nathan was attempting to knit on his cashmere (in this case Debbie Bliss rialto) wristers. Actually, just moments before I snapped this picture, his brother took a picture with even more cats on him, but for some reason cannot download those pictures to my computer.

all the rain that we didn't get over the summer

I do believe that we got all the rain last night that we didn't get over the summer. It's like when you move and leave a forwarding address. You don't get any mail and you don't get any mail and then suddenly you get more mail than your mailbox can hold.
Fortunately, it seems to have subsided for right now because I have to get out and run some errands in a bit and I really hate doing that when its raining so hard that it feels like we're having the second biblical flood.
I went to Knitch yesterday and scored some manos silk blend yarn. Its delightful. I went to get some addi turbos as well, but the size I was looking for wasn't in stock. Bummer.
I wonder if they ever need some more part time help at Knitch. It would be really cool to be around all that yarn and people who get into knitting! My youngest son said he wanted to work there as their ball winder. lol.
So, I don't have any great knitting pictures to share (even though I have 17 projects going at the same time). I did do some "spring cleaning" on my cafepress site and added a couple of things there. So, if you're really bored, check it out: www.cafepress.com/karmaandkismet

what on earth is going on?

I keep getting these spam-type comments to my blog. I suspect they may have some type of virus or something. Anybody got a clue on how to make them go away?

affirmations and the schedule

I am off to work on the dreaded schedule today. Earlier in the week I had realized that it was due pretty damn soon so I best get to working on it.
So, off I go when I would much rather be knitting, but then again, who wouldn't?
Part of my plan I was supposed to come up with on my 30 day raw food rast was to focus on an affirmation (preferably daily).
I dug my Abrahams Hicks cards out and random selected one. So, this is my affirmation for today: I will never cease being or desiring. New desires are constantly born within. Source energy will never stop answering my desires, and therefore my exapnsion is eternal. I may begin to relax in this moment if there is something that I desire that has not yet come to fruition.
I hope I didn't violate any copyright laws or anything by sharing that.

OM

Had a fun playdate with Brittany and Wayne yesterday.
I've been working on sock number 2 of my "advesary" socks last night and this morning. I figure while the energy between me and the "advesary" is non-hostile, I would attempt to make some progress on sock number 2.
I also scored some cool looking yarn by plymouth yarn yesterday called "confusion" that I'm contemplating using for a wrap sweater. I may take it along when I go to get the oil changed and tires rotated in a bit.
I've done some painting this morning. I'm working on an acrylic painting that is rather slow going and I've started on some stuff for possible bumper stickers. I'll post pictures when I've made some progress rather than try to describe the abstractness of it. The picture is of a painting I recently finished. It has a lot of texture to it and I just love my Chinese character paintings. One of the paintings I'm doing now is another Chinese character painting that I'm thinking of implementing as a t-shirt. We'll see.
So.... Namaste to everybody out there!

gita marie

They cancelled the charge nurse meeting today at work. Yipppee! I wasn't looking forward to driving an hour for an hour long meeting, just to drive back home an hour. The stay at home in my jammies day let me get a pair of pants hemmed, do some knitting, and make these cute earrings. They don't look that cute in the pictures because, as everybody knows, I can't take pictures worth snot. The little charms are Gita marie and I hung three tiny beads off the bottoms of them.
Tomorrow holds for me a meeting with my shaman (I have one week to go on this raw food fast, although I think it may end up being continued for a bit), a trip to Strings and Strands to score some berroco suede and some trendsetter checkmate (and some addi turbos and some sox sticks). Then I'm going to most likely go play with Wayne and Brittany again since I am addicted to playing with clay. Also, I didn't have a chance to enter the paws contest that somebody was holding, but thought I would post my picture of Ting Ting's crossed paws while she was snoozing.

chop, chop, chop

So, I got my hair cut today after it not being cut for about a year. 5 inches off the back. And I have bangs now. I guess its the perimenopausal woman in me in one of my drastic mood swings. I actually like it though and there's not that many times I've been able to say that about a hair cut in my life.
Aside from chopping my hair off and running other errands today, I've been hemming some pants for myself and my stepdaughter and only managed to get in a row of my parisian tote purse.
I've dug out the advesary socks and am planning on perhaps taking another wack at infusing some positive energy, at least enough to complete the second sock. I had started making them last year for my kids' stepmom but then she and I had a series of run ins and try as I might, I just couldn't find enough positive energy in me to do that second sock. So, we'll see if I can actually finish the second sock before we have another run in like our last Jerry Springer type incident on my ex's front lawn. The stepmother has been pleasant lately and I do feel that one should do all they can to be peaceful and positive towards those they have adversity with. So. Lets see what happens.

just another day

I'm off this afternoon to go do crafty things with Brittany and Mr. Man where I teach Brittany the art of making stitch markers without cussing too much and Mr. Man and I do some creative brainstorming over his button dilemma.
Yesterday Jonah and Nathan's bikes got stolen. They had ridden to a shopping strip mall here in PTC and decided to hide their bikes behind a store. I knew they were having some problems with the combo lock and had actually gone to Walmart while they were gone to get another combo chain lock. When they got ready to come home, their bikes were gone. The biggest issue there is that one of the bikes was a $350 bmx bike that was barely a year old. It caused a lot of hoopla at our house and I did not get much sleep last night and have been in a pretty shitty mood today as well. Hopefully the artsy stuff will get my mind off of things.
I cranked out a couple of baby hats over the weekend in my stress-induced state. Sometimes you need some quick immediate gratification projects to feel like you're getting somewhere in your life at a time when you can't see the finish line.
Also, Zoie delved into the artistic world and created a lovely present for me for my birthday complete with dragonflies, so I feel the need to showcase her work as well.

happy birthday Jonah

Happy birthday to Jonah, my oldest. We celebrated his birthday last weekend, but this is the actual day of his birth. The night before my scheduled c/s with him, I was so wound up that I stayed up watching Clan of the Cave Bear until 2am. Being a devoted ER fan at the time, I did make sure that me and my brand new baby stayed up to watch ER at 10pm that night.
On the knitting front, trying to finish up Jonah's socks so I can move on to some others. Still working on my Parisian tote bag and I just couldn't help myself and I've started making some socks from the Socks, Socks, Socks book with sheep number 3 yarn.
Oh, and btw, the sweater Jonah is wearing while eating his grilled cheese sandwich is the first sweater I ever made. I also made his lion costume which he wore for a whopping 10 minutes before he broke down and cried hysterically until I took it off.

Best of both worlds

We celebrated my oldest son's birthday yesterday. His actual birthday is Friday the 8th, but for part of his birthday celebration he wanted to see the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana 3-d concert. So, we all went to see this young woman sing her pop songs while wearing 3-d glasses befitting of Roy Orbison or Andy Warhol. The movie wasn't quite as painful as I was anticipating. There was some documentary stuff in it as well so that helped add some interest. The girl can sing as well, and she's cute as a button. No wonder every little girl in America wants to be Hannah Montana. And no wonder there were four different acts singing Best Of Both Worlds and two different acts singing Starting All Over at my younger son's talent show on Friday.
Today is day 7 of my raw food fast. Its been ok today, but yesterday was rough. Perhaps because between a movie and dinner (in which I ate a bowl full of nothing but lettuce at O'Charley's for Jonah's birthday supper) and the driving around, I was getting a bit on the hungry side. I had had some bananas and strawberries with honey that morning, but then that was it until 6:30pm since we had to leave early to go get his cake, drive to the theater, etc, etc. Bananas and strawberries will only hold you so long.... even with honey on it. Instead of feeling close to God yesterday(since this raw food fast is a detoxifying/spiritual fast), I was feeling more like close to homicide. We all survived though, including me, and we came home and bunched up on the couch and watched Stardust.
Sending out some peaceful, loving, healing energy today to Brittany who lost one of her four legged family members yesterday.