Friday, January 16, 2009

Busy Day - Doing Nothing

Yeah ok so I mis-spoke last night when bragging to friends about my “bad” news. The flooring contractors were not done installing my new floors yesterday so that meant it was my turn to be available today– meaning I had to stay home and knit all day....poor me huh? Because they were in the kitchen & dining room – basically cutting off ½ of the first floor (and access to laundry) I thought I was trapped with only with my iPod & knitting for the day. The PC was available for emailing work and of course Ravelry. But my planned knitting included working on my Bubbalicious Socks














and some mittens for me. I knit over a dozen pairs already this season but had none for me after the holoday gifts were wrapped up & given out.






Anyway, long story short, they are still not done with the flooring




but completed enough of the job before they had to leave for me to spend my afternoon reorganizing and cleaning the crystal.


I use to sell Princess House Crystal so I have tons of this stuff. A few years ago I sold boxes of it at a yard sale for a song, this is most of whats left.


The new dining room floor looks GREAT!




The kitchen has a bit to go. Moving and/or installing the flooring around the appliances and island was more time consuming than originally thought so I guess I have 3/4's of a kitchen floor for the weekend.




I did to do a little more knitting today while my Holey Cowl blocked & dried. I dont have final pics of that but I used the yarn above, which I dyed this fall. I found out that I was approved to add the pattern on Ravelry so once I finish writing it up I will – just need to stop procrastinating, maybe after all the crystal shines and I organize my knitting that’s been scattered throughout the assigned space …......

























Getting there, almost done. Oh yeah, now I need to call my kids and let them know their cousin had a baby girl this morning! And then call my sister and remind her to apply for AARP since shes' a grandma now!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

949 Items - 21.7 Days

I love listening to podcasts while I knit, drive, or even while I’m at work. I’ve also found an inner child in me that enjoys being read to sleep. My favorites are PodCastle http://podcastle.org/ and EscapePod http://escapepod.org/ both short Sci-Fi stories written and narrated by various undiscovered authors. I usually fall asleep in the middle of the story but obsolutely HAVE to re listen to the podcast in the morning.

At work it’s usually a radio show out of NY in my ears. I get it on iTunes to avoid all the commercials http://drjoy.com/. Open minded relationship advice without judgment. Sometimes I find it hard not to judge when a caller wants to know if she should stay with her significant other between beatings because he loves her, or they have kids, or they have history or whatever together. If you know me at all, you know my immediate thought /answer is turn around and run not walk out that door NOW and don’t look back! She advises them how to leave safely, that’s why she has a radio show and I don’t.

Im on the road alot becasue of work so when driving around I listen to – which I found completely by accident - Stuff You Should Know http://www.howstuffworks.com/. This podcast is actually one of the top podcasts for 2008. Did you know that former president Bill Clinton published 26,000 pages of legislative acts in the “midnight” phase of his term? The Big W is doing the same to sabotage Obama. Another scary fact is that there are 90 handguns for every 100 people in the US. Yikes! Did you know that you can generate enough power from a dead body to produce enough energy to illuminate their headstone (or other odd things) for quite some time long after their buried? Ok so some facts are just plain useless and stupid, but I’m thrilled at how the podcast discusses factoids in plain English making it much more interesting. While on the road I also like listening to another newly found podcast recommended by a friend called The Moth http://www.themoth.org/ Short unedited true stories.

Because the first kind of podcast I found was about knitting I have quite a few on my iPod. I have probably heard at least one episode of each show and either kept updating it or deleted it depending on my level of interest. They were never exclusively saved for when I’m knitting so I’ve tried a lot of them out; my favorite podcast is Knitters Uncensored http://knittersuncensored.blogspot.com/search/label/MP3%20link. But they haven’t recorded a new show in months. Cast On is another one http://www.cast-on.com/ and Stash & Burn http://www.stashandburn.com/.

Any recommendations out there? Knitting or otherwise.