Stalling

So I finally was able to start picking up stitches for the collar of Mr. Greenjeans this morning.  The right side of the sweater went great – very easy.  The left side, where I was carrying my yarn as I alternated skeins, was more of a challenge, as the vertical floats from carrying the unused strand were aligning perfectly with the line of stitches that I needed to pick up in.   It was hard to figure out where to pick up and stay in a straight line.  The result?  I picked up about 20% fewer stitches than I did on the right side.  I earned myself a tension headache too.   So I threw it in my knitting bag, out of sheer frustration.  And frankly, I’m a little afraid to pick it up again.  I’m this close and just want to finish it.  I don’t want to rip out even part of what I picked up, though I have no choice.

I’m whining, I know.

I’m stalling too.  Since I put it down, I’ve poked around online, talked to a friend for an hour, balanced the checkbook, poked online some more and best – I started another project.  I figured I’d ease my tension by swatching for the Woodland Shawl – you know, in case I needed to run to the yarn shop for a hook (another great stalling tactic).  Got gauge and rather than stopping there, I started the shawl and did 5 repeats.  Its fabulous.  Love the yarn, love the colors, love the pattern, which is super-easy.  No picking up, counting and ripping involved here.   And Mr. Greenjeans sits.  A couple of hours from completion, once I can get the stupid collar picked up.

I’m contemplating various options – wait until tomorrow morning when I’m fresh (more stalling), plow ahead and force myself (I might throw it across the room) or have a glass of wine and do it after dinner (I’d be relaxed but its guaranteed not to help the picking up in a straight line bit).  I don’t know.  I think I’ll crochet a bit more and then decide…

Before I go – the boiler guy came.  We have a “definite maybe” on the sink upstairs.  He has to come back and look at things more closely in order to determine whether he can easily get water up there.  He’s coming on Monday to look at it and give us an estimate.   From what he said today, my guess is that it won’t be quite as simple/cheap as we hoped.  So I’m not ripping out carpet yet, but I’m hopeful.  We’ll see.

Its a good thing I like my margaritas on the rocks…

…because I’m now minus a blender.  Ironically, of all the not often used kitchen appliances that got the keep or toss treatment today, that was the only one I intended to keep.  Then I dropped it when moving to it an empty shelf.  Oops.  What did get tossed?  An ice cream maker (used once).  An indoor grill (used but not since we lived in Syracuse and couldn’t get to the grill for months on end).  A bread machine.  An old mixer.  Lots of other random kitchen junk – enough to fill an entire shelving unit.  The next time I utter the words “I need a ____ (insert kitchen gadget)”, slap me.  Really.  Mind you, with the exception of the crock pot, which is God’s gift to weeknights, I haven’t bought a kitchen gadget in a while.   I really have no business buying another one again – except replacing the blender.   Must have blender for milkshakes/booze.

Kitchen stuff wasn’t the only thing we purged.  Books were the other big thing.  Nine big boxes full – all loaded up in the van and ready to be donated to the library’s used book sale tomorrow.  Its amazing how much less we have.  I’m so proud of Ev.  Once we got going, he got into the “fun” and started adding book after book of his to the pile.  Me – no problem getting rid of them (mind you, we are NOT touching the knitting books).  There was a good pile of random stuff that went to the dump too.  We are much lighter around here.  Purging felt good.  There’s more to come – we barely touched the upstairs, which consists of attic and fiber room/hopefully future studio.

I managed to reclaim the bookshelf in the office and have started to assemble all of my Painted Sheep stuff on it.  There’s organizing to do – tomorrow.   Or Sunday.   The boiler guy couldn’t make it out (nor apparently call.  trying not to be too annoyed).  He’s coming tomorrow afternoon.  The house is reasonably clean now and much more organized so I’m back to unstructured/unscheduled and doing what I want.  First priority tomorrow is finishing the sweater (if I don’t tonight – there’s still time).  Then I might go to the yarn shop.  Or to see Slumdog.  Or both.  Aside from boiler guy coming, our time is our own for the rest of the weekend…

Oh and ps – I finally ordered base yarns and fibers this afternoon, which should arrive early the week after next.  Dye days are coming!

What I Want To Do vs. What I Have To Do

What I want to do: finish Mr. Greenjeans.  All that’s left is the buttonband/collar, blocking and sewing on the button.  Doing so would involve sitting in front of the TV watching mindless trash all day while I knit.  Its cloudy and bleh here, so this is an ideal plan for the day.

What I have to do: the clean out.  The house is a mess and I feel compelled to clean up before the complete stranger who doesn’t care what the house looks like the boiler guy comes this afternoon.   Do other people do this or am I alone in my neuroses?

I also have come up with a list of large items that the trash haulers will need to pick up on Monday and call Public Works back to let them know.  Apparently, ugly old arm chair and random assorted other crap does not constitute a list, at least to DPW.  They scheduled my pick up for Monday but want a list of specific items.

So I don’t really have a choice.  Boiler guy will be here around 3, DPW closes at 4, so both must be done before then.

This is not quite the way I envisioned things in my head.  I was thinking more unplanned and unstructured.   Yesterday was just that.  What we thought would be a short trip out to buy a microwave turned into a long and leisurely lunch (btw, discovered that Chili’s has great salads.  About as good for you as a McDonald’s salad.  Still – yummy and huge!  filled me up so much that I could only eat a few bites of dinner).   We came home and watched 3 episodes of ER online, because we could.  I knitted.  We had dinner at 8 pm because we were so busy doing nothing that we forgot to cook.  Didn’t do any cleaning, which was just fine.  While I still want to do the cleaning, I think its the feeling that I “must” do it and the lure of the knitting that’s getting me.

Maybe if I push myself this morning, I can knit this afternoon.  I really, really, really want to finish the sweater.

Of course, getting off the computer would be a nice start…

W.I.P. Wednesday – February 25

Lots and lots of knitting this week – I’m motivated to finish Mr. Greenjeans.  And I’m close – about halfway down the second sleeve.   Now its just a matter of finishing the sleeve, knitting the button band/collar and sewing on that fabulous button from Birch Mountain Pottery.   No pictures – I think at this point, I’ll wait until its finished and blocked and I can get some modeled shots. My plan is to finish it as soon as I possibly can – maybe even tomorrow.

I also made progress on my Malabrigo socks.  Just a couple more inches until I turn the heel and start working on the cuff.  They’re going much, much faster than I thought they would

So my goals for the week?  Of course, first is to finish Mr. Greenjeans.  I want to turn the heel on tha sock.  And as soon as Mr. Greenjeans is done, I’m going to start my first big crochet project.  Remember this yarn?  Its Manos Silk Blend, purchased during the Wool Arts Tour and destined to be the Woodland Shawl from the fall Interweave Crochet.  I think its just right for my first big project – simple enough, with just a little bit of challenge for my beginner crochet skills between the shaping and the flower edging.  The yarn – ooohhh, what a treat!  It’ll be wonderful to work with.  I’m hoping this project goes fast – my office is fairly drafty, especially as my desk is next to the windows.  While I have a wrap to throw on, its pretty bulky – this shawl will be perfect.   One more reason that I can’t wait to finish Mr. Greenjeans…

I’m off to work – its my Friday!  Woo hoo!

Counting Down and Gearing Up

Two more work days ’til the long weekend.  Right now I’m feeling pretty immersed in work.  I spent a good part of Sunday doing work stuff, got in early yesterday and will work an extra long day today (13 hours? we’ll see what time I get in).  All in the name of having a couple of days off during a very busy time of year.

While we’re trying to keep this weekend fairly unstructured, plans are shaping up a bit.  It seems that the Great Clean Out of 2009 will take place this weekend.  Ev has been put on notice – I’m packing stuff up to be donated, throwing out a lot of crap and making an area in the attic for tag sale items.  You see, he’s not one for cleaning out/throwing out.  He’s one to argue for keeping things to use “some day”.   Though an admitted pack rat around yarn/fiber/related items, I am not a keeper of other “stuff” and will happily toss stuff we haven’t used recently.  I will remind him of when we were preparing to move to CT and I cleaned out the pantry area of the old house.  Basically, it was a 6 foot wide wall of shelves – filled with junk by the time we were getting ready to move.   One day, I went through and tossed a full third of what was there.  Ev came home, saw what I’d done and was horrified that I’d thrown out so much stuff.  I told that if he could name one thing I tossed, I’d retrieve it for him.  He couldn’t.  I remind him of this periodically when the subject of clean-outs comes up — for me it was a good lesson in what we really need and how much junk we accumulate.  So it will be the same this weekend.  We will relieve ourselves of a lot of junk – me happily so, Ev quietly kicking and screaming along the way.  We both know that this project will be largely me-directed, with Ev’s help – the occasional “keep or toss?” question and a whole lot of running to the dump, dropping stuff off to be donated, etc.   In its own weird little way, this will work for both of us.

The other big thing is that the boiler/plumber guy is coming late Friday afternoon.  I think he will soon be known in our house as “Saint Kevin” – he again is doing work on the boiler for an incredibly low price (less than my own brother was going to charge me!) and he’s just great to deal with.  Most importantly, he’s going to look at the feasibility of putting a sink upstairs.  If its a go, you can bet that I’ll have the ugly old carpet ripped out of that room and my studio stuff moved in by the end of the weekend

So we’ll clean out and maybe/hopefully move the studio this weekend.   We might go see Slumdog Millionaire, will hopefully get together with my brother and niece.  There will be knitting.  Other than that, no plans.  Definitely no timetables.  We’ll get done what we get done.  It promises to be relaxing.  Oh – and clean!  My house will be clutter-free and clean again!  Who needed a spa weekend when I really needed a dumpster?   Woo hoo!

Now, nose back to grindstone.  Two more work days…

Change of Plans

Things have a way of changing quickly around here.  A few things have come up, things that made Ev and I decide that now is not the time to spend the extra $$$ to go away for a weekend.  So, there will be no SPA for us after all.

All is not lost.  What we now have in front of us is a 4 day weekend with no plans.  No plans.  Nothing.  Nada!  Its sort of the “together” part of Christmas vacation we didn’t really get – it got so quickly tied up with plans (largely not of our making) and canceled days off that we really didn’t have the quiet time together that we had hoped for.  Now we get it.   While we’ll dearly miss the fun that is SPA, we get a quiet weekend to ourselves.  Once we made the decision not to go, we agreed to do “something fun”.  Who knows what we’ll do at this point – a little spontaneity will be part of the fun.  Who knows?  We might be able to sneak away for a day trip or an overnight.  There is talk, on my husband’s end, of getting the boiler/plumber guy out while we’re home to finish our boiler cleanout and squee – look at putting a sink upstairs.   That alone could make the weekend great.

And the sweater?  Still planning to finish it by next weekend.  I have a couple of free days after all…