But now? Now there are over 2300 unread posts. I give. There is no way. I keep not reading any of it because there is no way I can read it all. I’m marking every last thing read and starting over.

I got this job, see, which is sucking up a fair portion of my knit and crochet time, my blog-reading time, my gamer-dork time, my general slacking off time—you get the picture. I have not knitted or crocheted a stitch in at least two weeks.

I know, I know, your heart bleeds for me, having to work for a living and all. I’m a little bit exhausted, though. Working first shift is a major lifestyle adjustment for me, and I sit in front of a computer typing all day, which makes me not so much want to sit in front of a computer and type in the evenings when I get home.

I hope I haven’t missed anything—aw, hell. I know I missed lots. I need to start over again anyway.

This is good when things are rushed because it mostly uses things that are already in the house. It isn’t “real” shepherd’s pie with lamb, but close enough for me.

Ingredients:

* 1lb ground sausage (or hamburger, but I promise you it tastes a lot better with sausage)
* chopped onion (or onion powder if you don’t have any actual onions)
* salt
* pepper
* 1 can cream of blap soup (cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, cream of octopus, whatever you have hanging around the house)
* assorted canned veggies (I usually use green beans and mushrooms, sometimes corn, too. You can use frozen or fresh veggies if you want. I am not that ambitious.)
* mashed taters (leftover or instant)
* shredded cheese
* paprika

Brown the sausage (or beef, but I’m telling you the sausage tastes better) with the onion, drain. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the cream of blap soup and put the whole mess in a casserole dish (I think I use a 2qt one. Or 1.5qt. Something like that.)

Drain the cans of veggies, dump on sausage/blap mixture in casserole dish. Spread mashed taters on top. Sprinkle with paprika. Paprika is yummy. Then throw some shredded cheese on top. (If you are me, you only put cheese on half of the top, because I do not eat cheese. If you are not me, go crazy with the cheese if that’s what makes you happy.)

Bake about 30 mins in 350° oven.

2) Slipping knitwise is not the same thing as slipping purlwise. Perhaps if it weren’t for #1 above, I would’ve noticed that in the instructions first time through.

3) With regard to the car meme that’s popping up on everyone’s blogs (and which I am too lazy to fill out and post), has anyone actually had sex in a car since the age of seventeen or so? (The back seat of a Chevette = the most uncomfortable place I ever had sex. Hands down.)

Oh, wait, to answer my own question: I have. Oops. Almost forgot about that.

Now to settle on some yarn…

I haven’t been posting in this blog much lately (ya think?) I have been writing a bit in my journal (leave a comment if you want the link, but be aware that there’s a better than even chance that you’ll be offended by something or other over there—my foul language, my job, my opinions, what have you—and it is likely not work-friendly if you’re accessing the internet from work, ya slacker. Just so you know. I deliberately don’t link to there from here) but I haven’t been posting all that much over there, either.

I just haven’t had a lot of time at the computer, and I’ve had a lot of things going on in my head.

Current project status (someday I will update those status bars in the sidebar, really):
The corset: Very nearly finished! I need to attach the final strip of boning. I’ve done the bits that go around the top and bottom, but I am very, very frightened of what I need to do next, which is singe the ends of the boning. That is freaking me right the hell out.
The finished bags: Still need lined. I am a slacker with the sewing machine.
The bag in progress: There can never be enough unlined purses! I’ve started a new one with the green and beige wool I got from that marked-down kit. I’m not using a pattern, which is an entirely new concept for me. I usually feel lost without a pattern. I’m just working in rounds and winging it based on what I’ve done with other bags I’ve made. I really need to make a swatch of this wool and try to felt it before I get to the point of no return (the first color change), though.

I probably have other unfinished projects lurking around. Like those socks. You have no idea how fed up I am with those socks.

That’s it for now, I guess. I am now going to look at patterns and salivate over the Knitpicks catalog.

In other news, I’m about a third of the way through that corset but cannot show you a photo of how it’s coming along due to the aforementioned broken flash on the camera. I had a little trouble early on and had to start over about three or four times, but it’s going along pretty smoothly now.

Except that Tunisian crochet? Really is a little boring. It’s worth it for this pattern, but I can’t even imagine the tedium of making an entire afghan that way.

First I want to say thank you for all the nice things you said about the seraphina shawl. I’m really happy with it; it’s been very nice and warm during all this chilly rain we’ve been having here.

Lately I’ve been working hard, but that’s been at work, not at fun things. So I haven’t been crocheting, haven’t been making linings for those bags, haven’t been doing anything crafty at all really. I think I last picked up any of my projects about two weeks ago. It is very sad.

Work is better now. Things are caught up. There are no longer any piles of paper taunting me, telling me that I will never, ever, ever get through it all. Those are gone now. It’s done. All I have to do is keep up with it.

And now maybe I can do some fun crafty stuff.

So anyway I got nothin’ today. I still haven’t lined those bags. The weekend was pretty busy, just no time for it. Also I was possibly just the faintest bit hung over yesterday (we won’t get into how sad it is that a few beers can leave me hung over—oh, but I will tell you that a really hot bartender hugged me. That was fun) and also had been up until 5:00 AM the night before, so I just wasn’t up to anything that required energy and didn’t positively have to be done.

I’m finding out that I do all this crafty stuff because it drives me stark raving mad not to have something to keep my hands busy. I’ve been trying to take it easy on my wrists because they’ve been acting up a little. Not a lot, but I’ll be driving and I go to shift gears and get this weird zingpingblat of nerve pain, and that’s not good, right? And it’s really for the best if I give it a rest *before* it gets real bad rather than after.

So I’m trying to lay off anything that could be considered “repetitive strain”.

It’s not easy. I have a serious excess of nervous energy and I need to do SOMETHING with it.

You might recall my whining about my hands bothering me a few months ago? I hadn’t had much trouble from them lately; I started taking some herbal stuff (ginkgo biloba) for something else, and when I stopped taking it I noticed that my hands started hurting again after a few days. I was curious if it was that, so I took it for a week, stopped taking it for a week, etc. a couple of times until I decided that it really was helping with that. A couple of days on it and my hands feel better, a couple of days off it and they feel worse. I think it’s got some sort of anti-inflammatory effect. I’ll take what I can get; I can’t take advil or anything in that family (wheeeeeze!)

But yesterday afternoon it started up again, first the joints in my thumbs and then gradually in other fingers swelled up and went all wacky. It got worse as the day went on, but it’s way better today.

I think it might’ve been the weather, honestly. There was a massive front moving in to replace our lovely 60° day with 30°-and-dropping today, complete with near-hurricane force winds last night.

Feeling about 70% better today, so I’m hoping to get more done on it later on…

February 12th marks a very special day! This is your chance to pay homage to Mr. Doo by wishing him a very happy 4th birthday! Send him an e-card, but better yet, spend a few bucks and mail him a can of tuna, and if you are feeling really generous, consider sending him catnip or his favorite snacks: Whisker Lickin’s Tuna crunchies!

Mr. Doo has awesome mind powers and will know who you are if you fail to at least send him an e-card! He even has his own gmail account to facilitate your blessings, tributes, and worship to him. You may even want to go crazy and send him a real snail mail birthday card or postcard. He’ll gladly give you his mailing address upon request. (No, he doesn’t have his own post office box—yet!)

There are benefits to you bestowing a little worship his way!

* You may someday win the lottery!
* You can brag to friends how you sent somebody’s cat that you never met something for his birthday!
* You’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know you’ve done right by Mr. Doo!
* Most tuna is now dolphin safe so you’re protecting the environment!
* Mr. Doo would remember you on your birthday (well, maybe not)
* He is more evil than you and has better mind powers
* You would spend more money on buying a latte or skein of yarn
* This counts as a random act of kindness so you can negate some karma or move ahead one person in line at the Pearly Gates
* Mr. Doo may purr with excitement over all of the attention!

But wait, there’s more! Mr. Doo would appreciate it if you mentioned his upcoming birthday on your blog, in fact cut and paste any or all of this entry so that his birthday can reach as many people as it possibly can through all of Blogdom!

I can certainly attest to Mr. Doo’s considerable Mind Powers, as he used them to help out Kittycat when he (Cat, that is) was sick last summer.

Happy birthday, Mr. Doo!

Then again if I can figure out how to manage my time you may see just as many posts as usual. But there’s a big backlog of Stuff I Should Have Done Ages Ago, so if I go missing, that’s why.

Okay, folks, I normally don’t do much of this kind of thing, but this here is important. Really, really important.

Sunshyn is someone I’ve gotten to know online first via a mailing list and then from reading each other’s journals. She and her husband Will have been raising their three-year-old grandson for I think about two years now. More than half of his life. Roo’s had a lot of struggles for such a little guy. He was diagnosed early in 2005 with an autism spectrum disorder. Since then, he’s come a really long way, from being completely non-verbal to reaching the point where it was recently determined that he no longer qualifies for special-needs preschool.

Then this past Saturday when Sunshyn went to pick up Roo from his visit with his other grandparents, they handed her a court document saying they now had full custody of Roo and wouldn’t even let her say good-bye to him. She and Will had no knowledge that they were seeking custody, no chance to have their say in court.

Roo needs to be back in his home, and lawyers and custody battles cost money. A Paypal account has been set up for donations to Roo’s legal fund. Please go read these two links below, and please, please help get this little boy back home where he belongs.

The Unhappiest New Year (Sunshyn’s journal entry after Roo was taken away)
Background info on Roo from Sunshyn’s annual Christmas letter

I’m a little under the weather today. (Nothing serious. You don’t want to hear about it.) So I’m getting virtually nothing done at work, just catching up on reading blogs, though I haven’t been commenting because I feel dopey from the medication I took after I started feeling sick earlier. I’d really love a nap, but that’s probably not going to happen.

Anyway just thought I’d post something so it wouldn’t look like I vanished off the face of the earth. But I’m babbling incoherently so I’m just going to leave it at that…

I expect to have some photos shortly; I’m in a crunch trying to finish up some gifts, doilies for my mom and my mother-in-law. The one for MIL is done already apart from blocking, but it’s itty-bitty. That’s what she wanted, a tiny little doily, but I’m hoping to make a matching one in a bigger size to go along with it. Right now I’m about a third or so into my mom’s doily. I’d wanted to make a bunch of snowflakes to send to various family members, too, but that didn’t really work out.

Partly I’m so late with finishing gifts and not getting as many made as I’d have liked because my hands were/are bothering me (current status: not bad at all today, though my knuckles still have been swelling up randomly). And partly because I’m having a major back pain episode and the one position that’s comfortable to sit in is murder on my neck if I try to crochet too long sitting like that.

(Anyone want some cheese to go along with that whine?)

I’m noticing that my status bars over there haven’t been updated for so long that they don’t actually bear much relation to what I’m working on these days. I’ll try to remember to do WIP Wednesday this week. But mainly I’m doing the doilies, and after those I’m going to get back to some other projects, like lining the purse that’s otherwise finished and finishing up the Seraphina shawl, which I could totally use because, well, holy early winter, Batman! It’s cold here!

And I’m trying to decide what to do with the felting yarn Lori sent me. I’ve been browsing around looking at various patterns but haven’t been able to settle on anything yet. I’ve thought about doing some felted mittens—I saw a great-looking pattern somewhere and bookmarked it. They looked so lovely and warm. But I’m thinking that for a first attempt at felting (and in a front-loading washer at that) it might be best if I did something where size isn’t critical, like a bag. If anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

And now for some quiz results! Seen at various blogs, but I can’t remember whose offhand.

You’re a scientific intellectual.

What Sort of Intellectual Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

So here’s the deal: I’ve made a few coasters out of worsted weight cotton before these ones, and they’ve worked great for me and weren’t wobbly at all, but—and this could be a big difference between stable and wobbly—we’ve only been using them for water glasses next to the bed, where they’re less likely to be knocked over by cats, and where they usually have a giant 44-ounce cup of ice water on them. So I don’t know if they’re as stable with a smaller glass, since the water cups are pretty heavy when they’re full. What I’d say is to try making one and check it out. The ones I’ve made before were Janelle’s star coaster and granted they’re a little flatter than the ones I just made. But we’ve never had any spills, not even when a cup is close to empty.

Moving on…Nope, didn’t do any crochet this weekend. I feel really scatterbrained. More so than usual. And anxious—because of the holidays coming up and me being so not ready for it, and because there’s something going on with my hands that involves random joints swelling up and being painful and stiff, then randomly getting better, then other random joints in my hands doing the same thing. (Please do not mention the word arthritis, okay? I am only 32.)

Anyway, I’m trying to get a grip on myself. Meantime, some slightly unflattering quiz results!

You Have a Melancholic Temperament

Introspective and reflective, you think about everything and anything. You are a soft-hearted daydreamer. You long for your ideal life. You love silence and solitude. Everyday life is usually too chaotic for you. Given enough time alone, it’s easy for you to find inner peace. You tend to be spiritual, having found your own meaning of life. Wise and patient, you can help people through difficult times. At your worst, you brood and sulk. Your negative thoughts can trap you. You are reserved and withdrawn. This makes it hard to connect to others. You tend to over think small things, making decisions difficult.

I was away from the internet for over two days, so I’ve been slowly catching up on things. I’m going to be internet-less tomorrow, too, so I’ll be incommunicado a bit longer…

I’m having a bit of a tough week on account of spectacularly bad cramps and related nonsense. I accidentally left the heat packs at home today, too, which is a major bummer because I’m allergic to ibuprofen and heat is my friend. I’ve been taking Tylenol and that is just sad because Tylenol just does not help with this at all.

I expect I’ll be feeling better by tomorrow but I’ll also be super-busy what with the holiday coming up and all.

Since it’s been going around…For the record, I heart mashed potatoes. I’ve been totally rooting for them in Lori’s poll but they are trailing behind turkey and stuffing so I really think you should go vote for them.

You Are Mashed Potatoes

Ordinary, comforting, and more than a little predictable You’re the glue that holds everyone together.

1) My sister’s fiancé just got home from Iraq, a month or so earlier than scheduled.
and
2) My sister is moving to Pittsburgh sometime next year (Pittsburgh being about three hours from here, as opposed to 12-14 hours away right now).

Yay!

I don’t have much to post about today, but I wanted to thank everyone for the well wishes and advice and let you know that I’m alive and not sick anymore and all that. I drank about a gallon of cranberry juice over about a 24-hour period, and I got better, so apparently I started in on that soon enough not to need antibiotics. If I hadn’t been better by the next morning after I posted, I would’ve gone to the doctor, but luckily I didn’t have to (and good thing, too, because we had a tire emergency a couple of days later and had to spend the money I would’ve spent at the doctor’s office buying a tire instead). By the next morning I wasn’t in much pain at all, just a little twingy, and I was entirely better other than being tired by the end of that day.

I hate it when that happens.

I haven’t touched any crochet in about a week. I was really tired all last week and just didn’t have any energy for it. Maybe tonight…

Don’t you wish you were me?

Plan of action: 1) Chug cranberry juice. 2) If I still feel like this in a couple of hours, call doctor’s office and beg for prescription for whatever it was he gave me last time without a visit on the grounds that I know good and well what a UTI feels like. (Also, I still owe them $50 from my last visit when the nerve block cost way more than I expected and don’t want to rack up any more bills.) 3) If neither of those work, go to doctor tomorrow.

Ack.

At the same time I was poking through photos in the temp folder I use to download from the camera and saw that I’d taken a photo of the squares I sent for Anne’s comfortghan before mailing them off. (I couldn’t find the thread at Crochetville with the photo, but I found this post at Donna’s blog which has a photo.) Tandy at Crochetville did the hard part, organizing the whole thing and joining all the squares.

The color isn’t very true in the photo because I messed with the brightness/contrast settings to get them to show up at all; this was taken before I caught on to that thing about photographing dark objects against a light background and vice versa. (They’re Caron Simply Soft in sage and dark sage, if that gives a better idea what color they really are.) Clickable for full-size version:

The solid square is pretty basic; there’s a pattern at the bottom of this page at Priscilla Hewitt’s site. I like that pattern a lot, basic but pretty; it’s the same square I made my Wine & Roses afghan with. The third square is also one of Priscilla’s patterns: Amber Waves square.

The shawl is coming along, though, even though I haven’t worked at it much for a couple of days. I’m figuring I’ll probably get a little time tonight to spend on it. Part of why I haven’t worked on it is that usually during the time I spend minding the register, if things are slow I crochet, but lately I’ve been succumbing to the lure of Text Twist, which is disturbingly addictive.

Anyway I don’t have any photos today, just thought I’d post a quick post and then get back to work. I did the desktop thing that’s been going around, though:

Yes, that is in fact a stapler. A nifty antique stapler. I have an Office Supply Fetish. I got the wallpaper at virtualstapler.com, whose main page has a stapler simulation that I had great fun with. There, now you all know.

But I had to come here and ask a question. I don’t know where I first saw the link to this site, so you all may have seen it or not. But. Have you seen the Stuff On My Cat site? It’s hilarious.

My question, though: Do any of you really have cats who are that tolerant? I truly cannot picture Kit-Kat or Lena putting up with that sort of hijinks. Kittycat would flee. Lena would probably smack me around first (she’s skittish, and if someone touches her in an Unapproved Manner she’ll smack you—no claws, unless you ignore the Warning Smack and keep doing whatever it was she didn’t like). And then flee. I’m having trouble picturing how these photos get taken without sedation.

Oh, and a photo on that site that I can relate to: Remington the cat loves to knit.

I finished the shawl and am almost halfway done fringing it. Muttergrumbledamnfringe. I’m not very good at fringe. I tested out doing the twisty fringe, but it just didn’t look right that way (or without fringe), so I’m making normal fringe. I’m sure once it’s finished (and evened out) I’ll be glad I did it because in the picture on the pattern it looks great. But right now I’m going insane with the fringing.

You Are Apple Cider

Smooth and comforting. But downright nasty when cold.

Mmm…apple cider. I think the only things I really like about fall are apples and the leaves turning. And being able to crochet with yarn again after it being too hot to touch it much all summer. The rest is a little depressing because it means that winter is on the way. (And yes, I am downright nasty when I’m cold! Though I like cold cider. Not sure what the quiz writer’s problem is there. Maybe it’s the same quiz writer who thinks my inner child is sad because I’m not a social butterfly?)

But it is nice being able to bake again. I made an apple crisp last week. I really need to make another one soon—I still have half a sack of apples in the fridge. Mmm…apples…

I would ordinarily think it was too soon for the B vitamins to be helping, but I’m having a lot less nerve pain in my left wrist/hand. Even the Numb Finger is about 99% non-numb. The right wrist is actually a lot more painful than the left, even though I’m left-handed, and I think it’s also computer use that’s doing it on that count because I use the mouse right-handed.

So I’ve broken out the Fashion Statement of the Year, which has been stowed away for several years. Lovely, no?

It’s doing a lot of good; I feel a lot better since I started wearing it a few days ago. I pretty much wear it as much as I can stand to, then take it off for a while. Somehow I can even type and use the touchpad with it on, though it turns out that it’s entirely impossible to crochet while wearing it.

But it is, if such a thing is even possible, even more unattractive than the standard bent-wrist brace (those irritate my wrist a lot). Also those straps are a nuisance (and backed with neoprene—mmmm, sweaty!) and have to be readjusted all the time.

But whatever works, right? And it doubles as a weapon since it has a metal bar running through it!