Finally, a finished object and some doodle stitching

Rainy Day Weekends Are For....

Fantasizing about going back to the Lake District someday soon.

Curling up on the sofa with a lap cat, a steaming cup of green tea, and a whole season of Gilmore Girls DVD's.

Finally finishing the Pippa bag! (and also finding it a just a little bit ironic that one of my newest friends is called Pippa and secretly planning a whole series of items named after all the women I'd like to be friends with)

Making Easter bunny carrot cake cupcakes (get it, carrot cake, easter bunnies...) for my co-workers. Mostly because I love cream cheese frosting and the cute little cakes make the perfect frosting delivery devices.

Working on my very first embroidery project with inspiration and direction from this neato burrito book. If you haven't seen this already, I urge you to pick it up.

Discovering this website. And then getting completely lost in this one.

Secretly loving it when my neighbor calls me 'virtuous' for answering the door in workout clothes and I'm sure it's only a transliteration and means something completely different than intended in my American ears and then swelling just a little bit with pride. (Another trans-literation --- I've lost a stone since January! That's 12 pounds to you and me!)

Speaking of swelling, have you seen the size of my belly today? Ow.

Watching the raindrops collect on the windowpane and longing for that Arizona sunshine that is only a month away now.... that's right, I'm coming home!

Speaking of Easter, I'm resurrecting Sufjan's Illinois, Gillian's Soul Journey and My Morning Jacket's The Tennessee Fire.

Snuggling into the sofa with the man I love.

Long distance phone calls.

Saying 'hey baby wanna lick my spoon?'

InspirationThis Sunday

Snow drops, daffodils, crocuses, even the first of the season's lambs are wobbling along on knobby knees. Spring? Are you almost here? The weather report disagrees and calls for snow tonight!! March winds, April showers, May flowers, and all that.

Sunday morning finds me reading this gorgeous book on the edible rainbow garden, planning my garden and ordering seeds from Renee on this wonderful website. Finding these funky chickens from bird in the hand tucked away in my website bookmarks and I'm matching fabric from the stash as we speak. I finally pieced Pippa together while convalescing yesterday after having tucked her away for the past 3 months, hopefully she'll be finished this week and I'll be able to show her off. Reading through the archives of this blogger (and this one, oh and this one too!) and falling just a little bit in love.

Busted!

So the Bisbee-beast got the best of this ball of yarn (or did it get the best of him?) We were laughing so hard that by the time he'd had his fun, it took us a full 15 biting and scratching minutes to untangle the poor fool from all the furniture he'd wrapped himself around!

I noticed he's got a bit of a limp today, but that may just be the bitter cold that's blown in. I think he'd tell you it was worth it, he'd been stalking that ball of wool for the past couple weeks as I'm slowly but surely making progress on the Pippa bag. Let's say I'm 85% finished with the knitting, but have tons of felting and sewing left to do. Damn, I'm slow these days. It used to be that I'd get so obsessed with a knitting project I wouldn't leave the house till it was finished, feverishly staying up all night just get those last few rows completed. I can't even sit through a movie anymore. Restless, restless.

(sorry about the photo quality, it was my mobile phone that snapped these!)

Doh!

Which one of these needles is not like the others? Now that you'll be humming that sesame street classic under your breath the rest of the day, I'll explain. I grabbed the wrong friggin needle when rushing about to pack up for the quick trip back to the States last week when I was frantically rummaging through my to-do box. Consequently, one side of the Pippa Bag has this unsightly little bulge where I'd picked it up using the mistakenly identified offending 5 mm needle.
For whatever reason (hmmm, could it be travel exhaustion?) I didn't even notice until I got to Tucson and started in on the second side piece of the bag and began to run out of yarn. "Surely, the pattern called for 4 skeins, why does it look like I'll need six?" I said, puzzled. Apply hand to forehead here.

I'm going with it. It's felted, no one will be any the wiser, right? Any experienced felters out there please feel free to advise. This is my first felted piece.

This led my selectively anal-retentive nature down the long path of an inner monologue regarding how to avoid this in the future. Having worked as a vet nurse for a number of years, an obvious solution strikes me. We label instruments that all belong in the same surgical kit with rings of coloured tape to denote a matching set. I think I may embark on the same endeavor with my needles. Surely, that's the most overly drastic measure I could take. It would probably just be simpler to bind them together with rubber bands or create one of those wonderful needle organizers that I see patterns for all over the place. In fact, there's a pattern for one in the very same Rowan book that the Pippa Bag's pattern is in.

Queen Bee Poll: How do you organize your needles and other implements of mass construction?

One For The Road

I'm still not sure how it all happened so fast, but my departure for America is only 3 days away! After digging around in the To-Do box, I pulled out this start on the felted Pippa bag on the cover of the Rowan book. Swoon. Sigh. It's a perfect airplane knit. Since it's felted I opted to do it garter stitch instead of stockingette as there's just that much less thinking involved.

Consider this. Thursday looks like this for me: Leave house 7:30 am to catch train to London Gatwick. Arrive Gatwick at 11:30, flight to Detroit leaves at 2:00. Arrive Detroit at some ungodly time in the morning for me though bright day time for Detroit then catch another flight to Phoenix in which I arrive at 9 pm Phoenix time (6 am GMT). Then it's a 2 hour drive back to Tucson!! So that's a good 24 hours of traveling I've got to look forward to, so any less thinking I have to do, in my view, is a good thing.

Ankle update: Looking good, looking good! Only slightly swollen and just a tinge of green to be seen. Walking now with only a slight a limp. But man, have I got a lot done since I hurt myself in the line of duty! I can't drive yet though, and the anxiety is building regarding all of the running around I need to do before I leave on Thursday. What is that they say.... where there's a will there's a way.