Sunday, January 29, 2006

House hunting....

Again, I have no pictures. Well that's not true exactly. I have hundreds of pictures. Thousands of pictures. But they are pictures of brides and grooms, boquets and rings, flower girls and bestmen. They have nothing to do with knitting. I've been so busy with work that I haven't had a chance to take some knitting pictures. This busyness has guilted me into not posting because I keep promising to post pictures and haven't gotten it done. Not to mention the thank you notes. Oh the guilt.

Not only have I been busy with the business, I've been busy with house hunting. I always thought I'd be EXCITED! HAPPY! to go house hunting. Because when you dream of a new house it's always perfect. It has the perfect layout, the perfect number of bedrooms, the perfect neighbors, the perfect street name (yes I'm that much of a dork), the perfect trees, the perfect location. In reality (or realty ha! ha!)there's always a strike against it somewhere. And if I think it's perfect, or at least a possibility, I can guarantee you that my husband doesn't agree. We're looking for a house closer to my daughter's school with more room than what we've got now. Oh the stress. We can't seem to agree on anything.

We were looking at houses today when a real estate agent practically attacked me for taking pictures of a home we were in. And let me clarify this--there wasn't a stick of furniture in it. Just room after room of tacky wall-paper borders. And really that's a subject worthy of an entire blog entry of it's own--wall paper borders and their assault on home decorating. Anyway, I was shocked at how rude she was. She went on and on about how it wasn't proper or accepted to take photos of homes that are for sale. People could have expensive pieces of art or children there. Again, no furniture, no art, no kids in this house. She asked me how I would like it if I had an open house and people took pictures. I told her that would be great, because the object is to *sell the house*. If that necessitates pictures, go for it. Anyone with a few brain cells bumping around would *remove the valuables* before the open house. And likewise with the kids. I was astounded. She thought that was a way to attract buyers? Unbelieveable. Now she's e-mailing us trying to sell a house to us. I have half a mind to send her on a never-ending search for the perfect home for us. First time I've been treated like a criminal for taking pictures. Whatever...

And it's January so that means that we're on a rotation basis with the illness. Sabrina started first with it, then my son, then Sabrina again, then my older daughter, then my husband and now I think I'm getting a touch of it. We've rescheduled my daughter's fourth birthday party two times. I'm crossing my fingers I can get the family healthy by Saturday for the birthday party. Can't bear to think of rescheduling again.

And knitting? ha ha ha. I took it with me to sewing night with my two girlfriends but we just spent our sewing time racking up an embarassing large tab of appetizers and margaritas. But that was some money seriously well spent, we hadn't had a girls night in quite a while. And it's hard to think about knitting mittens when we're having 50 & 60 degree days. My pear trees have started to bud out already which just can't be a good thing. Maybe we can find that perfect house before the trees all get burned with a freeze...

Oh, someone had asked my opinion on the Sony N1. I tried to respond but the e-mail didn't go through. I've not personally looked at that model but I've had good luck with Sony digital cameras. I've had one and my parents have had two. They're good little cameras. I shoot with Canon digital SLRs now (which I *adore*) and have a Nikon for film. Have fun camera shopping!

Friday, January 13, 2006

no pictures yet, but I've made some progress...

Wow has it been a busy couple of weeks. My refrierator is positively bare and I just haven't had enough time to even make it to the grocery story. Business at the photography studio is really picking up. It's so exciting! I'm completely booked with weddings for June and have many more booked throughout the year. Yesterday I even booked one for 2007! Yay! The growth of the studio has allowed me to finally give my notice at my part-time cake decorating job. I've enjoyed the work there but have just been stretched too thing with the family, photography and cake decorating. Whew, it'll be nice to just focus (ha ha) on the photography now.

On the knitting front it's been a bit of a challenge. I finished the sunshine hat, just need to crochet a few flowers for it. But, the instructions (crochet) are a teeny bit confusing so i'm going to have to sit down with my mom and work on them. The hat did turn out quite cute if I do say so myself. Again, pictures will be coming soon. Our DVD burner died so I can't delete the wedding pictures I took last week from my cf card until I have a back-up dvd burned. Ya'll probably think I've completely made up all this photography business with this blog being completely devoid of pictures. I'm hoping to get some up soon. Did I tell ya that my sweet husband helped me make my own double pointed needles for the hat? Couldn't find any the right size in town and the ones I could find online were going to be $9 plus shipping. So went to the hardware store and bought the right size dowel rod for $0.85. Sweet.

I have started my first mitten to match the sunshine hat. I made a guage swatch but it was too big, went down a needle size and it was still too big. After looking at my swatch I decided I was knitting too loosely and tried it again, finally got guage. Began the mitten and it is going well so far. I've been learning a new technique with each thing I knit and this time I'm learning how to make slanting increases. Really enjoying it and I'll post some pics soon. Seriously. Otherwise I'll be forced to break out my kids crayolas and scan my sad little drawings in. And really, who wants to see that? I can promise you, you really don't.

And BTW, what on earth is this Dancing with the Stars? This summer my sister was in town from Seattle and we had each thought this was a joke. I mean we seriously thought it was a spoof commercial when we saw it for the first time. I'm watching some of it now and it's interesting. I enjoy seeing the dancing but it seems kind of campy. I can already see them talking about this on VH1 in ten years when they do the "I love the 00s". Well thank heavens they just told Lisa Rinna she could stay, I thought she might start bawling any minute on camera.

Welcome to those of you who have taken the time to stop by my blog! I'm new to all of this and really enjoying it. Now that the holidays are over hopefully I'll be able to post more. Well, let me make that after my daughter's birthday is over. Her birthday is Monday, she'll be four. It's gone by so fast! We went through quite a bit to have her so at the time I thouht her birthday was a fine time of year. I quickly learned though that it's not such a hot time. At two weeks old she was sick with a winter bug. And every birthday since then has been a challenge planning her party. I get so caught up with Christmas it's hard to remember how quickly her birthday will be there afterwards. We finally got her party planned and the invitations out only for her to wake up with a stomach bug today :-( So, her party will be postponed until next week. Maybe I can have her hat ready for her by then.

Real color photos coming soon...

Monday, January 02, 2006

Frajjjeeelllayy, it must be Italian! No dear I think it says "Fragile."

To quote my family's favorite Christmas movie:

"I won, I won, I won!"

No, no, it's not a major award but it is a fantabously cool prize. YARN! Many thanks to Amy for creating this contest. I had the closest guess to the number of items she finished this year. I guessed 30 and she completed 29. I think she should win some kind of reward for completing so many projects!

I wasn't as close on the number of skeins in her stash though, Susan won that one. Congrats Susan!

And hey, yay me again. I just figured out how to put links in my posts!

In other knitting news I made more progress on the sunshine hat today. I had happily knitted the first 20 rows per the instructions and decided to give my cute little hat a test fit on little daughter. It was too small. I go back and check in directions. I had bought the suggested size yarn and needles. Knitted my guage block and my size was off. Went back to the LYS bought smaller needles and knitted a new guage block which was spot on. Carefully followed the instructions and knit my 20 happy rows. I read the pattern again and see that it indicates this will yield a hat to fit an 18-19" head. Measured my girl's head and it's 20". Bummer.

I then frogged the entire thing did some knitting math (boo! hiss!) and now have a hat that looks cuter than hat 1.0. Currently said daughter is sleeping soundly in her bed so I must wait until tomorrow morning to test it on her cute little (or not so little as it is) mellon. Hopefully sunshine hat 2.0 will be a perfect fit.

And by this time I'm sure no one believes that I'm a photographer as I have the saddest text only blog out there. Honestly, I have a camera, I do! Not only that but people pay me to take pictures of themselves! Seriously! I promise that one day soon I will have happy little pictures on this page. This is just may way to build the excitement. Knitting drama. Yeah baby, knitting drama...

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Happy New Year!

2006! Wow does time fly. I was at the grocery store yesterday (yes, due to a busy schedule and poor planning I had the misfortune of being in Wal-Mart on New Year's Eve! Brilliant move, eh?) and as I was putting things in the cart I was remembering all the excitement and panic over Y2K. Hard to believe that was six years ago already.

We took the kids over to my parents last night and hung out a bit at their annual New Year's Eve party. They have a group of friends that they always get together with and rotate the party year to year to a different couple's house. Last night was my parents turn. We visited with them and snacked on some yummy food. The kids loved it because there were other kids to play and raise cain with. We're good friends with the son of one of the couples and he was there with three of his children. His children are older and more self-sufficient. Mine--not so much. They were pretty ramped up with the party atmosphere and so we spent most of our time watching them and keeping them from:

A. Breaking things
B. Hurting themselves
C. Hurting others
D. Ruining carpet, furniture, wallpaper, etc.

After a couple of hours of this we decided to throw in the towel and go home. Don't get me wrong, my children aren't little monsters. They're just 7, 3 & 1 with lots of excitement for the party, friends to play with and parents who can get distracted from time to time trying to carry on a conversation. They were pretty darn good for the most part it's just that we weren't able to really relax and enjoy things, plus the little one was getting sleepy.

So, off to home we went. We dodged the swerving cars and made it home in one piece. The girls celebrated the New Year early by popping the confetti champagne bottles on the porch and yelling "Happy New Year!" We let them stay up to watch the ball drop but neither one made it. We woke them up to watch the key moment and then they stumbled to their own bed. Of course that was only 11:00 our time so we flipped over and saw that Fox News was covering the ball dropping in Manhattan, Kansas (known around here as "The Little Apple")! My husband is a K-State alum so that was pretty cool to see.

While the girls were asleep on the couch I spent the time laughing until I was crying reading Crazy Aunt Purl's website. Love reading her entries, definitely my new favorite site. My husband thought I'd been swigging champagne behind his back. Do you ever read or see something funny and try to tell someone else about it? Except you completely ruin the story because you can't keep a straight face? And before you get to the punch like you start giggling and laughing? No? Just me? Well that was pretty much how every snippet of her site went that I shared with him. He just smiled and nodded his head like an adult does with a goofy kid who always tries to make up his own, better punch line to a joke. "Hey, hey, why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was a doody head! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Yeah, that was the same reaction I got. And since I can barely figure out how to post on my own blog let alone turn her name above into a magical link to her site I'll just type it out by hand since I'm just that lame:
http://www.crazyauntpurl.com Go, read, laugh, repeat.

After wiping the tears off my face, cleaning my glasses and blowing my nose a dozen times I actually did some knitting! Not only that I managed to do something New! And! Exciting! I began knitting in the round! For my first time! Although let me clarify that the only time last night my *husband* laughed until he cried was when he watched me trying to figure out how the hell I managed to turn the cast on row into a joined circular shape. I turned to my trusty lap top and did a quick search and found instructions! with pictures! Exactly what my non-engineering little brain needed. With the handy pictures I managed to join the knitting and get going on the sunshine hat. I now have 10 rows done and will be picking it back up after this entry. Only now I'm concerned about how I'm knitting it. I read something on Aunt Purl's site about if you don't hold your needles a certain way you actually end up knitting it inside out or some such thing. I'm just going to keep forging ahead though. It's going pretty quick and easy (which is usually a sign I've made a horrible mistake) so if I do screw it up I don't mind frogging and starting over.

Sorry no pictures of the progress. I let my photography/business partner borrow my CF card to shoot some weddings this weekend.

Have a great 2006!