24, 7, 2, 7, 12, 1

{Please bear with me as this is the first time I've attempted to post to my blog via iPhone.}

Yes, it has been months. I am still here, just hindered by no Internet access at home. We moved into our new house, and hubby never ceases to amaze me with his "mad skillz" in home & auto repair. Still a long ways to go, but it feels like our home. Just recently ended my barista job to get ready to go off to school to cross-train in avionics. No exotic trips, but otherwise it has been life as usual.

The title of the post? Well, 24 is the number of unfinished knitting objects I found. Some just need a little finishing work, but that is just crazy! Seven is the number of gifts I'd like to finish before Christmas, and two is the number of of those projects that are part of the 24. Seven is also the number of days I have left to finish! Twelve is the number of sweaters I've committed to knit next year through NaKniSweMoDo. (National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathelon)

And one is the number of brain cells I apparently have left in my head!

And the Tofu Brain Continues...

Fortunately, when the AC stops working, it is a quick fix. Has it really only been three weeks since I blogged? Yikes! It seems like much longer! We found a house, THE house, and we close the middle of next month. I've read seven books, including the first four in the "Bloody Jack" series by Louis A. Meyer -- awesome books, couldn't put them down! I started Letterboxing and Geocaching (which is a challenge since I don't have a handheld GPS unit). I secured a part-time java job (start next week). My husband took off for Germany on Monday. In knitting news, there has been progress on the Annetrelac socks. I finished packing up my yarn from the second batch in the freezer. Oooo... I want to play with it all, and I want to play with it all NOW! I signed up for the knitting Olympics a while ago, and today just found the UFO Olympics. I have to choose one, and can't decide which will be best for the knitting mojo. The biggest complication is that I am packing up our house (by myself) and close on the new house in the middle of the Olympics. That may even be something I do alone, along with the beginning of the move. Of course before the move there must be cleaning -- LOTS of cleaning. The house has been empty for two years, and four of the windows were broken out. The crew that - ahem - "cleaned" it prior to showing left a lot of broken glass both inside and out. The pool will also need to be scrubbed. (Yes, I said POOL! Squee!!!! I have always wanted one! I don't care that it is a lot of work, so don't bother trying to rain on this parade!)

To give a little photo content, I'm sharing my Flair board from Facebook. Not over there as much as I was in the beginning, but still having fun with it. If you want a laugh, read the first three flair in the bottom row as consecutive sentences.

How COULD I forget?

The past six weeks! What ELSE have I been doing? Couponing has been resurrected! Yes, I AM one of those crazy coupon ladies, and I am not bashful about it! When I did it a couple of years ago, my successes included trips such as $465 worth of groceries for $65, and $123 for $0 (that isn't a typo). The big trip included beef and chicken, so don't even bother to start lecturing me on how it's only good for convenience foods that you normally don't eat anyway. So far I've scored $0.25 dish soap, $0.19 boxes of cereal, and several free items. Plus I have $7.00 more than what I spent at CVS the other day. Right now I'm mostly using The Grocery Game, with frequent trips over to Coupon Mom's website. I need to get back in touch with The Savvy Shopper, a gal in Mansfield who has her finger on the pulse of the local goings-on. BTW, if you decide to use The Grocery Game, please use my email (tayaschram AT yahoo DOT com) as the referring member. Once you get it set up, it doesn't take all that much time provided you maintain your book weekly. Last time I figured up my hourly wage to be $60 for couponing, including the time spent sorting the coupons and the actual shopping time. (And remember, you have to shop for food regardless of your methods.) Even if I donate a third of what I get, it is still the equivalent of $40 per hour for my efforts.

Purring cat...

...in my lap. Shadow. Frank's sister. She has quite the motor. I sit here faced with probably the same dilemma that I've had for the past, oh, six weeks? I'm tired, need to pack up and drive home (to the land of no internet access), I desire to blog, but just don't feel the comments to be worthy. Or there is so much jumbled up in the head I'm afraid once I start, I won't stop!

So, what has consumed me for the past six weeks? I lost my knitting mojo. Gone. Finito. Bye-bye. Not sure if it was the abrupt end of the yarn store plans (put on hold indefinitely for bigger & better things), or a burning out as a result of the Sock Madness frenzy (which yes, I realize I STILL have not blogged). Probably a combination, and I'm sure the little skin condition that popped up on my "yarn finger" contributed. Oh, and there was also knitting an afghan square with that HORRID cotton/acrylic yarn -- Knit Picks Comfy. Blech. I am happy to report that the mojo is slowly returning. Not sure if this is linked to finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for the highlighter yellow socks, or pulling all of my stash together and freezing it. I decided I needed to freeze & bag everything, rather than taking a chance on losing the stash to the moths. The bizarre thing is that I now know I have 44 cubic feet of stash, because I filled my chest freezer twice. Random facts -- I just love 'em. I also participated in the Fort Worth Knit in Public Day.

Wii Fit and Facebook. Don't remember which came first in May. It isn't even my Wii, but I've spent more time on it than anyone else in the family. Facebook has just been fun, and I think part of what might have been my blogging efforts ended up over there. I've reconnected with people I haven't seen since college and high school, and some family members who are distant by geography. I'm also learning more about my local family members based on their pages.

Read a little, did a little sewing, husband came home (Squee!!!!), and still trying to work that Guard transfer. House hunted. Gave a couple 30 minute massages. OH! How could I forget! Hawaiian Falls! Have a season pass, VERY challenging to blog underwater. They frown on taking laptops down the water slides, too. So there you have it. The perfect excuse for lack of blogging. It may also be noteworthy that my brain completely turns to tofu in the Texas summer heat & humidity. (There is a REASON we TRIED to move to Virginia!) I do think the water park is one of the keys to survival. And certainly more fun than a cold bath.

What do insomnia & slow internet connection have in common?

They both stink. Put them together, and you have my Friday night. I was in bed nearly three hours ago, but laid awake, so I finally got up to watch some Hulu. The connection is a little slow tonight, so it keeps hiccuping. A bit of a drag.

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind, so the blog was dropped first, with the swimsuit bootcamp closely following. The best part of the whole thing was that Jeff was home in the middle of it! I've also enjoyed my time cooking for a crowd, and going on a field trip with my niece's first grade class. I don't think I'd even heard of the Dallas World Aquarium before going -- the place is MAJORLY COOL! It did make me yearn to go diving again, especially when we saw a woman in the water feeding the manatees. It's been two years since my last dive. In addition to all of the aquatic life, there were many birds & other animals. Here are two of my favorite pictures:

Thursday's Flowers

The weather has been lovely, but there is a bit of that humidity sneaking in, and the temperatures are beginning to creep up. Blech. But, we know this is all part of living in north Texas. Spring is long and full of flowers, including some roses in my backyard. I miss the rose garden from our house in Grand Prairie: Jeff gave me half a dozen rose BUSHES one year. All heirloom varieties -- just gorgeous! He's quite a guy! My strawberry plants are also developing new flowers, so I suspect I still have many berries to come.

Makin' Whoopie!

Whaaaaaat! No, not THAT! Whoopie pies! Here they are, in all their yummy, gooey goodness!
It was a recipe from my Aunt Gail, and I made it for my nieces & nephews. I also made Chicken Tetrazzini. It was great to cook for a dozen people for a change, instead of just one. And I was finally able to photograph that second pair of felted clogs. They took a day and a half to knit, but sat unfelted for four months...
I'm very glad I tried the pattern again after my first pair came out warped. These are done in Paton's Classic Wool Merino.

Errands & Exhaustion

Not even a photo today. I do, however, have a lawnmower (unassembled, in the box), 40 pounds of sunflower seed, and two cubic feet of compost in my Beetle. What's in your car? Oh! And I forgot to mention yesterday the Danica scarf that is the current "keep it in the car" project in case I lose my sensibilities and forget to take a WIP with me when I run out the door. So that's keeping the lawnmower, sunflower seed, and compost company.

Unfortunately, Frank is apparently bored tonight and getting into everything. Okay, where is my Flip Video? I didn't even finish typing that sentence and he knocked over a table (with a glass top, mind you) and broke a lamp. All I could do was sit here and watched it go down in slow motion. I don't know how the glass survived. Yes, I had to change my mind and stop and take photos when I saw this:


Do you think he's trying to show me that the glass wasn't broken? I guess I'm adding super glue to my shopping list. This is the table he was under, and the reason he was under it and knocked it over is at the bottom of the picture.

Okay, now it is really time for bed.

A New Beginning

How exactly is one supposed to begin a new blog? I could easily have spent hours scouring the internet at the first post on hundreds of other blogs and stolen, ahem, borrowed a clever format or idea, but I spend more than enough time in cyberspace as it is. Aside from the usual email and the Ravelry dark hole, there is Sock Madness. Those crazy adventures deserve their own post, which will come in a couple of weeks when the Madness is complete. (And yes, I've already expressed interest to the moderators to include me for next year. Hence, the Madness.) This month, there is the Swimsuit Bootcamp over at SparkPeople. I've grown accustomed to navigating through the pages in Ravelry, and it is taking a little while to get my bearing over at SparkPeople so I can move through it quickly.

This blog is not yet formatted the way I would like it to look and function, but I'm battling the urges of that underlying disease of procrastifectionism and posting anyway. I mean seriously, if I waited until I had all my poop in a group there would never be a post. Life just kind of goes along that way.

Generally, there is something that needs to be finished before another thing can begin, so in that vein I'll reveal my current pile of UFOs. I also am aware that a post without pictures is very boring. Very boring indeed.

Nighttime photography under compact fluorescents does not lend itself to the best color representation, but hey, I'm doing my part to save the earth, right? Left to right starting with the red blob: the beginnings of two felted lobsters, a felted clam, a hat, Lucy's Diamonds scarf, Catherina Lace Seaman's scarf. Then there is a mouse that needs to be dressed & given facial features, Annetrelac socks, Something's Shady socks, an afghan square, the legs of another mouse, and the dark blob at the bottom is actually a forest green felted clog. One. It is lonely.

Full disclosure means I must also include this second photo. Traditionally, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but I think it can be used to describe a knitted finished object. "Almost" is when you bind off just a little too tightly and the project sits in the basket until you feel like you have nothing better to do that pick out the bind off on something where the stark contrast in the yarn completely obscures the lace pattern. (These socks have been worn on occasion, with the tail tucked in.) "Almost" is adequate to describe that pair of gift socks that cannot accommodate the recipient's high arch. (And of course they are done in a one-of-a-kind, made-just-for-her hand-dyed yarn that she LOVES, so the option of finding someone else they fit and knitting her a completely different pair is out.) "Almost" certainly must be appropriate for describing that bag that just didn't felt to expectations. And my husband's socks were finished, but now sit with the rest of them until I have the desire to duplicate stitch the soles while there are still soles left to reinforce. So nice to know the man loves his socks. So embarrassing to admit he still only has one pair.

That will wrap it up for tonight. Didn't come up with any grand and hopeful goals for when the pile will be complete, I just wanted to lay it out there. Perhaps there could be a common thread of "UFO Mondays?" Perhaps.