Friday Fill-Ins #58

1. I’m looking forward to starting to knit my own socks this weekend.
2. Scotland is a place I always wanted to visit and haven’t made it there yet.
3. I’ve fallen in love with handpainted yarn.
4. Six of one, gives you a total of six!!
5. Addiction for me used to be fabric, now it’s yarn.
6. The Big Bang Theory guys crack me up!
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to just relaxing and catching up on my blog, tomorrow my plans include some long put off housework, and Sunday, I want to sleep!

Sunday Scribblings #97 Fridge Space

I’m not exactly complaining, you understand. If the ladies at work were to read this, they would have my head and for good reason. I know that my Sweet Baboo is just about the most perfect man on the face of the earth. They tell me — often, and with passion, that by comparison, I live with — well, someone who is very nearly perfect.

But — he leaves 3 or 4 spoonfuls of whatever is left over from a meal in each heavy duty plastic container in the fridge. When I pull one out to put it into a smaller container (I’m all about downsizing and simplifying, let me tell you) he will say, “oh, don’t bother honey, I’m going to eat that in a couple of minutes.” But then he doesn’t. Well, sometimes he does.

Or he will put a pork chop on an open plate without a cover in the fridge. Just as I’m about to put it into a container with a cover so it won’t dry out, “oh, don’t bother honey…….”.

Or I will pull out a container that has something unrecognizable in it, and just before I can throw it away, “oh, don’t bother honey……”

All kinds of wasted space in the fridge. All made by this wonderful man. That I wouldn’t trade for all the unwasted space in the world.

And this is the same man who stacks the hamburger patties and chicken breasts and frozen veggies in nice, neat little stacks, oldest on top always, in the freezer. Jeesh.

Not that I’m complaining. Really. Why would I complain?

If you have an opinion on fridge space check out Sunday Scribblings.

….and For My Next Trick, Ladies and Gentlemen…..

The lower part of our building is rented by two professionals. The lunchroom is also part of the lower part, but we rarely use it. It is used mostly by the tenants downstairs. It has come to our attention that they have a bit of a “ahem” rodent problem down there. Suggestions such as “maybe taking out your trash every night” and “it’s probably not a good idea to leave dirty dishes in the sink” were met with a frosty glare. I have to say that they tried those recommendations after they were suggested, (hard to believe that it had to be suggested, but there you have it) but it was a case of horse and barn door at that point.

Enter a bug guy. (You know them — guys in brown uniforms with large spray cans of who knows what wearing rubber gloves and goggles. They always try to tell you that the can contents are not toxic to anything but bugs. Bah!!) This bug guy spent nearly two hours down there setting those snappy traps and the sticky traps. We were starting to believe that he had set a trap down for every square foot of floor space. Kind of like the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons with the yard full of dogs.

Later that day — I go downstairs to pull a couple charts for incoming patients. (We have a utility room under the stairs that is just for old charts and other odd stuff. Like mice, apparently.) Although I have tried to make the filing as simple as possible, sometimes it’s a bit confusing and will involve opening several storage boxes before finding the chart you need.

So here I am, heaving boxes here and there and not really watching what I am doing. Or where I am stepping. Suddenly, my foot (I was wearing my old faithful Börn clogs which have a rubber sole) didn’t feel quite right. Looking down, I see that I had managed to step onto one of those sticky sheets. Darn little sucker wouldn’t come off. I took off my shoe and pulled on a corner of it for all I was worth — nothing. Tried using the other hand. Nada. (Of course my thumbs are so strong, I don’t understand why I was having a problem.) Finally, after pulling on this stupid thing for what seemed like hours, and thinking to myself, “terrific, I’m going to have to go upstairs with my shoe in my hand and find somebody to get this thing off for me”, I threw the shoe on the floor. Looked at it. Looked again. Stood on it with both feet. Bent over and hit my head on a box. Swore. Twice. Stood on it again. Pulled on one corner with both wimpy thumbs. Slowly, slowly it came off — then apparently decided that it had had enough fun with me and came off all at once. At which time I fell on my butt and hit my head on a box in back of me. More cussing. Even more being glad that there was no one there to witness my theatrics. Threw the sticky little #$@&^%* down on the floor again, picked up my charts and made my way back up the stairs, thump, whsht, thump, whsht, thump……. TGIF!!

Sockies for me, Act I

I have been bemoaning the fact to anyone that will listen that I haven’t knitted anything for myself yet, while making all kinds of items for family members. There were 2 scarfs that I made that I had intended to keep, but as soon as my neck started to get warm, it started itching like crazy, so they were passed on to Darling Daughter. Can I tell you how sad for me she was that I wouldn’t be able to wear them?

Moving on — I decided that socks in luscious Spring like colors would be great for me (and will look SOOOOO nice with my black dress slacks that I wear to work, wink, wink, nudge, nudge) — periwinkle, peach, lavender, mint green — and very unlike me, I ordered the yarn on line at a lovely little place called The Loopy Ewe. And from which I will definitely order from again, because I am a sucker for anyplace that sends me any kind of freebie. All it took was a piece of cardboard to keep track of DPN’s, which I don’t even use anymore, and I was a goner. Just look at the colors of this yarn. Positively yummy. My mouth doth water. It’s Seacoast HandpaintedYarn Superwash in color Lovebird. You can check it out here.

So — since this yarn is a little pricier than I usually use (but after all, I am worth it, eh?) I am being a good little knitter this time and swatching to make sure my gauge is correct. The yarn is just about fingering weight, very thin and size one needles. Well, size one for the cuff, then size two for the rest. For sure I don’t want to get part of a sock done, realize the size is wrong and then have to frog it all out again and possibly ruin the yarn in the process. That would certainly make for a very bad day. More later. Swatching awaits.