A busy couple of days....

Well, it's been a little while since I last wrote. I feel like I've been in a whirlwind, but this coming week should be calmer barring any unforeseen catastrophes. I'm knocking on wood as we speak, never fear.


Wednesday evening I cleaned the house as I had a knitting/Pampered Chef party planned at my house on Saturday, and planned the menu for the party. Thursday, I had to get a coffee cake fluted pan for the blueberry nut coffee cake I was going to make, so I picked one up on the way to my friend Alison's as I was headed there to knit. My knitting friends are hilarious. My face is usually tired when I get home from laughing so hard. I got home around 10 pm, which gave me a chance to clean the baby angelfish tank. Friday, I came home, went grocery shopping, picked up Vietnamese takeout at the Golden Bowl, vacuumed, did dishes and laundry. So, no major progress on any fronts except some net knitting at Alison's. (In our knitting group, net knitting means additional progress including any amounts ripped out. For example, if you knit 3 inches, but then have to rip out 4 inches, no net knitting occurred).


Saturday was the day of the party. There was knitting of course, and both Alison and I demo'd Pampered Chef recipes. My mom came down from Maine for it and to spend the night. In addition to the blueberry nut coffee cake, I made a rotisserie chicken in the Ronco Showtime Pro Rotisserie (I know it looks lame on TV, but I love that thing!!) and then used it to make a chicken and broccoli pastry wreath. I wish I took a picture, it was so awesome! Lora and Donna asked for the recipe, and it was really pretty easy to do, while looking fabulously gourmet. (Yes, I'm emailing the directions to you both later tonight). We also had some lovely fruit, as Alison tested out her new Pineapple Peeler/Corer. Alison made a fabulous coconut macaroon brownie pizza. It was so good! I also got to see some knitters I had not in a while, although it made me feel horrifically old. Liz and Mary, who are a mother daughter pair of knitters, took a class with me when I first started teaching at the Elegant Ewe somewhere in 1998 roughly. Liz was 14 then. She's now married...you can see how ancient this makes me feel. Also we had entertainment, as the angelish decided to spawn again during the party. I have another 200 eggs, the little aquatic rabbits.

After the party was over, since Mom had not seen the new wheels yet, we took it out for a drive and went to the Rockingham Mall. Given the disastrous state of colors available (everything appears to be orange, brown or teal, none of which I ever wear, unless I want to imitate a corpse), I bought two shirts for Shawn and some socks for me. Mom also bought socks. It was not a productive trip.


Today Mom and I hung out for a while and then I dragged her off to Goodale's bike shop in Hooksett to "look at" bikes. I ended up coming home with a Trek 7200 in eggplant. I spent a bit more than I wanted too, but the bike fit me, it was comfortable and it was purple! How could I not? I did have them put fenders on it though. I'm not into any type of splatter. I also got a doo-hicky that tells me my mph, has an odometer, and has a trip counter, temperature and time on it. After we got back, Mom headed back to Maine, and I headed up to the Borders in Concord for guild. I was pretty late, but I did get an hour of knitting in on the jacket I'm designing for Jen's daughter in New Zealand.

After guild, I met Shawn at his parents' house for dinner. It worked out pretty well, because his dad gave Shawn his old mountain bike, so now Shawn and I can ride together! Shawn is not terribly enthusiastic about the prospect, but it'll be good for him :) And if I can't cajole him into doing it, at least I can ride by myself, and we didn't spend any thing on his bike (other than getting it tuned up for him). Although I have to say, I'm pretty good at cajoling Shawn! I got home too late to try the new bike for a nice long ride, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow night after work.

I also I cleaned the baby tank tonight. There are 3 baby fish left from the first batch I tried to save, 2 left from the second batch, and now 200 eggs in the baby tank. They don't have great survival rates, but I swear I am not going to raise baby brine shrimp to feed these things.

Well, that's the blow by blow up to the minute. I am looking forward to finishing cleaning up the office reorganization this week, getting a writing schedule together, and riding the bike.

Latest Status Report

I haven't posted since Saturday night. Sunday was productive. I was able to work on the pattern for Mya's Jacket (working title, hoping to come up with something better later), for about 3 hours and had a passable draft, before I went to guild. For the the non-knitter readers among you, I organize the Concord Knitting Meetup group, and a fairly regular core group of us meet at Borders in Concord every Sunday. I was at least able to cast on and do a couple rows. Further progress just didn't happen though. I ended up entwined in the dishes and other things, like paying the bills. Then I couldn't sleep, so I read two novels instead of actually doing anything productive. (I am a crazy speed reader, through no real merit of my own...it's genetic...). Shawn's new work schedule is kind of throwing my sleep schedule off a bit. I'm not used to him going to bed before I do.

Monday not much happened, at least for the purposes of this blog. Shawn and I got our estate planning executed finally, and I ended up falling asleep ridiculously early, for me at least. All I accomplished was to clean out the baby angelfish tank. (This has to be done every day...sigh...why did I think trying to raise some would be interesting again??)

Today has not been much better. I managed to clean the baby angelfish tank. We're down to about 7 left from the original 100 or so. However, the parents spawned again, so there's now two hundred eggs in the community tank. I did the laundry, did some minor housekeeping work for my old office, and then I went through the Penzey's catalog because a friend is putting an order in. Then I did manage to knit for an hour on Mya's Jacket. I've already discovered a discrepancy (not an error per se, but a vague description in the pattern draft).

I've not yet managed to write at all. But honestly, my computer desk needs some serious help. I've not room to write. There's so much crap on the desk, that I don't feel like I have room for my notes and papers. I feel claustrophobic even just trying to type up knitting patterns from my notes, let alone try to write fiction. I think there's a room reorganization in our office's future, which will send Kiwi over the deep end. Her cage is in the office and she doesn't handle change gracefully. I am trying to decide if the reorg will be productive, or is a procrastination technique...feel free to comment.