Help My Friend

Please help my friend Crystal win the Florida Etsy Street Team contest by going here and voting for her copper shawl pin. The poll in the side bar to the right. Her shawl pins are beautiful! You can find Crystal's blog here and read more about the contest and see some more of her beautiful work.

All At Once

So a lot of things have happened in the last 24 hours. Most of which were bad.
1. Found out yesterday that I will no longer be doing the cleaning for the company I work for so I will be losing about 250.00 a month.
2. Came home from work to find that our refrigerator had quit working. ( I went grocery shopping Sunday night.)
3. Went to work on my secret knitting project to discover that my Zephyr knitting needle had broken.

All of that in 24 hours....really! Well, I can't do anything about number one other than try to find a way to make up for that lost money every month. The good news is our landlord is on his way to look at our refrigerator, bad news is our apartment is a MESS! Which, means Walt has to try and clean before Jack arrives, I am pretty sure this is the 2nd time Walt has cleaned since we moved into our apartment over 2 years ago. Other good news, KnitPicks is going to send me a replacement needle. The only downfall was that I really needed to be finished knitting this project tomorrow and well I probably won't have my needles until at least Thursday. Seriously, though I originally thought that our refrigerator was not covered by our landlord so I looked for a cheap used one. Yeah, they don't exist. They cheapest one I found was $195.00....OMG!! That's it for today. Let's hope the next 24 hours get better. 

Art!

So as most of you know Walt is an artist and has been struggling for a while to make his mark in the local art community. Well, I think things are finally starting to unfold for him and I am starting to unfold.

Two weekends ago we attended/participated in Platform Art Party, which is probably one of the biggest art shows in Lakeland aside from Mayfair. Well, of course Walt being who he is waited until the day before to start building his display for his art works. Granted Abby was kind of an unexpected distraction from preparing for Platform, but still I am sure he would have procrastinated. So here it is the day before Platform and we have 3 (8x4) foot pieces of Styrofoam that needs to be painting black, and then attach boards & hinges to it. Of course, it is also First Friday which means that we need to go check that out. So we were up until about 2 am Friday night working on the display, then we had to get back up at about 9 am Saturday to finish. So by this point Walt is stress and I am tired. Walt is really cranky which I am not used to at all so what might have been a fun team building project really became a nightmare. Fortunately, we have amazing friends like Marty Jones who helped up transport this massive piece. So then we are trying to find time to shower and make ourselves presentable and we still have no idea what we are going to do with Abby, we can’t possibly leave her home by herself yet. So we get ready and go to the venue and I finally just decide that I am tired, stressed, & over Platform. So Abby and I went home. We felt bad for missing Dad’s big event, but he didn’t mind. He even won a ribbon!!

Last weekend we had Walt’s Artist Meet and Greet at The Gallery at Lake Mirror. Which didn’t start out so stressful and I am not sure that the event was ever actually stressful. I think it was that Abby was very restless in the Gallery because her Daddy was moving around and talking so much so she took lots of extra attention. We had also been up for quite some time and the event went a bit late and we also went to Starbucks afterword. It was really nice to have lots of our good friends show up. Some that we have not seen in a while, we also met some new people and made some new friends. Most importantly thought, WALT SOLD HIS FIRST PAINTING!!! Yay! I was so shocked and so very proud of him. 

So as you can see it has been an adventure these past few weekends and well I am sure there will be more adventures to come!

Life With Abby!

I can't even begin to explain how much joy this sweet little dog has brought into our lives. She is so well behaved and mild mannered I can't get over it. However, I feel so stretched thin and stressed out. I am not used to waking up and having to immediately get out of my warm cozy bed and taking the dog out to pee. I am used to be able to hit the snooze button on morning that I really need it, but now not so much. I mean we are still working hard on this whole potting training thing and I don't want to blow it. Then on nights like last night where I worked until 7:15, then had to go to the grocery store, then had to cook dinner, had to feed the dog, had to give the dog medicine, hoping to get everything done by 8 so I could watch House! Whew! Fortunately, Walt is really great about covering the late night potty times. So he takes night shift and I take day shift. Next week Abby goes back for her first injection for her heartworms and we have to drop her off at the vet at 7:30 am. Which means we will have to wake up at 6:30 am....uggghhh! We also won't be allowed to pick her back up until 4pm. I am going to be so worried about my baby. She got to go to the dog park this weekend and meet some other dogs. I think that is going to take some time. She is also super protective of her mommy. I can't help but to smile when I watch her sleep and she starts to dream. I love when she sees that her daddy is sleeping in the morning and whines really loud to wake him up. I love our new puppy.

Welcome Home Abby!!

Where to start? Well, early Saturday morning Walt received a phone call from his brother Phillip. Phillip asked if we were allowed to have pets. Walt told him that we were, but it probably wasn't a good idea. Well, shortly after hanging up the phone with Phillip all Walt could think of was 'Olga' (that was Abby's name before). Phillip had told us that she had been at the SPCA for a long time because no one wanted her because she only had one eye.

So we decided that we would go take a look at 'Olga'. Granted there were some reservations. She is heart worm positive and there can be some danger in the treatment. We got to the SPCA and instantly fell in love with 'Olga'. She was so mellow and shy. So we decided we would take her home. First, things first though, we would have to change her name. So we named her Abby! After filling out all of the paperwork and getting all the necessary paperwork we walked next door to set an appointment for Abby to see the Vet and get her heart worms taken care of. (Her first appointment is tomorrow, I am so nervous). Next stop, PetSupermarket!! I then decided to spend entirely too much money, but how can you say no to that face! She has been so great these past 2 days and has brought many smiles & lots of laughter into our home!

Quick, Quick!!

Not much time to post, but I just felt the need to share what we had for dinner last night. Zuppa Toscana (which you will usually find at Olive Garden) made at home from scratch. It was so yummy! It is Walt's favorite thing from Olive Garden so I found the recipe here on CopyKat.com. I also made corn fritters which can be found through the Hillbilly Housewife blog. So that it is it. Just wanted to share yummy dinner.

Back To Knitting

My knitting world has been very strange lately. Lots of new techniques and unexpected projects. I started working on my first every lace project, which is Gail this beautiful shawl that kind of looks like peacock feathers when it is all finished. I am using this beautiful yarn that Francesca sent me.

 So, things started really well. I was really shocked and concerned that I hadn't had any issues. I mean so many seasoned lace knitters where really having problems with this shawl. So 1st repeat done, and the 2nd, and the 3rd, and the 4th, and the 5th, and then the 6th repeat came and something went so wrong. Not really sure what happened but I was suddenly short a stitch. So I tinked back a few rows and things were good and then suddenly I was short 1 stitch again. WTF??!!?? Well, the last lifeline (so thankful I used these I tend to skip those extra steps like swatching) was at the end of the 4th repeat which meant I had to take out the 5th & 6th repeat. Not that big of a deal because I am certainly a process knitter and well I am really enjoying the process of this shawl. Got almost to the end of the 5th repeat and I was short 1 stitch again all of a sudden. I feel like I am losing a stitch somewhere on my purl row but I can find it. Hmmmm. I am starting to get frustrated just because I hate not being able to do something right. I CAN follow directions! Well, Gail is currently taking a backseat since I working on a top secret project for Francesca. I will say that it requires about 700 yards of fingering weight and is Halloween themed to go with the theme of of next swap package. It is going really well and rather quickly. Walt even really likes and he doesn't often drool over the things that I knit. Speaking of Walt his socks are still on hold. They will be the death of me. They have become a project knit instead of a process and well I have just kind of been avoiding them. I know they will be fantastic when they are finished, but I have frogged them about 3 times now and just can't really stand to touch them at the moment. They are also plain socks which can be so boring at times. Lastly, I recently made a bunch of coasters to sell at the First Friday event. I was only given a weeks notice and had to whip up what I could as quick as I could. I also made a ton of soap in different scents, bases, colors, shapes, etc... I still have some lace/fingering weight yarn that I am trying to spin that has been sitting on the back burner since my spinning section of the couch has been blocked by a tote full of randomness.