A Little Help, Please?

Hey again! If you live in or around Albuquerque, and have about an hour free around one o' clock Friday afternoon, and are willing to help a fellow blogger, will you please email me? I would greatly appreciate it!

The End...Or Is It?

Well, here I am, making my final post on the last day of NaBloPoMo. I really enjoyed posting every day. I was actually surprised that I found stuff to blog about, whether it be things that my lovely readers suggested, memes, or my own random mumblings. You guys didn't have to see what I ate for dinner once! Aren't you proud of me? This has been such a great challenge for me. I started blogging mostly to share news with my friends and talk about being pregnant. Blogging for me has evolved so much further than that! Yes, I still like to give you all the news and talk about Joie, but I somehow have wedged my way into this huge online blogging/knitting community, and am making new friends all the time. I learned a butt load of css and html along the way. I've begun archiving my knitting here.( Who knew I would ever have enough to archive?!) I can't believe that one day I just happened to stumble upon all that is knitting and the Internet. I'm glad to be here, though! It is so much fun to make connections to people you never would have known otherwise. Bloglines is now a major part of my morning routine, and I really do enjoy reading every one of the 50 or so blogs that I am subscribed to. I hope you all have been enjoying mine as well! Well, I have some news, but before I break that out, I thought I would share with everyone my most recent Google hits. I check these every other week or so, and I always think it's funny what comes up. ~I'm not an addict baby ~Malabrigo Scarf ~how to interchange pumkin and pumkin pie mix (I really need to fix the spelling on that post.) ~Malabrigo Velvet Grapes ~One Skein Malabrigo Scarf ~blogspot pie crust ~Control-a-Woman Remote ~"short row ribbed" ~knitting dice bags for dnd I always have at least one hit from the dice bag. I really should put my patterns into pdf and put them on the sidebar, huh? Sometimes I get really weird stuff, too. The control-a-woman remote is a bit out there. The only reason I got a hit for that one was because in my blogroll "a ball of yarn and a remote control" comes right before "a woman obsessed". Funny! I've been getting a lot of Malabrigo hits as well, which is cool, and all the more reason to put my scarf pattern up on the sidebar so it's easy to find. Well, before this gets any longer, I have some news. For those of you who enjoy my blog, it'll be great. For those of you who are tired of reading me every day and wish I would shut up, you may be disappointed. I've joined another post-every-day-this-month thing! This one is Holidailies. I debated wither or not I wanted to, but I really liked posting every day, even though some days were crazy. I think I can do it for another month! It'll be a little weird with holiday travel and such, but I'm pretty sure I can do it. This one doesn't seem as hip or fun as NaBloPoMo, but good motivation, at least. They're not accepting wee little blurbs, either- each post mast have at least 50 words or one photo to count. They're still taking sign ups, so go check it out! SEE YOU TOMORROW!

Uuuuh....

I'm really at a loss as to what to blog about. Usually I can goof around on the Internet or something until I think of something good, but no go tonight. So, I'm just going to babble for a few minutes and you'll just have to deal with it, mmkay? I just cranked out another dishcloth- I'm getting a little sick of them, to tell the truth, and I think tomorrow or maybe even tonight I'm going to start one of my few remaining Christmas knitting projects. I'm sure all of you are sick of hearing about my Christmas knitting, as am I. There are quite a few things that I would like to knit for myself, and I'm really looking forward to our Christmas vacation where I'll have some airport and flying and down time to knit for ME. Although, I really do love knitting anything, even if it is dishcloths for my grandma. It is fun to knit for people, especially when I know it is something they will like and I can proudly say I made it myself. I'm really amazed at how far I have come in the last year with knitting. A year ago, I had finished just the one acrylic baby blanket. I now have so many different projects under my belt, and have learned so much! I braved the dpns, and now am really comfortable with them. Socks are soon to come! I've been wanting to knit up the awesome yarn that Knitpastis dyed for me in the Dye-O-Rama swap. This next year I would really like to try some Fair Isle color work and cables. I'm going to attempt the awesome fingerless glove pattern Fetching for my mom for Christmas- if they turn out a bit wonky, I'll just keep them! Although, they are pretty basic cables, and I should be able to do it. I have faith! I would also like to dye some more yarn. I am so inspired by the colors of everything around me, from the gorgeous New Mexico sky to the bright colors in a bag of Skittles, and I would love to translate those into yarns I can knit for myself and friends and family, and maybe even someday sell. I have so many ideas swimming around in my head, I just need to get organized and start doing things! I would love to be able to make a decent amount of money dying yarn and sewing awesome needle cases and with other crafty goodness. I actually have a knitter Christmas project in the works, Maybe in the next few days I'll be able to show you and have some for purchase. Are you excited? Well, for random babbles, I think that was pretty good. Thanks for sticking it out to the end!

Dishcloth Knitting

I've been cranking out dishcloths for Christmas gifts, so I thought I would share my favorite pattern for them. This one is so simple, and you can make two dishcloths from one ball of Peaches N' Cream cotton. I'm sure this pattern can be found in multiple places, it is by no means of my own invention. Enjoy! Basic Dishcloth Pattern Needles: US 6 straight Pattern: Cast on 4 stitches. Increase row: knit 2, yarn over, knit to end. Repeat this row until you ahve 44 stitches on the needle. Decrease row: knit one, knit 2 together, yarn over, knit two together, knit to end. Repeat this row until you only have 4 stitches remaining. Cast off. Voila! A dishcloth! Speaking of which, I know some people are really anal about using their dishcloths for actual dirty work. I used one of mine to scrub the floor today, and I regularly use them for counter clean up. Does this make me a bad person? I mean, they're just so much more durable than other rags and stuff. Plus, they only take about 3 or 4 solid knitting hours, and they cost about 80 cents a piece. Should I really save them just for wiping off things that are nearly clean? I think not.

Sorry, Elmo.

Two of your friends may have been harmed in the making of these scarves. Nonetheless, two young girls will be absolutely tickled to receive them as Christmas gifts. Here are the two Muppet Murder Scarves, one in hot pink and one in bright purple. This is also my one allotted fun fur post for the year. These were so easy to make. I used one skein for each scarf. I cast on 15 stitches and just knit until I ran out of "yarn". They are the perfect size for a little girl- if for some ungodly reason you would like to make one for yourself, I would get two skeins. I still need needles for more Christmas knitting, so I've been working on more dishcloths that will go out as Christmas gifts, as well. I recently discovered that I can knit dishcloths without even looking at it while I knit, so they are my new favorite TV knitting item. I think I'm going to go to Hobby Lobby today and get some needles, though. Christmas is right around the corner now! In other news, you should go check out Stitchy McYarnpants if you haven't already. Especially funny for knitters, but good clean fun for everyone! The most recent post is positively creepy.

I Promise

This will make you laugh. If it doesn't, you are either both blind and deaf (if that is the case, how would you read my blog anyways?) or a heartless bastard. C'mon. You know you want to. It's worth it, I promise! I promise, also, that tomorrow my blog will be less lame and I'll have pictures of dead muppets.(Not really. Close, though...)

Blah.

Worked this morning, just got home. I'm a bit tired. We're about to go up Santa Fe to do nerdy things and chill for a bit. More working tomorrow. Blah. Sorry, that's all you get today.

An Alphabet Meme

So, here's another meme that I think I made up. Don't take my word for it, though. I didn't really check. Anyways, what I did was type in all the letters of the alphabet, one at a time, into my little search bar up top there. (See it? right there.) Here's the first word or phrase that popped up for the auto-complete function. I know, kind of lame, but whatever. It could be worse! Albuquerque civil ceremony Blog idea Calabacita Day of the Dead Embroidery tutorial Fragile Things Graphics interchange Halloween blog image I can't believe pandamonium! J- I got nothing. Knit cthulhu Lacevember Matte black razr application error Nancy Drew Game O- Nada! PNG images Q-again with the nothing. Razr application error Sandra Bennett Tazo Calm U- empty. V- two in a row! Wacom Mouse X- yeah right. Y- possible, but not in my world. Z-index Yeah, I know it was kind of lame. At least I provided some strange insight into my life, right? I know you were all curious.

HEY!!

So, for whatever reason, the craphole that is Blogger Beta decided to switch how they do their feeds. So, for all of you out there who are subscribed to my site through bloglines or some other nifty notifier, you have to click here and subscribe to the url that comes up. That is my new feed. Make sure to read all the posts you've missed bacause of wonky Blogger Beta. If you want to do it another time, just find the little guy that tells you how over in the "Who I Am" section on my right sidebar. This really pisses me off, by the way. I think Blogger Beta sucks nuts. Seriously, it has taken me all week just to adjust everything and get it working properly.(Erin, when you're ready to switch over, give me a holler, because you're template is based off of mine. ) Hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

First off, I want to apologize for minor blog wonkiness. I've finally fixed the permalink issue, but not sure if my feeds are working (they haven't been since I switched to beta) and I need to make a few adjustments, as you can probably tell. At least they are minor things like text size and that crap. With Thanksgiving being tomorrow and Christmas around the corner, I thought I would share my favorite holiday dessert recipe for pumpkin cheesecake. It is super yummy, and really easy to make. Pumkin Cheesecake Ingredients: 16 ounces of softened cream cheese 1/2 C. Sugar 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 2 eggs 1/2 C. canned pumkin 1/2 tsp. each of cinnamon, ground cloves, and ground nutmeg One 6 ounce pie crust First off, make sure the cream cheese is softened. Just let it sit on the counter for about an hour. If it isn't softened, then you'll get little cream cheese chunks in it and it won't look as nice. Next, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Cream together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. Add the remaining ingredients and blend well- it should be smooth and creamy with no creame cheese lumpies. Pour into pie crust (I like to use a big measuring scoop so as not to make such a huge mess). Make sure to save the plastic liner from the pie crust- when the pies are all finished, you can take off the label and sticky glue crap, and use it as a lid. Just flip it upside-down and pinch the pie tin edges over it- voila! Easy to transport!I find that it doesn't all fit into the pie crust- that's okay! You don't want it overflowing. Put it in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until the center is set. This means that when you pull it out with some hot pads and give it a little shake, the center doesn't wiggle like it is still wet. It'll jiggle a little- kind of like set jello. Cool and refridgerate until serving. This recipe is really easy to double, as well! If you're not afraid of eating raw eggs, you can lick the spoon and eat the leftover filling like decadent pudding. Enjoy!

Blog Problems

So, I switched over to Blogger Beta a few days before I had finished my new design. Thankfully, they let you still use the old template style, because the new one is all full of widgets and absolutes and other weird things that I don't understand. (I guess it's some weird server code or something stupid like that.) Well, folks, all is not coming up roses here. for whatever reason, Blogger decided that in their beta version, each post page would be it's very own website. (the post page would be the one that displays just the post you want to see and none of the others.) This has been my major headache for two days now. For whatever reason, when you click the link that takes you to the post page from my main blog site, it fucks all of the layout up and stacks it instead of setting it up all pretty side by side. so far, the only thing I have been able to fix is to put the sidebars in the right place, but then the whole body of the post disappears. This really sucks, folks. I may just break down and figure out all the mumbo jumbo that is Blogger Beta. Moving right along, I finished the Pink Muppet Murder Scarf and now am cranking out the purple one. The knitting is easy and fairly mindless (Fun Fur can be tricky!) so hopefully this one will be done in a few days as well, and then I can move on to other knitting goodness. Once I get this one done, I'll post pictures of both of them together. I don't think I can allow more than one post a year that involves pictures of Fun Fur. Once these are done, I have just a few dwindling Super Secret Christmas Gifts that I need to get needles for. Very do-able in the next month. Yaay! I may have time to knit for myself before Christmas!

Tada!!

I finally got everything just the way I wanted it! Unfortunately, I was up until about 3 this morning trying to figure out the problem, with no success. It only took me about an hour after I woke up this morning to get it fixed. Lesson learned: adequate sleep does wonders for thinking. For those of you who were curious, I was having trouble with my table opacity causing everything inside the table to be become semi-transparent as well. Text wasn't a big issue, but I didn't like seeing my background through pictures I had posted. The problem was easily solved by taking out the opacity commands and just replacing the background with a semi-transparent PNG! Cool, huh? Last night's meeting was even more suckage than I had anticipated. Plus, my boss said I couldn't knit because it would be "distracting to others". C'mon, what's distracting about hot pink Fun Fur?! At any rate, I'm planning to work on it as soon as I am done blogging, hopefully I can finish it today. I'm going to do one for her slightly older sister, too, but in bright purple. I would just like to state for the record I am really proud of my Christmas Knitting progress this year. I stumbled upon this somehow, and it's kind of cute and fun, so go check it out!

Knitting and Stuff

Today at work I practically accosted a customer because she was wearing a hand-knit poncho-wrap thingy made from Noro. Apparently, she didn't mind, and we had a nice chat about knitting and how it sucks that Malabrigo is only available in Taos. The poncho-esque garment was actuatlly really cue, and would be super easy to make. I think I know where Christmas cash may be headed. I have to go back to work in a little bit for a staff meeting. I'm going to be hopeful and bring my knitting, and hope that if I explain to my boss that it's only garter stitch and I can pay perfect attention, I can knit through it. (Side note: just because I will be capable of providing devoted attention while knitting doesn't mean I will. Most likely, I won't. Staff meetings are teh suck.) So, maybe I'll be able to finish the scarf for my little cousin. I've nicknamed this scarf the Muppet Murder Scarf. For those of you unfamiliar with Fun Fur, you'll know why when I post a picture of it. Although, you may be getting a clear image already. I've been trying to get my new blog design to work properly, and it isn't cooperating, so you'll just have to wait a bit longer. Sorry. It'll be well worth it, I promise! Maybe tomorrow I can get it to work how I want it to, since I'll have all day to play with it. keep your fingers crossed!

Joie Eating Spaghetti

I'm pretty tired- another long day at work, and another ahead of me tomorrow. Instead of going in at 11 like I originally thought, I have to open at eight. I'm not sure if I misread the schedule or what, but either way, it kind of sucks. My tired brain is unable to create anything that is intelligent or remotely interesting, so here are some pictures of Joie eating her first spaghetti. It's of the pre-made baby variety, so more messy than regular spaghetti. Either way, adorable baby + messy food = CUTE!

The Fridge Meme

On another note, I just did a google search for "fridge meme" and I am so shocked at how many people have done it! I am so proud of my idea. I should start memes more often! Maybe tomorrow I'll check out all the fridges.

With 15 Minutes to Spare

I barely made it home to blog today! I just got home from work. We had a l ong day. We were up at 8:30, and spent most of the day downtown, trying to get married. We got our marriage certificate, but it's not official yet. Hopefully soon. I had to work at five, and we got home from being out around four. So, a long day. I apologize for another lame post, but I have to be to work at nine tomorrow, and am ready for bed. See ya!

The Fridge Meme

No, you have not seen this one anywhere before, because I invented it. Yep. That's right. Me. I invented a meme. I don't really think anyone else will do it, but it at least gives me something to post here when my brain won't work. So! The rules of the meme are simple. Take a picture of the front of your fridge. If you want to, go into detail about what is on it- you don't have to detail everything, but maybe a few key things. Post said picture on your blog. If you're really brave, you can even take a picture of the inside. I, sadly, am not that brave. You can click on the picture to see the annotated version with witty and fun details about my fridge goodies. In knitterly news, I started a scarf for my youngest cousin in hot pink Fun Fur. She's about four, so it'll be right up her alley. Plus, I had a little more than a ball left in my stash (don't ask) and I need new needles for remaining Christmas gifts. On size 11 needles, it's going pretty quick. Hopefully in a day or two I'll have it finished. In other news, I've decided to revamp the blog. I've been playing a lot with other people's blogs- Erin's in done, go check it out- and I've been helping James make a cool photo blog that should be done soon. All the fun playing with fonts and html made me want to do some of my own, so I have been working on it most of the day. Hopefully mine will be all shiny and new in a few days, too!

That One Word Meme

I've seen this a few places around. The rules are that you can only answer with one word- no explinations! So here goes. 1. Yourself: Tired 2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse): Working 3. Your hair: greasy 4. Your mother: dentist 5. Your Father: blah 6. Your Favorite Item: none 7. Your dream last night: unsure 8. Your Favorite drink: eggnog 9. Your Dream Car: mustang 10. The room you are in: quiet 11. Your Ex: immature 12. Your fear: bats 13. What you want to be in 10 years? happy 14. Who you hung out with last night? Family 15. What You’re Not? unhappy 16. Muffins: restricted 17. One of Your Wish List Items: money 18. Time: afternoon 19. The Last Thing You Did: dishes 20. What You Are Wearing: black 21. Your Favorite Weather: autumn 22. Your Favorite Book: Narnia 23. The Last Thing You Ate: Triscuit 24. Your Life: busy 25. Your Mood: great 27. What are you thinking about right now? this 28. Your car: Kia 29. What are you doing at the moment? typing 30. Your summer: quick 31. Your relationship status: engaged 32. What is on your TV? shit 33. What is the weather like? brisk 34. When is the last time you laughed? sister Whew! That was harder than I thought it would be. Give it a try!

My Obsession

I know I've stated in the past that I'm addicted to notecards. Well, friends, that is too true. I can hardly resist. I have to look at them everywhere I can find them. Most times, I'll buy them. I currently have more than I think I could send before I turn 40. Does that stop me from buying more? Sure doesn't. James claims that I once told him to not let me buy anymore. Clearly, I was not in my right mind, so said statement is dismissed by reason of temporary insanity. I buy a lot of them from the dollar bins at Michael's. That is by far my favorite place to get them, because it's so cheap. The dollar stores occasionally have some good ones. I really covet the great ones you see in bookstores and at Target, but since those are quite a bit pricier, I tend to hold off on those. I love it when I have an excuse to send a card for any reason. Sometimes I even make them up. To document to craziness, here's a picture of most of my notecards. Here are my favorites out of the bunch: These are some of the new additions for the upcoming holidays. (I also have some snowmen and another sparkly one.) You are all free to send me notecards at any time, I will gladly divulge my address. So, there it is. Actual documentation of my obsession. The really sick part is I took almost 50 pictures to lovingly capture these three shots of my collection. Plus I took the time to edit them in Photoshop. I know, I'm sick. I'm going to see if I can find some notecards on eBay.

The Albuquerque Aquarium

Last Friday, James and I took Joie to the Albuquerque Aquarium. It was really cool! I had never been, and James hadn't gone in a long time. Joie was so fun to watch- She was completely enthralled by the fish. It was a lot of fun for all of us, and actually pretty reasonable in price. The fish and sharks were cool, but by far my favorites were the rays and the jellyfish. They has some of the biggest rays I had ever seen, and a huge tank full of jellyfish, just floating around. I'd never seen live jellyfish, so that was definitely cool! Towards the end of the aquarium, they have a huge window into a tank that covers an entire wall, floor to ceiling. We could have sat there and watched the fish and sharks and turtles for hours. Joie had a blast here, too, because she could stand against the window and check out all the action. We all had a ton of fun, and will definitely be going back.