gaysknits

lest you think there is no knitting going on here...

let me say there is knitting to talk about...it just so happens that it is knitting that i didn't do.  before i continue i want you to also know that i am aware  that this is the season of giving but today when the guy and i went to the shopping center to do some last minute shopping i uncovered a real find...a gem...it was on the clearance rack and i could not leave it at the store so i gave it to myself!  ha ha merry christmas to me!!!

today was my first day off work for the rest of the year and i had shit piles of stuff to do.  the guy woke up saying he had this feeling that he needed to buy just one more gift and he wanted to go early. i'm always up for a shopping trip...early, late, weekends, weeknights, whenever so i coffeed up and we hit the road.  we found exactly what we were looking for in the first store but went to the second store anyway and that's when the trouble began. i was not intending to do any shopping. i am shopped out, wrapped up and ready for the big day.  i had a few things to buy from the grocery store and then i had lots of cooking to do.  the guy not being a fan of the department store where they sell clothing went next door to browse. i scoped out the clearance signs and immediately stumbled upon this red plaid coat hanging all willy nilly at the end of the rack of coats made of shiney polyester and black wool and fake fur trim...not that there's anything wrong with that.

i have nothing against a nice vegan coat and as a matter of fact i had just tried on a perfecty cool as hell zippered vegan pleather belted coat but the problem was that the zipper was broken and when i got it on i was lucky to have been able to slither out of the thing without out requiring scissors!  i try on this red plaid coat with knitted sleeves and a knitted collar...i told you there was knitting involved...and it was love at first sight.  it is cute as hell and the price seemed perfect until i notice that the label says free people and suddenly the price is not just perfect it is a real steal and i have to look over my shoulder to see if iam am going to be arrested!

 

i loooove free people and i cannot put this coat down...it is meant to be my christmas present!  ho ho ho!   i love this coat. i love the knitted collar. i love that part of the sleeves is knitted.  i love that it is a perfect fit and i love that it is lined in cotton jersey.  i love that it is warm as could be and i love that it is sooooo cool! i don't love that it was made in china but that is another story. so i bought the coat, i finished my grocery shopping and my cooking and i have beef to jerk tonite and candy to pack up in tins and i am ready for the big day and when it's all over i may just sleep a week!

this home made moose munch is so addictive and it is soooooo good and believe me i know because i ate it until i was sick the other day! hope your holiday is happy.  later...love   g

they told us it was cracked...

the sewer pipe that connects to the main line has a crack and it threatens to cave in on itself which will not be good.  hell it isn't good now! when the water comes up the drain in the basement it kind of spoils my day.  i know...nice talk only days before christmas.  if you have a joke about  this believe me when i say i have heard them all.  some are funny some and some are gross and some do not amuse me at all sort of like what they want to make a repair amounting to approximatley the price of a new car  which  even though i have not paid for my old car yet i still had to fork out cash to fix the window. fa la la la la huh?

i have no nicer talk this week. i was home yesterday cooking and candy making and gettting back to the basics of  giving homemade gifts for the holidays and i suppose i have only myself to blame but i think i ate too many nuts and they attacked me right in the guts and wow i haven't had a stomach issue like that since the one that brought me to my knees and made me seek treatment for an ulcer.  hoo boy.  i'm on the upside now but am not looking forward to christmas eve and all that fried fish at the moms or to christmas day and turkey and stuffing at the daughters...turkey being another of the foods that will spoil my day.  ah well maybe i'll start on the nexium now to prevent a future meltdown.

in case you didn't know or don't watch the news or the weather like i don't it snowed here this past weekend. i don't know how far reaching the snow storm was but every blog i have read from the east coast has pictures of snow...mine included.  we are silly when it comes to our first snow. sort of  like in the spring when we all run out and take a picture of a single lonely blossom that pops up out of the ground from it's long winters nap.  you  mean everyone doesn't do that???  our first snow brings us joy and excitment and we pray for a day off work or school. we run out with our cameras in the first light of day and take our dogs out for a romp as if they have been waiting all year to get some ice between their toes.

we are giddy  when it comes to our first snow of the season.  we get sick of it fast. we get sick of the salt stains on our cars and our good leather shoes and the crud hanging off of our fenders.  we get sick of the shoveling and the boots we put on that first day and never take off...for months.  we get sick of the mud that is underneath all that snow when it starts to  melt and we get aggravated that the dogs track all that mud into the house and then get in our bathtubs and make a real mess of things.  you mean not everyones dogs do this???  we get sick of bundling up like ralphy until we can hardly move our arms to reach into our purse to retrieve our keys. i am already  sick of idiots in four wheel drive vehicles full of themselves running me off an icey road. i am sick of putting on my snow boots and my coat every time the german has to go out and pee because he can no longer stand and walk on the ice with out someone holding him up by the handle on his fancy new harness...can't he learn to flush or something???  for now none of that matters.  for now the snow is glorious and we are in love and it is all we can talk about.  later...love   g

today i will ramble....

on and on and on. i have a lot of ramble in my head today and maybe it will go somewhere...maybe not.  i just noticed typepad has a quick compose like face book or twitter. i think i will try that but not today. today i have rambling to do. i have lots of work to do too but it is not work that i have been occupying myself with lately. it is knitting, it is reading, it is cooking well really candy making i should say that has been occupying my time lately.  i made myself sick eating the pecan brittle i made for the mom and she did get some of it but i ate a good share  myself and it was delicious. every year i make cookies for the holidays and they take up large hunks of time and for the most part go un eaten because there is so much else to eat and because i don't have the opportunity to see the people that will be eating the cookies until the day  of the holiday so this year i will not bake cookies.  i will make peoples favs.  i have people who love peanut brittle, i have people who will gorge on beef jerky, i have people who hoarde chocolate covered potato chips and then i have myself who will eat an entire recipie of thumbprint cookies all by myself and the guy will do the same to chocolate chips. i plan to limit my baking to the favs.

shopping...i plan to cut out practically altogether. well except for socks and patchoulli incense and of course the grandpuppy will get a giant bag of dog food. she has a new favorite kind this year so it will be a treat!  speaking of shopping...for my birthday i decided to buy a pair of boots. let me say that before i found the perfect pair i ordered and returned four other pair.  i used a tank of gas driving them back to the postal office and geez the mailman must think i am crazy and the last box i got in the mail had this printed on the side in big letters "highly addictive contents inside" ain't that the truth!  i returned a pair of snow boots that were wonderful but too small. i returned a pair of suede flat boots that had sheepskin inside and were too big.   i returned a pair of suede  wedge heel boots that were perfect  except they were too wide in the calf.  i returned a pair of tall buckled leather boots that were so cute with jeans but they were also way too wide on my skinny legs.  i bought and am in love with a tall pair of leather scrunchy boots with a  half inch heel and a bit of point to the toe and they are soo comfy, yum and cute. then rather than sell on e bay my old practically unused tall suede boots that did not fit under jeans only over them i gave them to the youngladygrandaughter  so she has new boots and there is still not a huge pile of boots in my closet. i kept one pair of snow boots to replace the ones that sprung a leak last year and one pair of black flat boots to replace two pair of suede flats...one tall  and one short so i am really short one pair of boots but no worries i have handled that. a pair of brown midcalf buckle boots is on the way to my front door and i hope they fit me because i love them but if they do not i will not hesitate to return them in exchange for a bigger or a smaller pair of the same boot but maybe in black  instead. highly addictive contents indeed!   i will not have time to knit gifts either.  the mom  will be dissappointed but she received a scarf for her birthday and i have been knitting gifts for the past few months so i will be occupying myself with a few personal projects.  one of which is the sweater coat and i have a design in mind  for that. as a matter of fact the guy sat through a fashion show of sorts when i went to the local national chain discount department store and tried on at least seven or was it fifteen sweater coats made from blends of acrylic yarn that i cannot stand to wear or to touch but i did find a style that i like so no harm done.

 i am also in the process of accumulating a wealth of yarn in shades of red.  i swear every day i order yarn in a different shade of red or a yarn with a different texture or fibre content for a sweater that is literally being designed as i knit it. whoa so unlike me to  do something like this and yet so perfect for me. it is inspiring. it  is fit to order and it is fun.  so far i have some wine cashmerino, some mauvey kidsilk aura, some red mohair, some rose red merino that i may or may not use depending on what the design of the neckline of the thing turns out to be...surprise, some maroon alpaca which i definately will not be using as it does not have enough color variation and or it clashes with the other yarn, and some angora blend yarn i ordered for additional texture and have not received  in a shade of red and when i woke up on friday morning i shouted to myself "it needs some violet" so i ordered a red violet angora. wait til you see this thing! it will either be fugly as hell or exciting and wonderfully creative!  i have no idea what the style will be. that changes in my head daily and as a matter of fact i am off now to rip out the neck and re do it to the specifications that were in my head when i woke up this morning.  so far the body is knit to the ribcage, the sleeves knit to below the elbow and i have started the neck/collar.  all of the above is done in cashmerino so it will be a soft and comfortable item next to the neck and upper body where the skin is most sensitive.  the cost is becoming astromomical. it all started out as a real bargain on the cashmerino...twenty bucks for four skeins is a real bargain then i added thirty five bucks to the total and then an additional twenty then again twenty more so we are already up to ninety five dollars and this thing is way out of the price range of anything i would normaly pay for a sweater to wear with my twelve dollar jeans but on the other hand that's entertainment! these are what is left of one of my brithday flower arrangements and a new pet  the guy found lost and wandering around and loving animlas as he does he adopted it...i keep him in a jar of alcohal! later...love   g

i talk to myself...

all the time. i talk to myself while i am at work constantly...i have wierded out several people who have at one time or another sat in the cube next to me. i talk to my self while i drive...a lot.  as a matter of fact i composed a  whole post the other day on my way to work and it's  a shame i didn't tape record it because it would have been a good one and now...i forgot what i was even thinking about at the time.  i would blame it on the early hour of the day but the truth is i forget lots of things these days. it could have been that i finished the book i was reading and now i must find another one to start on tuesday at approximatley noon while i eat my lunch...that doesn't leave me much time. it could have been that the four pounds of peanut brittle i made were a huge hit with the mom as was aisling fall shawl...multnomah which she is going to wear as a scarf.

it could have been that i have agreed to make another pair of armwarmers by thanksgiving and i have no wool do make them with (they were requested to be made in black).   the black wool was added to the tail end of an order of yarn i placed at webs and they have yet to ship it. as a matter of fact not only have they not shipped it but they put a hold on my credit card in an amount that does not include the particular yarn that i placed the order for in the first place.  grrrr. now i am in a holding pattern. it could have been the news that i am knitting a sweater.  it all started innocently enough. i ordered some purple  cashmerino and some navy cashmerino  for some knitted gifts and while i was at it  i nabbed some wine cashmerino  because it was a heck of a bargain but it was not enough to make a whole sweater out of so rather than make a  a cropped something or other i decided to make a striped something or other.

i started out with a pattern in mind but as soon as i cast on i changed my mind and now i am not making that but something else entirely...that is if i ever get the rest of my yarn from webs.  grrrrr.  all this is cutting into my i have to knit i promised to knit a christmas stocking for one of the boy oh boys before christmass decorting time and that time has arrived hasn't it?  also i am desperately seeking a sweater coat and god knows i don't know why because i am way to cheap to pay for a nice one and i am way to picky to wear a cheap one so i have no sweater coat.  i may have to knit one.  it will take a long time i suppose and it will most defninately cost way more than i would ever pay for a store bought one but i'm thinking i'm going to go for it as soon as my gift knitting of a pair of arm warmers and a christmas stocking is finished. i was considering the vogue knitting pattern...the long coat for the sweater coat but now that i think of it i may just go for the tilted duster.

i think it suits my body type better.  we shall see.  i have already obsessivley started looking for yarn for it and planning another mohair project for my future winter knitting.  this is starting to sound like stash building to me.  how about a couple of crappy pictures of the  fall shawl. i loved this after i got the hang of it and will make another...some day...maybe...but i doubt it i ususally don't like to make the same thing more than once. later...love   g

today i have lived...

 
fifty seven years. today i start my fifty eighth year of life. today i am one year older and maybe one year wiser. today i have the day off work because i don't like to work on my birthday. when i go back to work i will have a birthday cake from my favorite bakery. today i bought myself a new pair of boots...what a surprise eh? today the guy and i have an adventure and a day of celebrating planned. today is my birthday.  the moms birthday was a few days back and i made her  peanut brittle, four different kinds and i have eaten at least a third of pecan kind.  today i gained a pound or two! today i have no knitting projects on the needles all my knitting projects are finished and today i  may start something for myself.  i may even buy some yarn for a sweater coat today.  if not i will plan the sweater coat project and maybe pick out yarn...oh boy here we go again!  i have a pile of birthday cards here and some flowers and a new pandora charm and some candy and lotions and a few gift cards and i have a dinner out planned at my favorite restaurant and i plan to cook a thanksgiving turkey dinner in my new oven. today i am one year closer to retirement age and  i am so happy about that. today i celebrate my birthday. later...love   g