Witch's tits

I dunno. The saying goes "It's colder than a witch's tit". I've never been near a witch that I know of, and nor would I entertain the thought of touching a witch's tit, so I'll never know how cold that really is. But one thing I do know, is it's freakin' freezing cold outside here today! After almost a full week in my jammies, I put on some real clothes today and trekked out to get some much needed groceries in this house. I was blown away (almost literally!) at how cold it was out there! There's a strong and very nasty bitter cold north wind blowing. Needless to say it was a royal pita loading groceries into the trunk of the car, with that strong wind relentlessly fighting to blow the hood of the trunk down on my head! I just hope going out in that crap doesn't have any side effects on this nasty cold I've been down with. I'm sick of being sick!

Olivia

oh c'mon Mr. Blogger! Fix the damn spell check already, will ya?!

Oh yeah!

A couple weeks ago or so I had posted about a cute little crocheted hoodie sweater I made and at the time of the post had it in the washer being fulled. Well, here's a picture of the now very tiny sweater. Gosh that green looks pukish in the picture. It's really a nice funky olive green color in person. However, it turned out much smaller than I had anticipated. I wanted it to end up fitting say a 6 - 9 month old, or even a wee bit bigger, which the little green mary janes would fit, but it's come out more 0 - 3 month, and maybe even bordering preemie size. Know anyone with a cabbage patch kid that's in need of a hoodie? I don't even want to bother putting a zipper in this one now, because I think it's kind of pointless. Just goes to show you though, there really is no rule of thumb when it comes to fulling or felting wool. The mary janes shrank much more minimally than the sweater, and they're crocheted with the same brand, type and dye lot even of wool as the sweater. I can only assume it's because there was more body to the sweater to allow for more agitation in the wash, hence more friction to the fibres resulting in more shrinkage. Well that's my theory anyway, and I'm going to stick with it! I really do love this sweater pattern though, and I think I might make another, but not in a wool yarn to felt -- this time I'll try a nice cotton or bamboo yarn instead and make a lighter weight springier looking hoodie, since Spring is going to be early this year, according to our beloved Wiarton Willie the groundhog that pokes his head out of his hole every Groundhog day here in Ontario to give his prediction!

Olivia

arrgh! this non-working spell checker is making me crazy!

Statcounter surprise!

This is cool! I was just checking out the statistics on my stat counter to see what kind of hits I've had lately on my shop and this blog. So I see this one visitor to this blog on February 4th is from my home town -- Nanaimo, British Columbia. I thought for sure it was my sister checking to see if I had any new posts up, but then I noticed this person came in through a google search, and I knew it wasn't my sister then. Cool! They came up with this google search... This content is currently unavailable, which, when I clicked on that link made me happy to know that my post I did titled "Thith content ith currently unavailable" when I was frustrated with trying to watch the Price is Right show at the CBS website. I guess I'm not the only one out here that gets frustrated by hearing those annoying words when trying to see something online, because that has been searched many times, according to my stats. I was just excited to see that this time it was someone from my home town that visited this blog that time. Hello Nanaimo, whoever you are!! :-)

Olivia

curses to the spell checker here at Blogger for still not working! :-P

It's a beautiful day!

It's nice and sunny out. I hear some birds chirping too. Mind you, there's still snow on the ground, and on my car, and I'm not sure if it's cold out or not. However, all kinds of icky gunky and sometimes a little chunky stuff is coming out of my nose and being horked up from my lungs. What a beautiful welcomed sight that is! As gross as it is, at least I know this nasty clinging swirly cold is finally breaking up and coming out! YAY!!! I'm sick of being sick!

I did do a little knitting while I've been in bed this week. I'm almost finished the second sleeve of a sweater I started making myself in the early fall. Then I'll just have to put it together and knit up the collar and stitch on some buttons. It's a quick knit, because the yarn is quite bulky. But I have this bad habit of not following a pattern completely. I have this inner need to modify this, and tweek that, so the style suits my liking a wee bit more. This particular sweater was to be a bit longer, as in come down over the hips. Well, I didn't want that, so I shortened it up a few inches, and then I decided that I wanted more of a 3/4 length sleeve, rather than long sleeves. This is where my problem came in. I had to modify the stitches and the increases, in order to end up with the proper sized top of the sleeve, that will fit the sleeve opening on the sweater. Before I went to Cuba back in November, I did the first sleeve, and was very careful to make sure I wrote down exactly what I was doing for when it came time to make the next sleeve. So I went on my vacation, and when I got back it was that time of year to put all my free attention towards Christmas, so the sweater got further tossed back on my list of to-dos. A couple weeks ago, I got back to it, and was devastated to find that I had lost my crib notes on my sleeve modifications! Ack! Now I had to read the actual knitting on the first sleeve, which is something I'm not real good at. I lose track when I'm counting, or I get off track by a column or two, altering the count. To make matters worse, this sweater is brown, so the darker color is even worse for me to try to count, with my eyes not being the greatest. Yes, I do have to get to an optometrist real soon! Anyway, the other day, after I finished knitting a wool hat for hubby, and I was feeling a little bit better at the time, I tackled this sleeve again, and I think I've finally got it! So I have a few more rows to knit up now, and hopefully I'll still get to wear this sweater before the warm weather gets here again! I'd take a picture of the hat I made (on one of those big corking rings) but hubby is out right now, and appears to have his new hat on.

Until next time...

Olivia

p.s. for some reason the spell checker doesn't want to work here all of a sudden, so I apologize for any typos I have committed!

Cough, gag, sputter, sputter, cough, cough

Man oh man, I've been down with a nasty cold all week. It seems as I get older these damn colds really seem to knock me on my ass when I get them now. They never used to stop me before. Maybe slow me down a bit, but that's about it. Now though, I'm literally put to bed by them, and they seem to last longer too. This one started on me last weekend. I had a bit of a sore throat when I was out at a friend's place last Saturday night, and woke up Sunday to a sore throat and my entire body aching from head to toe. I went to work Monday, and ended up coming home early. Well, if you can call an hour and a half really early, but that was the earliest I could get out of there. Straight to bed is where I went, and I slept through that night and the next day. Wednesday I felt a wee bit better in the latter part of the day, and then I felt like major crap yesterday morning, so another full day of sleep in bed. I thought for sure I would be able to go to work this morning, but it seems this cold has swirled once again, and it's gone from my throat and chest yesterday back to my head -- runny nose, sinus headache and sneezing again. What the hell? Are these cold strains getting worse as the years go by, or is old age creeping up on me with a vengence and my body is weakening to the point of not being able to fight back like I used to be able to? I'm really getting tired of this nasty bed head hair I have from sleeping so much!

Achooooo!

Olivia

Productive

pro·duc·tive: \prə-ˈdək-tiv, prō-\
adjective
1: having the quality or power of producing especially in abundance
2:
effective in bringing about
3 a: yielding results, benefits, or profits b: yielding or
devoted to the satisfaction of wants or the creation of utilities
4: continuing to be used in
the formation of new words or constructions
5: raising mucus or sputum (as from the
bronchi)

Oh yuck on number 5! The kind of productive I'm referring to here today is more of a number 3 I guess. What I'm getting at, is that today is turning out to be a productive day for me. I'm multi-tasking here, and getting a good amount of tasks accomplished. In other words, I've managed to keep my ass out of the Pogo website so I can get some stuff done! Yes, I've ended up reviving my addiction to playing online games at Pogo again. It's fun, but it doesn't get stuff done!

So today, as most Sundays are around here is laundry day, and I started out with a nice mountain of it today! But while I've been doing the laundry chores, I've been getting other things done as well. Had the oven on cleaning cycle, the dishwasher going, and pre-sprayed my bathroom down with Tilex, wiped down the kitchen then swept and mopped the floors throughout the main part of the house. That's like what... five or six different tasks going all at once?! Cool! Work smarter, not harder! Once I was done with the floors I went and finished off the bathroom, then unloaded the clean dishes from the dishwasher. Still switching laundry loads, I did some dusting and then I decided to sit on my butt and finish off the last sleeve on a sweater that I have been crocheting. But even though I was sitting on my butt, I was still multitasking. While crocheting, I sat at the computer, and watched an episode of Celebrity Apprentice online that I had missed on TV. After that, I went on the hunt for the first episode of Moment of Truth, which is a new reality TV game show that aired this past Wednesday on Fox. My sister was telling me about it last night on the phone, and I wanted to see if I could find any video coverage of it online. I managed to find an 8 minute condensed clip of the first show at YouTube, so I watched that, and decided it will be part of my Wednesday night line up! You can view the entire episode at Fox on demand, but I didn't bother attempting to download the player you need there, because it never worked for me on my old computer, and I don't want to clutter this one up with a bunch of useless crap!

Anyway, now I've got my sweater in the wash, being felted. I should have taken a before picture of it, but apparently I wasn't thinking at the time! It's green though -- I used the same green wool that I made the little felted Mary Jane slippers out of, that I posted previously. I hope it looks good after the felting process, because it sure was cute before! It's a little hoodie sweater. Aww, simply adorable! Anyway, I'll post a pic here when it's done... if it turns out okay! ;-)

Olivia