Things you don't see every day

Today is a collection of things you don't see every day. I'll warn you, there are some crappy cell phone pictures included.

First up - ALPACAS!! Thursday was knit night at That'll Do Farm. They are so cute:


The girls - two of them are expecting


Mick


The as-yet-unnamed baby boy

I had a great time and many, many much-needed laughs after a pretty stressful day at work.

Next up, the DeLorean I saw at the car wash on the way to work this morning:



I have no idea what happened here, but a telephone pole down the street has been like this for a week:



Next:


Emma wanted to play Vanna

Crochet?? At my house? I took a 1-hour learn to crochet class from a lady at work on Tuesday. gotta say, I'm not hooked (yeah, couldn't help the bad pun). I had a really hard time keeping my tension even and figuring out where the stitches should go. I think I'll stick to knitting and reserve crochet for finishing/edging. And even then, only when absolutely necessary.

And what's this?



Knitting progress!! My hands finally stopped hurting (stupid arthritis) and I made it to the point where it's time to start the heel flaps on the Laughing Matter socks. Hooray!

Finally, Sleeping Princess in Cowboy Hat:

I'm not dead....

...contrary to popular belief. The week after my last post was crazy busy at work and then my allergies kicked in, then my arthritis flared up, so I didn't really have any knitting progress to show. Yeah, I know -- poor me.

I did get some knitting done. Since the socks on tiny needles were making my hands hurt, I started a very plain, very boring garter stitch scarf, which I started a couple of times and have been working on during non-work meetings over the last couple of weeks.



Doesn't get much simpler than that - cast on 20 stitches, slip 1 stitch purlwise, knit to the end, repeat forever. That's some Bernat Softee Chunky in the Nature's Way colorway (I think) on size10.5 needles. Exciting, isn't it?

Since I'm not knitting much, I decided to venture into my sewing room. I had Monday off, so I started with the clean up. I think the picture is a little blurry because my hands were shaking. Wouldn't you be afraid to go in here??


Disaster Central

I'm sad to say that after spending the better part of the afternoon in there, it didn't look a whole lot different. I took a bunch of yarn down to the stash, hung the bazillion scattered rulers on the pegboard, put the knitting notions back in the knitting tote, stashed the big plastic tote of batting under the sewing table, pulled fabrics for a couple of projects and now you can mostly see the sewing table and the top of the ironing board. The cutting table in the corner is still buried and likely will be for a while. Baby steps....

I took advantage of the cleared sewing table to actually *sew* something. This little kit that I bought at the NEORQC Getaway in February:


Closed


Open

It's a pretty easy pattern using 1-1/2" strips of fabric. You can get it here. I added the magnetic closure and the beads that hold the button on from my stash. Everything else was in the kit.

Tomorrow night is craft night with the girls from work and I'm taking my beading project, but I'll probably spend most of the night cutting pieces for a group quilt project and a couple of bags for a class I'm taking early next month. Maybe I'll have something bloggable afterward, but don't count on it.

A couple of weeks ago, the moon looked really cool. The trees didn't have many buds on them and it was a little cloudy. I tried to get some pictures of it, but this is the best one of the bunch:


It looked much cooler in real life

As for wildlife, the last few pictures I've taken of the cats have come out blurry, so I'll try to get some better ones for next time. Meanwhile, I've been birdwatching over the internet this past month or so and now I can do it live. Sort of. Meet Howard (just made that up):



He and his mate are building a nest in the christmas tree shaped bush/tree/shrubbery outside my kitchen window. you can see the hole where the nest is at the bottom of that picture. I haven't actually tried to look into the hole to check out the nest, but I've seen the other bird taking nesting materials in there a few times.. Being attacked by territorial birds isn't high on my list of fun things to try.

Anyone know what kind of bird he is? The one building the nest actually looks like she's a pale blue/gray. And Howard doesn't have a crest so they definitely aren't cardinals. I'd been thinking of taking down that tree/bush/shrubbery because over the 11 years I've been in the house, it's grown to the point that it's starting to encroach on the driveway. I can't get rid of it now, obviously. I'll keep you posted if I learn anything new.