Sunday Afternoon With the Girls

Spent this afternoon up at The Whole Nine Yarns attending their annual Breast Cancer Awareness Event. Having had this horrible disease affect several people very close to me, I probably paid a little more attention to it this year than I did in years past. You made a small donation to get in, and then spent the aftenoon knitting wristbands for walkers to wear during the area Breast Cancer Walk on October 12-14.

So I went to knit. I knitted for Debbie B. and Joan and Andy and my friend Phyllis at church. I knitted for Vicky's dear friend Lorene who lost her battle and left such a hole in Vicky's life because she misses her so much. I knitted for all of my friends who'd had a scare, and with each stitch I knitted, I said a prayer that maybe none of us would ever have to have a scare again.

And I knitted with some very nice women:You can see the wristbands we knitted and crocheted on top of the water bottles on the table. Our group won a prize for having 10 knitted and crocheted the fastest (much to the dismay of the teenagers across the room -- age and treachery will overcome youth and skill any day). We won all sorts of door prizes for all kinds of fun things... I don't think anyone walked away empty handed.

Debi the store owner made the whole thing happen:And last, but certainly not least, Jenn the wonder organizer, dare I say "organized" the whole thing by getting donations of pink yarn and coming up with games and activities and silent auction items.I told Jenn I had to put her picture on the blog so you could all see who had made my life so exhausting interesting for the past month or two. :) Actually we're coming down to the wire on the craft room. I'm hoping to post pictures of the finished product soon.

Update: Heard from Jenn and the afternoon raised over $1500!!! Can knitters raise money or what! How fabulous is that!!!!!

Representin'

It's been a quiet week here. Jenn the wonder organizer is on hold while we assemble the bookcases that were delivered on Tuesday. The trundle bed for the guest room was also delivered Tuesday, so it's fair to say that HRL Oscar had a busy day protecting the place from invaders.

But yesterday, FedEx (not Britney's FedEx, but the actual company) came to my door with a package full of wonderment. My new Dale Jr. swag:Ok. The t-shirt is a little busier than I normally wear. Actually, it's a lot busier than I normally wear. But beggars can't be choosers when you want to be the first kid on the block with the new stuff, you know. Chose the National Guard option because I'm not sure I'm ready to handle the green Mountain Dew Amp energy drink scheme yet. That's a lot of green. Also in the box was my tres kewl hoodie:That's more my style. Now if it would just get cold enough to wear it.....

People wonder why Dale Jr. is my driver. There's several reasons. One is that I cheered for his dad. Now, Jr. has a completely different driving style than his dad, which in a number of ways is very good, but he still has a great deal of his dad's talent, particularly on restrictor plate tracks (Daytona and Talledega), where I'm convinced the man can "see" the air and the draft. Secondly, he's one of the last of the good ol' boys... you can package him as slickly as you want, but he's still just a North Carolina boy who grew up working on cars and wanting to race. And last but not least, we both lost our fathers in the same year.... different ways, but we both had to grow up fast. I didn't have to do it in the public eye like he did, but for some reason I feel a kinship to him in that. It may be silly, but it's there.

So, the moral of this story is.... despite the three degrees and professional designation, there's still a little redneck girl who's thisclose to having an 88 tattoo somewhere. :)

Off to See the Harlot

...or should I say the Haaaaarrrrlot, since we went on September 19, which is officially "Talk like a pirate day". (It really is. Look it up.) At any rate, a group of us headed down to Knitch in the Virginia Highlands area of Atlanta to see Stephanie Pearl McPhee, aka The Yarn Harlot, at her only Atlanta appearance. If you're a knitter or stitcher, and you haven't read any of Stephanie's books, you really need to either look 'em up on Amazon or run to the nearest bookstore to get one, because you've missed a treat. Till then, you can be content with reading her blog. I can only hope to be so clever when I grow up. :)

We got down there early expecting a line to get in, and we tailgated with Subway sandwiches out of the back of the Hummer. I didn't get any pictures of that, but fortunately another person in line took a picture of us waiting outside:From left to right, you see some of my bestest buds Linda, Debbie, Cathy, Andy, and Jill. I, of course, am the goofy looking chick with the crew cut trying to be the center of attention as usual.

There were a *lot* of people there. Knitters. All over the place. Most of them brought their pointy sticks and were knitting in line. Then they were knitting inside the theater. I was so impressed with one young girl who was working on a complicated fair isle mitten that she almost had finished. Asked her how long she'd been working on it, to which she replied "A couple of days." !?!!!!??!! Ah to be young and have an uncluttered mind again!

After Stephanie's lecture (or should I say an hour and a half of continuous laughter), she signed books. I was lucky enough to get a photo taken with her that she gave me permission to post on my blog, so I give you me and the Yarn Harlot:I get so tongue tied when meeting famous (or at least famous to me) people that I'm sure I said something absolutely stupid to her, but she was gracious as she signed my book, posed for a picture, and allowed me to hold the traveling sock. And she said she'd seen my blog, so that made me feel all warm and fuzzy all over. :) A very nice memory for this fan.

Almost forgot to mention something very important: I won a prize in the raffle! They were selling raffle tickets to benefit Knitters Without Borders, and I figured I'd make a donation (since the only thing I've really ever won was a blender when I was in the 9th grade -- I'm still using it, by the way). But they called one of my numbers and I won two very purple, very feltable skeins of Cascade 220.Since they were purple I really had to watch 'em around Jill... (just kidding). I sense a new felted purse in the making.

After the lecture and book signing we went over to Knitch, but we didn't get to spend much time because it was so late. I'm hoping to go back there one weekend and nose around and probably get myself into trouble spending money -- it looks quite dangerous. But one of their staff was willing to take this photo of all of us to make another very nice memory:A plus of this pic was that Heather, the brunette to the far right, was able to make it into this shot. She was running late and got to the talk at the very last minute, so she missed the fun (?) of waiting outside.

Yesterday we had a birthday party for Cathy, who is reaching that milestone in her life of turning 60 (no, none of us can believe it either!). While Vicky and I technically hosted it, it became a group effort with all of us who were there pitching in. Richard was able to get a very nice shot of the group of us who were there:From left to right are Vicky, moi, Debbie, birthday girl Cathy, Jill, Andy and Ramona.

Have I said lately how thankful I am everyday to have all these folks, plus all my "far flung" friends like Judy, Joan, Teresa, and Ann in my life? I can't imagine what my journey would have been like without them. :)

Dude, what happened to your dog?

A couple of Saturdays ago, we went up to Woodstock to The Whole Nine Yarns after doing some shopping. Usually when we come in, Richard is carrying Oscar, like this:
So, nobody thought there was anything unusual when we walked in the store. Except when Debi turned around, did a double take, and said "What happened to your dog?" Because Richard looked like this:
That's a large stuffed dragon. It's a (late) birthday present for our niece Rachael, who I'm fairly confident is not reading this blog. She's 13 this year... that nether age between little girl and little woman, and she likes dragons. This kewl one was available at the book store next to the yarn shop. At any rate, we're shipping it off tomorrow. Do you know how difficult it is to find a box big enough to ship a large stuffed dragon????

I'm in!!!!

Ravelry name is doxietrek!

Woo Hoo!

Now I gotta figure out what all there is to do on it.... :)

God Bless America

And may He be with our troops as they fight to give me the freedom to write on silly blogs like this.

That'll Wake You Up

I'm the first to admit that I enjoy a good nap... especially on a Sunday afternoon after church. The Nextel Cup race was last night (ok. I'm over the fact that Dale Jr. didn't make it into the Chase), and the Falcons weren't really doing all that well against the Vikings, so I didn't fight much when the Nap Monster took over.

Then the phone rang. It was American Express, and right up front they said it wasn't a sales call. By the way, had I tried to make some charges totaling about $1300 over the internet today? The amount looked a bit suspicious....

Uh. No.

"Well, we've denied the charges, and we're stopping your account, but you might want to check your next bill."

"Hang on and I'll pull it up..... Holy Cow!"

Yep. They'd been having a party since September 1, and they hadn't even invited me. Total was almost $1800 till today when evidently they got greedy. Then AmEx read me the litany of charges they had made today.... small ones that didn't include the $1300 that drew attention to themselves.

My personal fave was the $103 they'd spent at QVC, so I decided to give QVC a call (since most of you know I'm the QVC queen). Got the customer service rep and informed them that someone had bought something with my credit card and gave them the card number.

"Yes, someone did purchase something with that card today."

"Well, you probably don't want to send it. They stole that card number from me; it's been reported to American Express, and I'm not paying it. By the way, what did they buy?"

"I'll report this to our fraud department and we'll get in touch with American Express. We can't release any other information due to privacy concerns."

Privacy Concerns?? These lowlifes have tried to steal from me, them, AmEx and all of us in general and they have Privacy Concerns???? Give Moi a major break.

I'm just hoping I didn't buy too many Adult Entertainment books, videos and supplies for them....

Evidently I have a type...

Another day with the organizer on Wednesday. We're making lots of progress, but I have to tell you this whole process is exhausting (sorry, Jenn -- I know she's reading this!). I find it amazing the projects I'm finding. What's more amazing is that I can tell you what was going on in my life when I was working on most of them. One I found from when my mom had surgery about 8 or 9 years ago was finished except for attaching 3 charms. I guess I must have put it away because I didn't have a beading needle in the hospital, and I kind of lost track of it. I plan to finish that up as soon as I finish posting this.

Another is the small project I took with me to work on in the waiting room while my dad had his radiation treatments for the brain tumor. Needless to say, there's some upsetting memories associated with that one, so I'm not sure when, or if, it'll be finished up. Although it's been almost six years since he passed away, I still haven't gotten to the point where I can even think about those days without crying, so I'm not sure if working on that project would be a good part of the healing process or not. I'll address that another day.

But as the subject says, evidently I have a type. My task while Jenn was here yesterday was to sort and organize all my tapestry and other needles that I had in this nifty multi-drawer unit I've had for awhile. Here's the end result:
If you look carefully at the top row (please excuse the glare from the flash), you'll notice 5 drawers full of size 28 needles. Evidently I prefer to use 28s in stitching. And, evidently I don't need to buy any of them or any other type of needle in the near future.

In the Spirit of the Holiday

Happy Labor Day to everyone! I hope that all had a nice, relaxing holiday to mark the unofficial end of summer. As for me, I can certainly do without any more 100+ degree days here in all too sunny Georgia. I'm a girl who loves cooler weather. I figure you can always wear more clothes, but there's a socially acceptable limit to what you can take off to get cool. His Royal Lowness, on the other hand revels in his nekkidness in the evenings when we take off his collar. :)

In the spirit of Labor Day, we labored around the house. Waded through a ton of paperwork, which we seem to attract like bees to pollen (or some other more appropriate simile that I can't think of right now). I hear Richard at the shredder now. It pays to have a home office with an industrial shredder.

We're also trying to prove our worthiness to the organizer. While Jenn didn't give us "official" homework, we did have this:
Yep. That's a laundry basket chock full o thread. DMC, Sampler Thread, Weeks, Thread Gatherer, Waterlillies, and sundry other fibers from a variety of completed projects that were just tossed in and needed to be put in some orderly fashion where they could be found and used for other projects. While Oscar supervised (a task he does quite well), Richard and I sorted thread by maker and number and/or name, and in the case of DMC bagged it with other floss and with other types of thread put it on rings. Eventually I'll have floss bags for everything, but I've got to order them.

Jenn's not a stitcher. She's a knitter, but she's learning all about stitching. When she first asked if I really *needed* all this thread, I really tried not to gasp in horror. I explained the concept of stitching out of stash and how it differed from buying yarn for specific projects. She's learning a whole different world of needlework, and I'm trying to see things from another point of view. Interesting all around. :)