Tilt-a-whirl

Goliath Blinked

yes, he did. I have had a few emails, asking about what the next installment of The Perils of Pauline is going to be about and here you have it. I told The Husband that this year has been one wild ride for us Libra's and once mine was over to begin a new phase, I promptly got sick (well, the dreaded eyes knocked funny from sinus, sick...not sick, sick. ) The Husband sees his birthday in with a tooth ache (the latest crown was never quite right) See? the Wild Ride year comes to an end and we are human again.

Back to Pauline...ummm, as the title of the post sez...Goliath blinked and The Husband has gotten the word that they are paying him what he needs (not anything inflated but quite fair) and the contractor position will follow the end of the official contract extension between Prophane and CYHMN, in the middle of November. A big sigh goes out. See? We were not meant to get The Palace because we were not finished yet. We do have a painted house and by the end of November (there must be a run on these things) this will be built for us, to free up more storage space for workspace.

Well now, on to nice things. The sweet and talented Alison Hyde sent me the link for a picture of her in the beautiful shawl that grew out of ONE skein of Sock! The woman is a wizard with turning something small into something big...hey, Alison...are you related to Mary Poppins? Love the picture, by the way...you look very arty.

Speaking of arty...another talented buddy sent me a very special birthday gift that will keep my noggin warm all winter!

Tom Clark used some of my yarns to create something that I would not have taken the time to do for myself but will love to wear. See how lucky I am to have such great and talented friends? Socks and a PussyCap...toe to head warmth.

Speaking of Tom...I have an enormous project of cashmere that was initially requested by Tom and then piled on my others, hence the Enormous part of the equation. :o) A few of us on Fiber Traditions were having a discussion about The Time/space continuum and how we just work and work and the pile neve seems to get smaller. My contribution to the discussion was my pile of cashmere fiber. It's true that In The Beginning there was another smaller basket to accompany this large one but after filling two 8+ ounce bobbins, I still have this pile.

It is looking nice, though...

Oh, rumor has it that Sheila Ernst is in the midst of adding bamboo needles to the arsenal. I just invited myself to be a Beta tester for some weensy ones and so you will all eat your hearts out when they show up. I will do my best to whip you into a frenzy for such yummy pieces of art. :o) Sheila and Michael did the combo Crochet and TKGA show with us this past July and SHE got to meet and lay one of her beautiful crochet hooks in the hands of Prudence Mapstone and I just got to hear about it. Heyyyyyyyyy...I wanna meet the queen. :o) Well, at least I have something in common with the queen...I work with a Cinderella crochet hook, too.

One last thing. Sugar Pie has not only accepted her rasta bed, she is happy to be there.

Gee, all you have to do is ruin some merino roving and you can have a cat that looks like that!

Evil thoughts

When last we met our heroine, she was running around with beautiful new socks, cheerfully chatting with friends, trying to take a day off. (anyone that knows me , laughs right about now) The Husband comes home with that familiar crinkly sound coming from the kitchen...you know, the sound of that special cellophane that is wrapped around bouquets of flowers! This guy must have bought 5 pounds of bouquet. I am not kidding! It was big enough to fill two vases and that is just what I did. They he starts to spill (I got to listen to an hour of a dear friend's horrible marital situation earlier). He is in a forced negotiation time with the boss at Prophane (yes, the same guy who came over to talk to him a couple of months ago to say that he would not be hired because of his salary) THROUGH a go-between Prophane Lackey contracting firm. He was told by the exiting Lackey employee that he should up his request for the contractor money and so he raised his asking price by $10 an hour. Sweet...perhaps they will bite. Now there is a NEW Lackey who is going back and forth between offices. She tells The Husband that Prophane was shocked at his numbers and that he needs to come down. We thought about it and said, ok...$5 an hour. The new Lackey says that Prophane's highest numbers is $15 an hour less than what The Husband proposed, which altough higher than his "salary" right now, does not include shopping for benefits and all of the other things that we must think of. Ok...The Lackey comes back and says that she was mistaken and that the Prophane guy 's numbers are now $18 an hour less. We are reaching meltdown with this mild mannered Libra (don't look at that Scorpio rising behind the curtain) I stopped the littany and started spouting a barage of blue words in the name of this Prophane guy. Let's just say that it would have made my mother pass out...(hey, I learned to swear in Rock and Roll bands...I am entitled) The husband tried to calm me down...this was, after all, my birthday. Ok, deep breath, we are going downtown to Pizza Antica for fine dining pizza...ok...ommmmmmm. I drank too much wine but it was a great meal. The swearing stopped.

Now, they want him to justify his figures. His currrent supervisor/friends are just standing with their mouths hanging open, amazed at the treatment that The Husband is receiving at the Hands of this Ork. I am so pissed off that I would tell him to turn his back on the half wheelbarrow load of money and just come home to live with me and peanut butter sammiches. (It is hard to look 2/3 of his salary in the eye and flip it off...) We'll see. He has told the Lackey that the numbers were run and this is his bottom line. Now we see in the horoscope something about Lines in the Sand. YIKES. I am just feisty enough to have him tell Prophane to sit on a gas well but this is his life and he must do it. One of the other employees that Prophane was trying to lure back as a contractor said that he would pay to see me march up to the Prophane guy and tell him where he could stick a certain portion of his anatomy. Feisty in my old age. Feisty.

Driveby Socking

Oh yes there WAS! I was having a bit of an afternoon jello refresher (AKA a 10 minute nap)yesterday afternoon and all was normal. When I got up and started to get moving again (yes I do work until I drop sometimes) I get a phonecall from Trish, saying that she had left some socks on the front porch. See? Driveby socking. Not even Sasha, the wonderdog, heard her! Trish turned out a pair of pretty Mardi Gras colored socks on her sock cranker. Whaddaya think? I am thrilled to have someone be able to crank this out so that I can see how the colorway translates to the round and round and round of socks. Pretty!

Yeah, that is little gimpy, the sock inspector. I think that we are going with the homeopathic choice with this little dude, giving the glucosamine a chance to work.

Oh yeah, so something arrived in the mail yesterday but I was a good girl and waited , as I was told by the instructions hand written on the pouch. I am good about these things cuz then a birthday is really fun. I am not saying that I did not squeeze and squish this package, of course...I am not THAT good!

Today I got to open it! A precious gift of hand knit socks from the Needle Beetle herself! GAWjus.

I am a lucky girl! See, I told you...driveby.

Poor Tank!

Well, he has been hobbling a little and has a sore elbow. Yeah...something that people who have only had Pound Puppies have never faced...Tank has Elbow-itis. Now we have to start thinking about do we, don't we put him through surgery, which may or may not help all that ails him. We had to leave him at the vet this afternoon so that the doctor could slip him a little something to to magically turn him from the whirlwind that had to be kept outside of the full waiting room to a calm dog with a fist full of X-yrays. I guess that this is just not something new...Lab puppies are knuckleheads and my knucklehead has a less than perfect elbow. So, no analgesics, simply because if they don't feel the pain, they will over-do. The doctor says that he won't be so gimpy when he gets older, simply because he will be less of a knucklehead wacko. Hmmm...the joys of purebred dogs. Guh.

Poor Tank...when we came home from the vet without him, Sasha was distraught but quickly got over it when she realized that she would not have to share the leftover corner of mama's burger. Needless to say, she was glad to have him back and inspected him all over.

I got an interesting commission this afternoon. A certain someone asked me to ass out on some cashmere yarn...creating something wilder than I had ever thought of with plain white cashmere. Ok, the only thing that could possibly fit the bill for me to be able to do this was my precious stash of Royal Cashmere. I'll take pictures of it in the morning...wild, boucle gobbledygook yarn for a fancy infant hat. I am enjoying the gift of the request...nothing like someone saying "could you possibly" to open a few braincells for business. Sure, why not! :o)

I guess that we're staying

You knew it all along, didn't you? People in such turmoil think that making a grand escape is the way to handle things, taking equity from an inflated housing market and plopping it into a different kind of lifestyle in a different area. Fine if you are 30 or even 40 but tomorrow is Double Nickels Day, the time when the body starts to tell a person that they are no longer members of the firm skin generation and that they had just better learn to deal with it. (you youngsters can just put your fingers in your ears right now cuz it will never happen to you. ) We went shopping yesterday...took each other shopping for new clothes, since it is birthday week for both of us. I enjoyed the heck out of the outing to Walnut Creek, which has become a pretty toney destination...far from its humble roots of a sleepy walnut orchard town. (You know that someplace is doomed when Tiffany's moves in. Hah!) We got a kick out of people watching and joined the throngs at the Apple Store, which to The Husband is powered by some sort of magnetic field...come innnnnnnnn and shoppppppppp. We escaped without giving them any new money but got a kick out of watching box after box of the new IPod Nano's go out the door with excited people. They are pretty darned cool, I must say. So, I sez to The Husband while watching some well toned, stilletto heeled woman follow her perfectly dressed children and fancy husband to their Cha-ching-mobile...look dear, he has Arm Candy and you have Arm Jello...enough said. We have each other.

So, back to staying in the Frappucino house. The Husband is readying the ground on the side yard for a miniature version of the red barn that I fell for, lo so many months ago at a property we let go of. He has built a retaining wall out of those HEAVY concrete building block things that are holding up hillsides everywhere and is getting into shape by hoisting these things in and out of the BAV and out to their final resting place.
Tank has tried to be ever so helpful by enticing his friend and cohort Sasha to rough-house on daddy's dirt. Soon there will not be such a socker field to rocket around...it will be filled with a little building. So there. Rocket, race, jump...bash. Hey, where did THAT come from?!

He was helping in his own special way, this canine himbo. (I'm sorry folks but this dog that bends in the middle to wag his whole ass is not the brightest dog on the planet...a Lab.) Oh yeah, and why do they do this?
Granted, he has proven to be a termite sniffer but he is not snacking on termites. Blech. Four star cat poop. Oy.

Yes, I have been knitting and spinning. I have a commission for a representation of the Desert Cardie that went home with someone at the last show but since these colorwork sweaters are part new solid color skeins and lots of bits of treasured handspun, no two can be alike, simply because once those bits are gone I must invest in my own stash by taking something from the handspun bin. Bits and pieces of treasured angora and cashmere are what I like to use for touches in these garments, to delight and surpise the wearer. So, Desert II is merely an interpretation of Desert I, with the addition of requested rust to the mix. You can see the progress as I putter along.

Seeing it from this squinting distance (too often viewed too closely, one must squint to test the values), I really like it and know that my client will be well dressed this year at the Cowboy Poet Festival.