amigurumi

Amigurumi is Japanese style crochet. I love it. It's absolutely adorable!

I've been contemplating learning how to crochet just for amigurumi. I'm not sure how practical that is, though. I mean, it'd be great to make for gifts and stuff like that. I dont know if the daughter would be interested in having some made for her, and making them just for my own amusement doesnt seem very practical.

Learning a new craft would mean another sort of obsession. It would mean money spent on crochet hooks, and probably quite a bit more yarn, even though I have tons of it trying to escape my closet. It would mean a lot more time learning to read patterns, learning tension all over again, staying up all night finishing a project, or rather, more projects left unfinished.

What am I thinking?! I still have yet to learn how to knit socks and sweaters and the like!

Still, there is something that keeps drawing me to the big round eyes and chubby little characters of the Amigurumi world.

Someday, I will learn.

work rant.

What a frustrating night at work. I go in to do a simple job, and co-workers make it such an enormous hassle.

I have such an easy job. Our palm pilots tell us everything we need to know. And yet these people still have problems. They dont pay attention to what they're doing. What's going to happen now, after tonight, is that they're going to be scheduled an extra night a week until they get this right. Then it wont be only me dealing with what they messed up on, and they can find out how annoying they are. If they cant handle the inconvenience, then they'd better start doing their job the right way. All. The. Time.

Work tonight and the rain that started up go very well with the rest of my crappy day.

I need a beer.

meh.

I hate being a girl. Well, I'll hate being a girl for about 3 days straight, anyway. I hate the inconvenience. The husband should knock me up already! :)
Ladies, you should try one of these things out.. http://www.divacup.com/ Go green! I've been using mine for months and I love it.

Okay, onto less awkward things.

Spring is finally here. The daffodils are coming up. Our trees outside are blooming (and they reek, in not a good way), and the daughter is bugging me to wear shorts already.

Spring means lacy hats, whispy scarves and fingerless gloves for those blustery days. I went ahead and made myself a nice Spring Beret, and plan on getting my fingerless gloves started soon. The hat I made out of Hobby Lobby's I Love This Cotton! yarn. It's very soft, but sheds horribly while working with it. I would have fuzz clinging to everything; my hands, my face, and my clothes. I still have another skein of it left, which I could make my gloves with.. but I think I'll stick to the Peaches n Creme I was going to use anyway.

I'm also thinking about learning how to cable. I was talking about it to a lady at work and she told me not to bother with buying cable needles, and just to use a saftey pin or stitch holders. So I guess that's what I'll experiment with.

One more thing that Spring makes me want to do is work out. The husband and I had gotten into the FIRM system. I really liked it. We dont have enough room in the living room to actually do it very well, though. Must rearrange. Maybe after Spring Break, I can try to talk him into running with me in the mornings. It's so hard to find the motivation to work out by myself. And I always feel like an idiot doing it alone in my living room. I guess that sounds sort of strange. Ah well.

Okay. Time to find some Midol. PMS on a gorgeous day like this just doesnt seem fair.

fear of commitment?

I have a problem. Apparently, this problem is not uncommon amongst us knitters. The fear of commitment. I'm not talking about relationships. I'm talking about finishing what we've started.

Right now, I can count 4 projects in my room around me that I need to finish. A hat, a pair of slippers, a headband (I'm gonna frog that one) and a washcloth. There are at least 2 projects unfinished in my living room. A doll blanket and a teddy bear.

Some of these projects I started quite a long time ago. The headband I started last summer. The hat was supposed to have been a Christmas present, the slippers from last fall for a friend who'd moved into a house with hardwood floors. The teddy bear I wanted to have finished 2 weeks ago.

What's even worse, is that even though I have all of these things I need to finish, I'm probably going to start another project before I even finish any of the others. Well, I want to anyway.

Not this time. I have decided that if I'm going to cast on for a pair of fingerless gloves that I really want, I'll have to finish at least one of these projects first. Now, which one, which one...

where, oh where did my Conan go?

Where IS he?! I miss him! And now I'm stuck with Jay Leno and his generic jokes, and Jimmy Fallon... well, I kind of want to punch him in the face (you know it'd be fun, and satisfying).

*sigh* Conan, I cant wait till you're back on television! <3

parenting is fun. blankets are too.

I've decided to knit some Barbie sized bed sets. I can knit a blanket w/matching pillows. And better yet, I can make up my own patterns. I mean, knitting a rectangle = brainless.

Something's been bothering me lately. I dont quite know how to go about it.
My daughter, J, recently got grounded (for a month) for not telling me where she and her friend were going one afternoon. I figured she was around the block, and she was, but neither one of them asked, or informed me that was where they'd be. Husband drove around the block and picked them up, and grounded J for a month. No TV, no video games, no friends, no outside. This is the harshest punishment we've dished out yet. But she acted very irresponsible, and she wont forget asking next time. And she's off the hook as soon as she admits that she was wrong. But J is a stubborn Taurus child, and she rarely admits that she's wrong, and will instead try to find loopholes in our plan.

Anyway, she goes over to her dad's house, and his wife goes and tells J that she's mad at me for grounding J. Step-mom (we'll call her S) doesnt think it's fair for J. At any rate, I'm getting the feeling that S may be badmouthing me at dad's house. Which is ONE thing we NEVER do. Ever. Never badmouth the other parent in front of the child!

I dont feel that S has any right to be mad at me, since she wasnt the one who spent over ten minutes looking for J. Or doesnt even have to deal with those shennanigans very often since they only see her every other weekend or so. But I also dont know what J said to S. J was probably playing up the pity party for herself and whined and moped around all weekend until S felt so sorry for her that she got mad at me for it. She needs to start seeing through that act real fast.

We will probably be seeing S and dad at J's violin recital this Saturday, and I may have to bite my tongue. Or tell dad that he'd better make sure that if S has any problems with my parenting skills, that she should talk to me about it, and not in front of my daughter. And if I hear of slander about me from J again, S and I may have some serious problems.

Ugh. What a rant, huh?

I feel better now.

Off to go get some ideas for blankets.

to knit, or not

I dont know why, but I'm kinda stressing out about this whole knitting for the MIL thing. I kind of want to knit some Barbie clothes, or a couple of blankets or something. I even bought some yarn. But I also kind of dont want to knit any of it. Maybe it had to do with my frustration due to the frogging of the second AG doll hat.

Essentially, I'd be doing this for a profit. I'm not doing it to really help anyone out but myself, and I think that's really what's bothering me. I dont really care to make much of a profit from something like this, so I'm not exactly motivated to get a whole lot of it done.

I guess I could be adventurous and try at least one dress or something. I figure, though, that if I'm only going to get a few things done by the deadline, what's the point anyway? Hmm...

the urge to blog

I'm recently finding myself wanting to blog. Maybe I just need someone to talk to. I think I'd rather just do it here than some silly place like Facebook or Myspace, because I'd rather be more anonymous. Do you think it's strange that I'd rather blog to a bunch of strangers instead of people that I know personally? I dont, oddly enough.

So, a few things that I've been up to recently:
Taking care of a sick husband. He's better now, thank goodness. I, sad to say, have reached my limit on patience with babying him. I feel kind of bad about that. I mean, I love him. I want to take care of him. But, I dont really do well with hand & foot kind of stuff. Not for long periods of time.

Then, I decided to help the MIL knit up something for her sister's shop in Wisconsin. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Actually, I was having fun with it; making little scarf and hat sets for the American Girl dolls. But, my second hat didnt work out so well. I had it on my Denise Interchangables for the Magic Loop method, and for some reason, my connecters kept coming unconnected. I started the hat twice, and after the second time, I gave up. Maybe I'll use bigger needles and that should prevent all the twisting. Grr. Frustrating, that is. And I think maybe I'll stick to something a little easier, like Barbie-sized blankets.

Also, I've been obsessed with knitting with cotton yarn. I love working with the stuff. So I've been searching for things to make; placemats, handtowels, washcloths. Making things for the home isnt all you can do with it, but it is ideal since cotton is so absorbant. Maybe I'll make a few headbands or something out of it as well.

Today I joined http://www.twitter.com/ as well as trying to get back into blogging. We'll see how both go. I figure Twitter is a lot like blogging, only shorter. Maybe I'll see you there. :)