New Swap Open 3/20

Caffeine + Yarn = Life that does not include prison

Weekly Warning 2/24/08

Don't wear elastic waistband shorts to Walmart with a four year old.

Usually not a problem, I'll concede but then again, you don't have my four year old daughter, Regan.

I was exhausted. I had Regan with me during my big monthly Walmart run on a busy Saturday morning. The buggy was full and we were cautiously crossing the parking lot. I told Regan to hold on to my pocket so I would know where she was.

The 12 pack of Diet Dr. Pepper fell out of the buggy and landed in front which caused an abrupt and very effective road block for my buggy. The buggy screeched to a halt with me a close second. Regan (WHO WAS HOLDING ON TO MY ELASTIC SHORTS) also stopped and fell. She pulled on me to stop falling into the buggy. Little did I realize as I reached down to help her up that she pulled my pants and underwear down in the process. In a split second, I felt a cool breeze on my bare posterior and in the next moment, my next thought was that my bottom was "facing" Walmart and all its recording security cameras.

I will be forever known in the metro Atlanta area as the ditz who mooned Walmart.

Come Envy Me!

Got not one but two packages for two separate swaps yesterday. Karen from the Scavanger Hunt Swap and Kim from Mystery Theme Swap 2 came through in a fantastic way.


Feast your eyes upon Karen's package! Corn yarn, candy, chocolate (now gone in the belly of a four and forty year old), lavender and Scooby Doo--what more can a girl want? Well, apparently Karen thought I needed more because I get scrapbooking supplies, Southern Living recipes, a knit pattern, stitch markers and new suspense mystery novel as well as the cutest row counter (my favorite part)!


Oh but silly me--there's one more package, Kim mails me a "Ireland" themed package complete with a little Irish blessing which is hanging in my yarn lair/Scooby Doo room, an Irish Hiking Scarf pattern, needles and yummy yarn. Also chocolate galore!!! Which has been consumed. To top it all, tea and an adorable Irish sheep mug. I'm using both of the these right now.

Thank you, Kim and Karen! I love it!

Easy Peasy Contest

Go to Knitingal to celebrate her milestone 1000th hit on her blog.

Here I thought I was Yarn

You Are Paper

Crafty and creative, you are able to adapt freely to almost any situation. People tend to underestimate you, unless they've truly seen what you are capable of. Deep down, you're always scheming and thinking up new plans. Your mind is constantly active. You are quite capable of anything you dream of. You can always figure out a way to get what you want. You can wrap a rock person up in your sheet of trickery. A scissor person can sneak up and cut you to pieces. When you fight: No one can anticipate your next move If someone makes you mad: You'll attack them mercilessly when they're unprepared

Are You Rock, Paper, or Scissors?

Gosh, I sound kind of mean and icky.

Chocolate Stacks

I needed something--fast. Scout Sunday Mass was looming like my fortieth birthday on the horizon. I had a bag of chocolate chips, dried cherries, raisins and butter.

1/2 stick of butter
1 bag milk chocolate chips
1 bag dried cherries
1 cup raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Melt the butter over medium heat in pot. Add chocolate chips and stir together until melted. Add vanilla and stir together. Remove from heat and stir in raisins and cherries. Add nuts if you want.

Drop by tablespoon onto wax paper and cool in fridge.

Law of Diminishing Yarny Value

I just eagerly started this shawl. Using stash yarn (KP Decadance in Rose) and free pattern so in a strange, roundabout way it's sort of a low cost project.

I know you're thinking, "Hey, goofus, unless someone gave you it to you, the yarn is not free." And you'd normally be correct but I operate on the Hissyknit's Law of Diminishing Yarny Value. It states that the yarn's purchase cost is decreases the longer it sits in your stash. In the most basic terms, I forgot how much I paid for it initially so therefore it's free.

Weekly Warning 2/17/08

Check your bra!!!!

The more important the meeting increases the likelihood that your left bra strap will snap in the middle of the meeting. This gives you three options:

Option 1: Do nothing. However, this will cause your left boob to sag down resulting in a lopsided pair of knockers. Watch in alarm as the other person tries not to stare at your increasingly disfigured chest.

Option 2: Discreetly pull up the broken side's cup up into your armpit. A double edged option. You will need to keep your left arm down at all times to hold the cup into place. You will end up looking like a six year old playing freeze tag, causing the other person to wonder at your strangeness.

Option 3: Ask politely to be excused to go the restroom. In a MacGyver moment, you quickly wrap a piece of toilet paper (after briefly thanking God that public restroom toilet paper rolls are actually sandpaper remnants) around the broken strap. Say a pray to the patron saint of undergarments and finish the meeting.

I did all three.

A Movie Based Upon My Life.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

I hope it means I'm a good yarn store customer and not what immediately popped into my gutter-like mind.

Darwin Awards 2008

For those of you who are not familiar with the Darwin Awards, it's annual award to people, usually criminals, who are, well, stupid. They rise to the top of the stupid heap like the green, noxious odor that hovers above landfills. And to make matters worse, they reproduce.

I don't know if they are real or not. I'm leaning toward real because you can't make this stuff up.

Here is the glorious winner:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

And now, the honorable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company, expecting negligence, sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

3. A man, who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago, returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. W hen the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled out a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer... $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on head, knocking him unconscious.
The liquor store window was made Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he
replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 a.m., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle
declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

Sewing Class: The Final Chapter

It's done. I feel like I've just given birth. Blood, sweat, tears, caffiene, swearing, and some Tylenol (to be honest, I had much more than a Tylenol while giving birth).

Bad me--I didn't do my homework. I was supposed to pull out stitches and re-pin the bottom. So sue me. I had a new car to play with this week. So my punishment was not to write "I will not neglect my Singer to play with shiny new toys" 100 times but nooooo, something much worse. I had to iron. I don't iron at home and there are very good reasons I don't and shouldn't according to the Orange, Texas fire chief. Irons were the inventions by masochists. But I ironed Saturday. Ick. Yuck. Hot and burned fingers.

I soon learned the seam ripper is my best friend and corners are evil. But I received my certificate and was encouraged to sign up for the next class. Clothes. I don't think so. That would mean I have to measure myself and I don't want that kind of depression.

And so Frankenstein's Redneck Tote is done. And it doesn't look too bad. The lining is a cheerful array of bugs. Maybe Igor from Dracula should tote this around instead of Frankenstein. Well, any well dressed monster would be proud to shoulder this fashionable accessory.

Weekly Warning 2/10/08

I've decided to start a new thingee here on my blog. I do a LOT of stupid stuff. Most of which could be avoided if someone had whacked me over the head with a newspaper or if I had just read directions or advise. Also I do not make this stuff up. These are actual things I have tried or made or whatever.

So here it is--The Introductory Weekly Warning.

You don't really need to put three teaspoons of raspberry syrup into your coffee for flavoring. The people at Starbucks might know a thing or two about this. Just use a dash like the directions say or you might end up with Pepto colored coffee.

Tag: Strange and Random Facts

Lil' Knitter has tagged me.
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

The challenge is which strange facts about me will not gross you out.
1. DH and I play the "Seven Degrees of Clue". Pick a movie and we can place an actor in that movie with another actor in another of the first one's movie. With in seven movies, we will have it related to the movie Clue. Kind of a demented Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

2. I usually never follow recipes. Some are incredibly gross flops that result in Chinese take out or they are so mouth-watering good it'll make you want to thank God you've got thumbs for fork-lifting. Unfortunately, since I don't follow recipes, I can't recreate it.

3. I have scars all over my body from my genetic klutziness which I have passed on to my daughter.

4. I can't remember people's names. It's horrible. I can remember faces but not names. It took me four months to remember Dave's middle name but seconds to remember he hated chocolate (can you believe it?)

5. I can't stand people who don't take care of their animals. Makes me want dump my icky dinner flops all over their cars.

6. My most favorite meal in the world is brisket, corn on the cob, homemade yeast rolls and some form of chocolate for dessert. Excuse me while I wipe the drool from the keyboard.

7. Housework ranks just above an annual Pap Smear.

My taggees:
Knitsabella
Cindy
Turtle
Zippiknits
Tiffany
Sarah
Elizabeth

Eye Candy for Yarn-o-holics

Feast your eyes! Katsara Yarns are awesome. I just want to run my fingers through them. But, I won't because I have greasy fingers overdosing on Bugles.

Also as you see (and covet) the colorways are fantastic but the actually yarn is soft and very nice to knit (or crochet, if you're in that sort of thing. Personally, I can't crochet but I have discovered crochet hooks are especially painful when caught under your wedding band and finger--but I digress)

Dorothy Gail--Yarn Thief

Your arch-nemesis is:	Dorothy Gail
Why?	Because they stole my yarn
The winner will be...	You will kill each other in a duel
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

I always thought she looked sneaky and that "her three friends" were actually hitmen.

Sewing Class, Part One

I survived my first sewing class. My project, however, looks like a cross between an accessory for Frankenstein and something tacky Minnie Pearl would use.

My back is killing me from being hunched over the cutting table. Someone needs to tell the pattern makers to make the black cutting lines dark and the paper not blow away when the a/c kicks in.

Fortunately, the demonic senior citizen from the supply jaunt was not in my class. Perhaps Satan recalled her to the seventh layer of hell, I don't know but I'm glad she was not there.

Kim, my very patient sewing instructor, did not run out of Joanne's clutching her head to prevent an aneurysm (and how cool is that I spelled that right without spell check?). Nor did I sew my fingers together. The only thing I did to scare Kim was to remark that the tracing tool thingee look liked some Friar Torquemada from the Spanish Inquisition would use on very little people. Oh and also stick a straight pin into my thumb.

By the time class was over, I looked so knowledgeable that someone actually came up to me to ask a sewing question about a shrug. To which I had no answer, of course, but I did advise her that she could knit up that shrug. I even told which yarn and needles to use. When the poor woman's eyes glazed over, I realized I had gone too far and referred her to Kim.

My homework is to pull out 4 inches of stitches from the bottom part and re-pin. Stay tuned for Sewing Part Two next Saturday where I post a picture of Frankenstein's Redneck Tote.

The Eagle (well, V-ger) has landed.

My new car has arrived. I swore that I would get a sensible, adult car like the four cars I've bought before. But this car, the 2008 Dodge Avenger, just followed me off the lot like a lost puppy. Dave, the master Negotiator, talked the dealership down from $23,900 to #17,500 on a fully loaded Avenger with Ethanol optional fuel and V-ger the Silver Avenger is mine.

What is V-ger and has this crazy person named her car, you ask?

I was subbing Friday in a kindergarten class when a five year old overheard me talking about our purchase of the Avenger and he called it V-ger. I was instantly transported (pardon the pun) back to the original first Star Trek movie when a large planet-like thing threatened Earth and it turned out to be a Voyager satellite from our time (well, the seventies). They called it V-ger. It was about to kill everything when Spock figured it out.

So V-ger is ours as well as the car payments.