Flooring and Carpet and Chaos, oh my!

We had new floors and carpet put in this week. Monday it was the laminate floor in the majority of the house. I had deluded myself into thinking that there would be no problem with the kids and space. Boy was I wrong! I sent Logan off to school at 8:15 and then 6 little worker bees showed up at my house about 15 minutes later. Now my husband and I had unloaded all the bookcases and moved everything out of the rooms except the furniture. I thought I would be able to hang out in the living room (which wasn't getting flooring but new carpeting on Thursday) but I completely forgot the worker bees would need a place to move the furniture to. Ok, Logan is at school and Sidney (the 8 month old) can hang out in the office with me for the morning. Sounds reasonable. Except all the furniture was now in the living room and there was no way they would be finished before Logan got home from school. So I called Jeff and he came home to help me entertain the kids until the worker bees were done. It worked ok from there. It was just a little crazy and chaotic (and I HATE chaos) and we were pretty much trapped in the office, but we managed.

Fast forward to yesterday. I got a phone call from the carpet people letting me know the next set of worker bees would be here sometime today between 7am and 10am. 7am?!!! I'm barely conscious by 7am! Ok, I can drag my lazy butt out of bed at 6am for one day, really I can. I may not like it but I can do it. I managed to get up by 6:30 (did I forget to mention I love my snooze button?). That gives me half an hour, right? Wrong! I was still in my bathrobe with wet hair (I at least got my shower done) when I saw the van pull into our driveway at 6:45! What the?!! I somehow managed to at least get dressed before they rang the doorbell. And all three of them barely spoke English, but that's a rant for another day. Here I am....trying to dry my hair, supervise these guys moving furniture, take care of the baby and get Logan ready to get on the school bus by 8:15. All this without my morning mocha! Complete chaos! Aargh!! It is now 9:30am. The 3 little worker bees are gone, my new carpet is in, the furniture is replaced, Logan is at school, I have my coffee and the baby is napping. Blessed peace. Maybe I will get some knitting done after all.

On the knitting front, would you believe I'm thinking about joining yet another knit-a-long? There is a Myrna Stahman group starting up. I've always wanted to try to make a faroese shawl and I know Myrna Stahmang designs some beautiful things. Now to figure out how to work this one in so Jeff doesn't catch me. I'll be using stash yarn I have so how can he complain bout just one more? Well I do have to buy the book, but.....

Coffee and moving

What is it about coffee that make some people nuts? I mean I'm from Seattle originally. The coffee capital of the world and I freaked out when I couldn't find a drive-thru latte stand anywhere when I moved to Maryland. I used to know where there were at least 10 of them within a 5 mile radius of my house when I lived in Seattle but out here? Nothing!! I'm lucky I can find a Starbucks and those are everywhere! I was wondering what kind of uncivilized planet had Jeff brought me to to marry him. Luckily one of the wedding gifts we got was an espresso maker and a coffee grinder. There is a God! So every morning I now make a triple mocha and I'm good to go. Knitting (and all things in general) are better with a sufficient dose of caffeine. And while I'm on the subject.... why can't a company call there products the same thing on the East Coast as on the West Coast? The example that comes to mind is mayonnaise. The brand I know (west coast) is Best Foods. Do you know how many months it took me to figure out that Hellman's was the same thing here?! Too much work if you ask me. I guess I should get used to it if I'm going to continue to be a Navy wife. We move a lot I've heard. Moving on now....

The FLAK is going along quite nicely. I have my saddles done:

















Aren't they cool? I think they came out pretty well. I'm in love with the color. I used KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Hollyberry. I decided I needed a reddish sweater since I didn't have one and the cables pop nice. Now to work on other things while I wait patiently for the next installment.

I decided to join yet another KAL. I guess you can call it that. It's the Knitting Olympics that the Yarn Harlot challenged knitters on. I know... I may have totally lost my mind and I think Jeff may shoot me if I join one more but what he doesn't know won't hurt him, right? I've decided to knit the Shetland Lace shawl that Evelyn A Clark designed in Wrap Style. It should be sufficiently challenging that I'll have to work at it but not so tough I have no hope of finishing in the 16 days! I'll post the picture of whatever I get done by the time the Olympics are over.

How Many KAL's can one person join?

Answer: How many ya got?

I'm now up to three KAL's and the year has just started. The one that started it all is the FLAK (Follow the Leader Aran Knitalong) that Janet Szabo started on Yahoo. Ok, so that was the first.... Through that one I discovered a group of people that were knitting the Aran Weight Victorian Lace shawl that is a free pattern on Elann. And sometime before either of these started a friend of mine (thanks Genia!) told me about a Mystery Shawl along, because I knit lace shawls all the time. I'll have to figure out how to post pictures so everyone can see some of my insanity with the lace shawls (could be a while since I just figured out how to do 'links' thus the link-happy post!). The group starts the 3rd shawl this February so I said, why not! I don't have anything else to do. After all I only have two kids (both under 4), a husband, one cat and a house to take care of! And right now we're trying to get all the lose ends tied up before Jeff leaves in June for Bahrain for a year. I get to be a single mom for a while but he'll be back on leave occasionally. So I've got loads of free time!

Till next time

Hey all!

Well here's my attempt at blogging. I figure everyone is doing it so why not be a lemming and try too?

I'm a 40 yr old mother of two (my oldest, the 3 1/2 year old has Down Syndrome) who is married to a Navy man. I moved to Maryland from the Seattle area 4 years ago since that's where the Navy decided we needed to be. I gave up everything to move out here and basically started my life over. It was kinda scary but I seem to be doing ok at it. For the most part I have a husband who drives me nuts (but whose doesn't?), two kids I adore (when they aren't driving me nuts ;-) ), a house that seems to always have something that needs doing and fibers that are always calling my name.

The knitting part you ask? Well I've been knitting (or doing some form of needlearts) since I was 9. My stash is no where near the epic proportions I know some ladies' are. Mostly I would like to think that this is because I have self control. Not! More likely it's because of finances. I can't imagine what my stash would be like if I won the lottery! I'd have to buy a house just for the yarn so I could go visit it and pet it when I want to. Or buy a yarn shop so I could justify having a place for all that yarn! My most recent insanity is a KAL that started a couple of weeks ago. Janet Szabo started a FLAK
(Follow the Leader Aran Knit-a-long) on Yahoo and I'm having a blast. We haven't even started the real sweater yet, just swatching but I've learned so much! Janet, if you happen to stumble on this post, you are an absolute gem to take this on! I've also go numerous UFO's on the needles here and there. That's my downfall, I can't seem to get to the finishing part sometimes. I think that's why I decided to do this Knit-a-long.... I'm hoping I'll have incentive to actually finish!

Until next time.