Holy Exposure, Batman!

Good morning, everyone!  I have been up for four hours or so...not too long by my standards.  So far this morning, I completed a major money project, corresponded with a guy about a purple chair, exercised the dogs to collapsed exhaustion, and wrote an article about knitting.  Here's THAT...

http://www.examiner.com/article/register-now-for-wool-and-company-stitch-n-pitch

So one of the greatest things EVER, knitting-wise, happened this week.  One of the yarn stores participating in the Chicago Yarn Crawl asked if they could use one of my scarf patterns as their exclusive giveaway for their store.  Sounds like no big deal, right?  Well, let me explain the Yarn Crawl to you, then.

Basically, there are 28 local yarn shops in the Chicago area participating in this week-long event.  You go to one store and pick up a passport, and then during the event, every time you go into a local yarn shop, you get your passport stamped.  There are prizes for visiting five stores, ten stores, and fifteen stores, in addition to the route being broken up by region.  Every store is giving away a raffle basket valued at about a hundred bucks.  The event is sponsored by one of the yarn company reps, in conjunction with all of the stores.

Yarn Crawlers are a crazy breed (I can say this with conviction, as I myself will be a Yarn Crawler and can confirm my level of crazy)...they start out the week with a budget, and then of course see that with 28 stores' worth of yarn, there is just too much loveliness to stay within the confines of a pre-stuffed envelope of cash.

So I don't know how many hundreds of knitters there are who pick up a passport for the event (I suppose I could ask Joan, but I try to respect how busy she is), but all of them who stop by one of the stores will be receiving one of my patterns, complete with my contact info.

Meaning all of these people have easy access to subscribe to me at examiner.com, find me on Ravelry or Etsy to view other patterns, send me suggestions and news events related to knitting...

Super-duper win.  Seriously.  I'm honored.

For those of you who humor me and don't knit, I understand where you may be thinking this isn't a very big deal, but this is actually a very, very big deal.  And I can only hope there are no mistakes in the pattern...ha ha ha.

Other than that, I have actually made progress on the kimono sweater.  I'm on the second front, which means when I finish that, I get to attach everything as one giant piece and knit the body.  Woo hoo!  What I like so much about this sweater isn't just the shape of it...there are only two seams to sew.  I hate sewing.

What I hate about it is that...again...it's sixty miles of stockinette stitch.  But it will be worth it in the end.

I'm going to go to Starbucks and dance the afternoon away!

Vacation Time!

Good morning, everyone...today I get to say this for the first time in six months (and even THEN, I was packing up an Aveo and driving 1,100 miles almost in one day)....I'm on vacation!

From what?

My job, which has taken an incredibly odd turn.  My personal relationships with friends and family both old and new, which usually get re-evaluated on my vacations and then I forget everything I re-evaluated the day I go back to work.  Giving a crap about laundry.  Oh, to sum up, watch this video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fztNCJy-GXI&feature=related

I think this will be a week of catching up.  Getting ahead may be asking a bit much, but catching up is reasonable...I'll get on the bike, I'll knit, I'll maybe get off the bike at some location where I have never been before, and maybe I'll knit some more.  I will get my financial affairs together, if there are any yet to get together (although I don't think there are any).  If not, I'll just get other people's financial affairs together!  Math...yay!

For now, though, I just watched my cat crawl into the couch.  Seriously.  Like a rat that can dislocate its shoulders.  Me seeing this live actually explains why I couldn't find him  for about six hours last week.

The Scarf Pattern of the Month for August is written and on the needles...one pattern repeat shouldn't take more than a day, so I'll know if the pattern works before shipping it off to Tiny E to test-knit for me.  I may write a few extra columns this month about knitting.  Go ahead and make your fun, but I LOVE yarn.  And being creative.  And the Chicago Blackhawks.  And these are just the THINGS I love!  I love people, too, but that's a conversation for tomorrow.  It's so rare that I'm shallow that today, I think I'll focus on things.

So yesterday, I met this cop who was patiently waiting for some lady to show up on a video, and we were basically small-talking while we waited.  Turns out he's the brother in law of a guy I knew about 17 years ago.  Because that's how small my world is.

Wait...I said I wasn't talking about people.

Anyway, also on my list this week is cleaning out my condo of history...the couple who are moving out I am sure have left an entire dog's worth of hair behind.  Not to mention a host of other substances I'd rather not think about, since they got me fined by the condo association for...wait for it...teaching their dog to pee off of the balcony and onto the building manager assistant's car.  By the way, the couple is double-college-educated and their combined income hovers around two-hundred grand.  I won't miss them.

Funny story...the guy who's moving out told me once he's not very handy.  He called me when I was still in Texas to tell me that the closet door was loose.  I asked him if he had a Phillips head screwdriver.  I told him to go ahead and place it on that top notch of the door, and twist it to the right.

Ooh!  Maybe I'll make some headway on the kimono sweater!  It's about six thousand miles of stockinette stitch, so it's not a very exciting knit.  But hopefully it will be cute.

Okay...enough rambling for the morning.  If you look for me over the next week and a half, I'll be somewhere.  Most likely thinking and doing and being.