Happy Hump Day!!!

Yes, it's that time of week and yes, I missed last week, mainly b/c my stuff hadn't changed! Here's what I am currently:

Reading

Listening to...yes, still

Watching

It's getting to pretty weather here in Texas. We have had several 70+ degree day in a row. This means Spring....which inevitability means.......SPRING CLEANING!!!!

I think that once we get to the 70's in Texas, it begins "open window" weather. I started mine a few weeks ago when we had a few days of warm, before it chilled out again. With this run of nice weather, and some inspiration from Christine, I began my HARD CORE PURGE!!!!

As any of you who have visited/moved me know, I have alot of crap. I differentiate between crap and stuff. Yarn is stuff, books are stuff, clothes that I haven't worn in three years are crap. You get the idea.

I began with a little furniture movement for accessibility, but I realized that wasn't the problem. It was my closet. Things that were supposed to be IN my closet were cluttering my bedroom. I have a bad relationship with laundry. We don't get along. Luckily, since moving to an apartment with W/D, my clothes are clean....they just don't get put up.

My clean clothes end up in a pile on the floor of my closet. It usually end up that I am too busy, too tired, or "my roommate needs the dryer so we will throw them in the closet" kinda situation. However, this comes in handy later.

Tonight, the spirit moved me and I tackled the closet. I took a page from Christine: "If you have forty shirts, you can go six weeks without doing laundry." She makes an excellent point. I started with the hanging items and sorting what I could donate and what I would keep. This was the easy part since I haven't worn these clothes in a while. Basically, what survived are my nice button-ups, 3 suits (I did get rid of two), a few coats, and half my dresses. Anything that hadn't been worn in 2 years got donated.

The exceptions were the suits and dresses. The reason being that I will need suits, on occasion, and I kept three dresses (two I made) and four "formal" dresses. Three of them are nice bridesmaid dresses from good brides who chose ones that could be easily reworn (Thanks Lesley, Julie, and Becky!). May we all be so fortunate.....

However, that is only about 1/4-1/3 of my wardrobe. The rest consists of pajamas, casual wear, and what I call "lab wear" (Leigh can vouch for this).
"Lab wear", for a chemist, consists of clothing that assumes the possibility that it could be ruined, with holes or stains. I have several pairs of pants and shirts that have been "chemically altered". This is not a bad thing, it's just reserved for the lab....and maybe the grocery store. Okay....enough of my crappy wardrobe.....I get enough of that from home! :-P

If you are unlucky enough to live by yourself, the good part is that you can do this anytime you want.....including from 11pm-3am, like me. Hey, I have to go when the spirit moves me.

When you are ready to do this for yourself, here's what I recommend:
1. Get a bottle of wine and your favorite music CD (see above).
2. If you have to think whether you need it, you don't. It's called HARD CORE for a reason.
3. Knitterly things I recommend:
(a) Over-the-door shoe organizer (clear) to store handknit socks.
(b) "Closet rod" sweater and shoe organizers; great for HK shawls and sweaters.
(c) Triple-drawers, plastic: great for storing yarn. You can usually pull of the top and stack them. Three will match the height of a bookcase. Ask me how I know!
(d) In all of the above, I added cedar/lavender stuff to ward off "vermin."

Overall, I feel like I am 85% done with my bedroom. I still need to clean the desk area, "lingerie drawer", and the bathroom.

Knitterly news, not much to publicly report. I am currently working on baby/birthday gifts for some blog-readers, so I won't post till after! I have currently hit a "sock block". The socks that I have been working on are causing nothing but trouble. I will have knitting pictures someday, I promise!

Happy Mardi Gras!!!

For those of you not in a college town, please get a good nights sleep while the rest of us get woken up by the drunken college students coming home at 2-3am.

Guess what I got for Mardi Gras? My first SP package!!!!! Check it out!- Several types of tea...yum.....

- A cute heart ornament (now hanging with my postcards)

- A magnetic needle holder (I call him Norm)

- My first skein of Jitterbug (Blue Parrot)!! I have always loved to Collinette yarns and the colorways, but haven't been able to get a hold of any of this. Here, let's take a closer look:

MMMMmmmm......yarn pron..................

Lately, I have been in an organizational/cleaning mode. For those who know me, this is a wonderous statement. I have almost gotten to the point of being able to walk in my room, to my desk, or to the bathroom and be walking on carpet. Yeah, guys, it's that bad. Not dirty, but as my mother would/has put it, I have alot of crap. I tend to agree with her. I have begun a MAJOR cleanout to separate the crap from the stuff. I think I have been watching too much Oprah. Once it is all picked up, I plan on doing my closet, ala Christine....except for the wooden hangers. I do at least have all matching plastic hangers. Check out my new needle vase....see if you can find Norm:

My great personal news for the day is that I finally bought a new skillet! Ok, for those not in the know, a little background. My good ol' skillet finally bit the big one. Most of the Teflon had flaked off and it was getting hard to tell the difference between the pan and burnt-on food. I was not looking for something specific. I wanted a 10' pan, with straight sides, Teflon and a lid. In our family we call this the "Hamburger Helper" pan. Should not be that hard!!! I have spent a YEAR looking for something.

Today, I went to Target for some more plastic drawers that I keep my yarn in (I am up to nine, not including the bookcases in the living room). I thought I would just see what they had and there it was....no, there THEY were. I even had a choice. It was nice......okay, you go cook on my old pan for a week and see how you feel about a new one!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

First, a small rant. I have been arguing with flickr and blogger for over two hours now. It's unreal. Apparently, VD is a big blogging day. I figured I would going to end up doing this tomorrow, but I though, "okay, I'll try once more before I go to bed and that's it." So, of course, it worked.

On to happier things!!!

First, a little shout out to Miss Leigh, I am going to "borrow" her Wednesday tradition, just to give you an idea of what I am:

Listening to

Reading

Watching

I spent my lovely, single VD by coming home, reheating some Olive Garden leftovers (the Tuscan Garlic Chicken is sooooo yummy), a glass of wine, a little Audrey Hepburn, and of course some pink knitting. Since I finally got some more needles in, I have started the second soakers for Miss Elizabeth in some Cascade (color 5012). It's actually lighter IRL.

Got mail with NO BILLS!! WOO HOO!!! And it included some fun things like a lovely card from my parents and the second postcard from my SP!!!

One our second stop on our virtual tour of Europe, we are in lovely Florence, ITALY!!!! Here we see the famous Il Duomo - Cattedrale de Santa Maria del Fiore. Here, explore!! It's fun!! Someday, someday.....

I took a turn from Bezzie and ran to the thrift shop the other day, I have gone other times, but this was in search of knitterly things. I did find a nice, cotton sweater that I loved the yarn on. I plan to unravel it and make something more for Texas weather. A 7lb cotton sweater ain't one of them.

And then I heard a small wimper. I searched and searched and I finally found a cause. A poor, defenseless, handknit, argyle sweatervest. It looked so sad, and unloved, so I decided that I would give it a good home. I retrained it into something everyone would appreciate.

(Okay, like I said....flickr and I were having a disagreement. I will attempt to reupload later.)

The dark diamonds are actually a dark red, but doesn't it look nice and happy?!? I wanted to preserve the argyle because I know how much hardwork went into it. And all for $2.

Speaking of cheap, checkout my needle holder, ala pieKnits:

I used the clothespin stand things for the larger needles and I think it will go up to a US13. Now I just need to find all of my needles........

Postman, postman.....

Getting yarn in the mail is always very exciting. However, I am not sure how to take today's mail....and it isn't the yarn. Check it out:

My FIRST EVER Yarn Pirate and Cherry Tree Hill. They are even better than I could imagine. Then there is the Lorna's in Verrrrra and Bold Red. Wanna check out how pretty Vera can be? And who doesn't need a pair of red socks? I was super excited!!! What could bring me down!!!!

Yeah, Jury Duty.....my first time ever. Now, I am of two minds about this. First........Ugh.....Jury duty. Second...yes, ugh, but I am a nerd. I wanna go. I can get an exemption because I am a full time student....and a grad student, nonetheless. But, it could be a nice time for a "day off" from grad school. However, (see a trend here?) this happens a week before spring break. Knowing my luck, I will end up in some capital murder trial or something that takes six weeks. Ok, maybe I was a little over dramatic on that last part. But think of the idiot knitting that could get done.......

I got pressies!!!

I got some lovely things last week, but haven't been able to get pics up. So, heeeeerrre we go!!

This was from my upstream SP, who is over in Europe (I think). They have begun to give me a virtual tour of Europe, since I have never been. We begin in Amsterdam where here we have the nice snow covered canals. I wanna go.....

Several weeks ago, I was chosen as a winner on Amy's blog. Check out my prize!! Here we have a lovely, yummy (sorry Bezzie) skein of lavender sock yarn that she dyed herself and some wonderful smelling peach soap. I was so excited because I don't really have any solid sock yarn and there are just some patterns that you can't do with a varigated yarn.

I also had lunch with my cousin, Julie, this weekend who is the mother of Miss Elizabeth, now proud owner of handknit soakers. Do I have pictures? Of course not....I am not that smart. But they looked really cute on her!

I know my current project list looks out of date, but lately I have just been finishing things too quickly. Trust me, it's a fluke. I have cast on my February socks 4 times (I think I got it right now) and the soakers were knit in like two nights. I just started a Hogwarts scarf and yes, I will be wearing it at the store when I pick up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on July 21, 2007. For the non-Texans, that means it will be about 100 degress outside and I will be wearing a wool scarf, probably with shorts and a t-shirt.

You forget....I am that nerdy.