A Little Yarn On The Side

Yesterday was the last day of the "Race to the Bottom" challenge on Ravelry, which I helped moderate.  An 18-month challenge to potentially use up all one's stash (if possible) or an estimated 30,000.  Several people cleared out over 100,000 yards of yarn.  Me, I did an astounding 7,474.1 yards over a total of 18 months.  415 yards a month--that's just pathetic.  It did earn me the funniest badge ever, The Dryer Lint Level participation badge!  We'll be starting another 18-month challenge on May 1, and at least I'll have nowhere to go but up.

  And ready for Me Made Monday tomorrow .  And since I can't remember if I already did one for last week, I had a chance to wear my new yellow floral jacket for the very first time ye sterday: so I'm feeling a bit Amish this week.  I even started Andy's Valentine's Day gift.  I KNOW!  It isn't even March yet.  Aren't I just speedy...............?

So 2 weeks ago I got a message from an old boss that there were a couple openings with her group in Oregon that she wanted to talk to me about and would follow up on the following Monday.  Granted, we'd already decided that I'd start looking for a job in Oregon, but that kicked us into high gear because of the possible short time frame--hence all the frantic cleaning/sorting.  And then I never heard back from her.  It's kind of weird and disappointing, but I'm more worried that she'll feel bad and potentially draw back as a friend, because she's far more important to me as a person than any job is.  And it DID get some tidying of the sewing room accomplished, so I'm kind of grateful for that with or without a job. I am still pursuing jobs outside of Idaho, and with that in mind, I decided to cancel my Vogue Knitting subscription.  I had canceled all knitting magazine subscriptions several years ago, but there was recently a pretty tempting offer for t...

If you think I've fallen behind on this blog, some of these are Christmas gifts that hadn't yet been shipped, and this is the current status of Andy's Valentine's day gift.  Ahem............ There has been crafting.  Remember the stack of new towels to embroider? 9 out of 12 are now embroidered.  These are all new designs, which is really fun.  We give away embroidered towels as host/hostess gifts, and I've been doing it for so long that it's fun to have new designs that I know no one has even seen before.  And I'm NOT just saying that to try to rationalize all the new designs.  I'd need more towels for that.  I have also finished two of the small University of Idaho table runners, and I'm ready to bind the next one: On this one I added a little decorative stitching for quilting, but it isn't really necessary as I used fleece for the backing.  I think I'll do a decorative stitch "tie" with the two larger ru...

Since the wonderful Larry was able to fix my embroidery machine, I have been so excited that I've gone a bit overboard with buying embroidery designs--I admit it.  However, I have this whole new stack of towels to embroider, and today my favorite site had this design for $1.39: Can you blame me?

Here it is, February 8, and I'm just now finding time to sit down and upload some pictures. Last week I went up to visit my parents for a few days.  They're having an even worse winter at the ranch than we are, and these were taken 2 snowstorms ago.  I actually came back early to beat one of them. We've also been dealing with this: Thanks to the snow load, our back porch roof is pulling away from the house now, and dealing with contractors in Idaho is a tricky thing as they don't have to be licensed or have any sort of qualifications, so you have to find one via referral if you don't want a disaster.  I'm beginning to really hate snow, and was really hoping that yesterday's snow would melt off by itself.  Instead, I got to shovel a bunch of really heavy and wet slush-snow late in the afternoon, as well as clearing the gutter because our next door neighbor--even though she's actually helped CLEAR them of snow--continues to shovel the snow...

I am crafting today: working on the flannel shirt, then maybe the pink sweater which is now all the way to the sleeves, and enjoying the sunshine, and not have to shovel today.  And I'm spending time with all you wonderful crafters who visit each other's blogs and say nice things and make lovely craft items.  This is a nice world. And then there's the not-so-nice one.  A friend of mine is running for DNC chair, and while anyone who steps up to run for office should be applauded because it's a lot of work and there's often no reward and no thanks, I was kind of trying to lay low and not have anything to do with it.  Kudos to her for running, but a DNC chair from Idaho would be like and RNC chair from Hawaii or whatever other state hasn't elected a statewide Republican in 20 years--maybe NOT your expert on building a successful organization.  However, when I logged on to social media this morning, I had a message that Breitbart had done a story attackin...