A Little Yarn On The Side

And I haven't finished a single sweater.  I am indeed working on a sweater, and I think it's probably more than half-finished, but for the sake of my sanity, I'm thinking I should update my goal to 6 sweaters, quilts, or shawls.  They're still all large projects, right? And that brings me to ONE finished large project for the year, since I can count the quilt for my friends.  Now only 5 more to go.......

...but there's a cat on my project.  It's rather astounding how he can cover it so completely. Easter dinner was great fun, but it was a really busy weekend, so tonight I came home from work, crawled into pajamas, and thought I'd get a little knitting done.  But Valentino says there was too much cleaning and not enough kitty this weekend, so there's some petting to be made up.  And who am I to argue?

 There I was, all excited about the new tulips coming up to make up for the THOUSANDS in extra taxes we're paying this year, when I came home one night to find these:  reduced to this:  The survivors were brought inside for their own protection,  and Andy and I spent an evening spraying deer repellent on everything else.  If the deer finds it even half as repellent as we did while spraying it, our flowers are safe.   Luckily, I bought mid- and late-blooming flowers as well, so now that they stink, the next wave have been allowed to bloom:  as well as the ones that were already planted,   so we're looking pretty festive.  We have 12 people coming for Easter, so it's nice to have some color in the yard.  Of course, it means no sewing this weekend, but maybe the weekend after.... I think we've decided to keep the latest bowl , as it so nicely matches a table runner we just happen to have, so one less gi...

I did our taxes this weekend, and instead of the usual refund, we owe a HUGE extra amount in taxes.  I know the "party line" is that the smaller with holdings were supposed to make some people pay less, but we are not among them.  Our tax percentage took a huge jump, and this is before all the middle class tax "cuts" fade out.  Next year the Trump Tax will be even worse for us because I drive my own car for appointments, and while my last job had a car allowance to reimburse me for it, the new job has NO such programs, and Cheeto Voldemort took away the ability for salespeople to write off mileage even for business purposes, so automatic pay cut for all outside salespeople.  So, the rest of the weekend was spent in NOT spending any money, which will be the theme for the rest of the year to make up for how much we have to come up with. The creeping phlox is starting to fire up, one of my hellebores finally bloomed,  we have two azaleas that I didn't know...

Today kicks off the third Race to the Bottom in the Ravelry Stashdown group:  an 18-month challenge to either use up the rest of one's stash or to decrease it by a goal amount.  Last time I rocked  the Dryer Lint level, but this time I'm in two additional challenges, fabric and sweaters, so I'm hoping to reach "Alpaca," or 15,000 yards.  To be fair, I've done that amount in a year in the past, but I've dropped off the knitting bandwagon a bit, so I'm hoping to get reinvigorated by the challenge.  And I just might have been dragging on finishing the second sock to give myself an early yardage boost, just in case.........

I'm going into the third week at the new job, and so far it's a bit mixed.  I think I'll like the actual job, but it comes with some baggage:  almost daily emails to the sales department emphasizing selling more, which are ridiculous and never work; team members blasting basketball on the television the instant management isn't there; and on my second day of training, the managers all went out of town for meetings so most of my training got blown off by people who didn't even show up to work.  But I've always been good at marketing and advertising, so I think the actual job is a good fit, but we'll see.  Last weekend we had company, and in case you were considering it, don't have company during your first couple weeks of a new job.  It's too exhausting.  So I was REALLY excited to have the house to ourselves this weekend.  Yesterday I attended the new owner classes for my machine.  The machine weighs 35 pounds, and the suitcase isn't exactly ...

But I'm ready to start the new job.  I think it's going to be a fun place to work, which would be a nice change.  Vacation has been lovely, and everyone should get a two-week vacation when they get a new sewing machine.  :) I finished the shirt from 2015, and am pretty pleased with myself over it.  Now I know to use temporary fabric stiffeners when working with horrible fabrics, but this was started prior to that knowledge, and because the fabric was cut in such a wonky manner, I had to go back to Joanns to get more fabric and even the extra fabric didn't allow for the other collar piece.  Usually when something is this frustrating, it stands a good chance of learning what the inside of the food processor looks like, but I put it away until I could face it again, then actually found it after the move!  There's hope for my sweater wips yet! There was a trip to my Bernina dealership to pick up the table I ordered, and two fabric panels might have ...