05 June 2007

June travel, prospects, & projects so far

Got back yesterday from house-/ dog-/ cat-sitting at C & S's place in Ohio. We drove up Thursday afternoon, got home yesterday afternoon after detouring through Charleston & Huntington WV, where I needed to sign the union books. Huntington says Kyger Creek is calling a few at a time and should go "time" two months (or so) from now, and "the Oilcan" in Ashland is due to begin a sixty-day outage Sept. 15th. There are about 110 ahead of me on the books. In Charleston, when I asked, "where's all the work?" they said, "right here, and Clarksburg." Sounds like I may get a call out in the nick of time. Wish me luck.

There's a woman in Kenova who is freecycling "a bag of misc sewing items" in which I'd expressed interest. Somehow we miscommunicated (both of us) and I didn't get the bag on either the trip to Ohio or the return trip, and now she's on a trip herself. I don't know what's in the bag and her sig file indicates our philosophies differ, but I'm having fun participating in our miscommunication, and am looking forward to (maybe, eventually) meeting her and picking up the bag.

While at C & S's, though we have internet access it's just not the same as being home on our own boxes, we spend less time on the computer and more wondering "what to do next." They have some sort of satellite TV and high-definition, and TIVO and a bunch of other stuff I don't know how to use, so we did manage to watch a few decent movies and even an episode of Dead Like Me that hadn't arrived in our netflix queue yet.



I finished the soldiersocks and printed out the band I'm supposed to wrap them in. I'm glad that's done; it took much much longer than I had planned, or expected, and I was heartily sick of the project several times before the end, but the socks are beautiful and I'm proud of them. And it was good practice knitting; I now have a standard sock pattern (my adaptation of the official SFS pattern) to use with fingering weight yarn, and a new favorite "cheap" sock yarn: knitpicks essential solids.

Got quite a bit done on the Oh's and X's cross stitch, and unless the backstitching really transforms what I see so far, I won't be buying any more of their patterns. th'Mr made a valid point:
he: "how much did that cost you?"
me: "not much, I got it out of the clearance bin at Michaels, I think."
he: "then why, if you don't enjoy it, are you finishing it?"
me: "uh..."



I'm finishing it because I'm curious just how much the backstitching will improve it. I'm finishing it because it'll fit with the "decor" or "theme" of what will eventually be my sewing room. I'm finishing it because I'm OCD and have a really hard time not finishing what I start... eventually. But most of all I was working on it over the weekend because after finishing the soldier socks I had no other project with me to work on, and there's nothing like a craft store to be found anywhere near Athens, Ohio.



Wednesday, I think it was, th'Mr & I were out riding around town after RJ's film screening, and finally found the quilting supply store that I'd seen "Grand Opening June 1" fliers for. It wasn't open yet, but the proprietor (proprietess?) invited me in anyway, and I came out the proud owner of a Fiskar's brand 3-piece quilting set - rotary cutter, mat, and transparent ruler.

On the way home from Ohio we stopped in Barboursville to get th'Mr's dad (hereafter to be known as th'Mr.Sr) a birthday present, a digital picture frame. I think it's a great idea and something he (1) doesn't already have (2) may have actually never heard of (3) will enjoy. This is a guy who's pretty hard to buy for.

Speaking of guys hard to buy for, Fathers' Day is coming up, what, this weekend? I'm going to get busy knitting ties of sock yarn. Wish me speed.



And with that, I'll close this blog entry (almost neglecting to mention that we finally had rain, both while we were away and last night, and my nasturtiums are blooming!) and go cast on a tie.

Oh, my. I was all prepared to <shriek> here, when I did my usual <arrow up, enter> in order to access wvdial to go online and post this, and instead of wvdial my previous command had apparently been HALT... so after rebooting I expected this whole post to be gone but NO, Firefox is absofuckinlutely amazing. Yes, it's still here. Now to add some pix...

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