You know it's time to stop for a bit when you almost glue your fingers to a desk.

At least I managed to get the bits of tissue off them...

How the hell did I acquire so much yarn?!?!?

Yesterday I completed the first part of a large piece of filet crochet I'm working on. It's eventually going to be a centerpiece with spaces for cross stitch inserts. The pictures are of the completed bottom part. I'm currently working on one sides right now and will take some more pictures when I've got another piece finished.

( Pictures behind the cut )

Okay we had two days of nice sunny weather in the 70's and now we're back in the 50's and going to hit the 40 for a high on Tuesday. WTF? It's April. WHERE IS MY SPRING?!?!

Next weekend I will be in Atlanta and at the mercy of my family for my birthday. My mom is going to take me shopping. I would say something about black skirts, except I actually need to buy a black skirt since I got rid of the last two that sat on hangers and were never worn because they no longer fit. My sister called me yesterday and wants to know what kind cake I wanted. I love my family, when I don't want to strangle them.

I have started a new crochet project, this one in filet crochet. Filet crochet should be easy to do. It is in some respects because you only need to know how to chain and how to do double crochet. The thing that trips me up is that you are making a grid with hole filled in to make the pattern and you make both the grid and the pattern at the same time. For some reason this breaks my brain. But after my successful bunny square (which I took pictures of and need to find the cable for my camera), I decided to do a centerpiece for when we get a table. We don't have one now (we eat at the counter), but I get the feeling we'll need one after we move. I like this centerpiece because once you get down with the filet crochet, you have four open space you can fill with embroidery or cloth in different colors. It's a large piece (thank goodness I used the smaller thread or I'd have a bedspread instead of a centerpiece!), but it looks like it will be gorgeous when I'm done.

Other than crochet, I've spent the weekend watching miome play video games. It has been nice and relaxing. Good weekend has been good.

I was going to show a picture I took of the awesome filet crochet bunny I did, but I can't find the cable for my camera. Foiled! FOILED I SAY!

I was then going to write on something, but can't decide what. FOILED AGAIN. Until I realize that I have my friend's list to decide for me.

Pick a number between 1 and... 147? Good lord, I have a lot of WIPs in this one folder.

1) Went to an art fair on Saturday. Miome and I wandered for two hours and still did not see all the booths. It was huge and awesome. And sometimes expensive. There was one lady selling simple knitted hats for $65 and people were buying them. The only thing special about them was that they were felted. Well hell, I can churn out one of those suckers using my round loom in an afternoon. If I'd known all I needed to do was felt the damn thing, I could have practically paid for my books this year. What a deal!

2) I bought a ceramic fish. I know this sounds crazy, but my grandfather was an avid fisherman. I can remember summers with him spent fishing. When he moved to GA from NC, he had to leave behind the large bass he had mounted on his wall. My mom said no way. He really wanted a fish to hang on his door, but my mom wanted something non-tacky. While at the art fair, I found one modeled from a real small-mouth bass. I bought it and am going to mount it on a nice board with my grandfather's last name beneath it. It'll be classy and a fish. My mom will not be able to complain.

3) Realized that I somehow lost a week. All the stuff for my internship isn't due until the week after next, meaning I could spend this weekend relaxing and not stressing. Awesome.

4) Turned the entire windowsill full of roma tomatoes from my plant into vegetable broth and pizza sauce. Next time I have got to remember to remove the skins before I boil them. I didn't think it would matted once they were blended up, but it does.

5) Called my sister so we could continue our plans for my mom's 60th birthday party. It's a secret. She doesn't know we're trying to get most of the family to come to a big party for lunch. She just thinks we're going to go out to eat with her. Heh. We are so devious.

Now to go to bed. If I can pull Miome away from the fanfic she's currently reading.

Argh. I realized I contradicted myself on something in the third part of the Witch King. Which means I not only have to fix it in the word docs but also on my page. *grumble* At least I was able to get my glasses fixed for free.

Also I wrote 3/4 of the fourth part of Witch King. It went pretty fast. I could end the fourth part here, but I think you'd all rise up and smite me. It's not a cliff hanger but it would make this part much shorted than the other three. I think I'll see if I can add one more scene.

Maybe I'll be really evil and end if on a cliff hanger. I just had an evil, evil, EVIL idea for doing just that. WHAHAHAHAHA. Might get it done by tomorrow. That would be a nice way to start the school year. Post the fourth part of the Witch King story.

Right then. I think that's enough writing for today. I'm going to crochet for awhile and then go to bed.

EDIT: Error fixed on website. Win!

Tonight's dinner was fried pork chops, green beans, and salad from the container garden. Mmm... So very good. I'm obviously a better cook than I realized. rykaine passed on a very nice crochet pattern for fingerless gloves that doesn't require me to crochet in back loops in order to do. I'm going to give it a try and see if I can get some gloves done. I owe nikerymis a drabble. Next week I am flying to Atlanta to visit with my family. I come back the following Monday.

Finally, I was supposed to get my new laptop from Dell last week. They shipped it to Raleigh instead despite the fact we told them twice (once in July when I was having problems with the AC adapter and again in email for this call that we no longer lived in NC and what are new address was). We were then told that it would be shipped again and we could expect it by Wednesday. Miome got a call yesterday from the shipping company saying they'd tried to deliver it to Raleigh, but no one was there to sign for it. *bangs head on desk*

Miome also spoke to a high up supervisor about the whole mess (we started this whole mess in mid-October). He was very confused as to why we were directed into the program for getting a different type of laptop since we could have just gotten the exact same laptop as my old one as a replacement. This is what we wanted in the first place. Sigh... instead I'll get a different laptop that will need to have all the old software reloaded onto it. That's assuming it's not shipped to Raleigh AGAIN. At this point, if they told me that the delivery truck the laptop was on had a freak accident with a car full of midget clowns and a donkey that caused the laptop to spontaneously combust, sending flying shrapnel into the river and incidentally killing a hidden ninja, I wouldn't be surprised. After all, everything else about this whole mess has been a farce.

Oh well. At least I have cinnamon cookies my girlfriend made to keep me company.

( I swear I need a tag called the State of the Bowels )

In other news, I have about given up on the fingerless gloves thing. I just cannot find a pattern that is what I want and doesn't involve doing ribbing (which I have done successfully in crochet, but would rather stab my eyes out than do for any length of time). So I'm probably going to finish the scarf and take a picture of it and the hat sometime this week. I've got an extra skein of blue yarn leftover from this endeavor that I'll turn into a bunch of Granny squares with some white I keep around for just such a thing. Maybe I'll make an afghan to take to my mom. Who knows?

miome called the BMV here and Indiana and discovered that their website is a load of bull. I have all the paper work I need to get my car registered. We went down there today only to find out that it was closed for Veteran's day. WTF? Veteran's isn't till Monday! So no registration for me.

Dell has managed to screw up getting me my laptop in new and interesting ways. This time they sent the new laptop to Raleigh. Yep. Despite me telling them to remove the old address from their files in July when ic alled about another issue and Miome telling them in email again what our new address is, Dell still managed to screw up. It's like watching a farce unfold before my eyes.

But... I have a HAT! I crocheted a hat and it is AWESOME. Miome even wants me to do one for her it's so nifty. This pleases me mightily. When I get the gloves done, I'll photograph the entire set (scarf, hat, gloves) and show it off. I am so pleased.

I got my mid-term back for one of my classes. I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. Granted, I didn't do badly but... I thought I'd done better. Turns out I completely screwed up one of the questions and that really hurt my grade. I got above a hundred (yeah for extra credit!) on my assignments in the same class, so that will bring up my mid-term grade. I'm still disappointed though.

In other news, still don't have a laptop. miome has been battling with Dell about getting a replacement. The warranty on my laptop was supposed to be next day support, but that hasn't happened. Some of the Dell support people have been complete morons. I've been borrowing Miome's computer for over two weeks now. This is getting ridiculous.

Not much writing has been done for the above reason. I like Miome's computer, but the keyboard doesn't feel right. It's distracting. That and I just don't have the time in between school, work, and other projects.

I finished my crocheted scarf and have started working on a matching hat. After this I think I'm going to try and find a fingerless glove pattern to work on. I might even have enough yarn to do them all in the same color. Yeah for matching set! Someone expressed an interest in seeing it when I was done. Was it skylark97? If you still want to see what it looks like, I'll take a picture once I'm done with the hat (which is taking 1/10 the amount of time).

Finally, I spent most of the day fighting with the server where the aerial photos I use for work are stored on. I could get half the picture to load and the rest I couldn't. It sucked. I wound up getting so frustrated I stopped working an hour early. I'll have to make that up at some point during the week. Sigh.

Dear self,

You are not allowed to go by a Jo-Anns or a Michaels and buy any more yarn. YOU HAVE ENOUGH ALREADY. Even if it is on sale for less than $2 a ball.

No love,
Tsaiko


I really do not want to do my readings. Mostly because the chapters are on latitude/longitude and map projections. I have read about these things in every, single map/GIS class I have ever taken. Heck, I've read about latitude/longitude in some geology classes.

The only thing I can compare it to is how every single book on dinosaurs will have a chapter in it about the geologic time scale. After a while, you just don't want to read about it any more. You know that the dinosaurs lived in the Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous. You don't need to read it 20 million times.

Sigh. The sacrifices I must make. At least this isn't like the one year I had where every single one of my geology classes began with the formation of the earth. *stab*

The SMP story of DOOM is off to my beta. I swear that thing just keeps getting bigger. It topped 10,000 words tonight. That's 1/5 of a NaNoWriMo novel. And I am not done. ;_;

miome is coming up tomorrow. EEEEEE! I have been cleaning on and off all day long. Grocery shopping tomorrow morning. Then I'm dehydrating something else because I'm tired of the entire apartment smelling like onions. Ugh.

Now I'm going to crochet some. Then I'll put up the dried onions so I can crush them into a powder at some point.