BlogStalk: Fave invention of the 20th Century

When I saw this topic come up, my mind immediately went to cell phones and digital cameras. I use them every day and they are an intrinsic part of my life, but I would adapt to life without them. Humans are amazing in their ability to adapt to their situations. So I know I could live without cell phones and digital cameras.

Wanna know what I've decided I can't live without?



My old kitchen aid stand mixer. It was my Christmas present from the husband and I've only used it once. But I made a double batch of bread last night in 20 minutes (it's rising slowly in the fridge all day). That batch of bread normally takes me about 40 minutes to knead by hand, not to mention the time for shaping and mixing and trying to get it the right consistency. It's a K5A, so it doesn't have the same speed control as the newer ones, and it doesn't have the hokey plastic gear casing that the newer ones do. It's pure metal and weighs in at 31 pounds! And I'm in love. I don't think we'll be buying bread anymore. This is just way too easy and fun. I think I'm in love.

The other thing I'm very thankful for? Pain meds. I'm not entirely sure what I did to my back, but I aggravated a many year old back injury in the last few days and I can't hardly move. It's very difficult to dress when you can barely reach your feet without crying. So I'm popping pills every 4 - 5 hours and hoping it loosens up in the next couple of days. I may be spending all weekend in bed, though it was amazingly sore and stiff when I got up this morning, 10 times worse than when I went to bed. It's nearly as painful as when I first injured it, normally my flair ups are at about half the original pain. I think I really messed it up this time around. So if it's not remarkably better by Monday, I'm headed to the walk-in clinic to see if I can get the big girl drugs. For now, It's naproxen sodium, very careful bending, and homemade bread.

And we're back!

Christmas vacation went really well. I started a new knitting project, which we'll discuss after I take pictures! We had a lovely time visiting our families and made a bit of progress on the moving front. Looks like we're looking at 6-12 months here and then begin the annoying process of relocating. It gets harder to leave every time. We really miss our families. But I'll do a big post later tonight, Just wanted to say that I'm back!

Traveling?

Hotel Reservations is the new reservation site on the web. They have hotels, flights, vacation rentals, and car rentals. Everything you need to get from point A to point B and save money doing it! You can book online or over the phone and they even have group discount rates. Looks like the simplest way to save money while booking for a large group. They guarantee that their prices are the lowest on the net. If you have a destination in mind, you can narrow your search by dates, times, and locations. If you just want to set off on a driving destination, tell them how much time you want to spend in the car and where you're starting from, and they'll give you a selection of destinations, with estimated travel times and cost of hotels. They may not be as large as some of the other hotel discount sites, but they do have wonderful prices and seem to be really easy to navigate. Next time we travel, we'll be checking out Hotel Reservations first!


*this is a sponsored post*

Done!

I just finished the last exam of my Landscape Design Program. It was a 12-18 month home study program to give you the basics of landscape design, to understand the theories behind it, understand design principles, etc. Not a lot of the art/design aspect, but a lot of the business end of things. Which is what I wanted. And I'm done. One more payment to go, and I get the little piece of paper saying that I finally finished something. Now I have to find something new. I need to look into finishing my AS or BA online, don't have time or money to do a real classroom route right now. But I could finish the management degree online. It feels good to be done with something!

Winter is Officially Here

For so many people, winter is viewed as a time of rebuilding. They see the plants go dormant, the snow come down and blanket the plants as a protective covering, the shorter days, and they see life rebuilding and repairing itself in preparation for spring.
Myself, I see winter as a time of breaking. It's been this way for years for me. If I'm going to struggle and fight with something, I more than likely will be dealing with it in the winter. Being cooped up more, dealing with the shorter days, looking at the barren landscape. It all causes me to re-evaluate where I stand and to attempt to change the things bothering me. So often, this is the time that my fears and feelings of inadequacy come back to me. And it's the time of year that I feel like something inside of me is breaking. Not breaking to the point of no return, but breaking so that I can be rebuilt.

Yesterday was our pastor's final sermon before moving. He spoke about fear, about stepping out into the unknown. And as he spoke, I began to see the last few weeks for what they were. My own fight against the season of breaking. I fight it every year. I try to push through it by keeping myself busy. Believing that if I ignore it, I won't have to do it again. This year, it snuck up on me a little bit. I didn't prepare for it, I didn't see it coming. So when it came, I was knocked off my feet by it a little. Little by little, the restlessness moved back in and I started floundering.

I don't know how long it will take me to work through this. So today I decided I had to deal with it. I baked and cooked, did laundry, went through my knitting projects to reorganize them, and molded soap for Christmas. I feel hollow tonight. I can feel the breaking. I know where it's centered and I know I need to stop fighting it. But some days? Some days I just want to escape back to summer. This isn't easy. It's emotionally exhausting.

Ravelry is very good

Especially on the day the new http://www.knitty.com/ comes out. Why? Because it tells me I already have 6 items on the needles. Granted, I don't remember where one of them is in the mess I call home, but I have 6 in the works. None is above 60% completed right now. I can not, can not, can not cast on for a new project. But I so want to... So very very much.

I want to make a shrug for my doggie. She won't like it one bit, I don't think, but I just need to see her in it. Doesn't matter that she's 50 lbs and way above the sizes in the pattern, I just think she needs one.

And I love the socks. All the socks. I have lots of sock yarn too. But my socks in progress are the project I can't find. And I've loaned out my cable needle for them and haven't gotten it back yet. So do they really count? I just finished a pair of socks last night, of my own design, super secret project. I haven't decided yet how I'm publishing the design. Probably a free PDF linked through here and Ravelry. We'll see. May just decide to submit it someplace, which is why it's super secret right now. So I'm sockless at the moment. Does that mean I can cast on? No. It means I get my tush in gear and find the missing sock.

But the real project that's got me befuddled and wishing I could just cast it all aside? It's Jeanie. I'm in love with everything about this project. I am in a state of cable lust right now. Almost all my projects OTN are either cabled or lace and *sigh* I feel like I must have this shawl. I don't even like knitting rectangular stoles. Not at all. They bore me after about 10 inches. So Why, oh Why, does this project torment me so? It's all I can do not to buy yarn for it. I think it would be amazing out of the Habu 1/6 roving and we have a hank here at work that's just plain perfect. Almost exactly the yardage needed. But I can't... I really can't...

Well... Maybe I can. It will take a week to finish drying if I dye it tonight and if I wait till this weekend to dye it, it will take all next week to dry. That means that I have 2 weeks to get a couple things off the needles and cast on for this project. The baby hat will take another hour or two to finish. The rest? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll use this project as a reward for writing up the pattern for the previously mentioned socks. I'm such and ADD knitter. There must me something in the air, because I've noticed a lot of us have caught castonitis lately. But isn't it lovely?