Updates

Hello all! I have good news and bad (well, not seriously bad) news. Good news first: I am happy to report that my attempt to destash some yarn and make a little cash in the process has been successful so far! It's been really nice to have a little bit of a balance in my PayPal account to buy a skein of "must-have" yarn, or a knitting notion or two, or a little something special from etsy.

So far I've made $131 from selling yarn in my etsy shop; and another $61 selling directly from my Ravelry "will-trade-or-sell" list. So $192--- not too shabby! That total does not include the shipping amounts, either! There's still more that I want to get rid of. Given the good results so far, I am very encouraged!

Some more good news: I did finish the pair of socks for Jen (the orange striped ones). And I am on track to finish the slate blue "Data Socks" for Josh, hopefully at some point this weekend! So I'll be all set for them come the Valentine's Day weekend.

Now the "bad" news. Remember that wedding wrap that I started for my future sister-in-law? Yeah, well there is no way that I am ever going to get that thing finished. In yesterday's mail I got the invitation to her bridal shower, which is March 13. ACK. I didn't expect it to be that soon. Although, I must admit that I don't know where my brain is! I mean really, it IS already the end of the first week of February and the wedding is early May. Sigh. Anyway, it's not going to happen. I only just found where I stashed it away (to keep it from feline influence). Talk about out of sight, out of mind!

And here's some potentially actually bad news: we need to take Sophie to the vet again for a thyroid check-up. These never turn out well. First of all, she's always half a pound lighter than she was the time before. Not good. Sophie used to be a 22-pound cat. Seriously. One day a few years ago I happened to be paying closer attention to her and realized that she looked great. A routine vet visit confirmed that she had lost a lot of weight; she was down to about 16 pounds. But since that time, which was not more than 3 years ago, she's consistently lost about 1.5 pounds a year. This is a lot for a cat. So in less than 3 years, she's gone from 16 to 11.5 pounds. :-(

She started on a thyroid regime about the same time we first noticed the weight loss. So, obviously, we're STILL not getting the dosage right. I just want her to stop losing weight. Thankfully, her appetite is still good. She doesn't drink as much water as I'd like. In fact, the last time we brought her in to the vet, Sophie was pretty dehydrated and they gave her some fluids. The sight of the bag of fluids makes me very sad. That was the last step before euthanasia for Mr. Chesterfield.

There are other potential issues with Sophie, too. For one thing, I'm starting to doubt the accuracy of her date of birth, something we have long thought to be March 1996. My sister adopted Sophie in November of 1997 and was told at that time that Sophie was "a year and a half old." Given the debacle with Mr. Chesterfield's age when we adopted him, I have an ever increasing terror that Sophie isn't approaching 14, but 19 or 20. Also, she was in bad shape when she was initially rescued. She had a really bad case of pneumonia, the effects of which still plague her today. She is prone to respiratory infections and has had fluid around her heart and lungs a couple of times. Plus at her last vet check-up we learned that she has fractal cataracts. She can still see, but she might see as if she were looking through a kaleidoscope or faceted glass. Great.
AND she's been having accidents again around the house, which is really disconcerting. We had to move a small litter box into the front foyer for her to use because she was just randomly peeing on the floor right there for no reason. Todd is very diligent about keeping the boxes in good order and no other cats take issue with them.

I just don't want her to suffer along, getting skinnier and skinnier, sicker and sicker. Sometimes I truly wonder if the vet's office has Sophie's best interests at heart. She's a veritable goldmine for them by way of check-ups, medicine, tests, shots, fluids, etc. Maybe that's crazy talk, but....

DONE!

Hear, ye! Hear, ye!

All the yarn in my stash (give or take 5-7 items currently in use in projects that I can't easily pull out & photograph) is finally up on Ravelry. It was both labor and time intensive, but worth it in the long run!

I actually sold something too. Oddly enough, it was one of the last things I ever expected to sell: 3 skeins of Paton's Mosaic in Bottle Green. But hey! It's a start! I also listed 4 things on Destash, just to see if I get any bites there. Nothing yet. I actually have sold 1 or 2 things on Destash, so people do look there.

I also broke down and got some blocking mats for myself from KnitPicks. Since I seem to veer towards knitting gifts lately, I figured it might be nice to have them look a good as possible! And...I got this sock yarn. Oh boy, is it beautiful.

Stroll in the Tea Party colorway:























YUM

More Stashing

Last night I put 2 more groups of yarn colors on my Ravelry page: purples and blacks. Man, I have a lot of purple-ish yarn. Tonight I might try to do grays and ivory/white. I have an assload of gray too, I'm sure.

In other news, I decided to knit a newsboy hat. I've been wanting to knit one for a while now and haven't been able to find a decent enough pattern that doesn't require cutting and inserting a piece of plastic in the peak. I finally found this free pattern from Coats & Clark. Unfortunately the pattern calls for crappy Red Heart Zoomy yarn. Blargh. The main problem I have with this yarn is that it comes only in pastel-ish colors. When I think newsboy hat, I don't think pastel. I think brown tweed, army green, denim blue, or charcoal gray, etc.

So I set out to find comparable yarn to use. Gotta love etsy. I found this 100% wool bulky weight yarn in a deep indigo color from Cordova Studios.














I cast on last night and I can tell it's going to be a really quick knit. I'm liking the way it's turning out. My only concern is that the dye is so deep and inky on the yarn that it tinged my fingers blue while knitting with it. I just hope that when it's done, it doesn't dye my forehead blue! But, we'll see!