Random Thoughts Of My Blogiversary.

 1. It was fifteen years ago today, I wrote my very first blog post.  It was originally intended to be a place to post my quick sketches, so I chose the name Sketches And More.  Dumb, huh?  Over time, it expanded to include knitting, karate, and my general life.  I never figured I'd still be going after this long.  For those of you still reading, thank you for sticking with me. 

2.  I finished a sock yesterday.  

The pattern is Bubble Wrap from the now defunct Sockbug blog.  You can still get a PDF of this pattern through the Wayback Machine if you go to that site and search for it.  I won't link them here, though.  If you're a knitter, you probably know which site I'm talking about, and you also understand why I'm not linking.  

Wonder of wonders, I managed to avoid Second Sock Syndrome and cast on the other sock. 

3. It's been very beautiful weather wise this weekend. I've been able to keep my French Doors open all day and let the dogs come and go as they pleased.  They weren't the only ones who came and went.

I had me a little visitor drop by for a few minutes.  I believe it's a little wren. I turned off all the lights in the kitchen, and he soon found his way back outside.  It was fun while it lasted, though. 

4.  I caught a nice, fat rat in my live trap this morning.  I thought for a minute that I ought to kill him, but I didn't.  My heart got tender for just a minute, and I let him go. I may scatter some corn out for him tomorrow when I fill the squirrel feeder.  He needs to stay fat.  If things get really bad, he might become dinner.

5.  I'm not sure what's wrong with me lately.  Despite having all of these long weekends, I'm feeling tired and run down.  I don't have any interest in doing anything.  Between the pandemic, the elections, and the over active hurricane season, stress levels have been high this year.    Even I'm starting to feel it.  People asked me what I did for my birthday, and all I could say was "nothing."  All my family is out of state, and all my friends live in the computer, so what am I going to do?  I'm feeling the need to get together with Amy and Christi...soon.  What say, ladies?  Shall we make a day of it?  

6.  You might not get a Christmas concert next month.  I was stressing so much over getting these songs right that playing stopped being fun.   I had to start playing for my own enjoyment again.  It's kind of fun going back to my level 1 books and playing the simple stuff again. 

7.  Yesterday afternoon, while I was watching cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies, my friend texted me and said they'd fired the safety lady out at work.  I haven't found out why.  I wonder if it had something to do with the other firings a few weeks ago.  If I find anything out, I'll be sure to let you know.

8.  I guess that's about it for tonight. Goodnight, everybody. 

What Good Is It?

What good is it to have a day off when you wake up at 3:30 AM anyway?

Which reminds me, back in July when Cody and I went to Texas, my sister asked us when we would coming back East.  Cody told her he had to be at work at 6:45 Monday morning, so we'd be leaving Sunday.  She then asked me what time I had to to be back at work.  I said, "I go in at 4:30."    My sister said, "Oh, so you work nights?", and Cody replied, "No, the other 4:30."  "There's another one?" my sister said.  

But that's neither here nor there...As I was saying, I woke up at 3:30 this morning, and just laid there in the bed for two whole hours.  That part was nice, but when it became apparent I wasn't going to get back to sleep anytime soon, I got on up.  I spent most of the morning trying to overcome my inertia and get my in-town running done, which I finally did by promising myself I could spend he rest of the day doing nothing. 

And that's pretty much what I did.  While I was in town, I went ahead and bought most of what I will need for Thanksgiving dinner.  My reasoning was, I forgot something -- as I usually do -- I would have next week to go back and get it.  I think every single person in town must have had had the same idea, as the Walmart was an absolute madhouse.  I finally gave up and decided to leave.  I got half my stuff on the conveyor, and that's when it hit me.  I'd forgotten the fresh cranberries.  Cody loves fresh cranberry sauce, and it's so easy to make. 

Sigh...I'll guess I'll get them next week.

Speaking of, next week is inventory at work.  It's usually the last week of October, but what with the pandemic and the embezzling boss and all, they postponed it for a month.  People who aren't working will have a three day work week.  Those of us who will be working it, will be working it.  At least they've moved me back into my own work area.  I mean, I'll be inventorying where I work.  In the supermarket area.  These last few years, they've had me in the stock room.  I don't know anything about the stock room, and drain pans and cartons and stuff.  I know adapter tubes and headers, so I'm glad of that. 

But I digress...I got the necessary chores taken care of and spent the rest of the day knitting and watching Christmas movies, and cookie baking shows on Food Network. 

I've gotten a couple more pattern repeats finished on my sock. 

I was in such a Christmassy mood here lately, I'd thought I would make my dad's fruitcakes this weekend, but wonder of wonders, Walmart was out of fruitcake mix.  I mean, who the heck buys fruitcake mix?  Besides me, that is. 

I tried to shake it off, but the Christmas mood simply would not be denied, so I got my Christmas cards out and addressed them.  By the way, the offer is still on the table.  If you want a card,  message me your address, and I'll add you to my list.  

Just for future reference, this was the gas price on Tuesday: 

And finally, my white headed shanty men liked my comment!  

I feel like I've made the big time now.

Oh, and if you were wondering, here is the video I commented on.  

Dentists And Socks

 I had to go to the dentist yesterday.  I'd actually intended to blog about it, but it didn't seem to fit into yesterday's post anywhere.  I always seem to be a day late and a dollar short.  Even with these shorter shifts, I feel so rushed all the time.  I always seem to have so much I need to do, and never enough time to get it all done.

But as I was saying, I had to go to the dentist yesterday, because I had a toothache.  Turns out I had some decay under a filling, so he needed to pull the old filling out, clean out the decay, and replace the filling.  No big deal.  Routine dental work.   My tooth is already feeling better.  Still a bit sore, but much better than it was.  

He did tell me that if it acts up again, the next step would be to get a root canal and a crown.  I'm hoping I can hold off a couple of years on that, though.  We'll just have to see. 

This afternoon, I was there at work, just a working away, when my coworker said, "Becky, did you know [Other Coworker] has the corona?"  No, I hadn't known that.  They used to tell us any time someone had tested positive.  They couldn't tell us who, but they'd at least tell us someone in...say, tubing for example, had a a positive test, and go over the timeline with us.  Not so any more.  If my friend hadn't told me, I'd have never known.

And I went to the dentist yesterday!  

Now, the coworker who has the corona works a ways away from me, so it's highly unlikely I've been exposed, but what if I had?  What if I had unknowingly exposed everyone in the dentist office?  They need to tell us these things!  They don't even tell us how many cases we've had any more.  Last I heard, it was 71, and that was back in August.  I'm sure it's up over 100 at least by now. 

In more pleasant news, I found a couple of partially knit socks stuffed into a project bag. 

 The blue one, I'm going to finish that pair as is, but the tan and green one, I'm going to rip and start over.  The pattern is one that was written by my dear friend Suzie.  She'd originally written a 64 stitch cast on, but that wouldn't fit over my gigantic heels.  I'd tried to adapt her pattern to a 72 stitch cast on, but it just wasn't working out right on the top of the foot.  Now that I've found my Chinese Waitress cast on, which is so much stretchier than most other cast ons, I'm going to rip it all out and knit it with her original 64 stitch cast on. Maybe I'll finally get them done. 

And finally, if you really want to thank a veteran, be the kind of American who is worth fighting for. 

Weekend Projects

It would seem my obsession with knitting hats has been replaced with an obsession for knitting scarves.  Over the weekend, I cast on two, yes two, count 'em two new scarves.  Well, sort of...

This one I'd actually cast on a while back, but lost interest and set it aside for a while.  After pulling it back out of the project bag in which it had been languishing for the last couple of years, I started working on it again.  It didn't take long for me to realize the fabric was going to be way too stiff.  

I debated on whether I really wanted to start over, but I hadn't gotten very far, so I ripped it out and cast on again with larger needles.  However, I that fabric seemed too loose.  Again, I ripped and started over a third time.  I think this time I got it.    

The fabric is just about right.  Not too stiff, but sturdy enough.  The pattern came out of an old book I bought at Walmart years ago called Coats & Clark Knitting Made Easy.  It may be available online, I don't know.  It's just "Hat and Scarf Set".  I probably won't do the matching hat, because it's knit flat and seamed.   

The second scarf I cast on is Yarn Harlot's one row scarf.  

I'd found this ball of Bernat POP when I was cleaning up the other week -- which I also finished doing over the weekend.  I'm not sure it's going to make a long enough scarf.  I may need to see if I can find another ball.  I'm going to wait, though, to see how it goes before doing that. 

You'll all be happy to know I didn't spend the entire weekend sitting around knitting.  I got my pressure washer out and got the rest of the moss off my steps.  

They still look stained, so I'm going to get the detergent and try to get them a bit cleaner.  One of these days...  Once the steps are done to my satisfaction, I'm going to start working on my bricks.  First thing I'll do there will be to finish getting all the English Ivy roots off this side of the house.   

I got a good bit of them knocked off Saturday before my hands got worn out.  Pressure washing isn't as easy as it looks.  

And the last project I tackled was to replace the mini blinds on one of my French Doors.  Several of the slats had gotten broken and it just looked bad.  I carefully measured, thinking I'd be able to use the same brackets, but the blinds I bought didn't fit them.  Dang...

So I pulled the old brackets down, and look what I discovered:  

Apparently, when the previous owners painted those doors, they didn't bother to take the blinds down first.  Oh, well, it's not all that noticeable once I got the new blinds up.  

That was an exercise in frustration, I'm telling you, because those doors are steel.  It took some doing, a bit of sweating, and a few unwholesome words, but I persevered and got 'er done.   Just a simple thing like that makes the room look so much neater. 

Now I just have to finish stripping that paint and repaint the doors.  It's always something, isn't it? 

Finally!

Yes, I know, it's been a while.  The sad part is, I've actually had stuff to say, just no motivation to say it, so this'll be a bit of a catch up post.  It'll be a bit long, and probably pretty disjointed, but bear with me. OK, are you ready?  Let's dive in...

First up, if you don't have the ibotta app, you're really missing out.  I know some of the deals aren't really deals -- like if you normally buy the $5 laundry detergent, but get the $8 laundry detergent so you can get the $1 rebate, you've actually lost two dollars.  But sometimes, there comes along something that is such a bargain you just can't pass it up.  They've got a special deal going on this month, and let me tell you what it is.  Do you see all this stuff?

Every bit of this stuff was absolutely free after the rebate.  Yes, you read that right.  Free.  Even that turkey breast.  Absolutely free!  If you do download the app, use my referral code:  lypnolp.  

Next up:  Let me give you an update on my cleaning efforts.  I've gotten all the lose yarn sorted and neatly stacked into the closet.  

 I offered all this yarn up for free, but the person who wanted it hasn't shown up, so I think I'm going to list it on FB.  

If you want it, let me know.  It's free to locals, and cost of shipping to anyone else. 

I still need to sort the project bags and get them squared away.  

And maybe finish some of these projects while I'm at it.  Or rip them out and use the yarn for something else.  This is a dishcloth I started several years ago, but ran out of yarn before I finished.  

I kept saying I was going to buy another ball of yarn and finish it, but I never did.  This afternoon, I finally broke down and ripped it all out.  I'll knit it into a smaller cloth and do this cloth with a full ball.  Of yarn, I mean.  

Wonder of wonders, I finally finished this scarf!  

I've only been working on it for three years.  I had originally cast on when I went to Missouri in '17 to see the eclipse, but earlier this year, I decided it was too narrow.  I ripped it all out and started over.  Now it's a bit wider, but still plenty long enough to wrap around my neck a couple of times.  I'm debating on keeping this one, even though I seldom wear scarves.  

Well, we finally had our first frost, so I brought all my outside plants inside, and went ahead and settled them into their winter home.

 

All of my Whatever Cacti are covered in buds.  It ought to be a glorious show when they start blooming. 

After I moved the gun cabinet out of my kitchen/dining area, I had a bit of a blank spot on the wall.  I finally found something to hang there:  

It fills the space nicely without being overwhelming. 

And finally, my latest eBay score arrived today.

There was a copy I'd been watching for a while now, but the guy wanted $50 for it.  Yeah, that's not going to happen.  Every so often, I'd log in and check to see if he'd lowered the price.  One day last week, as I was checking on it, I found another copy from a different seller.  This one wasn't still factory sealed, but it was only $15, so I ordered it. 

As soon as it arrived this morning, I dragged the ol' record player out and listened to it.  I was a bit worried, because it appeared to be pretty warped, but it sounded just fine. 

And with that, my record collection is complete.  

At least, it is until I find something else I want...

That's all for now, but I'll try to do better from here on. 

Random Thoughts Of A Halloween Evening

 1.  Once again, I didn't get any Trick-Or-Treaters.  I'm not surprised, living in an out of the way neighborhood as I do.  Darn.  I guess I'll have to eat all this candy myself. 

2.  My Supervisor has a bull horn.

2.  You know what else my supervisor has?  A giant bear costume.

And some pretty sweet dance moves, too. 

4.  Well, I lost.  The game of seeing how long we can go without turning on the heater, I mean.  I just can't deal at 3:30 in the morning, so I threw in the towel and turned mine on. Just enough to take the chill off the house. 

It's supposed to be even colder in the morning.  I've got a little firewood left, but I'm going to have to be stingy with it.  Several people have posted firewood for sale in some of the local groups, but they either don't answer my messages, or they refuse to deliver, or want cash only.  I contacted one person from a little town just about 10 miles from here, and he wanted an extra $50 to deliver, and he wanted cash only.  Yeah, that's not going to happen. I'm thinking I'm going to be spending a lot of time under blankets this winter. 

5.  I told myself all day long that I was going to go out to the lake this evening and watch the moon rise over the water.   Here at the house, there are too many trees to see it until it's well over the horizon and no longer big and orange.  Unfortunately, these ball games were too good to walk away for that long.  Well, one of them was, at least. Texas knocked off OK ST in overtime.  LSU is not having a good season, and that's all I have to say about that. 

Even so, I got the old telescope out and took some photos of the moon once it cleared the trees.  Or almost cleared them.  

I may go out here again in a little bit and take some more, once it's fully cleared all the trees.

Then I put my 3x magnifier in and took some close ups of the surface.  

No, it's not completely round because the image was too big for the eyepiece.  I haven't figured out how to zoom out.   Actually, I don't think you can, other than switching the eyepieces out to change the magnification factor.  Eh, it's a cheap telescope.  I'm already wanting to upgrade, but the really good ones are pretty high dollar.  A bit much for my budget right now.  

6.  I had to work this weekend.  It was supposed to be inventory this week, so I didn't put in a vacation day.  I'm kind of glad, because we had a special guest out at the plant. 

7.  I guess that's all I have for tonight, so I'll just leave you with my traditional Halloween prayer. 

Dear Coworker

 It's not my job to stand there and fight with you about you doing your job, so when you tell me you aren't going to cut the parts I need, of course, I'm going to go tell the group leader. 

Don't be mad at me.  You wouldn't have gotten into trouble if you'd just made the parts I needed.  So next time, maybe a little less attitude and a little more doing your job, OK?  

Thank you.

That is all. 

Sunday Sundries

 Well, we knew the no overtime thing wouldn't last.  What was it?  A week?  Yep, that's right.  We're back to going in at 5:00 AM in the morning.  I'm still going to stay up tonight and watch one of the new cheesy Hallmark movies, though.  Countdown to Christmas started Friday, and I've been glutting on cheese -- so to speak.  

Except for the time I took to watch Texas win, Navy lose, and LSU win decisively over South Carolina, that is...

While I was watching football interspersed with Hallmark movies, I took a moment to play with my new stamps.  Or my new stamp pads, rather.  I've had the stamps for ages.  

This is just one of the cards I did.  I don't know that I'm going to do all of them this way, but some of you will definitely get some fancy stamped cards.   

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I decided I needed to finally get all my yarn organized.  When I'd moved into this house, I just kind of stuffed it everywhere, but what with all the new yarn I've been getting here lately, I felt the need to reorganized things.  

First thing, I picked out a few skeins I knew I'd probably never use and gave them away in one of the local FB groups.  

Wonder of wonders, the person who contacted me actually showed up and got it.  

The next thing I did was to drag out all my yarn and pile it into the middle of the snake room floor.   I was able to fit most of my worsted weight acrylic into this cabinet in the living room.  

Most of this is slated for charity hats, but I'm thinking some of it might go into a blanket.  Once all that was put away, this is what was left.  And yes, that box is full of yarn, too. 

I got it sorted into worsted weight, sock weight, DK/Sport weight,  novelty yarns, 

and lace weight piles.  

I'll still need to sort the yarn in the box.  Most of it is sock weight, but there is some worsted and some that appears to be hand spun.  I'll be putting it away over the next few days, and I'll probably try to de-stash a little more, as well.  If I do destash, I'll be posting it on my FB page before offering it up to the general public, so if you're friends with me over there, keep an eye out for it.  

What I really need to do is to spend less time on my computer/phone/Kindle, and more time knitting.  So, with that, I'll bid you adieu and get to knitting. 

My New Telescope

 I've been sharing a few photos I took with my new telescope on Facebook and Instagram, but it occurred to me that I should probably post a few here.  You know, just in case I might have a reader somewhere that doesn't follow me on those sites.  

In the interest of full disclosure, I'd intended to post this on Thursday, but insomnia had hit me hard the night before, and I didn't feel like it.  I've been an insomniac for as long as I can remember.  When I was about 8 or 9, I even asked my mother how to go to sleep.  She said, "You just lay down and close your eyes, and you go to sleep."  Well, that wasn't working for me, so I said, "But how do you go to sleep?"  Fifty-ish years later, and I still haven't figured it out.  

If I had posted this Thursday, I'd have mostly shown you some of the pictures I'd taken with my telescope. 

For instance, this squirrel, eating at the feeder. 

And a couple of decent pictures of the deer. 

My silly camera kept wanting to focus on the fence, but this is still better than I was getting before. 

A female cardinal

And a male cardinal. 

On a whim, I decided to see if I could get a video of a squirrel.  Lo and behold, it worked!

And lastly, a picture of the moon. 

I've been wanting to get out and try to look at maybe Mars, but it's been cloudy ever since.  Maybe we'll have a clear night soon. 

Spend, Spend, Spend

Back when I was in the Navy, serving overseas, they only had one television station on base -- Armed Forces Network.  Of course, you could always tune into the Italian stations, but if you wanted American shows, AFN it was. 

As with anything, there were some people who were simply impossible to please.  You should have heard the complaints!  "Why are you showing religious programming on Sunday mornings?  I don't want to watch that!"  And "What's up with all the kids' shows on Saturday?"  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

Through all that, AFN had one redeeming factor -- their commercials.  And I'm saying that with a huge dose of sarcasm.  It was a long running joke among servicemembers about how bad those commercials were.  A specific one that came to mind this afternoon was of a sailor dressing to go out on Friday night.  He was smoothing his hair in the mirror and said to himself, "I got my pay today, and I'm going to spend, spend, spend like there ain't no end."  Then his conscience appeared in the mirror and told him he needed to save first, so the young sailor sat down and wrote himself a check...all righty then...

But what does that have to do with today?  Well, I'll tell you.  It's because today, I spent, spent, spent, like there wasn't an ent ... or end, but that doesn't rhyme.  

OK, here's how all that spending started, back when Beverly and James moved back to Texas, they gave me their old Christmas tree. The house they moved in to is much smaller than the house they had here, and they just didn't have room for it.  It's a gorgeous tree, and I love it...but it's just too big for my little living room.  I have to do some serious furniture rearranging every year to make room for it.  The last couple of years, I keep saying I'm going to get a new tree, but I can't seem to find one I like.  

There is one at Walmart that I like, and is the right size, but it's clear lights, and I like multicolored.  I've been looking on Amazon, and places like Joann's and Michael's websites.  This morning, I decided to get up and go to Lowe's in Batesville to see what they had.  

On the way there, I made one additional quick stop.  See, I was adding someone to my Christmas card list, when I found a little bag of Christmas themed rubber stamps.  I've had them for a while, and have never used them.  I thought I'd give them a shot this year.  To do that, I needed some stamp pads.  Walmart in Grenada had the pack on the right, but the other ones were out of stock.  

Since I was going to be right across the street anyway, I stopped into Batesville Walmart to see if they had them, and lo and behold, there they were.  Soon as I'm done here, I'm going to go try them out.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

Once that was done, I went on over to Lowe's.  Where I found a tree I really like. 

It's 7.5' tall, with a 54" base.  My old tree has a 60" base, so this is exactly what I was looking for -- size wise at least. It's got multi-colored LED bulbs, but there are only 500 of them.  No problem, though, as I can always string more. The only real problem I have with it is it's not very realistic looking.  The needles are plastic, and you can tell.  I'm thinking it's not going to make much of a difference from across the room, but I'm going to do a little more looking around before I buy it.  

As it happens, I've been trying for a while to hire someone to come out and pressure wash my house.  I had couple of people have come and give me quotes, but none of them have shown up to actually do the job.  It seems to be a common thing around here.  

As it also happens, after I'd looked at the Christmas trees, I turned around and there they were:  pressure washers on clearance.   The one I chose was marked down from $120 to $80.  

It's just what I needed.  I'll probably only use it a few times a year, mostly to keep the moss off of my back stoop.  It did a bang-up job on that.  Here's the before picture: 

And the after:  

I'll need to go over it again to get the algae and stains off, but I had to quit when it started raining. 

But at least now, I won't be slipping on the moss and falling on my behind every time I go outside. 

My pressure washer has a detergent thing that I've got to figure out how to use.  Then, maybe I can get the stains out of my car port, too. 

And finally, a couple of days ago, one of my knitting friends posted some yarn she was trying to destash.  I quickly asked, and the price was right, so I got it -- as if I didn't have enough already.  

I was thinking I could add some of it to my sock yarn blanket, but a couple of them have enough to actually knit socks out of.   I'm definitely going to knit socks from this one. 

I like the way it was knitting up.  I'm going to have to rip this out and start over.  I can't wear plain vanilla socks because of my absurdly skinny ankles. 

In the meantime, I need to get busy on my other socks...like finding a pattern to knit.  That's help, wouldn't it?