When I'm Happy About Where Bill Works

    There are times where it is annoying because things are going wrong and he's not home until after I'm asleep, but most of the time I really like it.  We have a great second D&D group and some great people to go out with for various things; board games, happy hour, Secret Santa, or hiking.

  One of his co-workers (Matt) and his wife (Anna) are about to have their first baby.  They are both in our D&D group.  Because of Covid they have to go into a two week self quarantine before entering the hospital.  It is usually recommend to bring things with the smell of the baby home so the cat doesn't totally get weirded out by the new creature in her house.  Since you can't leave and re-enter the hospital we've been joking about ways to work around that, which mostly involve throwing onesies out a window for someone outside to bring to the cat.  Their plan is to bring some things Fish has loved on so that maybe the smells will mix and it won't be so weird for her.
  What does all of that have to do with the croughnut above?  Well, one of Bill's other co-worker's tested positive for Covid, so everyone on that team had to go into self quarantine for two weeks.  Matt decided to treat people that team to a goodie while they were quarantining and before he had to do it himself for the baby.  It's kind of amusing how our quarantine time ends about the time his and Anna's starts.

  I've been doing alright at my New Year's Resolutions.  I've not tested the dancing space yet to see if I fall onto the love seat or smack my hands against the wall, but that will happen soon.  I'm still trying to decide what I want to do about the shawl I'm working on.  I don't know if the notes I found in the bag have anything to do with them, but I don't see why not.  This is definitely a case where the person who wrote the notes would understand what they mean, but I have no idea.  I've sort of figured it out, but my problem is that if you don't have one plain stitch on one end you won't increase on both sides and the shawl won't keep increasing at the same speed it was before.  I've tried it with the one in the beginning or at the end, but I'm not sure which I like better.  I might also just go with something completely different.

Day Too Many: Couches!!

  Today was the day when we finally got the furniture we ordered back on July 26th.  They arrived earlier in the day than the estimated time frame, which was nice.  The delivery people took a look at where they were going to be putting them and said that there was no way they were going to fit down the stairs.  Bill told them to leave the large couch in the kitchen after they asked if we wanted to send them back.  The delivery people were going to leave both in the kitchen, but Bill got them to try and move the smaller one down and it was easy to do.  As the delivery people were leaving they kept insisting that we were going to have to take the banister off.

  Once Bill was able to get off his work calls we tried to move the larger one down.  We went the wrong way the first time, but were able to get it back up the stairs and rotate it.  The second time we got it to the bottom of the stairs and almost got ourselves stuck in a corner.  We had it on it's side at the bottom of the stairs and Bill had wedged himself to the same side I was on.  Luckily I was able to squeeze between the couch and the stairs and get to the other side.  We then lifted and rotated and it went right over.  It was pretty easy to do.

  I'm so glad that I still like them!  It's been so long that I was forgetting what they looked like and was starting to get nervous that I wouldn't like them when they arrived.  They have a velvet feeling fabric and go with the color theme.  That's something I never thought I would say.

  We still need to finish the other section of shelves for the rest of the DVDs and Blu-rays.  Right now it look like I will either have to move the smaller couch back some, or just have a bit less space to work with when I play Just Dance.  I'll have to test to see if the couch matters when playing the game so we will know if we have to move it completely out of the way once we can have people over again and have more people playing.  When I tested it before I was able to go all the way to the other side of the stairs and had more problems seeing than the sensor did picking up my movements.

  I asked Bill about a coffee table and while I think it would be handy, he doesn't seem to think we will need one.  I guess people are just going to have to hold their drinks and snacks.  Or we could bring down some TV trays and set those up when needed.

  I've also sold enough of the patterns I have on eBay that was able to move some things around in my craft room.  It's still a bit too cluttered, but I'm working on it.  I'm also down to just one large bin of yarn to give away, though there is always the chance that I will change my mind about some yarn and decide to donate more.

Last Year...

   I was looking at my yearly recap for last year and it doesn't look the way I wanted it to.  It seemed with all of the social distancing we had to do because of Covid-19, it makes my knitting time go way down.  I would have thought that because I was stuck in my room with Tank, while construction was happening, that I would have gotten a lot more done.

  I'm not saying that I wasn't productive with my year, I was just spending time on projects that took longer.  I designed four patterns and published three of them, that's more than I have done in the past six years!  It's kind of surprising how long it takes to design a pattern and get the written pattern to be clear and easy to do.  You have to take into consideration that some people might not just be able to remember to repeat that one part, you have to tell them; or that it might be annoying for other people to have to move the row marker every other row.

  I also spent a lot of time playing Animal Crossing and started to get back into playing Just Dance.  I've also slowly, very slowly, been trying to go through all the things we pulled out of the basement and other parts of the house.  We don't need all the things we have and I want to try and figure out how to get them to a new home.  There were a lot of Good Will and the Closet trips to donate things that they would take and there will be many more.  I've also been listing some of the things online for free or for a small amount.  Apparently not a lot of people want my extra stuff.

  I finally got the patterns I got from JoAnn Fabrics, when they were closing a store, listed online.  I've had them floating around my house for about ten years and kept putting off going through them and listing them.  I had to go through and separate each brand, then put them in numerological order.  It turns out I had 780 patterns to list online.  Luckily some were multiple copies for the same pattern in the same size ranges.  I've managed to sell about half of them so far.

  Another thing I did in 2020 was to design the Googly Sploots.  They are a lot of fun to make and everyone has said they really like them.  I do need to make a few more big ones in American flag colors for T.A.P.S. because I think the kids will really like them.  Who knows, maybe some of the adults will like them too.


  I have a few goals for the new year.  I'm going to play more Just Dance because it makes me happy when I play it.  I want to unlock everything in the game and even go back to one of the older ones I used to play and unlock the achievements on that one too.  I also plan on listing more things on my Etsy shop because I like making things to list on there.  My last one is to make sure I put aside time each week to knit/crochet because it helps me to just sit down and take time out for myself.
  Here's to another year!

2020

Here is a quick list of everything I got done in the year of 2020

Knit: 14
Hats:
~~~Slippy Hat: 1-2, 3, 4-10, 11,
Shawls:
~~~Caron Asymmetrical Lace Shawl
~~~Textured Shawl
Sweaters:
~~~Quick Knit Baby Shrug