More adventures in lazy knitting

Ok.  I'm a new knitter (1 year) and sometimes I come up with these theories and they are crap.  Sometimes, I come up with something that ends up working.

Here is another that I'm not sure will work, but I'm going to investigate and get back to you.

I don't mind purling.  My tension is fine and I have no troubles with it, surprisingly since many people hate to purl.  Tomato : Tomato.    Currently, I'm sort of in a hurry to do some Christmas gifts which led me to a cowl.  The pattern consists of 4 rows where 1 and 3 are knitted and 2 and 4 are purled.  (P1, S1)

Here is my query:   Could I just turn my work and K1, S1?

I've called my LYS and it was decided that in theory this might work but they really aren't sure.  So, I figure if it'll save me some time on a Christmas Cowl for my mom, then it is worth a little effort to figure out.  I mean, IN THEORY it should work right?

Family Photos

A friend of mine took this photo (and a bunch of others) a couple weeks ago.  Of course this leads me to a dilema...because...well...I am me and I always over think stuff.

Who is the friend you ask?   Some of you may remember (or not) my post earlier this year No Good Deed... .  A person's (I knew peripherally in high school) son was in an accident around the New Year last year.  This would be late Dec 2010.  Several of my friends were rallying around and trying to do a fundraiser to help with potential medical expenses.  I asked what I could do and was put in charge of the silent auction.   It went off great and we raised a total of something like $25K total.  "My" auction raised about $10K.  His son has made a full recovery.

Everytime I see Fred he thanks me obnoxiously (in a good way).  I get it, he's thankful but I don't do so well with the praise.  I say "you are welcome.  Now get over it".   So when I asked him to do my family photos this year I expected to get a bill.  He refused to tell me how much.  I did eventually find out.

Now the dilema is, do I pay him or not, and if so, how?

If I don't we'll be "even" and he'll feel better.  But that leaves me with a sense of having taken advantage of a friend.  I know this is not the case but that's how it feels.  If I send him something he either won't cash a check, we'll fight over handing over cash etc.  So my only real option is a gift card.  I was talking to another friend and they said to just let it be, to suck it up and live with it.

I still haven't decided.  It bugs me to not have paid him for his time.  He probably feels the same way about me doing the auction but x200 because of all the people that helped him at the time.

Either way, the photos are beautiful and I'm more than happy with them.  Thank you Fred.  You may or may not get a gift card in the mail.    :)

Here are a couple of my favorites.

My glass is half full...

Yes, I am in Disney World.

Yes, I'm also stuck in the room with my little one because she's vomiting.  :(    While I hate to see her sick, and God knows she's thin enough, I've had worse days.  In between bouts of holding her hair back, rubbing her back and generally soothing her, I've been able to sit on the balcony and either read or knit the scarf I'm making for my mom.

Z came out on the balcony and said that at least she's got a good view in between bouts of throwing up.  That's my girl!

Love

I love these people

Taking Bets...

TMNC (The Many Named Cat). I figured I'd take a photo before we went out of town since he'll either be half dead or missing when we get back if going by past evidence.

If you give a a cat a cookie...

My life is sort of like one of those If you Give a Moose a Muffin books.  Seriously.

My husband and I didn't go anywhere for our 15th wedding anniversary and I was turning 40 two months later so we took our first trip to San Francisco and Napa.  While in San Francisco I, of course, went to Artfibers for some yarn shopping.  I found a lovely yarn called Tsuki which is 40% silk and 60% kid mohair.  There is a swatch of almost every yarn knitted up in the store.  I loved this look and wanted to replicate it in a shawl or scarf.  

Beautiful right?   Photo is of two colors held together and I bought both.  I was told the pattern was some sort of K1B (knit one below) and after much searching I couldn't find anything remotely similar.  

A friend sent me a link to the Horai Scarf and I love the look of it...but well, we all know my past record with lace.  Not so good.  After studying the pattern for a few weeks I decided I'd do a practice Horai with some Filisilk.  (Lace + Me + Mohair = Disaster)

So far so good.  Finished this project in 10 days!   Now to block:  

Spent 10 days knitting this thing and then soaked it and another 1.5 hours getting the blocking wires in. Ahhhhh....now for it to dry and be a perfect ending to my first finished lace project.  

As I'm walking by the hallway where my masterpiece is drying this is what I see:

Thinking this rotten cat might need to find a new home.  

Life Happens and my brain is broke

We got a little bit of bad news today.

We have three clients on the programming side of the business and one of them canceled recently.

This is a total bummer since we are basically loosing 1/3 of our income.

I have taken to cutting back on some of our bills.  I started with health insurance.  For a family of four who rarely go to the doctor, we were paying 1138 a month in health insurance.  I've been bitching about this forever!   Let me start by saying that my husband was in a networking group and we have our health insurance though one of those people.

I called the guy I used to use and low and behold, our new payment is ... DRUM ROLL PLEASE ... $429 a month!   A lower deductible, a slightly higher co pay and the rest is pretty much the same.

WTF took me so long to do this????   I'm so irritate with myself.

I moved on to DirectTV.  Let me just say that to work at Direct TV, you obviously don't need to be a brain surgeon.  I can't even remotely explain my 2 hour (YES you read that right TWO FREAKING HOURS) conversation with them but let's just say that my bill went from $150 to $80.

Next was home insurance.  Yet another person set us up thought the networking group.  You see where this is going?   My old homeowners was going up $1100 to $5300 a year and I've gotten it down to $2500 with a lower deductible.

Now if I could just get my market totes moving again I'd be in good shape!