Winding Down

I’m blessed enough to have the week off from work. The entire week is a holiday for the company I am on assignment with and since they have the holiday, I have the holiday. How great is that. I’m spending time this week finishing up a lot of things that have followed me through the year. Today, I finally made it through all the posts in my RSS reader and I completed a few knitting and crochet projects, although those haven’t necessarily been following me all year.



My mother and I have been doing a lot of similar craft projects this year. She is currently crocheting towels and suggested I try this pattern from the makers of Peaches and Cream. Of course I made it in Sugar and Cream. It’s a great pattern and I will do more of them as I have tons and tons of cotton left.




I redid the mobeus scarf and I am very happy with the outcome this time. I knit it on size 8 needles. I think I’m using a 40” Addi. I don’t know how many stitches I cast on. I cast on enough to join the work in the round without stretching. It’s probably a little longer than it needs to be but it wraps around my head 3 times so it’s perfect for blocking out the wind coming off the river on my walk to work. I’m actually blocking this so I will take more pictures after it is dry.



Right now I am trying to figure out my planner/journal needs for the new year. The Life Tracker system from DayRunner that I adopted last year has been discontinued so I am looking at other solutions that will allow me to continue using the binder from the Life Tracker system. I picked up a BlueSky planner from Target today along with some post-it notes that will help me to keep everything organized. We’ll see how long this lasts as I am notorious for changing planners often throughout the year. I’m also trying to make sure the planner/journal system works well for planning the wedding (must get started on planning the wedding!).

How are you all doing on finishing out the year?

Sick Sunday

I have a headache that won’t let me go this weekend. I get a little dizzy when I move too much so for right now I am sitting in bed. I’m trying to read some of the blog posts in my RSS reader and watch a little Doctor Who.



I’m always amazed when I open my RSS reader and I see that one blog has put up 10 to 20 posts in a week. I find myself skipping a lot of these posts. Some seem to be more about volume rather than content. For now, I won’ be expelling anyone from the reader but it takes a lot of time to keep up with the good content when you have to surf through all the fluff.

Hope you all are having a headache free existence.

Good Morning

My fiance just left for work so I decided to get a quick post in before going back to sleep. The weekend has been great so far. I hope you all can say the same. We had dinner last night with friends at the National Harbor at a restaurant called Ketchup. I won’t link the restaurant because I don’t recommend it at all. The food was decent but the service was horrible. Don’t waste your time. And if you plan to spend any time at the National Harbor, go early and plan to stay long. The wait at every restaurant was at least 3 hours. Ketchup was about an hour and a half. Possibly more if the bad service kicks in as it did with us.

I think I’m going to do some more crocheting today. I tried to do a little knitting last week and it completely failed. I attempted to do a Mobeus scarf. I did the mobeus cast on and started with 300 stitches on size 6 needles.



Things went well in the knitting. I even took it off the needles a few rows in to make sure it would be long enough. When I finished, I hated it. It started curling immediately and only got worse. It completely curled in on itself and it would take too much blocking to make it worth keeping. And it was too short. It made a cowl that was too long and a scarf that was too short.

I will re-do this with a few changes. I will knit on bigger needles for a looser stitch. I think I’ll go up to a size 8 needle. I’ll go up to 400 stitches. I bought a cone of this yarn but only brought a little of it up to Virginia with me. I think I’ll just put all of the yarn I brought with me into it for a nice and full scarf.

Knitting this scarf in one piece is definitely the way to go. The traditional method of knitting 6 to 8 feet of fabric and stitching together gets so boring. Knitting it in the spiral is much more interesting. I found directions for this cast on through YouTube. Love YouTube.

Happy Sunday all. I’m off to bed now since there is nothing on TV at 5 in the morning.

Nothing Changes In a Week

One of the new things going on with me has to do with my hair. I have decided to go natural. This means that I have decided not to chemically relax my hair anymore. For now I am still coloring it, but that may soon change as well. The chemicals have become very harsh to my skin which seems to be getting more sensitive as I age. That means my hair is not looking it’s best these days. Honestly, it was not looking good before I started transitioning and I am doing all I can to repair the damage while nurturing the new hair that is growing. I got a little bit cut off before Thanksgiving and this did not please the fiance at all. He loves long hair and has been trying to get me to grow it out. Deciding to go natural requires a reset on length so I am getting shorter until all the relaxer is cut out and then my natural hair can grow.

Well, he has been complaining about how short and dry my hair is and how much it sheds. He’s now gotten his mother into and I felt completely attacked this weekend as they both decided to give me an intervention on my hair. This is not a fun experience. I am incredibly hurt. Hair is personal and when your hair is not where you want it for whatever reason, you tend to feel a little vulnerable. Hair on the floor is a particular pet peeve for him and his mother so I was afraid to comb my hair at her house for fear that I would leave an errant hair behind.

He knows I’m hurt so today he attempted to tell me how nice I fixed my hair today. I made sure I pointed out to him that he didn’t like it last week when I fixed it the exact same way. Nothing changes in a week when it comes to someone’s attitude and I doubt my hurt will go away in this next week.

We’ll see. I’m happy to be seeing videos posted on YouTube from many, many black women who have taken the same steps towards hair and skin health. In the future I will share some videos and tips that I find.

More than anything, I think all of us should remember that there are times when Love can hurt just as much as Hate.

Happy Holidays everyone. I pray you all have strong support systems among your loved ones for whatever changes you decide to institute in life.

The Best Laid Plans

November didn’t go as well as I had hoped in terms of Nanowrimo. I did really well the first couple of weeks and then life got in the way. I was unable to continue but I am really happy with the quality of the writing so everything will get expanded over the next couple of months and hopefully turned into some solid projects. One of the things that I hope to do during this last month of the year is to share a little bit more with you all in blog land. Life seems to be running away with me and I need to force myself to sit down and focus and evaluate all that has come to be in this last year. What better place than to do that here with you.

I’ve been spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos and reading the numerous blogs in my RSS feed. There are so many great people out there saying interesting things and I want to share some of that with you all. Hopefully what I say or link to can help you through what you are going through in life. Times are tough my friends, but with a little help we can all make it through.

I’m excited to share with you all the crocheting that I have been doing. I’m thrilled to be able to crochet for long periods of time and not have to worry about my hands hurting. yay! As a result, I cranked out a lot of towels over the Thanksgiving week. I don’t know what I will do with them all.



But more on that later. I have tons more cotton left over and many more towels to make. I will be on the road this weekend with the future husband and his mother so I will continue making these to get me through the slow times down in the country.

Have a great Friday and a great weekend. Congratulations to all of you that were successful in Nanowrimo. Congratulations to those of you that tried but just couldn’t make it for whatever reason. The important thing is to have written something.

Take care all.

Oh No!

Another day and no writing. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I will be waking up tomorrow and getting right to the computer to put some words to the screen. I’m mentally zapped right now so I’m hoping some inspiration will come to me as I sleep.

Slowing Down

I didn’t get a word written yesterday. I just couldn’t bring myself to write anything. We even lost our server and internet connections at work yesterday and couldn’t get much work done without them. I could have used that time to get a little writing in but no. At home, I chose to finish “The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson instead of write. The good thing is that I’m still ahead of the target word count but my lead is shrinking. In a week, Thanksgiving madness starts so I have to get back ahead or the last week of Nano will see me being a madwoman. Wish me luck.

How are you all doing at it?

Updating You

Hello all!

Nanowrimo is going well. I now have 14,512 words. Two years ago my ending word count was a little over 13,000 so I am thrilled beyond belief that things are going so well. I slowed down a bit this weekend but I’m hoping to get back in gear during the week. The Nano revolution has spawned all kinds of spin-offs. While I can’t see myself ever doing the knit a sweater in a month challenge, I just may have to try to blog everyday for a month. One of the bloggers in my reader feed is doing this for the month. It’s too late for me to do it this month but I just may do this in December. This will give me the platform to share a little bit of what I wrote during Nano and let you see what I am going to do this year to get ready for Christmas. I have no idea what’s in store for Christmas but I’m looking forward to planning it considering it’s the first Christmas for me and my fiance. Hopefully I won’t bore you all to death. Please come back and join me and add me to your favorite rss reader so you don’t miss a word.

Hope your month is shaping up well. Temperatures are dropping and Thanksgiving is around the corner.

Welcome to Nanowrimo

Another November and another foray into the world of Nanowrimo. I’m doing pretty good today. Currently I’m sitting at 3622 words which is pretty good. My goal per day is 2044 to account for the non-writing days around Thanksgiving. I hope some of you are joining in. Let me know if you are so I can keep up with you on the site.

Happy writing, my friends. Too bad the 79 words of this post don’t count. Oh well, back to writing.

Hello Again

Since I found myself in the mood to really tackle a little knitting, I decided to say Hello Again to some of the projects I have had laying around needing some attention. The first is the baby blanket I wrote about yesterday. Unfortunately, as soon as I posted that entry and bound off the body of the blanket, I discovered I don’t have enough yarn to do the intended binding. I’m not sure what to do about that for the moment so I have put that little project aside.

I pulled out this little sock square that I’m working on out of left over bits of sock yarn. I think I’m going to try and make it blanket size but I may get bored and make a pillow. We shall see. In the meantime, I have added a few more rows to this neglected little project.

I FINALLY (YES, FINALLY) felted this little bag that I have had knitted for 9 months now. It’s just been floating around waiting to be felted. On the last trip home to Chattanooga, I made sure to bring it back with me and last night it took a go in the washing machine. I love the result and for now, it will live on my desk in the city to hold the things that will get me through Nanowrimo 2010.

I feel like I’m fall cleaning.

Back to the Knitting

I’m spending some time this weekend getting back to the things I love, knitting being the most accessible. I’ve been working on this baby blanket for awhile, but now that I have a friend that is about to pop one out, I’m prompted to get it done quickly.

I think this will be perfect for lounging around on the floor for the little one. Especially nice with the fall breezes coming through the open windows.
I’ve been looking at the blogs and checking out everyone’s projects on Ravelry and the pictures uploaded to Flickr and I am inspired by all the crafting that I am seeing. What crafts are you inspired to get back to this fall?

Hello To All

Sorry for being away so long. I’ve been on temporary assignment for work and since I’ve been here all of my regular activities have been neglected. I’m getting back to normal and hoping to get back into the swing of all things that I love, including blogging. I will be sharing lots of things in the future, including the new life that is waiting for me.

This is Michael. The love of my life. My future husband. Yay! More on that later. For now, I wish you all well and will be talking to you soon.
Take care!
AL

The Nokia N900

IMG00150-20100129-0953.jpg
Originally uploaded by aldorris105

So far, I am really liking this phone. Excuse me, to those literal people out there that would rather call it the tablet computer that it is sold to be. And it is a tablet computer, but I'm not quite ready to get into the computing power of it just yet. Right now, I am just wanting to port over all of the phone and email aspects and then I can start branching out.

This truly is a beautiful device and I can see so much potential in it, but it is not for the casual cell phone user. Setting it up takes more thought than other phones and it may take a couple of tries before something works exactly right but it is well worth the effort.

Because some people have asked, I chose this over an iPhone because it has a physical keyboard and I don't have to go over to ATT. I chose it over the Droid because it has resistive touch rather than capacitive touch. The difference? Capacitive screens allow for all the fancy multi-touch functions that you see on the iPhone and Droid. Resistive screens allow for stylus input which allows better use of hand drawing and note-taking applications which I wanted. Not to mention, I have had trouble with capacitive screens when my hands are too cold which they often are.

But this phone is meant to be a potential replacement to my Blackberry Tour so I will do a more in dept analysis of the differences between the two devices soon.

So, what new technology are you trying out these days?

Well, That May Change Things

I’m a very brand dependent person so it’s a big deal for me to not only change the kind of cell phone (really it’s a min-computer) that I am using, but to also change my service provider. But I just read that Verizon will cut 13,000 jobs before the end of the year. I don’t feel so bad anymore. Verizon just last week lowered it’s prices on some of it’s plans. Is this the true cost for that reduction?

Joy in the Palm of Your Hand

Tomorrow, I take delivery of a brand new toy. The Nokia N900. I won’t bore any of you with how excited I am. The only potential negative is that the phone is GSM which carries me over to T-mobile, but I’m willing to give a try. For the next few weeks (or how ever long I have to decide to return the phone), I will be transferring my life over to T-Mobile and Nokia to see how things go. If all goes well, I’m bidding a fond farewell to Verizon and the Blackberry (I shall miss you though BB--you’ve been so good to me). Look for some geekyness from me in the next few weeks. :)

A Little Bit of Sewing-the Nissan Leaf

If you have a lot of t-shirts that you don’t wear laying around or you have shirts that are stained and no longer wearable, consider recycling them into other projects. Lately I have been more into projects that are designed to reduce waste. On Friday, Nissan was in town for their road tour announcing their new electric car called the Leaf. Since they were in walking distance of our office, some coworkers and I walked over to take a look. We didn’t stay to take a test drive, but we did sign up so we could get a free t-shirt. it was a beautiful t-shirt, but I would never wear it, so I up-cycled it.

I didn’t think to take a before shot of the t-shirt so you could se what it looked like, but this is what it looks like now.

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I told you it was a nice shirt. That logo was begging to be the centerpiece of a bag. The pattern is the Amy Butler Swing Bag. The dark blue external fabric is the Nissan Leaf t-shirt. The internal is a white t-shirt from Lane Bryant that I had stained but had not thrown away. I would often wear it to bed because the fabric felt so good. Now, it has a new life. The bag is lined with Peltex to give it some stiffness. It is reversible but I would never walk around with a white bag. I attract stains too much to be that brave, but having a white interior gives you that extra brightness that makes finding things a little simpler.

But I couldn’t leave it there. I’m constantly looking for ways to organize all the stuff that makes it’s way into my bag. Mostly I do this with little zippered bags. I made two to match my new Nissan Leaf Swing Bag.

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These zippered pouches are made from the cap sleeves of the t-shirt. These are improvised and far from perfectly square, but they are very utilitarian and ready to toss in any bag.

So, what do you think? Are you off to make new use of your old t-shirts? Let me know.

Happy crafting.

Drink Anyone?

I love to cook and entertain at home and while dating a vegetarian, I got away from that as I’m not so good at cooking good vegetarian dishes and he was extremely picky. So I stopped cooking. Then he started drinking more than I was comfortable with so I stopped buying wine and liquor. But he is gone and that part of my life is dead and today, I started restocking my wine cabinet. I made a visit down to the Georgia Winery and bought 2 cases that are a mix of what I consider to be their best stock and a few flavors that I have never had before. I still need about another case to be fully stocked and I need some liquor staples but I am well on my way to some wonderful twenty-ten dinners. I hope you will be my guest one day.

Happy New Year

I thought I should start the year off with a very profound blog post to get this year off to a fantastic start. I can’t think of anything to say. I am very happy to welcome in this new year, but I have spent the first day of it relaxing and recovering from a very crazy 2009. Last year brought the end of a romantic relationship and the end of several friendships that proved to be quite toxic to me. It brought a higher salary and greater earnings potential my way which in turn allowed me to not only spoil myself a bit, but also help some family and friends as they encountered financial hardships. I gained greater perspective and I know more than ever what I want in my life and what I am no longer willing to put up with. This is my world and I plan to fully take advantage of it in twenty ten. I wish you all the best as we embark into this new year. May all the joy and prosperity and happiness of life come your way as long as you put forth the effort and hard work to obtain it. I plan to. Why don’t you join me?

Shall we?