Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Thanks Y'All!

Well, thanks to Joan and Madge I now have a photo on my profile--and it's the original mehitabel! Isn't she a cutie??
The blurb for this book says that it will appeal to lovers of humor, poetry, and talking vermin.

Here's your eye candy for the day--my favorite grandcarrot, sitting in his stroller at Starbucks while his mommy, his auntie and I all had coffee. And didn't share it with him, either!
There are two suspiciously yarny packages waiting for me to open them (gee, the "Webs" return address on one might be a clue??) so there will hopefully be a little yarn porn to share. I've got one more item ordered, but since it's a third hank of something I already have 2 hanks of, I'm not going to count it.
Yes, I am once again going to try to rein in the stash acquisition. You heard it here first. I have way way too much yarn. Alert the media, she is once again going on a yarn diet. Although, reading diet blogs--Debbi is one of my favs, since she also knits and beads--has been raising my awareness that what I need is not a diet, but a Yarn Management Plan. In other words, a "diet" is something you go on and off of, kind of a punishment for past sins of overindulgence. Yeah, overindulging in food or yarn is not a good thing.
I know that part of it is that I've been self-medicating with yarn--better than with booze, or drugs, or even food, but still not terribly healthy in the long run. Depression is the pits. I'm working my way out of it, bit by bit, and I've got lots of good support.
And thanks to all of you who are providing that! I mean it--without y'all, kids, friends, knitters, quilters--I don't know where I'd be. Curled up in bed sucking my thumb, probably, and that only looks good on people The Carrot's age!
Off to knit now--if I spend a couple of hours knitting, it will assuage my guilt over having SO MUCH YARN!!

Monday, November 13, 2006

Stuff with my Cat

Simon is very easygoing and quite accommodating. Witness him posing nicely with Lady E II and her ball of yarn. This is the Woodland colourway and it's rather intriguing. In some lights, it's greeen and gold. In other lights, it's grey and beige. I keep finding bits of different colors as I keep knitting. One thing, though, is that I don't think it's Simon's colors.

Now here, Simon has bee joined by the moose cub and the little "computer bear" as well as Lady E II. As I said, he's pretty mellow. On this picture, you can actually see his enormously long whiskers--even his "eye whiskers" are exceptionally long.
No, I don't have progress pics of anything else. I spent the weekend working at the bookstore and also at a stamping workshop. I made 10 cards (2 each of 5 designs) and when I'm not quite so tired (yes, I worked again today) I'll take them out and photograph them. I took Lady E II to the bookstore meeting and got a whole tier knitted, along with getting up to speed on new books for the holidays. Lady E I is looking like more of the same--she doesn't really show progress now, and she's too bulky to take very many places. So she and Hanging Gardens are "home" knitting and there hasn't been a lot of that in view recently.

Now a question for the Tech Set. Please forgive my massive ignorance as well as fatigue tonight.

This is the picture I want to use for my profile photo:

... but I don't want the arrow, natch. So my two questions are, how do I remove the arrow? And how do I upload this to my profile? It won't let me just upload it like I did to get it in here. (BTW, mehitabel is the cat; archy is the cockroach. He can only type in lower case because he can't hold down the shift key and type a letter at the same time. I know, my "cat" is named archy; he was named for our late-lamented black cat Archie, who was named for an Australian cat we met in '88. TMI??)

My Victorian Lace book came today, so I am planning an early bedtime: just me, my book, and a cat or two if they behave!