Finito!

Finally! I know you have all been waiting with baited breath to see the finished Girl Friday Sweater. I managed to finish it up a few days before Christmas and get it all seamed together (which felt like it took forever!). Then, I wrapped it up and realized that I forgot to take pictures! So, I had to wait until my mom opened it for Christmas - which was really better anyway since she makes a much better model than I do!!

I was really excited about how well it fit her! She loves it and has already been wearing it around and getting compliments on it. I am pretty proud of this sweater since this is the first project I have every actually seamed together! This project was a great knit and a really good first seaming project. The pattern is well written which is always a nice plus.

I didn't really make any modifications except for the yarn. I used Knit Witch Yarn - Mystical World (DK Weight) in colorway Apollo.

Can you tell my mom used to be a model??? :)



I hope everyone has a SAFE and happy New Year's Eve!! Can you believe it's time for another decade? I'm sure we'll just be staying home and watching the festivities on tv alone together as we usually do - trying like crazy to stay up until midnight!! What's everyone else doing??

I spy

I was lucky enough to see a few birds around our place this week. Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough without scaring them to get really good pictures but maybe you can find them in these pictures:

Large Blue Heron in our pond fishing.


Broad Tail Hawk sitting in the tree waiting for mice.



Missy brought me a lively brown field mouse at about 5AM the other morning. I guess I should have taken his picture too. He was very cute but I felt compelled to continue with the capture and release program that we frequently run in our house and return him to his enjoyment out in the wild.

Christmas Eve Excitement

On the night of Christmas Eve we had a REALLY bad rain/wind storm. We had gusts of wind up to 65mph!! The wind kept me up most of the night - I was thinking that the shingles weren't even going to stay on our house!! It was pretty scary. Luckily, it was much too warm here for there to be snow and ice - otherwise the storm would have been way worse.

I sat up on the couch and read from about 2:30AM until about 7. (YAY for Kindle!) I couldn't sleep because I felt like crap and because the wind was keeping me up. At about 4:30 AM I heard this loud "CRAAAAAAACK" that lasted for about 10 seconds. I braced myself for a tree falling and really, really hoped that it wasn't going to fall on our house. I didn't hear it actually hit the ground so I was anxious to see what had happened the next morning when the sun came up. Around 6AM we finally lost power but it was back on by about 11 or so.

Once the sun came up, this is what we saw.

This does not really seem unusual in and of itself except that..............we never have this view of our neighbor's barn! Usually there is a large tree blocking our view of her barn. Uh oh.

When the sun came up well we went out to see what had happened. Here's what we found:

Ugh. Poor tree. I hate to see that we have lost one of our big pine trees. The reason that I didn't hear it actually fall is because the fall was cushioned by all of the brush that grows alongside the creek that flows between our pond and our neighbor's pond. Unfortunately, the tree is hanging into our neighbor's pond so we'll need to get someone out here this week to see what we can do about having it removed. I don't know how they are going to get this thing out of there though. It should be an interesting blog story if nothing else.

*Cough, Cough*

Well, my husband and I have gotten to spend our Christmas holiday sick! This really hasn't been too much fun. I haven't been sick in probably 5 or 6 years though - so I guess I am due. A vast majority of our holiday has been spent on the couch. If you are curious about just how much time I have spent on the couch - I have read 3 complete novels and am about halfway through another since Christmas day! I haven't done any knitting at all. I have read Weekend at Bellevue by Julie Holland (good book), The Cobra Virus by Richard Preston (great book) and At Risk by Patricia Cornwell (lousy book).

Patricia Cornwell is one of my favorite authors but this particular book didn't have her main character (Kay Scarpetta) in it. To me, it just didn't have the interest, character development and medical information and mystery in it that her other books have. I am now working on another book by her, Black Notice, that is back to the world of Kay Scarpetta and thus far it is much better. I have also downloaded a book by DA Henderson and Richard Preston about the Smallpox eradication program. I'm a big geek when it comes to infectious disease bugs so I always enjoy reading books about infectious agents.




It takes A LOT to get me to stay on the couch all day - I can't stand it! Thank goodness I have had books to read to at least make it a little more bearable. But still, it is really difficult for me to stay still for so long. I am missing the gym and missing daily walks with my husband and dog!





We did manage to go to my mom's on Christmas Eve (even though we probably shouldn't have). We had a good time though and it was great to have Nathan and his girlfriend to go with us. My wonderful husband bought me a Kindle for Christmas! I LOVE IT!!



This is what I have been doing a majority of my reading on. If you love to read you should check this out. It is so easy to operate and so easy to read on plus, the books are much less expensive, you don't have a bunch of books laying around that you will probably never read again and you can take everything you are reading with you wherever you go. You can change the font size, have the books read aloud to you and you can even email PDF files to it so that you can take those with you too! Pretty cool, eh? I don't really like to read on the computer (I prefer reading on paper) so I wasn't sure I would really like to read on the Kindle. But really, it looks and feels like you are reading a book except that it is easier because you can hold it with one hand.





Other than that, we had a pretty small Christmas. My mom gave me a few great sweaters and my son got me a cover for my iphone. We haven't made it out to my dad's yet since we haven't been feeling well. Other than being sick though, we had a great holiday. That's the way I like it - low key and just spending time with family and friends.

So, how many of you out there got yarn bowls for Christmas?? A few of you have already written to me about your surprise!

Can you believe..........

............that it is almost Christmas??? It's almost time to usher in a new year and a new decade. Where does the time go? We have an action packed few days up ahead so I think Knit Witch will be taking the rest of the week off from blogging and dyeing. I was planning to dye yesterday and today but it just hasn't worked out thus far so I figure that means I am supposed to be on vacation this week, right?

We put up our tree. Last year, our neighbor bought us this little fiber optic tree. This turned out to be great because when we moved here we pretty much got rid of ALL of our Christmas stuff. I'm not really big into decorating and we just didn't have the space to keep it and no one drives by here to see our house anyway so I didn't think that decorating the whole house was something we were really going to do anyway. But, this tree is perfect! It's 6 ft. tall and we don't have to do anything to it if we don't want to. So, we did keep our tree skirt so I put that around the base and was going to put all of our presents there since my son and his girlfriend are coming to visit us for Christmas. But, I haven't yet - because of this.



Yes - Missy, Goose and Slim seem to think that we laid out the tree skirt just for them. I'm a little afraid of what damage they will do to the presents if we put them under the tree so, for now, the presents are stacked up on my desk and the cats are enjoying their new "throw". Why do we always seem to bow to the will of the furries?

Look at this card that Wayne made with all of our animals for our Christmas cards! Don't feel bad if you didn't get one - we only sent out like 5. We were totally slack on the cards this year.



We'll be heading to Atlanta today, and Thursday and Sunday. Our friend asked us if we wanted some tickets to the Atlanta hockey game last night but we just felt like driving to Atlanta 3 times in one week was plenty!!

On Saturday, we went with our neighbor to put her dog, Dudley, to sleep. It was very sad but she rescued him from a bad situation and gave him a year of great life that he might not have ever had. He was 13 and for a Great Pyrenees that is really old! He had bone cancer in his shoulder and he was just getting too painful for Liz to keep him hanging around just for her, ya know? So, tomorrow, we'll be picking him up from the vet and driving him to a pet crematory in Atlanta. Not really a fun trip to Atlanta but I'm glad we can do this to help our neighbor so that she does not have to do it alone.

For practicality sake though - the pet crematory is like 2 minutes down the road from where we buy clay so we'll also be stopping off to buy some much needed clay. In addition to that - my mom lives like 5 minutes from there so we'll be stopping by to visit her as well. Since I bought an iphone she is taking my Blackberry so we'll be dropping that off for her. I know she is excited about it. Maybe I'll even be able to text message her now!! :)

I hope everyone has a GREAT holiday and Knit Witch will be back up and blogging again next week. I'm sure I'll have plenty of entertaining stories and pictures for you by then.

Tweak

So, I finished the book "Tweak" which is the book written by the son of the previous book that I read and told you all about - "Beautiful Boy". I had recommended Beautiful Boy as a good book for people dealing with loved ones going through substance abuse issues. I am a bit hesitant to recommend Tweak though if you have someone close to you going through these issues. Not because it isn't a good book - it is. I could barely put it down. I think I read it in about four days. But, it is a rough read.

This book is written from the perspective of the addict. Nic Sheff is very detailed in his descriptions about what his life was like as he was living on the streets addicted to crystal meth and heroin. For me, it was really interesting. It allowed me to see the situation from a different point of view and understand that really, addiction is the symptom of the disease more than the disease itself. Nic really takes you through his journey of pain, depression, OCD, self-loathing and mental instability. He is brutally honest and gives a heart wrenching depiction of what his life was like. The internal struggles that he talks about are almost beyond comprehension and you can certainly see how drugs would be the easy out for him.

Wayne couldn't make it through the first 10 pages. Like I said, it is just really, really difficult to read this type of blunt rendition when all you can see in your mind is your own kid going through all of this and worrying about the internal stuggles that they are piled on top of that.

So, if any of you were contemplating reading Beautiful Boy because I had brought it to your attention I wanted to caution you on the book Tweak. This book could be a really difficult read for some of you. Beautiful Boy is more like - "Well, Nic has been gone for 2 weeks and we have no idea where he is, who he is with or what he is doing" whereas Tweak goes into very detailed descriptions about what he is doing, who he is with and how he is getting by. It's not a pretty picture.

Personally, I thought it was a well-written book and I liked reading it because it gave me a perspective into the world of addiction that I have never known about before. It took me a while just to even understand what they were talking about because I didn't know the "lingo". I didn't even know what the word "tweak" meant until I read the book. I can definitely see how writing this book would be extreemly cathartic for Nic and an important part of his own recovery. But, just be warned if this is a book that you thought you might be interested in.

Guess who's back!

That's right - our good friend Black Bear. The other morning I was looking for Petey outside and he was around the side of the house. I walked over to see what he was investigating and it was our outdoor trashcan. The lid was removed and it had been hauled up a hill and was sitting at the top of our stairs on the side of the house, on it's side and totally empty. Great. So, where is the trash that was in it? We didn't know.

We looked around and never could find anything so we figured the bear came by, grabbed our one bag of trash that was in there and took it back to the lair for further investigation.

Well, then Wayne went up behind our garden shed and found this on our property behind our garden.

Great.

Now, the only thing that makes trash strewn out all over your yard even better is when you start cleaning it up and realize that it isn't even your trash! I'm looking at the trash and I tell Wayne "uh, that's NOT our trash!" he was like "really?" so I went on asking him when was the last time we bought potato chips? Fast food? Juice boxes? Frozen pizza? We never buy that kind of stuff. So, we hadn't found our trash but we found someone elses! We figure the bear must be some kind of trash conniseur or something, right? Mixing and matching trash from different places until he finds what he wants.

Well, as you can see, we had a bunch of mess to clean up. That isn't even half of it - there is more up higher on the hill that you can't see in this picture. A nice long line of trash. So, we get to work. About 3 piles in I find our trash with all the familiar things in it. So, ok - one mystery solved. Then we figured out that the rest of the trash belonged to our neighbor (all the junk food was from her family that had been visiting over Thanksgiving). So, now we are trying to figure out why the bear would take trash from her place and bring it WAY over to our place to go through it - seems kind of weird, right? It's a pretty long way from her garage to our backyard garden. Then it hits us...............

Liz does not live here full time. Consequently, she does not pay for trash service here - she usually just brings her trash back to Atlanta with her since there isn't much just being her. We tell her all the time though if she had something that she does not want to haul back - just drop it in our outdoor trash cans and we'll take it down with ours. So, that must have been what she did. NOW it all makes sense! We don't generally have a lot of trash because we recycle and compost so I can't imagine that our trash is really all that interesting to a bear. Usually it's just one bag a week and most of it is probably animal hair that I sweep up everyday during the week!! But, the fast food and chip bags and frozen pizza remnants must have been pretty exciting.

I guess we will start keeping our outdoor trash in the shed now - gotta love life in the country.

Have a great weekend! We are supposed to get snow all weekend - we'll see! Here's a cute picture of Missy. She got into the bubble wrap box - she is always getting into everything!!

Wanna see something funny?

I put some yarn outside to dry last week. When I got up the next morning to bring it in - it was frozen!!

Quick Annoucement

TODAY is the last day to order products at the regular shipping rate to guarantee arrival by Christmas!!

Do you hear frogs?

It's sort of late in the year for frogs but the frogging sound was heard loud and clear here in Blue Ridge yesterday.

I FINALLY finished the Girl Friday sweater yesterday! It was a great knit except for the 83 miles of 1x1 at the end. I finally finished it all and all I had left to do was seam it all together. As I was knitting the dreaded ribbing, I noticed that the ribbing was "pulling in" a little bit but I figured it was nothing that could not be fixed with a little light blocking. Famous last words, right?

Well, if I had actually laid it out and LOOKED at it instead of just knitting more and more ribbing I would have noticed that something was not quite right. In Knit Witch speak, this is referred to as "wonky". See anything amiss here?



Uh, yeah. MAJOR problems here. That problem is WAY beyond blocking, don't you think. Then as I thought about it, I remember the knitting pattern clearly stating to pick up 2 stitches for every 3 stitches along the button bands. Yeah, I picked up every other stitch. Big difference.

So, 5 minutes later after I realized this error, the sweater looked like this:



Back to the drawing board. So, now I get to knit the 83 miles of 1x1 again PLUS about another 42 miles in addition to that due to the additional stitches I should have picked up in the first place. I should be really good at ribbing by the time this is all over.

I have already picked up the stitches again and completed the neck ribbing, now I just have to do the button bands and the rest of the neck. On the first go around I had a total of like 125 stitches or something. On this second go around I have 203 so this should work much better. Nothing like reading the pattern and actually doing what it says, eh?

Party Time!!

First of all - an announcement - TODAY is the last day to sign up for Knit Witch Clubs until July. The sign-ups for Club Dragon Witch are open until January 7th. I just got word of the pattern that Gryphon is working on for the club - it sounds great!
_______________________________

This past Sunday we had the pleasure of heading to Atlanta to go visit our good friend Jane and a few other knitters. Jane and Wayne actually graduated from high school together but we never realized it until one day Wayne got some kind of email about a high school reunion and I happened to notice that Jane's email address was on the list! I went to the same high school also actually, just 22 years later. :)

The day started by us visiting my mom, who actually lives REALLY close to Jane. That was fun, we got to hang out with her and have a glass of wine (or 3) and have some laughs and conversations. After that, we headed a little further into Decatur for this:



Everyone had a great time. We all brought a gift, the gift got a number attached to it and then we all drew numbers to see which gift we got. My gift was pretty hilarious. It started out as this big box.



But I just kept unwrapping......

And unwrapping.........




Until finally, I got THIS



A gift certificate to Knitch - yay!! So now I have two so I forsee a visit to my LYS (even though it is in Atlanta) to spend some gift certificate money!

This is me and Hockeymom



Then Chickengoddess joined in the fun.



Wayne had fun with one of the cutest babies I have ever seen - baby Pixie Purls! (Doesn't Wayne look so cute with a baby?!?!)



Katey (Snarky Katey) and Allen (of Numma Numma) were there too.

I think Katey even liked the gift I brought that was picked up by Meg.


A good time was had by all - thanks Jane, Claudia and Alma!!!

Totally not Knit Witch Related

Guess what I got?


drumroll please..........................



A JOB!!!!


I know, I know. My dad almost passed out when I told him. He said he was going to go and call all of his friends. I know I already have a full-time job running Knit Witch. Honestly, it's going to be difficult to fit it in but this is something I have been wanting to do so I went for it.

I have been in training for the past 2 months so I didn't want to say anything until I passed all the training - you know - didn't want to jinx anything! But now all the training is done so I have filled out my HR paperwork and am waiting to teach my first class.

I will be teaching nursing classes for the University of Phoenix. Everything is online so it is perfect! I wanted to be able to keep my hand in nursing at least a little bit and education is where I really like to be. I can't believe I will actually be getting a real paycheck! It seems like it has been so long. It will be great to give the 'ol savings account a boost again!! I am pretty excited about it. I know it will be a lot of work to squeeze all of this in but the nice thing is that I can go to this job at any time just like I can with Knit Witch so I have a lot of flexibility in both places.

When I first found out about this job I predicted (citing Murphy's Law) that now Knit Witch would start REALLY getting busy and taking off. Sure enough - that is exactly what happened. We have had our best 2 months yet - by a LONG shot (well except for show months). November was absolutely crazy and we topped our November figures by December 9th! Amazing how that happens. When it rains it pours, right?

Now, I just need to figure out how to start working on my doctoral degree in addition to all of this! I have been thinking about doing my doctoral degree around online education programs, specifically for nursing, so that is another reason that I really wanted to start teaching in an online program.

I think I am going to have to teach my husband and my dog how to skein yarn!! :)

Hot and Cold

First up - a few annoucements:

There are new yarn bowls up on the website - these will probably be the last batch we put up before Christmas. If you (or someone for you) is ordering for Christmas - please make sure you (they) order BEFORE December 17th so that we can be sure to get your order to you in time.

There are 4 days left to sign up for the Knit Witch Fiber Clubs. We have made the move from open enrollment to scheduled enrollment. The next sign-up will be in June. Sign-ups for the Knit Witch clubs end on December 15th.

You still have time to join Club Dragon Witch, though spaces are filling up! We are keeping this sign-up open until January 7th or until it is full. I happen to know that at least two people are getting this as a gift for Christmas!! :) We did some gift certificates for those who were buying the club as a gift so that they would have something for the recipient to open on Christmas. We are glad to do that for any of our products and email you the certificate so that you can print it for a gift.

FINALLY - we have some new videos up! We are getting ready to shoot another one in just a few minutes on wet blocking since I have some sleeves to block so that one should be up later today.

We came home from Atlanta one day and realized that the kiln had never shut off while we were gone. This was BAD! The kiln should have shut itself off hours ago so it was REALLY hot. Wayne bravely opened it a little bit so that he could bring the temperature down a bit. I should have taken a picture then but I didn't think about it until several hours later. So, here is what it looked like several hours later after it had "cooled" a bit.


Also, last week - we had some SNOW! We took a few pictures for you. I know, those of you up north are going to be laughing at our "snow".




Have a great weekend everyone! We are headed to Atlanta this weekend for a fun holiday party with some knitting friends. We can't wait to see everyone and have some fun! I'm sure there will be some entertaining pictures from that!

Only Ewe

First of all - thank you all SO MUCH for your comments and support on the blog post yesterday. I really appreciate hearing that it helped people and I am so sorry for all the others that are on such a painful and difficult journey as well. I guess we just keep putting the positive energy out there.

____________________________________________
Last week we made the trek to Only Ewe and Cotton Too in Alpharetta. We had a great time there! Elyse and Bill (the owners) are just some of the nicest people we have ever met and they have such a cute shop with great customers!!!

We played with yarn.



And looked around the shop (such a cute little shop too!).




And took an order for even MORE yarn! It seems that Knit Witch BFL fingering weight yarn will be a regular player in the shop so we are really excited about that! This shop is only a couple of miles from my dad's house so that makes it really convenient to swing by and drop off the yarn and it gives me a great excuse to go visit my dad too.

After we went there we met my dad for lunch at PF Chang. THAT was a good time! It's always nice to be able to hang out with him for a while. Then we went and did our shopping at Sam's. I went ahead and reordered my contacts from there so I had conveniently arranged to do everything on the same day. We went to Sam's and did all of our shopping then we headed back to the hills.

Later that night I was sitting on the couch watching "Daltry Calhoun" (which was a pretty good movie by the way) and there is a scene in there where the girl is fiddling with her glasses. Then it suddenly hit me. After pretty much arranging that whole darn trip around getting to Sam's to pick up my contacts - guess what I forgot?!?!?! Ugh..................luckily I called my dad telling him what a goof I was and he kindly offered to go pick them up for me and store them until I get back down there again - which shouldn't be too long as I have already started work on the new order for Only Ewe and Cotton Too!

I hate it when stuff like that happens though - don't you?

Beautiful Boy

Has anyone read this book by David Sheff?

Well, it's pretty interesting. This book chronicals David Sheff's journey through his son's addiction with methamphetamines. Interestingly enough, his son has also written a book discussing his own jouney through this process called "Tweak". That one is next on my list and I'll probably start that one tonight.

A lot of you probably don't know this, because it isn't something I really like to talk about on the blog, but Wayne and I have a son who has been dealing with a serious addiction problem for going on probably 6-7 years now. We have really reached the point of having to distance ourselves from the whole situation because nothing good ever seems to come out of us being involved.

The person in question here is 30 years old so it's not like this is a teenager that we can just send off to rehab. I was interested to read about someone else's journey through this process just to see what it is like from someone else's perspective. Amazingly enough - it's all the same. Just change the kid's name and maybe some of the players but the rest of it is pretty much the same. The roller coaster ride of ups and downs, the lying, the stealing, the bad group of friends that B can't seem to distance himself from, the strung out girlfriends, the fighting, the jail time, the ODs that wind him up in the hospital, the rehab and re-rehab and re-re-rehab, the anger, the frustration, the sadness, the guilt, the worry - everything. It's all the same.

Not only are we dealing with B's addiction and everything that comes with that - but we are also dealing with other members of the family that are serious enablers so it seems that nothing can ever get accomplished. Back near the beginning of this whole situation, Wayne and I spent a lot of time going to rehab centers and meetings and family therapy sessions and that sort of thing. Some of them were great and productive and some of them ended very, very badly. Very badly.

No matter what we did, no matter what we decided, it didn't matter because the people who are the enablers in this situation were just going to do whatever they wanted to do even if it was not the best thing for B or for other members of the family. We really rode this roller coaster of situation after situation when we finally realized that WE were also living a life of addiction. Addiction to his addiction. Addiction to the drama surrounding addiction. We were overly involved in a situaiton that we had absolutely no control over and were dealing with everyone else's drama (both perceived and real) on an almost daily basis. We just decided that we could not allow this situation to take over our otherwise peaceful and happy life.

This didn't cause problems BETWEEN Wayne and I but it certainly added an element of stress to our lives that was unwelcome. For instance, one night B got arrested (again). B's mother called us to discuss the situation and we all agreed that we would NOT bail him out because he needs to start understanding and realizing that his actions have consequences. Fine. Everyone agreed this was the right thing to do. Then, the next morning we found out that B's mother went downtown anyway and bailed him out because she felt sorry for him being in jail. Well, I sort of thought that him not liking it was the point so he would think twice about ending up there again. Anyway, that is just one small example of the many, many, many battles we have fought with this whole thing. We won't even get into all of the cover-ups and excuses and the "I can't believe you think he would lie about something like that" situations. Talk about denial...........

To me, the whole point of being a parent is to turn out independent young men and women who are positive contributors to the world around them. We aren't here to be their friends, we are here to be their parents. Now, that does not mean that we are not also their friends but it means that we are here to do a job. We can't do that job if we never hold our kids responsible for their own actions, bail them out of any trouble that they get themselves into, cover up for them and lie for them, believe anything they tell us when we KNOW it is a lie, don't expect high standards from them and basically let them act however they want to act (including lying, stealing, etc). They need to have a job or go to school and be responsible for their own lives. We simply won't put up with that sort of thing in our home so we have now reached the point of "if you are using - you aren't welcome here". This is simply our opinion and how we choose to run our own home.

Over Thanksgiving, we found out that B had overdosed again on heroin (that makes it the 4th? 5th? 6th? time now? I can't keep track). So, I was talking about this at Thanksgiving with some of the other members of our family. My cousin told me that I needed to read this book. So, I went home and ordered it from Amazon.

I definitely learned a lot of information from this book but I also realized how many people all over the US are dealing with the same problems that Wayne and I face. Always hoping things will get better, always hoping that xyz will REALLY be the rock bottom this time, always hoping he will get clean, always hoping he will not continue to drag his small children down this nightmare path with him, always hoping we will be able to trust him in our home again, always hoping we won't have to worry that Christmas presents we buy for him be hocked for drug money, and on and on and on. Addiction is really crippling, for the family of the addict as well as for the addict.

It seems that almost everyone is touched by addiction in some fashion. If you don't personally know someone who is or has gone through this, then you probably know someone who is going through it with someone else. What this book really made me realize is how much addiction takes from everyone. David Sheff and his wife had 2 other small children who idolized their older brother, Nic. They were constantly dealing with all the stress and terror that the parents were going through and you realize how much attention parents give to this child who is an addict over their other children. Not because they want to or because the like the addict better but because dealing with the situation is so absolutely all consuming. It is really crazy how parents can act when faced with a worrisome, terrifying situation with their child (which is completely understandable - I don't think we ever stop wanting the best for our kids).

I guess you have to finally come to the realization that it is OK for you to not allow your entire life to be consumed by someone else's addiction. We can't control it and we can't cure it. All we can do is be supportive when he is doing the RIGHT things for himself and making the RIGHT decisions for himself and not allow ourselves to get caught up in the bad decisions. It is a difficult path to say the least and is one we continue to struggle with on a regular basis.

Like I said, I really don't like to talk about this stuff on the blog because, well this is supposed to be a happy and fun blog, right? But, if I can help one person out there by recommending a couple of books that might give them a little insight into the struggles they are facing then one depressing blog is worth it if you ask me.

Oh yeah.........a blog post!

Usually I have my blog posts ready to go first thing in the morning. Well, not today. Let me show you why.................

Yep, I got an iphone. Now, I know what you are thinking here. "Awwwww, isn't that cute she didn't get anything done yesterday because she was so excited about getting an iphone and she spent the whole day playing with it!!" Well, not exactly. Let my suffering be a warning for anyone about to purchase an iphone.

When you set it up it gives you the option to merge your contacts from your email account. Now, I was thinking this was setting up my email - not my contacts. So, I did it. I merged my gmail contacts (not email) with my phone. Sounds like no big deal, right? Wrong. I don't know how many of you have gmail but gmail saves everyone to your contacts list. Everyone you have ever emailed and everyone who has ever emailed you and that you have responded to. It's not like yahoo where you have to actually save every individual person that you want to have in your contacts list. And dudes, I get A LOT of email. I bet on an average day I get somewhere between 100 and 200 emails.

So, yeah - there are over 3000 contact names in my email account - ALL of which are pretty much completely useless in my phone as the are email addresses only and probably 95% of people I don't even know. I tried to set the phone back to the factory settings but it did not delete my contacts. Sooooooooooooooooo................I have been spending a lot of time deleting all these contacts out of my phone. I'm down to 1200 or so left to go.

Some of the people, of course, I do know and I'm wondering why I have so many contact entries for them. Like - evilsciencechick - WHY do I have 5 different contact entries for you in my email??? Good grief.

Now, I probably should have posted this last night because I'm sure someone is going to leave a comment that says something like - "Oh, all you have to do is hit x,y and z at the same time and it will delete all of your contacts!" or something like that. In which case, I have wasted like 3 hours of my life thus far deleting contacts one by one. But, ya know, if you have any handy tips feel free to share them - I still have about 1200 to go.....................

Everyone wants an iphone - even Petey!

No extra charge for the cat butt in the picture.

New 2010 Sock Club Sign-ups!

Finally! We are ready to reveal our latest, greatest plan! Knit Witch will be teaming up with Kate from Dragonfly Fibers for an awesome 2010 sock club! We have named it Club Dragon Witch. The sock club is for one year and 6 shipments. Each package will have a skein of sock yarn (either Knit Witch or Dragonfly Fiber yarn), a pattern designed especially for our club and some fun goodies! We have some really amazing designers on board and we are so excited that they will be working with us! We already have the first design underway.

The spaces are going to be LIMITED so please be sure to sign up early if you are interested. The sign-ups will run from now until January 7th unless the club fills up before then - in which case we will close the sign-ups.

Our designers are as follows:

Barb Brown of Wild Geese Fibres - http://wildgeesefibres.com/?page_id=3

Kate Chiocchio of Dragonfly Fibers - http://www.etsy.com/shop/dragonflyfiberdesign

Cristi Brockway aka Turtlegirl76 – http://www.turtlegirl76.com

Sarah Eyre of Sanguine Gryphon - http://www.sanguinegryphon.com/

Rosi Garmendia - http://rosi-g.com/soapyknitter/

Gryphon of Sanguine Gryphon - http://www.sanguinegryphon.com/

You can find all the pertinent information HERE on the new website. You can sign up on this site as well.

You can still sign up for just the Knit Witch clubs if you like (sock club, roving club or not-a-sock club). I will be running those sign-ups until December 15th. Those are the "no frills" clubs - yarn only.

We hope to see you there!

Announcement Preview!

First of all - Happy Birthday to my freaking awesome mom!!!! :)



Second of all - we will be at Only Ewe and Cotton Too today at about 11AM in Alpharetta. We are bringing a new order of yarn for the shop. Stop in and visit with us if you get the chance!

Unfortunately we aren't QUITE ready to give you the full blown annoucement on the new sock club details. We are almost there though and our goal is to launch it on Monday! I will give you a hint though - Knit Witch is teaming up with another indie dyer and 6 AWESOME designers for a 2010 club! I am really excited about this so I hope you all will be too!

Until then, I give you kittehs...................

I snapped this pic of the kittehs the other night. This is where they live when it starts getting cold - parked right in front of the heater. That's Missy laying upside down next to Slim. Isn't she cute????


Have a great weekend!!!!

New Man Toys

That sounds far more interesting than it really is.

Wayne got a new pickup.

See?



Not what you were expecting, eh? How about a closer look?



Yeah, wow, right? I know - but he is really excited about it. Now he can play his acoustic guitar through an amp. He has been looking online obsessively lately trying to find an electric guitar to buy. In the meantime, my son, Nathan, has so many that he graciously left one here for Wayne to play with in the meantime. Great kid, eh? :)

OK - so that was short lived. He bought an electric guitar when we "stopped by Guitar Center just to see what they had" yesterday. Right. I know all about him. He was debating between the teal one and the natural wood one. I voted for the natural wood! He has been obsessed with learning how to play it - but I love it! I love seeing him so passionate about learning. Now, hopefully the weather will be better today so I can get him outside doing some glazing for you all!! It's a PRS if anyone is interested.



Finally - some folks asked me for the bread recipe. Silly me - I should have included it in the post! You can find it here. I also added 1 tblsp of wheat gluten in the recipe. The bread took about 30 minutes to bake for me and it this recipe makes 2 loaves. In the second batch I made I used 4c of wheat flour and 2c of rye flour. I also added other goodies like rosemary, garlic, parsley, etc. YUM!!!!!!

It Has Risin!

Well, the bread that is! This is the first time I have ever made bread "for real" without a bread maker so I was pretty excited to see it rising!!! I made a whole wheat bread from a very simple recipe. I made a loaf and had enough left over for another loaf but I decided to make some rolls instead. I must say, for a first effort - it was delicious!!!!!

Here is the bread before baking after it's second rising.

Here are the rolls

Here is the finished product - YUM!!



Also - my mom needs some SERIOUS mojo today - so take a minute and just send out some good 'ol knitter mojo for her will ya? Thanks!!!!!