Life, Knitting and the Pursuit of Roller Coasters

I’ve been neglecting the blog again. I did finally find a template that doesn’t look like ass in IE and I’ve been playing with it some behind the scenes so expect a more realistic blogroll and a new podcast-roll in the near future and some other little tweaks to the stuff hanging out on the sidebar here.

I won’t neglect the blog for long though. Tandaina posted a convincing post for NaBloPoMo, and I’m jumping on the bandwagon for a good kick start and rejuvenation in blogging again. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to approach the month yet, I might run into some day-of-the-week themes if the writing gets harried, but I’m mostly going to just play by ear and see where the day to day takes me. It’ll definitely be a new approach for me, since I’ve been going with the neglect and vague update route for a while now.

On the neglect and vague update front, I do have a FO to show off. I used that same fingerless mitt pattern I made before and added fingers to make a pair of gloves that match my Chevron Scarf. I realized with all the accessories I’ve been mentally knitting (because I’m just not getting stuff on or off the needles lately) that I should have at least two winter accessories that “matched”. I figure I can make a slew of winter hats in a zillion different solids to pair with the matched set of the chevron and gloves. The second glove fits a little better, I made the pinkie a little longer, and the thumb shaped a little differently and it worked better than what I’d done on the first glove, but I love them, and knitting fingers weren’t nearly as annoying as I expected them to be. They definitely get a thumbs up.

I really need to focus on getting Christmas knit to within an inch of it’s life so barring wrapping up a small project or two, these gloves will be the last selfish knit for a while. The holiday knits will be getting the forefront of the blog. There are a lot of those holiday knits to take that forefront as well, I’ve got at least 10 things on my list to make and half that list is socks. So, that’s at least 5 FOs a month for the next two months.

Other news, my car has been back in my posession for almost two weeks now and it’s behaving so far. I was also possessed by the spirit of a neat freak over the weekend (that neat freak, Peter Walsh… I borrowed his book from the library and read it in two evenings last week) and took on a massive cleaning/decluttering in my bedroom. I rearranged the furniture and cleaned out the dresser and one of the nightstands on Friday night, spent Saturday clearing out the closet and spent Sunday doing laundry. Lots and lots of laundry. Lots of stuff to the dumpster and I’ve got a carfull (9 garbage bags + other stuff!) ready for goodwill and my bedroom and closet are the cleanest they’ve been sice I moved in. I also unearthed a corner bookshelf that’s been occupying the corner behind the bed for the 7 years since I moved in and it’s just the right size to hold all of my sock yarn. So, the sock yarn stash is no longer living in the middle of the living room in a computer box.

I did come to the realization that there’s a lot of little furniture in my bedroom. The only big pieces in there are my bed and the dresser. Once my finances are in better shape, I’ll be investing in a bigger bookcase and that should give me enough room to move most of the rest of the non-acrylic stash into the bedroom. For the time being though, I’m focussing on getting more stuff out of the house. The living room will be the next attack zone and hopefully the inner neat freak will stick around long enough to tackle the middle bedroom dump zone. I suspect this topic will get revisited, since I’ve got 3o days of posting daily ahead of me. See ya back here on Thursday!