Dear So and So

Dear People Who Owned My House Before Me,

I can understand your bold usage of sea foam green on the walls in the dining room, the chartreuse green on the bathroom walls and the magenta on the cabinets. I mean, after all, even though I painted over those horrible colors, to each his own, right? There's a bit of gypsy blood in all of us lovers of color, or why else would I have painted my downstairs half bath a gorgeous, yet subdued, brick red?

What I can't understand, not even a little bit, was your approach to so many other things in this house. Why, oh why, did you decide that half-assed solutions to decorating and building were good ideas? That back deck? Not up to code I'm afraid. The hack job that you did when you put up a ceiling fan? You know, the one that fell out of the ceiling? That was also not up to code by the way.

And let's not forget your shoddy job with wallpaper in the bathrooms and kitchen. I suffered through your hideous taste in the paper that you picked. I also suffered through peeling off three layers of the foul stuff in the bathroom and two in the kitchen. I'm afraid the third layer had to remain on the walls in the kitchen as you never used primer on the walls before you laid the paper down. I learned that lesson from the bathroom.
I've repainted your kitchen walls and they look much nicer now. I'm still working on the wainscoting area, but things are going well now. I've gone from the disastrous wall paper above to this:

And finally, to this:

The white is just a primer (like you should have used), another color will soon be added that will go well with the wall color. It will be arriving asap.

But I'm afraid what makes me furious is the fact that you painted over the kitchen cabinets without priming them as well. I began working with them in an effort to repaint them and guess what? Your paint is now peeling off way too easily and is messing up my efforts. I will probably have to use paint stripper on all of the cabinets and their accompanying doors.

I have kids. Kids and paint stripper don't mix well. What the hell were you thinking? Could you not have done all these jobs correctly from the beginning and thereby paving the way for the next family to decorate their home in the colors and manner of their own choosing? Would that really have been such a stretch?

Are you now doing this to your current abode? I shudder to think what the next family will have to do to repair your imaginative use of color and your handywork, I really do.

And furthermore, do you know how much time you have sucked away from my knitting, spinning and dyework? I sadly think not. May you forevermore rot in the hell of your own wallpaper, paint and shoddy repairs of your own devising.

Sincerely,

Shea

A vent, a FO and a WIP

I do have some knitting stuff and a spinning FO to show you, but bear with me a minute while I vent/agonize.

Summer drama camp season is upon us. It begins next week. Why am I agonizing?

First, the powers that be at our church are having power play issues. Two different departments, Music and Children, are arguing about whose turf this camp is on. Guess who gets stuck in the middle? Yep, me, the Director.

Second, I got pushed into doing a specific play. I had little say in the matter. The problem, is that the play sucks, it's absolutely awful. It was written by a local lady and the one that pushed me into it.

I've spent the past four years building this camp to be a full-on broadway style camp. I teach the kids everything, from set design, prop making, costume making, choreography, etc. This has become one of the most popular and most requested children's camp and I'm extremely proud of it. usually. Not so much this year.

It's difficult for me to get excited about having kids perform something that is sub-standard. The lady that wrote it is planning on sending this off to a publishing house. They're gonna rip it to shreds in it's current state.

Here's a couple of examples of what bothers me:
1. She makes jokingly makes references to prozac and bulimia. Not the subjects of choice for elementary children. I've already stated that I will not have those in this play. I really don't feel up to explaining in detail what those are to the kids. I find this especially inappropriate at a church camp. I'm not going to go all preachy here, I think you know what I mean.
2. No big production numbers. There isn't one time that the kids can get up and sing and dance together.
3. The level of vocabulary is way too advanced. This is not geared enough for the elementary crowd. It doesn't need dumbing down, just simplification.

There's a lot more where that came from, but I'll stop for now or I'll get all riled up again. If I could bow out of this play gracefully, I would. It's my reputation at stake here too you know.

The positives? Set design is cool as well as the props. I'm still working on the costumes.

Onward to the important stuff!

I know that I promised to show you a glimpse of this on Saturday, but when I promised, it was on a Friday, and I had no idea what day it was. I have lost all track of days now that school is out. And I was right too, it's completely balanced after blocking!

Anyway, here, as promised is the spinning FO.

Turned out pretty huh? Click to enlarge

Here is the state of the current knit, Elizabeth Zimmerman's February baby sweater:

The Terracotta Cardigan

Yuck and OOH!

YUCK!
You know those weird searches that people do in the search engines that lead to your site? Well, there's one that's kind of creeping me out.

One of my first posts was about a pair of socks that I made for the Eldest. In the post I mentioned that they were silly socks for silly boy feet. Did you know that there are people out there searching for boy feet? Are there really pedophile foot fetishists out there? That's just sick people. It kind of grosses me out to think that some strange dude is out there getting off to a photo of The Eldest's feet. Yuck. What is the world coming to?


OOH!
Anyway, I have no new updates on the knitting. I did about 10 rows today and my wrists starting hurting. I need to inspect how I'm knitting. They shouldn't be hurting after only 10 rows even if the cables are slightly tight.

I do however, have a pic of the yarn that I've spun up.

Here is the roving that I started out with:


Here is how it spun up:

Click to see the pretty colors!

I still haven't made a decision on a name for the colorway yet, but I really appreciate the suggestions so far. I really didn't expect that the color in the plied yarn would look like this. It's absolutely amazing to me the difference of colors from roving to yarn. Magic!

In a few hours I'm off to the lake with the kiddos. Poor hubby has to stay home and be productive. Me, I'll be sharing 2 year old temper tantrums with the Grandparents. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Political Rant

If you dislike Political Rants, please skip this post. More adventures in Knitting will be appearing in the next post.

Today I felt that I had to write a letter to my Senators in protest against them voting to give the Telecoms retroactive immunity. I feel passionately about the issue of spying on the common everyday "Joe". This is not about whether I am a Republican or a Democrat, but how I feel about my Telecom collecting data on where I visit on the web, who I send email to, what I post on my blog.

While I know that the information that they will collect on me will be useless to them or anyone else for that matter (does the Government really need to know about knitting patterns or stitches or yarn or me lolcats to my Mom?), I dislike that they will be doing it at all.

I believe in my freedom, and I believe in my Senators upholding my Constitution which grants me my freedom. Here is a copy of what I sent:


Mr. XXXXXXX,

I'm disappointed that you would choose to vote for giving Telecoms retroactive immunity. Do you remember the Constitution, which you swore to uphold?

According to Article 1, Section 9:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law (ex post facto laws are seen as a violation of the rule of law as it applies in a free and democratic society. ) shall be passed.

The rights of the people that you serve are being violated Mr. XXXXXX. All citizens must have legal recourse when their rights are infringed upon, and companies must bear the responsibility for breaking the law.

I feel that the you and your fellow GA representatives have completely lost touch with their constituents (as in "We, the people...", not "We, the corporations and PACs who gave you cash...) and all of you who have voted for this legislation have completely lost my confidence and my future vote.

The saying that "Big Brother is watching" has never been true or appropriate. After writing this letter to you I fully expect to be watched very closely. It is unfortunate that the government will be wasting it's money by spying on a middle class American Housewife, don't you think?

Sincerely,

SHEA

I am positive that I have wasted my time in sending the letter and ranting about it here, but I feel better now, thanks.

PS - I would like to hear about what my fellow knitters and bloggers think about this issue - please leave me a comment and let me know!

Why ME? rant

Why ME? Why do I get stuck in long lines with older men who feel compelled to tell me their life stories? For the second time in recent history (see here for the first) , I had to sit and listen to this older dude tell me the following:

1. "Oh, you live over on ******* street. Well, let me tell you, I was one of the people that framed your house. As a matter of fact, I framed all the houses in that neighborhood."

2. "I live over on **** street for 27 years. Yep, 27 years until my wife decided she wanted a divorce and kept the house. Yessir, I had just got that house completely paid for and then I had to go and start payin' on another house. My daughter and her boy live there too. It's over back behind the high school. We watch the kids run track and play football over there all the time."

3. "My grandson is five. He's going to be in kindergarten at ***** school. We thought about going to ***** school, but decided that ***** school was closer."

Now, I'm all for being friendly. I like meeting people, really, I do. But, there's a limit to how much I want to find out about them at the first meeting. Are these folks just that lonely or just that dumb? I mean, what if I was a spy, a home burglary expert, or a child kidnapper even? I've just learned your life story, where you live, where your ex-wife lives, where your grandchild lives, that you have a grandson going to X school. These people are ripe for pickin'. Scary.

But seriously, why me? Do I have a huge sign on my forehead that says "If you're over 55, please, tell me your life story while you waste an hour of your time in line?"

Vent day

Today is Vent day. Yesterday I was so furious that I cried. Yes, I am one of those. If I am so ticked that I'm crying, watch out. The crying only makes me more mad.

It seems that I've gotten caught up in some politics within the theater troupe that I'm in. I'm not going to go into everything that has lead up to this point, but I finally became a victim of it. I was the last man standing, so to speak, in a small group of friends that have been driven out, one after the other, from the theater group. I've been a fixture in the troupe now for about four years. I have always had either a lead part or at least a small part in every production. Never have I been relegated to the background scenery. I have always done more than my fair share of the work involved in putting on a production. As a matter of fact, I've worked my behind off for these people. But yesterday was not a good day.

Today I am merely angry and resentful. I feel like i've been slapped. You see, not only is this a community theater group, but it's also church based. These are, or were, my so-called friends, people that I go to church with, was in choir with, in sunday school with, etc. These are supposed to be people who are christians and act with christian ethics and morals.

I've had jobs where I ran head-on into politics and at least there I saw it coming, could read the writing on the wall. But this blind sided me. It really did. I've become a victim of the clique.

Bummed

I'm a bit bummed. I have an audition tomorrow for a broadway type medley show and I've managed to catch a cold from my kids. So now I'm a major snot machine to go along with the other two snot machines roaming around the house. I'm going to shoot my husband if he doesn't catch it too. misery loves company.

I have a sore throat from the post nasal drip and I'm worried that I won't have a voice for the audition. The last few auditions that I've been too, I've either managed to catch a cold or I had allergies so bad that I ended up with the same problems.

I hate auditions. Put me in front of a crowd and I'm fine, I absolutely love the stage; but you put me in front of just a couple of people and I get incredibly nervous. Wish me luck tomorrow! I think I'm going to need it.

two simple rants

Today, I want to express my dissatisfaction with two simple rants.

First, Why the hell does Wal-Mart and Sam's Club have the idiots working the door check your grocery cart purchases as you are leaving? Is it truly productive to have said idiots to barely glance at your receipt, then barely glance at your cart, then mark the receipt with a highlighter? Do the companies really expect to catch someone stealing? How? Everything is bagged or boxed up and buried under all the other bags/boxes. I can understand having the people at the door to mark returns. That actually makes sense, but not to check your cart as you leave. Treating people as criminals as they leave from purchasing stuff at your store is really a slap in the face to your customers.

This leads me to my second rant. This one about the Methamphetamine Precursor Control Act. WTF was Congress thinking? This is not going to slow down the meth makers and dealers for one second. It is however, going to punish me and other law abiding citizens like me. I am now in a national database (which is scary in itself) and I am allowed to only buy a certain amount at a time. This is a huge inconvience and waiting in line to get my Claritin-D is a waste of time. I can't tell you how aggrevated I am by this. I have to buy for two people at a time, me and my husband, since I am the one that does all the shopping while he works. Now in order for us to both get the amount of medication that we need, we have to tag-team purchase the Claritin-D and he has to go out of his way for it. Also, if my two children have colds and I want to get effective medication for them, it is possible that I won't be able to get this due to my purchasing of the allergy medication due to it having the same ingredients. The meth. makers/dealers can make meth out of other things, not just the main ingredient in Claritin-D and Sudafed. Why are we being punished?

Well, I don't feel better, but it's now off my chest. I hope the idiots at Wal-Mart and the idiots in Washington D.C. read this.