Friday, February 2, 2018

FMM - General Chitchat

Have you met General Chitchat?  He's cousin to Captain Crunch.  Or, Cap'n, as the cereal box spells it.  Anyway, my brain is all over the place today, so I thought I'd share some of the randomness that's currently floating about inside my head.

Last Saturday, while at Blue Baker, I got an email notification of a blog comment, which is not unusual - all of my comments come to my email.  But this one was obviously a spam comment - I could tell right away by the name, didn't even need to see the comment.  It was for my Happy New Year post, and I thought, that's weird, my blog is set up to send all comments to old posts to moderation, and this didn't go there.  When I got home I checked my settings, and sure enough, they were still correct - any comments on posts over 30 days old go to moderation.  What was happening, then?  Would you believe it took me another few minutes to realize that the post wasn't 30 days old?

So yeah, I guess that's what happens when you start January on the east coast, eventually make your way back home to Texas, then run the goal race you've been training for all fall, only to come down with food poisoning (I think we're going with that based on Logan not getting sick), recover from that, do about a gajillion loads of laundry while trying to sterilize everything you're touching in case it was a potent virus, and there you go.  January was one hell of a long month.  Glad it's over, glad we all survived, and glad February is short and sweet.

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Beautiful sock yarn, all wound and ready for knitting!

I was winding my new yarn the other day, tense as usual, when it came to me why I was so tense.  You see, skeins of hand-dyed yarn are tied in several places around the skein, and you have to cut those ties in order to wind the yarn.  Some companies use different colors and/or different weights of yarn to do this, which I appreciate so much - that makes it super easy to see what to cut.  But other companies use the same colored yarn, which makes me nervous, because if you cut the wrong piece, you've messed up that skein.  Such was the case with all of the Irish yarn I bought recently; I was literally breaking a sweat trying to figure out which was the correct piece to cut, and I realized this must be how the bomb squad feels when they're trying to stop a ticking bomb by cutting the correct wire:
This is pretty simple - I could follow the yarn and see that it was just holding the skein together.  However, if it happened to be both ends of the skein, cutting it wouldn't ruin the skein.
Here's where the sweating begins:  there are FOUR ends tied together!  I debated over which one to cut, but ended up untying them, which wasn't easy, as they were in a tight knot.  Still, it was the safer bet.  You can see the pile of yarn in the background - this was my third skein, and all of them had been tied like this, even though they were from three different companies.

This probably explains why I had the yarn sitting on my desk for a week, waiting to wind it.  I had to be in the right mindset to handle the potentially dangerous situation.  Sure, my version of danger might be less scary to most people, but hand-dyed yarn isn't cheap, so you have to be cautious.  And now I'm wondering if a bomb squad person might be quicker at this than me.  Now that would be an interesting challenge to watch unfold!

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I'm overdue on posting some pet pictures, so here's a few funny ones:
 
Henry was enjoying the morning sunshine when Paco walked by and just had to stir up trouble.
 
But old Henners was having none of that.  BAM, POW - he let Paco have it!
The thing is, Paco never lies on that chair, so he really was just being a jerk to Henry.  I had to laugh that Henry stood his ground instead of being forced out by Paco.
Dat's right, I win.

Eventually he left, and Paco got to claim HIS spot in the sunshine:
It looks like he's getting an X-ray, what with the window pane shadows...nope, just his Vitamin D. 

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Have a great weekend - I hear there's some big football game on, but better yet, I hear there's some fun commercials coming, which is all I plan on watching. 

12 comments:

  1. I get a lot of spam comments--they are so ridic--so I have my posts set to moderation after a week. I've had to close commenting on some posts that were getting an unusual amount of spam.

    Cocoa loves to lay in the sun!

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  2. I totally get the stress of cutting the yarn...I get so nervous and stressed when I’m cutting wallpaper or flooring for my dollhouses...or wood for the furniture!!! Crafting is hard on the nerves!!!

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  3. love your pet ics.

    Do you ever get yarn with a knot in the middle or yarn that is so tangled that you have cut it and make a knot. Grrrr

    Maybe it's because I don't buy expensive yarn.

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    1. I've had that happen with a skein of expensive yarn more than once and oooh, it's irritated me big time!

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  4. You had the craziest Jan! I am not surprised that threw you for a loop!

    Eek! I would be nervous I was going to cut in the wrong spot too! Beautiful yarn though! :) What are you making?

    So glad to see your pet pics. <3 Show him who's boss, Henry!!!

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  5. I saw a meme on Facebook that said, “Why is today January 74th?” Perfect for this January in my world, and others too I guess.

    That yarn thing would give me anxiety - not to mention I’m sitting here wondering if I have glasses strong enough to actually see what needed to be done.

    Paco and Henry are truly brothers!

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  6. I have my comments moderated on older blog post too and still get a ton of spam!

    I did realize cutting skeins of yarn was so methodical. Hey, I noticed in the one yarn picture that the little bit of scrap yarn to the right looks like it is in the shape of a frog...lol. Just silly things I notice.
    The furkids are cute as always!

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    1. You have a creative eye with what you saw in yarn scraps! :)

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Comments are now moderated to prevent spammers from leaving, well, spam - but rest assured that as soon as I read a real comment, I will publish it. So please, comment away, even though the blog is officially closed. Thanks!