Yarnmoire

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I can't seem to focus on anything very well these days. I'm still experiencing pain and numbness in my hands, wrists, and arm which is most likely due to the computer and knitting. I've been trying to take a break from both. If only I could do these two things without using my hands! My knitting and computer time is more limited than before since Miss M is shaking off her afternoon nap. I don't really get any down time for myself. She doesn't let me do either activities when she's around because my attention is not on her and she doesn't like that.

Oh, that photo above is just something I've been pushing around my needles, however I've put it on hold because of all the pain I'm experiencing. It's just a little cable scarf knit in Elann Highland Wool in Orchid Pink.

I've spent more time trying to learn Mandarin, and reading some mystery novels. I can't proceed forward in Mandarin until I get the next set of CDs in the series. I was looking back at the books I've been reading lately and the most common authors to pop up are Laurie R. King, Martha Grimes, and Val McDermid. I'm new to all these mystery authors. I started out by reading a lot of Elizabeth George. Then I branched out to Laurie R. King, Minette Walters, Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid, and Martha Grimes. I like all these authors and am trying not to work through any one author's books too quickly because the last thing I want is to have read ALL of their books. I've done that before and hate the feeling of having to find something else to read because I've exhausted their books. I've just discovered Donna Leon and have started Doctored Evidence. Her novels take place in Italy and that is a nice change of scenery.

It's totally lame. I just discovered that I made a typo when I signed up for my Meez acct. I signed up as "smairek" instead of "smariek". Oopsie.

I've been watching lots of cooking shows lately. I've been watching Jamie Oliver's new show, Jamie at Home. I really wish he wouldn't wear knit hats as I find them very distracting. I end up staring at the hat and tuning out what he says about cooking. I start thinking about how I could knit something like that, working out all the details in my head while he's going on about mushrooms and such. Of course I won't actually follow through with knitting similar hats cuz I have absolutely no desire to do anything involving more than one color of yarn right now. I just don't want to juggle balls of yarn. Besides, I have a needle shortage. It's a side effect of having too many needles stuck on WIPs. This is one reason why I haven't knit a hat in a while.

I was at Safeway earlier in the week and noticed something sneaky going on in the ice cream aisle. Do you guys remember when ice cream came in 1/2 gallons? Some years back, Breyers and Dreyers started packaging them in 1.75 quart containers. This week I noticed that the Breyers were packaged in 1.5 quart containers. I think what bugs me most about this is that it feels (to me) more disingenuous to reduce the packaging size to 1.5 qt in order to maintain the current $6.49 pricing, rather than maintain the current 1.75 qt size while raising the price to $7.57. Ah well, at least they haven't yet discontinued one of my favorite flavors, Cherry Vanilla. Dreyers discontinued that and replaced it with Cherry Chocolate Chip which I did not like at all.

During one of Miss M's tricycle rides around the block, we almost ran over this little guy crossing the sidewalk. I was so happy to be able to show her a real live snail that was actually out and about doing its thing. I tried to take close up photos of him, but I had a hard time getting my stupid camera to auto focus. It refused to focus in "auto" mode or "macro" mode. Very frustrating. This was the best shot I could manage. I'm not very good at taking photos.

Then we went around the snail and continued around the block until we ran into a stray feather in the sidewalk. I know, not very exciting to look at.

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I know I mentioned posting some photos of my Yarnmoire a while back. I finally stumbled upon the photos I took of it. Some were from September shortly after we moved into the new house, others were from December. Things got shuffled around several times since Sept so the yarnmoire doesn't quite look the same today as in the photos. I got the idea of calling this a "yarnmoire" from Grace. My mom gave me this one when we moved to the new house. It was so nice to have a piece of furniture that we hadn't used in the old house. This meant that DH was not used to having it to put his stuff in it, which meant he wouldn't notice what I would use it for. :-)

This is what it looks like when you open the doors. I wish the bottom half had the same cubby holes as the top half. I feel like I can stuff more with the cubby hole configuration. The drawers are very limiting cuz you can't over stuff them. Plus it is harder to see what I have in the drawers. You only see the top layer of yarn when you open up the drawers, and you really have to dig down to see what's hiding underneath. That top section contains DK weight yarn: Elann Luxury Merino Superwash (my favorite superwash yarn!), Elann Highland Silk (discontinued, boo hoo), Online Linie Marly, Debble Bliss Merino, Filatura di Crosa 501 and Zara, Cleckheaton Country 8 Ply.

Here are some photos of the drawers:


Ah... there's some yarn in here from ArtFibers in San Francisco. Barbara and Lisa dragged me over there, it's all their fault. ;-) I think that's Elann Super Tweed in green, Elann Pure Alpaca Fina, and Reynolds Blizzard.

I think this is mostly Elann Baby Silk, Berroco Softwist, and I have no idea what is underneath the Softwist.

I think this is all Austermann Peru and Elann Baby Cashmere.

This is mostly Elann Highland Wool, and it looks like the Berroco Softwist got moved from one of the upper drawers to this lower one.



These 4 bins contain the overflow that couldn't fit into the yarnmoire. Right now I have 7 of these bins sitting in our bedroom, and about the same volume of yarn inside my closet. Sorry you can't see the yarn inside, I line the transparent sides with manilla file folders to minimize sun exposure on the yarn. I don't know if a little bit of sun hurts the yarn (fading?), but I don't want to take any chances. And I do get quite a bit more sun in my new city compared to the old city.


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