i'm clearly being taunted

I know that life does not run smoothly. I accept that there are meant to be speed bumps...you know, just to keep things interesting.

But sometimes it feels like the universe is pointing and laughing and just generally being a stinking brat.

Such was this past week.

Aside from the whole work thing, there was Dooley's eye thing and then this thing:




That, my friends, is a foul flood in the basement that has preoccupied and tortured me to within an inch of my sanity since we discovered it on wednesday. What I thought was rust making the water turn that color was...not. It was algae. How nasty disgusting repulsive is that?

Many frantic calls to a restoration company and the people who installed a system many years ago to keep this from happening have now resulted in a dry basement.

And just to keep things interesting, we had a day of nasty thunderstorms just to test if the fix really stuck. I shudder to think what would have happened if we had not found it last week and we had had these rains and it had continued to fill the whole (very very large) basement with water. (I just made myself nauseous thinking of that scenario...)

So now I am obsessively reorganizing the basement. Because you know, I had too much free time on my hands so this should help to fill that void.

Plus now I can turn my full attention to obsessing about Dooley's eye. His next check-up is tuesday and although multiple people have assured me he'll be just fine, I'm practically crawling the walls with worry. (We won't mention the stomach bug from hell that hit me mid week or the curious amount of bees that keep getting into the house that I have slaughtered with rolled up knitting magazines or the way the screen separated from the frame so that I can't open the window in the living room without letting in every flying critter milling around or the big jar of paint I spilled in my studio that does not match my rug or the incredibly painful injury I decided I needed that resulted in pulling part of my nail away from my finger. Those were just minor distractions for fun.)

It should come as no surprise that I've started pulling out the yarn and needles again. I bought a big hunk of yarn to make this:


This is the garter stitch bed cover (fancy way of saying a plain blanket) from the latest Debbie Bliss knitting magazine. Although it looks crisp and clean and charming when they photograph white objects against all white objects, I couldn't bring myself to make a white one. Mostly because I figure it will take me the rest of my life to finish it and white would get dingy by then. Its a summer blanket (I chose a cotton/acrylic blend so that I didn't have to have the pleasure of washing the thing by hand. It finishes to 52" x 71") but you know, I figure it gives me something to look forward to in 2010.

But it is a lovely mindless thing and I'm appreciating it for that. After I finally worked out that I need a 60" long cable to make it. (Note that I could list the dimensions for it in a blog post but couldn't be bothered to pay attention to those numbers when selecting a needle.) First I tried a 24" cable (go ahead and laugh, I deserve it), then I tried a 40" one (which was better but was clearly going to be difficult once I get a decent amount of length on the thing) and then finally cried uncle and decided if a 60" cable didn't work I was taking up macrame to use up the yarn. But it worked so we are good.

Yarnhog is also working on something that I am coveting in a big way. Go check out her latest post to get a gander at how Noro yarn works up in a granny square. Oh baby. I drooled so much in fact that I hit up the closeout Noro on Webs so I could be a total copy cat and make one too.

All of the crochet afghans I've done so far have been out of acrylic. And I like them all very much but the effect of the Noro was just far too much for me to resist in my current weakened state. (I tend to buy yarn when I'm really strung out.)

So I'm done whining now. I have decided tomorrow will be boring and uneventful and I may even watch some Battlestar Galactica. (Please note that while I have been keeping up my end of the challenge, Tom has not found the time yet to start reading Twilight. I have my doubts as to why he has not started. Lack of time versus I'd-rather-walk-on-red-hot-coals...which one do you think is a more accurate reason for why he hasn't started yet? Yeah, that's what I thought too...)