The Caffeine Dumps, Flying Yarn and Hot Fridges

And here are the fruits of my labor in various stages of skeining. Sometimes the yarn is so pretty, it just breaks my heart to send it away. A rocking chair full of yarn is one of those simple pleasures of life......

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This week has been a flurry of activity. Last week was too, but it wasn't good activity. It's the kind of activity where you feel like you're running 90 miles an hour just to spin your wheels while someone beats you over the head with a two by four. Let's just say that I never want to repeat last week ever again. It wasn't wholesale tragedy or anything like that. Just entirely unpleasant and inconvenient and lots of stressors coming one right after another. The last hurrah of the previous week was the refrigerator deciding it didn't want to work. It had been a little warm on the door, but then cooled back down one day last week so I just assumed one of the girlies held the door open too long. Sunday morning we woke up to find any open dairy item soured. So we loaded all our food into our big camping cooler and stuck it on our deck in the snow and frigid air. Despite the inconvenience of having to make multiple trips out to the deck for any refrigerated item we were doing pretty well. Called a couple of repair places and discovered no one could get here until Wednesday. Grrr, but at least the food is OK in the cooler. Forecast is for cold temps, so we should be OK. The very good repair man comes Wednesday and identifies what we need but has to order it. So more deck food until midday on Friday (yesterday! No fridge for 5 days with 3 kids under the age of 3....starting to get on my nerves.) So the part is in, the freezer is good and frozen and the repair guy says "Load her up! You're in business!" The fridge seemed much cooler so we did. We had company for dinner and proceeded to put all our beautiful bourbon marinated flank steak with garlic mash and decadent chocolate cake into the fridge before spending the evening talking and having fun. This morning we wake up to a fridge that is 60 degrees. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Crap! Stupid fridge!



Ahem, apparently Mr. N is one of the handiest men around because he looked it up on the internet, pulled apart some apparatus in the fridge and found the problem. The space that conducts the cold air down from the fridge and the "warm air returns" were completely blocked with ice. That meant no cold air could get into the fridge and the warm air stayed in the fridge instead of moving up into the freezer to be returned as cold air. So he dried those out with a hair blower and sucked all the air intakes out with our vacuum...it made a huge mess in the kitchen which the girlies thought was the funnest thing ever. And wah lah! We're back in business....at least I supposed until the thing blows up tomorrow morning.

At least the upshot of all of this is I have an extremely clean fridge. If you want to lick your food right off the fridge shelf, just stop on by!

Besides the frenetic emptying and reloading of the fridge, I've also been on a dyeing tear. Some more yarn came in for an order and I've been busy getting it all ready to go out the door. It's always nice to dye and have the fun of reskeining it all. It's so pretty just slipping through my fingers on it's way to the swift. Each skein has it's own nuances and it's neat to see the differences develop. Yarn Love has been selling like hotcakes, and I've been putting together many packages for shipping. Mr. N drives right by the mailbox every day on his way to work, so I handed him a stack of four and asked if he would drop them off. It's been 0 degrees actual temp with a foot of snow on the ground for the past few weeks, and I just didn't feel like walking down the drive to the mail box only to return as a snowman. A few minutes later, I see these four, beautifully wrapped packages of $200 worth of yarn sitting on his trunk as he backs down the driveway!!! So, I did what any self respecting yarn dyer would do. I threw open the door, ran out into the snow in my slippers while waving my arms frantically and all the time picturing the packages, my beautiful babies, hitting the dirty, sandy, salty snow of the street. He nonchalantly rolls the window down, assures me he knows they're there and proceeds to go merrily on his way.

They all made it safely into the mailbox. I was still cold. And mostly baffled at why he would do that.

And my favorite part of having a distracted week: the Caffeine Dumps. Let me start off by saying that when I am pregnant I don't have caffeine. When I am nursing I don't have caffeine. Caffeine in pregnancy causes the baby's brain to work differently and there's preliminary evidence showing that it causes a host of problems such as ADD, etc. When I'm nursing my body is hyper sensitive to it, and a cup of 1/2 caff, 1/2 decaf coffee will have me laying in bed awake 15 hours after I drank it. So I prefer to stay away. However, now that my nursing relationship with X is minimal (he nurses once or twice in the night) and can have some. But I'm still working my way up and rarely ever get above 1/4 caff, 3/4 decaf blend. Unless I'm so distracted by my funky fridge and copious quantities of dyeing that i don't count the scoops of coffee right.

Oh, the thrill of the caffeine high! I am getting so much done! I feel so great! My kids have never been such angels. Never mind that you can't see the floor in the family room due to the layer of toys. I'll have them picked up in a jiffy. Right after I finish these last 10 pounds of yarn.

Two hours later I can't understand why every little thing is jangling my nerves and I'm the hugest grump you've ever seen. It's so bad, I'm wondering what I can do to get away from myself. Oh, and I hate that 10 pounds of soaking wet yarn waiting for me to dye it. Die yarn, die!

So that in a nutshell is the last few days of my life. My best tip of the Valentine's Day week? If you stand outside in subzero temps for 10- 15 minutes while filling your car with gas on your way home from a bikini wax, you'll notice almost no redness and swelling! It's like instant gratification! So remember that beauty tip from me, your friendly yarn dyer, next time it's off the the aesthetician.


Here is my knitting project of the week. I think I actually started it in the midst of last week, the Week From Hell, because I realized that the gorgeous Tiger Eye lace socks would never get done in time to qualify for this month's Socktopia challenge. I have over achiever tendencies. Sometimes I'm pretty good at suppressing them, but this is not one of those times. Rather than get most of the way through the lacey ones, I just put them down and grabbed some Emu Superwash that had been sitting in my destash box forever. Got to love that. The pattern is one that I made up. It's just like the Beverly Socks, only a heavier gauge and not quite as symmetrical. I didn't actually use a calculator at any point during the knitting of these socks, I just cast on at the toes (which are really much wider than normal) and started knitting. But they're turning out OK after all, and I know I'll wear them. They will be pair number THREE of Katie's hand knit socks when they're done. I'm nearly out of yarn, so it will be soon. I've promised myself that I'll get back to the Tiger Eye lace as soon as these are off the needles. I've already committed to sending that along to Socktopia members as a free pattern. I've never really done lace before...what was I thinking? Eeek!

Some of you have been asking about the Spring Collection on Yarn Love. It's up and you can take home anything you want. I promise to send it right out. I won't keep it even though I love it. Every skein of yarn you buy helps get me to my exhibitor's booth at the upcoming Knitter's Connection in Columbus, OH. So if you want to see me there, buy a skein!