Ask Poops....Please!

It’s my Blogaversary and I’m having a party!

Well, less of a party and more of a contest, really.

Wanna play? It’s easy!

All you have to do to enter the contest is Ask Poops, Please! Go ahead, ask me anything. Is there something you’ve been dying to ask me? Some mystery of the universe you’d like discussed? Perhaps you just want to test my powers of Google-Fu.

Fire away!

To enter, respond to this post with a comment. Your first sentence should read “Can I ask you something?” and then follow it with your question. Then give me your email addy so that if you’re the big winner, or any one of the little winners, I can contact you for more information. (Of course I would never dream of posting that info here, nor will I sell it or use it for any personal gain, I promise!)

All entries must be received by April 7th. That’s a week from this Saturday, and the day before Easter for anyone keeping track. I will pick the winners Sunday night and there will be much celebrating and rejoicing on Monday, the first day of my new Blog Year.

All the questions will be saved until needed, and I’ll pull them out one at a time and answer them personally in a witty and entertaining post.

So, how do you win? Well, I’ve thought long and hard about this, and there are two grand prizes to be won. One goes to my favorite question and is chosen by me and me alone. The second grand prize is selected from the remaining entrants quite at random by one of my lovely assistants. (I’m going under the assumption that most of my readers are knitters, and have lovely knitting related prizes. If you’re a reader and not a knitter, just mention that when you submit your question and I’ll see what I can do to accommodate your special needs.)

And there will be a little prize for everyone just for playing along! How’s that for fun?

So go on! What are you waiting for? Ask Poops….Please!

Oh, yeah, I am saving all the questions until after the contest ends. But y'all are just cracking me up and giving me many fun things to write about! Keep those cards and letters coming!

Poops Has Got a Brand New Bag!

It might be gray and muddy out there today, but my new bag just SCREAMS Spring!

Thanks to elizabeth and Zonda for the yarn donations! The darker green is Lamb's Pride worsted from Zonda, the lighter green is vintage "Arnold Palmer 1974", the darker pink is some vintage Lamb's Pride, and the light pink is vintage again.

The pattern is called "Baby's Got a Brand New Big Bag" and it is easy and fast.

Yay for Spring!

The Kindness of Strangers

There are those people out there that think friendships can’t be forged in cyberspace. It’s too easy, they say, to hide who you really are online and become whatever you want others to think you are.

They argue that the Web is full of con artists and scammers ready to get what they can from you, so keep your guard up and don’t let anyone you meet online get to close. At the end of the day, remember that you’re talking to strangers.

Well, those people never met My Knitters.

The Knittyboard is a place for knitters to get together from all over the world and have a chat, get some advice, or vent their spleen when needed. It’s a community, and everyone is welcome as long as you can abide by the first rule—the Knitty Prime Directive as it were—and Play Nice.

I have met some of the nicest people in the world there, and they are my friends. More than that, they are My Knitters. I’ve always loved just checking in every day with them, reading their blogs and seeing what projects they’re working on. And from time to time, the Spirit has moved me to send someone here and there a little something.

Knowing the generous spirit of Knittyheads, there’s a special forum on the board called cryptically “SP and RAK”. SP is Secret Pal, which is kind of like a Secret Santa but without the Christmassy part, and RAK just means Random Acts of Kindness.

You sign up for SP rounds and someone gives you gifts while you shower someone else with presents. I just signed up for a short Spring Fling Secret Pal round and I’m excited because it’s my first time.

But the thing about SP is that you know you’re going to get gifted in addition to giving. But RAK is another animal entirely. You can post at will to the thread and list some stuff that you’d like, knitting or otherwise. And others read the posts and maybe they pick you as a recipient of an RAK, and maybe they don’t.

I told you that story to tell you this one.

Yesterday, I’m sitting at my ‘puter, and I look out the window and see a cloud float over the neighbor’s house. It was shaped like a perfect “Z”. I’ve seen bunnies, scoops of ice cream, even the occasional fire-breathing dragon, but never a letter of the alphabet. “Curious,” thought I and continued surfing.

That afternoon, I popped out to the mailbox and there’s a completely unexpected package in there. It’s a RAK! I rip into it like a madwoman and there’s a card with a “Z” on it. *insert spooky music here*. It’s a care package from Zonda! She sent me two bags of Russell Stovers Low Carb chocolates, a package of flavored coffee, four handmade stitch markers in various sizes (nice touch!) and two skeins of my beloved worsted wool—fuschia Peace Fleece and green Lamb’s Pride!

I was totally verklempt, so I documented it for posterity, and this morning settled down to compose a proper thank you for the goodies. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. It’s the mailman with two GIANT boxes.

They’re from Elizabeth! Now, I knew she had a bed rail for me because we discussed it on the boards and she said she had an RAK for me and she’d send it as well. She asked me for specifics ahead of time on what I wanted for yarn, but I had no idea the lengths to which she would go!

There’s a tote bag for my knitting to ride around in, and many, many skeins of vintage worsted in shades of pink and a green that she describes as “Arnold Palmer circa 1974 Green”. I have no plans to overdye the vibrant colors as she suggested I might do. I have every intention of making myself a kicky felted totebag out of it!

Or a granny square mini-dress. I can’t quite decide.

So to anyone who says that you can’t make “real” friends on the Web, I say you are so wrong. My Knitters are the best; they’re kind, warm, intelligent, witty, and all around lovely people. I’m lucky to have you!


And in other news, I finished those legwarmers. They are ready to mail. Yay! And phew!

An End to the Photo Drought!

Here's Bobo in her latest Made by Mama creation. Please note the continuation of our Earl Hickey issues with the flash. She flinches before the flash goes off! She says cheese and scrunches up her eyes.

Kid's weird.

But cute, you gotta admit it.

Anyway, the sweater is knit from four balls, more or less of Knitpicks Merino Style in Crocus, Tide Pool, Rhubarb, and Asparagus. Yeah, it's garish, but she's three. And the colors make me happy and springy inside, so it's all good.

I used almost all the tide pool and almost all the rhubarb, and I actually had to go into stash for a few more yards of crocus and asparagus to finish. Thank God for the stash!

AAAAAAAANYway, I am supposed to be knitting furiously on a pair of legwarmers and I've truly lost my will to work on them. Only they're for a customer and they have been promised. I'd like them out of my house very much so I'm forcing myself to knit. I'm really in the home stretch, but they're so boooooring!

The yarn I'm using is by Fearless Fibers and it is truly lovely to work with, which is a saving grace to be sure!

But my Knitpicks order came in yesterday with the yarn to work on the two cotton sweaters I started, and I hear their sirens song from the basket calling....calling.....calling to me......

It's Unlike Me, Really

Unlike me to have so many unfinished projects going at the same time! I never added any of those progress bars because I finish things so quickly. I make small stuff usually, so there's no point.

But I have a cotton baby sweater that's waiting for my Knitpicks order to come later today so I can finish it. I needed just a bit of aquamarine to finish the sleeves. I even got the buttons on already!

Then there's a second cotton sweater that will use up the bits leftover from the first two sweaters as soon as said Knitpicks order comes in with more tan yarn for the base color.

Then there's the merino sweater for Bobo that needs a sleeve and a collar of some sort. I got a lot of work done on that yesterday.

And there's the legwarmers for a customer. I'm four inches into the second one and plan to get most of it knit today, if not all.

Whew.

We're on a two-hour delay today because of last night's freezing rain. It's going to warm up later; the sun is trying desperately to come out, and I think it's going to succeed before too much longer. So I can sit and enjoy my coffee before dragging ass down to the bus stop.

In other knitting news, I have signed up to play swapping gifty games with some of my fellow Knittyheads. First, I signed up on the Random Act of Kindness (or RAK) thread. You just post a list of things you don't have that you'd like and if someone is feeling generous they might see that list and send you something that they have just out of the blue.

In the spirit of the thing, as soon as I posted my "I Wants" I picked two recipients for my own giving pleasure. Both packages are going to the UK, so before I send them out I want to make sure I've included everything I wanted to go in there.

And that same week, another knitter picked me and is sending some odds and ends from her worsted wool stash, and a bed rail to keep Bobo in her big bed, once we set it up that is.

I also signed up for the Spring Fling Secret Pal or (SP) round. With SP you sign up and fill out a questionnaire about yourself. Then you're assigned a SP, while you yourself are assigned to another SP. You shower them with love and goodies during the SP period, and your SP does the same to you. Everyone plays, everyone wins!

Hooray for my knitters and their kindness! If I didn't have them out there to talk to everyday I'd go crazy for sure. How much of being stuck in the house with no car and a toddler can one person take?

In other news, we're singing very hard getting ready for Holy Week. This Sunday is the fifth of Lent, then next week is Palm Sunday, and then the marathon of churchiness starts on Thursday. Holy Thursday features the presentation of holy oil at the beginning of the mass and the washing of the feet in the middle. And that's the day we transfer the Eucharist out of the church and into the downstairs chapel for adoration. And to get it out of there on Good Friday.

Then Good Friday, our second biggest music mass of the week. During the veneration of the cross we sing five pieces in a row. It's taxing.

Of course the Easter Vigil is the biggest and bestest of all the masses. It starts at 8 and usually gets over just before midnight or so. We sing, and sing, and sing some more. This year I'm cantoring one of the seven psalms, and I have a section of the Litany of Saints. I made it a point not to raise my hands for any solos for anything else. I have enough to worry about with learning pieces I'm familiar with, nevermind taking on anything new.

Then after Easter, we have Confirmation on Tuesday of Easter week. Like we won't be tired enough from Holy Week, we're hosting thirty-something of the area's fifteen year olds as they're confirmed by the bishop. In our church. It'll be a song heavy mass too, three in a row during the actual confirmations, though the verses of the songs are mostly solos. I like when other people have solos. Less for me to learn!

I think I'll go rummage around now and see what else I have for my British RAK buddies. A CD just caught my eye...

The Soundtrack of My Life

This is stolen shamelessly from jupiterjessica's blog, along with something else to be announced later. Two things in one day: I'll be lucky if she doesn't start proceedings against me!

I thought this was fun!

*Soundtrack of my Life*

Directions: If your life was a movie, what would the soundtrack be?

1. Open your mp3 library
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press Play.
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the Next button.
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool.
7. Don’t skip songs.

My Movie:
1. Opening credits: Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin' by Journey
2. Waking up: I Think It's Gonna Rain Today by Bette Midler from the Beaches Soundtrack
3. First day of school: Miss Celie's Blues by Suede
4. Fight song: Don't You Love Me Anymore by Joe Cocker
5. Breaking up: Hey Ya! by Outkast
6. Happiness: Shelter Me by Joe Cocker
7. Life’s okay: Night Calls by Joe Cocker
8. Mental breakdown: I Can Hear the River by Joe Cocker (my shuffle sucks, I think)
9. Driving: Dim All the Lights by Donna Summer
10. Flashback: With a Little Help From My Friends by Joe Cocker
11. Getting back together: This Is All I Ask by John Gary
12. Wedding song: Buying Her Roses by Reba McEntire
13. Birth of first child: Dead Skunk by Loudon Wainwright III
14. Final battle scene: No Scrubs by TLC
15. Death scene: Now That the Magic Has Gone by Joe Cocker
16. Funeral song: Dani California by The Red Hot Chili Peppers
17. End credits: Zombie by The Cranberries

If you read this, you’re tagged (only if you want to be). Some of these cracked me up, though I think Joe Cocker was featured a bit heavily. It's not like I have a ton of JC on my iTunes, but he shows up heavily in rotation. Go figure.

My favorite one? My End Credits done to the tune of Zombie. That's just funny, I don't care who y'are...

I Hate Running Out of Yarn!

But it's what happens when you pay no heed to yardage amounts required for a project, and attempt to use up as many skeins as possible during said project.

Hence the khaki sleeves on the last baby sweater. They were supposed to be navy, but I ran out and rather than order more, I just used the khaki of which I had plenty. I call it a design feature.

So now I'm working on a cotton sweater and I'm not going to have enough aquamarine to finish it. But to sub another color would look weird and bad, so I just ordered another skein of the aqua, and some more cream for another project entirely.

This is made from Knitpicks Shine Sport in coral, aquamarine, and butter. There are four buttonholes at the very top in the first aquamarine and coral stripe. I'm planning on using yellow buttons there. It'll be long sleeved when I'm done...note the dps on the as yet unfinished sleeve!

I don't think there's anything more satisfying than a top-down raglan sleeve sweater. Easy to make, and once you've figured out the math behind it, so simple to just design your own. I have some basic notes and numbers for this kind of sweater, but no real "pattern" per se.

I would also like to point out one more thing with this sweater: I've got a grip on my "rowing out" problem! My gauge is very consistent now, and you can't see where I go from knitting back and forth to in the round. I'm pleased with my progress in this area!

Keep your eyes glued to my blog for upcoming events! Like you weren't going to anyway...

First, April 1st is the Annual Knittyboard "Flash Your Stash" event. You will see pictures of the yarny goodness I have acquired during my knitting career, brief as it has been thus far. I've been getting the skeins and balls in order for the big day, and we're primped and ready to go. Just waiting for those last stragglers to join the clan!

Second, April 7th is my official One Year Blogaversary! I feel I must celebrate with a contest and some prizes, so stay tuned for more information in the next couple of weeks.

And we're expecting as much as 10 inches of snow late Friday night. Would someone just shoot me, please?

Kind of Anti-Climactic

That's a hard word to spell.

From the annals (is that right? I'm so used to subbing "anals" as a joke that the real spelling escapes me. Yeah, I could look it up. Perhaps later.) of Low Carb Living, I have to report that I have found the food item that might just save my life. And my diet.

Karb Krunchers Bagels.

Mmm, mmm, good. Not gritty, not soy-y (soyish? soyful? soyriffic?), just warm and kind of nutty tasting. Not a NYC bagel, but I didn't spit it out. And since I crave something bready in the morning, this was just the ticket. I'm soooooo tired of eggs and meat first thing in the morning. I just can't do it. I don't even eat breakfast until mid-morning because I cannot gag anything high protein down at 7:30.

Enter the bagel and a renewed commitment to reduced carb living. I'm done with the Atkins induction phase so I can cautiously add in a bit of carbs here and there, five grams at a time, as long as I keep losing weight. When I reach max carbs for weight loss, thats how many carbs I can have. So at 5.7 grams per bagel, these are just the ticket.

Of course I'm going to cheat wholeheartedly on Saturday. I bought tickets to the church spaghetti supper. Yes, spaghetti. With Phyllis Shoemaker's homemade rolls that you'd gladly sell an arm to eat. And probably a table groaning with desserts. I can't decide if I should be cautious, fill up on salad and pick at the pasta, or just say "Screw it!" and eat carbs until I either faint or require an insulin injection. I was saving that binge for Easter day, but people, it's spaghetti!

I will need all my willpower on Saturday. Send out those willpower vibes, please.

And good news on the laundry front: the dryer is fixed! Apparently, the inside of the dryer gets filled with excess lint that doesn't get trapped by your lint filter and eventually will cause your thermal fuse to blow. It cost me 16.22 for the fuse and 132.oo for the guy who knows how to replace it. The good news is that the nice man showed me how to take the front off the dryer and remove the bottom piece that holds the lint trap so that I can stick the vacuum in there from time to time and prevent it happening again. Seems he's not allowed to show me that for liability reasons, so I shall not give his name here. I suspect it's less about liability and more about being able to collect nearly 150 smackers from homeowners who can't figure out how to clean the dryer and prevent the thermal fuse from blowing.

All's well that ends well.

Today is starting well. It's already 40 degrees at 8:00 in the morning. Yesterday afternoon it was 70 degrees on my porch. C'mon Spring! We're ready for you! You've broken the back of winter! The snow is melting like a mofo and my driveway is a mudbog. It does the heart good.

In knitting news, since this is a knitting blog after all, I'm working on a small cotton baby sweater for the shop. It's done with Knitpicks Shine Sport and as much as I hate knitting cotton (hard on the hands, dontcha know), this is really nice to work with. It's nice and smooth and shiny and the sweater is so cute. I'm kind of glad I didn't make this any bigger because I'd be tempted to keep it for Bobo. Come to that, I may make her one anyway. Maybe in a pullover instead of a cardigan.

Pictures tomorrow. I should be able to finish this puppy today. Because I'm all about the instant gratification.

A Woeful Lack of Knitting Content

Though there is a neat new thingy on my sidebar! A gallery of tidbits from my shop! First cool thing etsy's done in a long time!

Aaaaaanyway, there has been much turmoil Chez Poops lately.

First, I broke our Giant Mamajama TV. I broke off the thing that the cable screws into, so while the DVD's play fine, the shows don't come in. So we're watching TV on our old tiny set.

Then, the clothes dryer decided to stop lighting. It's a gas dryer with an automatic pilot which has ceased to light automatically. So the nice folks from Sears are coming to take a peek at it. I bet you dollars to donuts that he tells me it'll be cheaper to buy a new one. That's what he told me 8 years ago when we bought this one. You mark my words. I probably should just start dryer shopping now, huh?

By the way, this is my hundredth post! Whee!

I'm not doing much in the way of knitting these days. I've done a modicum of spinning and I'm getting good with my spindle if I do say so myself. I produced a well-balanced skein this time out, only I forgot and set the twist before I could stop myself. I forgot that I wanted to ply it. No worries. I'm spinning thinner now and have tons of roving left, so I'm sure I'll get enough plyed yarn out of it to do something with.

Here it is, by the way...

Looks even better all washed up and wrapped into a neat center pull ball. I can't wait to knit with it! It has a lot more bounce than my previous attempts at singles.

I do have some contract knitting to be working on. I've been making a hat and legwarmers set for an etsy customer. I finished the hat and listed it, and told her twice that it was ready to be shipped, but she's added to her cart and not paid for it yet. I'm not knitting another stitch on the legwarmers until she pays for the hat. Not that it matters. If she doesn't buy them, I'll just list them on the site and someone else will. No big whoop.

Oh, and I managed to piss off the editrix of the town newsletter, The Belmont Better Times. Which is about the dumbest name for a town paper I've ever heard, but that neither here nor there.

She is a SavetheEarth AlGoreWorshipping Treehugger of the first order. Not that saving the planet is a bad agenda, but she's filling the newsletter about organic farming and recycling and raising your own free range chickens...blah blah blah. This month she put in an editorial saying that she thought the citizens had too many lights on at night. And she said she couldn't fathom why anyone would leave an outside light on at night. We have a low crime rate, says she, and no one needs a security light.

I wrote to her and told her I thought she was wrong. It seems like there are lot of lights on driving through town at night because it gets dark early. You go by at dinnertime and yes, there are lights on. As for lights being on all night, our crime rate is probably low because there are lights on! Well, she took great umbrage at my point of view and accused me of calling her a liar, and said that she didn't have to take abuse even if she was a volunteer editor. Blah blah blah. My favorite part is when she used her "ten years of living in town" as a basis for her opinion. I shot back that I thought my 37 years of living in town in the same house possibly overrode her experience by about 27 years.

In a nutshell, and not using these exact words, I told her to grow a set and get over it.

She also asked for people to come forth who are interested in starting a Community Supported Agriculture Program, or CSA. She said consumers give money to the farmer to pay for his supplies and pay his salary and come harvest time they get produce in exchange, or not if it's a bad season. I asked, "Which farmers benefit?" Who's eligible? Who oversees the farmer to make sure he's not taking the money to Foxwoods? How much money is involved per person?

She couldn't answer any of my questions, and wanted to know what I was "insinuating". I said I wasn't insinuating anything, I just needed more information so I could be an informed consumer.

I have surmised that she is a crackpot. I shall take great delight in tormenting her for the rest of her tenure. She has it coming.

Why Poops, Please?

Before I answer that, I have to show you what I made yesterday. Well, I finished it yesterday. I started it on Tuesday. It almost makes me want another baby. Almost!

I do apologize for the darkness of the pictures. I have to take my stuff outside to get any kind of decent light, and even then I have to use the flash as well if you want to see the colors. If I do open an online shop, I'm really going to need a better camera for the taking of merchandise pictures. What online shop? Sorry, I get ahead of myself.

This wee sweater is a basic raglan, top down, seamless baby sweater in the newborn size. The yarn is Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool in navy, khaki, and cream. Don't you get sick of baby blue on little boys? I would put this on a boy or a girl! I added some pewter buttons with Irish knots on them. The sleeves were supposed to be navy from the color pattern to the cuff, but I ran out, so I finished them with khaki. I still like it, though. I was making it up as I went along.

It's for the shop.

Speaking of shops, I'm getting kind of tired of etsy. I haven't exactly had a bad experience there, but stuff isn't moving and they don't really have any decent tools for improving sales at all. And I have a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth after being warned by the administrators that I violated the terms of use policy. I didn't know I did.

See, etsy has this tool where you can bookmark something for sale in a shop to go back and look at later. It's called "hearting" someone, as in I "heart" that baby sweater. I can go to my shop and see who hearts a particular item. I decided at the end of February that since Spring is just around the corner I'd run a mitten special. I have many of them on sale, and we're coming to the end of mitten season. So I decided to offer free shipping on any and all mittens in the store.

Then I looked at who hearted the mittens and wrote them a personal email (etsy has its own internal email system called "conversations"--emailing someone in house is called "convo-ing" them) telling them that the mittens they hearted have free shipping during March.

I was promptly reported and reprimanded. Apparently, one is not allowed to initiate a convo for the purpose of selling. Only potential customers can initiate a convo. To do it the other way around is considered spam, or unwanted junk email.

See, I thought that hearting someone was, in a way, initiating contact. The seller, by hearting me, is telling me that something in my shop was worth a second look. So I let them know that since the last time they looked, it got a special attached to it.

You say spam, I say salesmanship.

I'm at a point where I have a lot of stuff in my store. I have a blog. I have email. And they're in three different places. I thought it would be cool to have one site that was All Poops, All the Time. So I'm looking to see what the costs would be to have my own store with my own rules, a place to have my blog, and a business email as well. I'd love to be able to link to some of my Knittyhead friends who have online shops to give them some additional exposure as well.

So it's in the initial planning phases. It may come to naught if it's prohibitively expensive, but we shall have to see. Stay tuned.

Oh, and about the name, Ask Poops Please? Someone asked...I don't remember who. "Poops" is actually the nickname my family uses for me. All the time. Especially my sister and her husband. Her husband--Baboo--is under the impression (accurately too, I might add) that I know something about everything. So if she doesn't know the answer, he'll say "Ask Poops Please and chortles with glee when I know the answer.

But it's confusing because my craft show business is called Remember When, as in "Remember when everything was made by hand?"

I'm trying to figure out how to consolidate all this into one nice, neat package.

One last thing before the computer hangs and I lose it again: here's a pair of mittens I made but forgot to blog. Yarn from handpaintedyarn.com, pattern's all my own.

Vacation is Over! Yay!

Back to our regular lives again!

I only had to yell at Bug twice this morning to get her ready for school on time. I had anticipated at least three, so I was pleasantly surprised.

I finished Bug's Easter Bolero this weekend, but you'll have to wait until she models it at Easter with the whole ensemble, complete with pantyhose and heels. She's six. God help me. She'll probably want to shave her legs.

And now I'm working on a set for an etsy customer. I ordered the yarn from another etsy seller, Fearless Fibers and it is just so lovely to work with. It's really a shame I'm working in 2 x 2 rib the whole time. This yarn screams to see some real action. Ah well, maybe I'll have some leftover.

Oh, here's the hat all finished. I'm awaiting payment. *poops taps her foot*

The other part of the set is a pair of ribbed legwarmers 18" long. I'm 9" into the first one. It's slow going. I have a tremendous urge to make some mittens just to get the taste out of my mouth.

I think I've decided to make a Lopi sweater for Larry T. for Christmas next year. It will probably take me that long to get up the nerve to steek. I think I'm going to make some more sweaters for the girls first. Something dainty and cute for spring, and chilly summer nights.

Not much else is new around here. Bug's Girl Scout Cookies came in and we're in the process of delivering the cookies. I have 63 boxes in my kitchen. I feel like a heroin addict working in a smack factory...

I'm going to mass at 6 tonight. I like night mass during the week. No frills. Very lent-y. Or is it lent-ish? Take your pick.

On Ash Wednesday I went to church way early to get away from my children. I told Fr. Albert that church was my happy place. He said he felt bad for me....