I've tried and tried but I just can't get the house to do it's own housework.

My lack of blogging is not due to an excessive amount of housecleaning. Quite the contrary. The house has been relatively ignored for over a month. Oh sure, I've kept the dishes clean, the laundry done (if not all folded and put away), swept the kitchen floor, made a quick swipe of the toilet bowl with a brush ... just enough to get by but not pass any Happy Housekeeper inspection. My time has been spent wrapped knee deep in bookkeeping for the store, computer work, and other stuff. (Yeah, okay, all right - knitting - I confess!) The housework slid waaaaay down on the list of priorities.

I can only take dust and clutter and an un-vacuumed carpet for just so long before a combination of guilt and previously habitual neat-freak tendencies crawl up my spine and have me wigging out in a not so pleasant way. One more day of looking into a toothpaste bespecked bathroom mirror would simply send me, walling and shrieking like a banshee, over the edge. So, today, I cleaned. All day. Cleaned. And cleaned some more. Not pleasant, but it made the house cleaner and made me feel better. I really do hate an untidy house.

I decided to temporarily ignore the three dozen other things on my To Do list. I'm not a very good multi-tasker. Granted, I didn't get every cobweb out of every corner and scrub the tile grout with a toothbrush. No, I didn't get that deep into my Domestic Goddess duties. Even a Goddess has to draw the line somewhere when she's faced with the mountainous tasks of housekeeping left undone for far too long. There's always another day, sometime in the future, to wash windows and dust the pictures on the walls. Besides me, the husband and the cat, not many people see the inside of my house and one or two dust bunnies under the bed won't bring down 200 years of karmic bad debt. At least, I don't think so.

The frenzy of house cleaning did play havock with the sanity of my cat though. Reasoning out why I would polish the glass on his coffee table or vacuuming up his fur off the carpet was beyond him. Tuck, like most cats, isn't a fan of the vacuum cleaner. Poor fella' spent most of the day, wild eyed, behind the sofa. Can't say I blame him. I would have much preferred hiding back there, too, instead of polishing the coffee table. But now it's time to take a break and get back to the serious things in life ... like knitting.

Oh yes, knitting. I'm wallowing in knitting. I am making another sweater. Lovely heathered-brown cardigan. Caron Eco-Simply Soft yarn in the color Twig. Knitting Pure & Simple Pattern 994 Neck-down V-neck Caridgan. This is the "big" project. Suffice it to say it will take me awhile to finish. Will be worth it.


The other things are small, relatively quick to finish (I am a slow knitter) so that I get a little completion gratification in the face of knitting a sweater. The exception is a scarf I'm working on with the same yarn as the sweater, only it's a 2x rib with three color changes; Twig, Charcoal, Black. No photos of it just yet. The other things I've finished are ...

Lovely bubble-colored fluffy scarf of Lion Brand Homespun boucle' and matching eyelash yarn. Extra long fringe just because I could! This is so pretty and warm, too. How can you beat that?


Scarf and hat with Lion Homespun boucle' and novelty eyelash yarn. This Homespun is a pretty colorway of soft dark beige to various shade of browns. Has a few twists of a spicey rush color as well. The eyelash is a chocolate color with a threading of sparkle to it. Nice long fringe on the scarf.


Scarf with Red Heart baby yarn and eyelash yarn. Had this stuff for a couple of years now and couldn't decide what to do with it. I like pink, so a pink scarf worked for me. Didn't get too wild with the fringe.


Chenille and novelty ribbon yarn. The soft but bright and happy butter yellow worked well with the rainbow colored ribbon. I decided I didn't want it as a traditional square-ended scarf so I decreased the ends into points and tied on a little fringe for fun.


Boucle' scarf with color 'tufts' woven in the yarn. I bought a single skein of this a couple of years ago because I thought it looked fun and quirky. I made it a simple scarf to play up the interest of the yarn.


Tarot Bag(s) with Lion Brand colorway acrylic yarn. I found this pattern via Ravelry from NicolaKnits. After I sent her questions on how she knit it Nicola was kind enough to post the instructions on her blog. They have an interesting star shaped decreasing on the bottom. Made one to size, then made another slightly fuller but shorter just to see if I could. I was thinking about making some of these up - with some alterations to the pattern - to sell in the store. They would make good Tarot bags, medicine bags, crystal bags or whatever. If I can get faster on the knitting part it might indeed be something I do. They are worked on DPNs and I'm as slow as a sloth with DPNs.


There is another Tarot bag in the works but it's a different shape altogether. Again, no photos of it at the moment. It's more of the Lion Brand colorway acrylic in different colors than the ones above. I'm thinking I may do a cotton lining for it. Haven't decided.

So that's what going on here. Store and business stuff. Domestic Goddess stuff. And knitting stuff. The studio and painting are at a complete standstill save the ideas in my head. Hopefully it won't be long before things happen in that area as well. While I certainly enjoy the knitting I do miss having a brush in my hand.

Namaste, y'all ...