Sunday, July 13, 2014

July WIPocalypse!

Putting together the current WIPs was a wonderful treat today after the fun of trying to shop this morning......let us go back to 8:00 am.........
My Sleeping Beauty at 8:06 am
Up at 7:30 am, I dress and get my things together, add a few things to the shopping list, putter around until 8:06 and then try and rouse my daughter Sleeping Beauty.  This is no easy feat since she is far from a morning person, but she did drag herself out of her sleeping cave and put enough clothes on to be socially acceptable and not make headlines on the "Wal Mart People" websites.

For some reason I felt it would be better to drive my no-brake-having Little Blue Car down to Michael's house to park since it was what I deemed to be "safer" and have the car on flat land rather than on one of the streets by my house which is up Mt. Juneau where the roads are steep, so that Little Blue Car could be more safely driven to the fix-it place later on (it seemed like a good idea at the time).  That is also when I decided to check the brake fluid and see if that may be the issue for there being no brakes.  Turns out there was a tiny little bit of brake fluid, so I added DOT3 Fluid to my list and we were off on our hair raising, driving in low gear, trip to Michael's house. (Again, I am not sure why I thought this was wise, but it happened)

Safely parked by Michael's house, I ask Michael if where I am parked is okay.  He explains that the neighbors will probably get mad but he doesn't mind because he thinks it so cute when they do.  And so our day's adventure continued with fun things like "Chop, Chop, Michael" and my daughter in the back seat pretending she was Miss Daisy and singing a song about hunting the booty in a Miss Daisy kind of voice. My people can be very entertaining if nothing else!

A stop at the coffee place, the auto parts store for DOT3 Fluid, and then Wal Mart since Costco wasn't open yet.  Basket full, we go to check out and if you aren't here in Juneau, please note that we shoppers do not experience any kind of customer service and are usually forced to use the self check out. (Now I'm confused...the prices have gone up and yet we are checking ourselves out so what exactly are we paying for?) There have been times when there wasn't even a person at self checkout for that inevitable computer issue and all the computers were locked up which created huge lines at the two "fast lane" checkouts....I digress, today was lovely as there was one person there who understood and while we did our own checkout, was on hand for the 27 times we locked up the computer due to something or another (usually it was when we took too long to put something in a bag, or that irritating bit about not being able to use our Eco bags).  I needed to go to Customer Service to send money out and oh how strange....no one there.  Onward we go.

Round one of shopping complete (except for the sending money part) we wander over to Costco where Michael had a bad experience that made him crabby and I'm still not sure what happened but he couldn't wait to get out of that place!  He nearly jogged his cart out the door!

Yes....this could very well be the turning point of our foraging, but it was a slow turn so we really didn't see it coming.

Off to Fred Meyers, gassed up the truck, shopped around a bit, had a panic attack about how much  money we have spent today even though I knew that's what today's goal was, it was still something that put me on edge.  Turns out, we were all hungry so off we trundle to the local McDonald's for a healthy lunch of grease, salt and sugar.  Hmmmm, is this where the turn sharpened?  Or is this the calm before the storm?

Next stop is Joann's.  Daughter and Michael chose to stay in the truck and slip into lunch induced comas while I ran in for what I thought would be a quick stop.  Michael parked halfway to Nome, so I had to splash through the rain for 50 miles before getting into the mall. How he knew I needed to walk off that lunch, I'll never know!  

Once inside I am hit with a barrage of OWLS.  If you don't know the story about the owls this won't make sense, but just know it was frightening to see an entire wall of owls on everything from napkins to hanging metal artwork.  It was ghastly! I sent a picture of this horror to Michael and continued on.

The local Joann's had been reset so I had no idea where things are anymore and take a quick spin around the store to get my bearings and find what I am after......ribbon.  Please note I haven't been in the store for more than five minutes at this time and have found what I seek, but there is a dirty hooker standing in front of the ribbon section that I need to be at and I'm not rude enough to tell her to move her undeciding ass out of the way. Truth be told, I hadn't thought of her as a dirty hooker at that moment.  But 30 minutes later that thought and more were rampaging through my mind as I wait and wait for her to get the hell out of the way. I kind of feel like a jerk now for thinking those thoughts, but at the time I had our lunch rearranging my mental state and internal organs.

Don't get me wrong, I did manage to tour the entire store three more times, but there is danger in doing that which is why I was becoming increasingly agitated with this woman (Hadn't I just freaked out at Fred Meyers about spending too much??  Hadn't I??).  How long does it take a person to decide if they want yellow ribbon with white dots or the plain satin kind??  Seriously HOW LONG!!??  If you cannot decide get both, dammit!

Finally the woman went on her way to annoy some other unsuspecting shopper, and in less than sixty seconds I had what I needed.  But now the line has been crossed.....the downward spiral has taken on speed and the lunch is clogging arteries and slowing metabolism and mental acuity......

After catching a boat back to the truck, and using our handy defibrillator on my daughter and Michael, we were off to the next stop which was the smoke shop to pick up tobacco and tubes and machine to send to my brother as per his request.  Expensive and easy, which created a false sense of security as moments such as that go...

To the post office!  It takes awhile to figure out which boxes will work best with the stuff for my brother and now  I have three boxes for my brother and four padded envelopes to send to my girlfriends and realize that I do not have ANY addresses.  I start scrolling through my notes on Facebook but my phone has this nasty habit of going back to the beginning and after 20 minutes of trying to find anything my mind snapped.  Time to go home so that the public will be safe.  The spiral has now taken me down to the bottom and the only thing that will make it better is a nap.....or 15 glasses of wine...but nap seems the safer choice.

First I must put brake fluid in my car.  Michael and Emily dropped me off at Little Blue Car and continued up to my house.  Fluid in, start the car, pump the brakes, drive around Michael's neighborhood a bit, slam on the brakes a few times and  I HAVE BRAKES  again!  Drive up the mountain and spend 20 minutes figuring out that there is absolutely NO parking to be had anywhere....except where I shouldn't, but dammit my brakes work great!  

This town is not that big and nothing like what we did today should take so long or be so aggravating, but it is.  I don't know why, but here in Juneau it is.

My coma lasted for SIX HOURS, but after regaining consciousness I was able to find a spot for my car that is more acceptable AND play with my WIPs and Second Stage WIPs.  Took long enough to get to this point, right?


Here we have Celtic Goddess, Vinnie Stretch, No Drama, 12 Days and ECS!

Not bad and I like knowing that I only have this many on going projects.  It's quite wonderful really.  All but ECS and Celtic Goddess are safely stored in the nerdy expando-file.

The fabric and ribbon are for something else that I cannot discuss at this time but will discuss at a later time, which will be so much later you will have forgotten about it and when it does come up again you may or may not go "ohhhh, I was wondering what that was for but had forgotten" and at that time all will be revealed.




You may be saying, "Hey! those aren't WIPs!" and you are right and wrong all at once.  These are Second Stage WIPs.  First stage was the stitching, the second stage is the quilting and sewing.

I was very fortunate that Magical had sent me that fun rainbow swirl fabric for the Derpy Dice Bag, Leah had given me the snowman and snow flake fabric for the Snowmen AND she had the perfect fabric for the Travis Christmas Stocking I stitched up 20 years ago.  Yes, it's time to finish that one up since Travis will turn 31 this year it may be about time to give it to him when he shows up here to visit next week.


Let us not forget the ongoing Dr. Who Shada Scarf!  The balls of yarn you see are the last bits to be used.  I AM that close to completing it.  Keep in mind I will not need the entire ball of yarn for those unused ones and will use those to make the fringe ends, but still won't need all of that....THAT is how close to done I am!!

I've had this serious bug to knit this up and get it done, so Celtic Goddess hasn't been stitched on at all.  That is alright as I have just acquired six more Hamish MacBeth Mysteries on Audible and when I start up stitching again I can really get into it!

Now the next picture is of the upcoming project that I will start on September 1st.  This shot I am so excited about as it shows how truly awesome the fabric is!  Just had to share it again.

We have a contest going on at Stitching Pirates right now called SHOW US YOUR COLORS, and I may have found a couple little patterns from my Ancient Scrolls that I can Frankenstein together into something fun, but for now I'm going to focus on current WIPs.

There you have it!  It wouldn't be Scéal Teach without the Scéal, now would it? Hope you enjoyed this installment.  Here's hoping next time we will see some Second Statge WIPs and Dr. Who completed.

Until next time....happy everything! 





8 comments:

  1. What a terrible, no good, horrible, rotten day, but at least you have brakes.
    Look at the scarf!!!! so wonderful, and a good reason to hold of on the goddess, but not for too long.

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    1. Yes, and once that is done I will resume the stitching. It's really exciting to be so close to finishing :D

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  2. as always your blog and adventures are so VERY entertaining, it's like a drug to me to read because an internal laugh and snicker feels so good! VERY happy to hear the brakes issue was so easily resolved and so cheaply!! Much cheaper than my $350.00 brake job a few months ago. So next time you run into that dirty hooker at Joann's tell her to get the hell out of the way, you have SHOPPING to do and YOU unlike like her knows what you want. You can even tell her i said so!! hehehe :)

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    1. haha, chances are you know her, but I did not. If I had known her I wouldn't have been so "nice" about waiting ha ha!!

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  3. Sounds like you had a very interesting weekend. I hate it when you have shopping to do and people don't let you get on with it. Glad you have working breaks again though. ^_^ And yay for almost being done with the scarf!! ^_^

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    1. Now that it's Monday, I feel pretty good about Saturday because we did get food, ribbon AND my brakes work so all was not lost!

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  4. Wow, what a day you had! I'm glad you were sucessful in the end ^_^

    And look, you WIPs are not half as bad as mine! You can do that and finish everything if you just patiently focus on one thing after the other!

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