Yes, white fluffy doom.

My scarf is taking forever to do and I need more yarn.

So I might have found a yarn replacement for the giant fuzzy stuff that I used for my fluffy cloud blanket.

https://www.woolwarehouse.co.uk/yarn/bernat...big-all-colours

Problem is, it's not cheap, and I need a lot of it.

I'm thinking though that I want to keep with the original plan of using DROPS Polaris, but I'll need like 1400 grams of yarn(14 balls), and that's going to run me something like 80 USD.

Gah. Why must knitting be so bloody expensive.

I'm also looking at needle sets and cases, because not having my needles match is driving me up a wall, and I don't have anything to keep them in(I need a case for my circulars and my straights, no cases work for both T.T) so they're rattling round loose in my knitting bag(at least that was free, my sister bought a bag a while back and never used it, gave it to me and I use it for my knitting supplies. It's hot pink and awesome).

Gah.

I'm seriously second guessing not just this project, but this hobby. My first hobby(jewelcrafting with wire) also got expensive. My toolkit itself was 200 US. Then there's the wire, the beads. I haven't used up my current stash either, it just got hard to work with. But that's expensive too. And I can only shower my friends and family with so many tree of life ornaments before they get tree'd out.

Why can't I just get a nice, cheap hobby?

I didn't realize knitting was so pricey. Hmm, some of the ladies around here make their own greeting cards and that is a pretty neat hobby; though it can be done affordably, some of them spend quite a bit on fancy equipment.

Hey, I know! Puter games!

I live near a resort area, and the local women in this area make a fortune by making unique quilts and afghans = selling them in the towns where the most tourists amass. Blankets like the one you made would be sold for quite a bit!

For the men with talent; they carve statuettes and animals out of wood and sell them - made with a chainsaw! Here is an example:

Start baking cakes! I bet no one would get tree'd out of getting those! Yes, speaking from experience


@mALX - Holy crap! I actually thought that horse was real for a moment!

What kills me is that they do it with a chain saw! The ones that sell the biggest are the bears, but some of them are so good that they can do you or your pet if you give them a picture. (like the guy who did the ones in the picture).

That is amazing.

And I already play computer games! I'm looking to getting off the computer for awhile!

Yeah knitted afghans sell for quite a bit, I'm just really bad at marketing goods. I have no idea where I'd sell something like that here.

Looking to learn to crochet too because it looks fun as crap but I just can't get past how much good yarn costs.

Gonna make a headband for my sister in law. Gonna try putting a rose on it too. She likes pink.

I must be mistaken. I did remember you telling me about adding a gate a while back and thought I remembered seeing a picture of it, (because I was surprised to see it wasn't the type of gate I was picturing in my mind = because pedestrians could still get on your property, just not vehicles. I was picturing a gate that would have kept everything out).

This one does, although you can get through it if you really want to. But if someone does that they know what they're doing and thus it's not by mistake. I may expand on the gate at some point if proven necessary.


I can also post a pic of it specifically if you want, but you don't want that, right?

No, I'll let you slide on the photos this time,

Nobody does slides these days. It's all digital.

Lol!

Good one.

Yarn ordered. Crochet hooks ordered.

Needle order shipped but I can't track it because Royal Mail. Which is the same reason it'll probably take two weeks to get here. RM is notorious for being slow as all get out.

But whee! yarn order will be here within a week. Going to be a big box I think. 14 balls of yarn...

Must... resist... ball of yarn

Lol khajiit.

My cats mostly ignore my yarn thankfully.

Gate pic

A cat ignoring yarn? GAAAAAAH! What is the world coming to?

Really nice touch! Are those the new trees you planted along the fenceline? They look gorgeous here! (The last picture they looked a bit dead) Was this pic taken before or after that one? (because I know trees do undergo some shock when re-planted). We used to leave them in a burlap bag of their original soil to ease it; and baby them with watering a couple times per day and adding nutrients to the soil in each hole before the transplant and every now and then the first two weeks.

Something I noticed in this pic that I hadn't seen before was that nice wire mesh behind the trees, that really looks good!

Yup

I had to add the wire mesh to fend off deer so they don't eat them in the winter. I'll never be able to get rid of it but hey, as long as my trees are fine I don't care.


They never looked dead to me, are you sure you didn't focus on the dead material in the background? I put it there a few years back because our neighbour is so close. I need to distance myself, if you know what I mean, and this was the only way I could do it.

I think they've all adjusted well. All of them seem to have sprung up a bit. I'll add some fertilizer next spring to keep them motivated

When I lived in Germany, it took 30 days minimum for stuff to reach us from the U.S.

I can get packages from the US pretty quick comparatively, if I'm ordering from a company. Usually takes 2 to 3 weeks, depending on shipping method. Priority mail takes about 5 to 6 business days. First class around 10. If it's being shipped media mail or that super budget crap it can take a month(Rio Grande uses this to ship me wire) almost.

This is coming from the UK. 2 weeks for mail from the UK to Sweden. I've heard a LOT of complaints about Royal Mail being slow as crap, mostly on Amazon, because there's only two sites for some of us to order from in Europe for Amazon, and most of the non German speakers use .co.uk. I use .de mostly, but this isn't an Amazon order. This is Wool Warehouse. Reputable shop, but I don't have much choice in shipping methods outside the UK.

Now the yarn order is coming from southern Sweden and I was quoted 3 to 7 days. I imagine I'll have it by Friday.

You are exactly right; I was focusing on those dead trees in the background on THIS pic:


This pic


(didn't see the pretty green ones in front of them, )

I think anything bulk sent to us went by cargo ship (rather than air mail); and all the APO mail was sent in bulk lots. (Army Post Offices for Americans stationed overseas) All the mail came into Bremerhaven by ship; (the northernmost point in Germany) where it would sit for a while in stacks and crates while the ship's contents were divided up into what was going where and who would be taking it there. Then it would be loaded on a truck and driven down to Trier (which is a long trip even in a car; so a truck stopping for deliveries along the way would take even longer).

And the ships and trucks are not refrigerated, ether. When my son was in Iraq, everything took a month too. I sent him some chocolate candy in the mail; and when it arrived there was nothing but brown liquid all over everything else in the package, lol. It melted everywhere!

It doesn't look good with that stuff there, but it was something I sort of had to do. It boggles my mind that nothing really grows there naturally other than the stuff that's been there for ages. Everywhere else bushes grow up 2 meters as soon as you turn your back, but not there!

Sounds like a chocolate mess!

Yeah anything coming by ship is a month minimum. That's what I was quoted for moving containers being shipped. I'd have had to pick them up in Gothenburg and drive a truck back. That's on the other side of the country.

I opted to replace rather than ship.

Plant Boxwood hedge there and give it "Miracle Gro" as directed (if you have it over there). The Boxwood will grow 12 feet high in no time; just keep them trimmed on the sides so they grow upward.






I don't blame you on that!

Needles came today, along with a few other things I ordered(mail was faster than I expected tbh) and now my yarn is in Jönköping so I still get to wait.

That's a long drive up to here. Really long drive. Plus all the sorting stops. Hoping it gets here tomorrow though because I have to go out and won't have to make a special trip to pick it up.

^^

(slightly OT alert) It's a pretty nice city though. I've been there twice on business, and this one time we had this hotel that's basically a ship now permanently "parked" in the harbor. And right next to that is a smaller ship which houses a pub Also the local beer (forgot what it's called) is pretty good.

I think that permanently docked ship you can live on (after dealing with the former residents) is the Marie Elena. And the nearby smaller pub ship is the Bloated Float. They're in the docks district of Cyrodiil, right?

Lol.

I'm sure Gothenburg is a nice, pleasant place, when it's not being lit on fire or having grenades tossed about...

But it's also on the other side of the country and south by quite a bit, so I'd be looking at a full day by train. There's a reason why hubby will be flying there when he's called for transplant.

What?! Protests?

Ahem.

The uhm... new arrivals. And gangs. Grenade attacks, synagogues being set on fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Gothenbu...ynagogue_attack
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37161752
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grena...tacks_in_Sweden

I'll leave it there.

MY YARN CAME!!! YAYYYYYYYYYY!

Blanket time tomorrow! It'll probably take me quite some time to do it, but I'm hoping it doesn't take more than two months. lol.

My project for the weekend will be to bury some concrete blocks. Still no new teeth for my Cavator so the old ones will have to do.

My Nerf Kriss Vector Kit came in. I'll post a picture asap.

Sweet.

Also I can't follow a knitting pattern to save myself. My stitches are all over the place.

Ball 2 of yarn done. Not vey big, only 36m(39y). 11 balls left, hopefully.

Had a few yarn overs I think because I went from 55 to 60 something stitches across. Of course I can't have that so I fixed it, but it messed up my pattern again.

I think I've got it though. Just can't be drunk or have hubby in the room. He keeps trying to show me stuff on reddit and it's distracting.

Be sweeter once it's finished .

Nice!

Small but importance project today. Selected on a Vision Care Plan to buy in to next month that lets me keep the Provider I used before losing vision care benefits with the switch from Tricare Prime to Medicare/Tricare for Life. Spent part of this morning making calls to verify that the provider is indeed a full participant in the Plan.

Still need to settle on a new Dental Care Plan, as we military retirees are losing our very good dental plan beginning next year. We can now buy in to FEDVIP Dental Plan options, none of which are as good as what we had. I've got it whittled down to one potentially preferred option, but want to touch bases with my dentist about before signing up mid Nov.

Always sucks to lose good dental. I haven't been able to get in to a dentist since I moved here.

Poor Little Yellow 'Cavator!
















No drunk knitting!






D'aaaaaw! What an adorable doggie!!!








Decrepit! I'm so glad to see you posting on here again! I worried about you when you kind of dropped out of sight for a while there!!!! Hope you are okay! And urgh on the Dental plans, my health insurance plan dropped both dental and sight on mine, urk. Seems like other health problems will increase without the good dental program as a kind of "maintenance."

So now if I get a toothache, I have to go to the Emergency Room; which costs them a heck of a lot more than a dental visit would have!

The ER will give you pain meds and refer you to a dentist. I just skip the middle man. Getting dental here is super easy if you're in pain. I've needed a cleaning for two years. Might just go to Poland.

Project for the day: VOTE.

Walked to our polling station.

Filled out ballot via electronic voting machine. First time ever to vote this way. I dislike voting machines, but paper ballots weren't an option. Thankfully, the process was pretty straightforward. Only thing that concerns me is that two propositions appeared that I had read were disqualified. That being so I didn't study them in advance. Had no idea how to vote. Placed an arbitrary AGAINST next to both. Hope I'm right that it doesn't matter either way.

Voting for me is more or less going through the motions. My political views are so at odds with majority of voters in my neck of the woods none of my candidates of choice have a realistic chance of winning. Well, maybe one this time round, but its iffy at best. I suspect a proposition I voted for might win too, but it's one I don't really care about and could have gone either way on. Voted as I did on it more or less on a whim.

Walked home.

Voting for PA from abroad was impossible for me in time. By the time I got around to it, it was too late for me to adequately work around the fact that they blocked overseas IP addresses.

This means I couldn't view the ballot to download and print. Because we can't actually vote electronically. Not that my printer works anyway.

meh. Maybe next time.

I was wondering if people like you actually exist. From the media coverage around here, you'd think there's only two sides with immortal hatred for each others, and everyone belonged to one or the other. Considering how many different parties we have around here, that always baffled me.


My project right now is me. The stargelgym is seeing heavy usage, and today I finally reached a new level in my effords: deadlifting 12x100 KG. According to my calculations, that means that my one-rep-maximum is 140 KG. My goal is to lift twice my own weight for the 12 repetition set, but that is still far off.

Slightly off-topic: does anyone else love to watch gym fail videos?

Nice having yourself as a project, Starge. I just jump into the forklift if I wanna lift heavy stuff

Well if it ever breaks you know who to call

Great to hear that the stargelgym is getting plenty of use!