I can’t stand how I wait until I have a million things to write about, then get too tired to write all of it at once. So much has happened and so many brillant ideas have been thought…and then all forgotten!

I went to Stitches West this weekend. For those of you who aren’t so much into fibers, Stitches West is a giant yarn convention in Santa Clara. My knitting group rode the train that had about 3 or 4 cars full of knitters and crocheters. It was pretty interesting. The whole day was spent touching and squeezing wool, hemp, cotton, you name it. By the end of the day I had to stop myself from feeling a perfect stranger’s fancy cabled sweater for worry of weirding her out. I was just so used to the “see a nice fiber, do a squeeze test” motions that I just reached out at her sweater without even noticing what I was doing! Ack!

I scored a few things, but I didn’t go nearly as crazy with the spending as I thought I would. There was just so much stuff to buy and see that I became a bit overwhelmed. The prices weren’t as low as I thought they would be either, but I was so happy to see a booth dedicated to hemp because I’d been wanting to make a hemp shopping bag for a while now, but I had never found any to use.

Other than the convention, school has been keeping most of my time. I’m hitting my midterms week and surprisingly, my drawing class is still so much more difficult than my other classes. It’s pretty frustrating knowing that I am capable of drawing but having to stick to certain guidelines makes it so hard!! My hand shakes so much when I hold my pencil in the correct way it makes it almost impossible to get smooth lines. I also can’t seem to grasp the idea of filling up my paper. I’m always being chided on having too much negative space!

We will be moving in just a couple weeks and trying to get this place cleaned up and things packed away is looking more and more difficult. How did we manage to accumulate so much crap? I think the thrift store should be expecting a big payload in the next week or so. I’m in the purging mood! The less stuff we have to drag to our new home, the better.

Oh yes, and I want to take this time to let you all know about the Christian Carlos Fundraiser auction that is going on. A bunch of kind hearted women got together and donated their time and work to be put up for auction on eBay to raise money for the little boy who lost his family in a car wreck. Please help them out and bid!

Okay, what else? What else? I know I’ve seen a bunch of stuff I want to share with everyone….

Oh yeah! I came across a d.i.y. crafty website called OhMyStars! which has loads of great tutorials and a knit sweater pattern to die for. Seriously, it’s great.

Anyways, don’t worry. I’ll be posting again soon. I still have more to say, but oh. my. god. I’m so hungry.

I hate it hate it HATE it when too much time is spent writing something that you feel absolutely great about, only to have the browser have an internal error and just like that, all that post-y goodness disappears from the face of the earth, as if it never was.

So let’s try and recollect what I wrote earlier into a condensed, less patient form.

Joe and I will be living in a new home soon; March 15th to be exact. I don’t know how on earth we were approved over the many who applied, but we were. Now we are just waiting on our current property managers to dish the goods on us to our new property managers and hope they don’t say anything bad. I have no reason to suspect that they would, we have never caused any trouble, and in fact, have left our last place in better condition than when we found it. But something inside me keeps thinking that something has to go wrong. For some reason, my inner voice doesn’t think I will get exactly what I want. But I can hope!

The new place is a charming 1930’s home with the all the little things that make old homes so great. It’s in the older neighborhood, and practically walking distance to the American river. I’ll have a claw foot tub, a kitchen with tons of counter space (which I guess isn’t characteristic of older homes, but this one has been updated), lot’s of natural light (our home now has virtually none, except for the master bathroom shower which has loads of sunlight glaring right into my eyes), and a perfectly beautiful front yard and back courtyard. I can tell one of the owners is a gardener. I only hope I can keep it in as good of shape as they did.

I also hope that they allow me to paint. I have been haunted in day dreams of a handmade felt birdie twig mobile in front of an orange wall. I must have an orange wall! I have a physical need to paint a wall orange. It must be done.

I don’t know why. It’s not like I’ve ever liked the color orange. In fact, I have loathed it for most of my life. When I was about 6, I had a nightmare that my mom, her boyfriend and I were all stuck on the seat of a giant plastic orange chair (the kind that were in the creepy drive-in movie’s snack building; they reek of the 70’s) waiting to be eaten by a dragon.

Also, the mean girls in middle school used to think that highlighter orange sweatshirts were cool. Bleck.

Yep. But an orange wall is entirely a different matter…uh huh.

There is also a bonus {house?}. It’s a tiny one room cottage which the owners use as an office, but I can envision a grow-op/craft room, unless Joe claims it for something more practical, which if you are reading this, Monkey, you can totally call the extra room!

I’m imagining a long summer of relaxing on a lounge chair in my pretty back yard! *sigh*

Tomorrow (oops, today…wow, is it really that late?) is Valentine’s day. I got Joe a couple small feel good gifts and a homemade valentine card (screw you, Hallmark), but we actually aren’t going to be spending it together. I’m such a jerk, but I really didn’t want to miss my knitting/crochet meet up which we are having at Heather’s. We all are going to bring some snacks and I have chosen to bake black bottom cupcakes and whip up a fruit salsa with homemade cinnamon chips! Valentine’s day with the girls, I just can’t miss something like that. So Joe gets to have fun working on his master’s project or doing some other random programming instead. At least that sounds good to him.