It's Almost Blindingly Pink

I bought myself a new knitting bag. It is shiny hot pink with shinier butterflies on it. I am apparently nine years old.

I also bought a set of nesting pink pouches. I'm using one for each project I have in progress. That way whatever notions I need I have already right there in my hot pink project pouch. I forgot to take pictures of those...I should do that; they're totally adorable.

I Made Soup! By Myself!

Every couple of weeks Scott and I are now participating in a produce co-op called Bountiful Baskets. Basically, for $15 you get $50 worth of produce, and all you have to do is volunteer every once in a while (which I haven't done yet, since it's at 5 freaking 30 in the morning...). The produce is just like what you would get in a grocery store. Here's the first basket we got:

 (In the brown bag there are peaches and plums)

That's a LOT for $15, riiiiiiight? It lasts us two weeks, usually, since it's just the two of us.

Anyway, it's helped me and Scott to work more fruits and vegetables into our diet, which is definitely a good thing. It's also saving us money. Also, I'm trying cooking. COOKING. ME. It's amazing; I totally made cauliflower cheese soup from scratch and it was almost as delicious as at Zupas!

Anyway, hit up the link above if you're interested and see if there's a co-op near you. They're all over the country, apparently.

The 80s Are A Blur

I've been looking through my pictures and realizing that I've been making things...many, many things...but not posting because oh look, I'm depressed and boring.

So I've joined this fiber club where every month I get an art batt and a coordinating top. It's always a surprise what we get. I love it! I finally got around to spinning the first month's fiber a little while ago, and wanted to show you all a couple of pictures. Or like ten pictures.

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the unspun batt because I'm a rock star like that...it was titled "The 80s Are A Blur" for obvious, very colorful reasons.

Here is the batt on the bobbin:

It has a bit of something shiny in it, and you can see on that last one how it catches the light a bit.

And here it is all spun up:

I know, it kinda looks like a clown threw up, but wait and you'll see the end result.

Here's the blue top that came with it, drawn out into thin strips to make it easier to draft:

In progress, going onto the bobbin:

Finished on the bobbin:

Finished and wound into a hank:

And the two together, wound into center-pull balls:

Still kinda looks like clown barf, yes? Well...

It took me several false starts and experiments to decide what exactly to do with this, but it turns out it wanted to be a cowl for Em:

It's not really to my taste, but Em loves ALL THE COLORS and when I showed her the halfway-done cowl she expressed delight in what she saw, so I'm satisfied with the end result of the first month's fiber club fiber.

This is the first time I've actually made something from yarn I've spun. I'm slightly proud of myself!

I'll Force Myself Out Of It...Somehow

As you may have noticed, I've been...away.

I didn't really realize what was going on until about an hour ago, when I was reading a post about a friend of mine who is dealing with some depression. I think I'm a bit depressive at the moment.

Why do I think this? Well, I've lost interest in a few things that have brought me joy in the past...one of them being blogging. I feel like I have nothing of interest to say, and I feel like the types of things I share on here are trite and irrelevant to most people, and when you feel that way you don't really want to do anything with the old blog, do you? Nope.

I don't know why I didn't see it before. Not wanting to do certain things, or hang with people much, and having a hard time sleeping, and being stressed at work by things that normally wouldn't stress me out, not wanting to be social...these are all classic Anna Is Depressed symptoms, but apparently it took someone else noticing her own depression for me to notice mine.

So what am I going to do about it? Not a damn thing. I'll force myself to continue to get out of bed in the morning and go to work and talk to coworkers I don't care to talk to. I'll force myself to continue to go to knitting group every week, even if I don't feel like being around people. I'll force myself to knit, crochet, and spin, because I know myself well enough to know that keeping up the routine is always the best thing to draw me out of a funk.

Maybe I'll even force myself to blog more. We'll see how that one works out...

Chicken Vs. Not Chicken

I feel the need to weigh in on the Chik-Fil-A issue.

First of all, this isn't about the first amendment, like people seem to think it is.It's not about a man who owns a company who has a viewpoint supporting traditional marriage. Good for him. He's allowed to think and do whatever he wants within the law, and like it or not, his opinion is just as valid as mine.

It's about boycotting a COMPANY that funnels money into anti-gay organizations. Organizations that treat gays as less-than-human. Organizations that discriminate and shame gays. A COMPANY, PEOPLE. This guy isn't using private funds for this. He's using COMPANY FUNDS for this.

So if you don't support the company, don't go get delicious chicken.

What am I doing? Not going to Chik-Fil-A. But I'm not making Scott boycott with me. He doesn't give half a damn about politics as I do, and he loves their chicken. And who could blame him? It's damn delicious.

The end. That's all there is to it.

Thoughts?

(My sister is gay, I have friends and friends of friends and family members of friends who are gay, and guess what? They're awesome people who have rights, and who should get more rights, like "regular" people.)

So Many Post-Its

Since I am bored at work I decided I'd share something with you.

My desk at work:

Pretty terrible, right?

My home is NEVER this messy. *Cough*

Queen Penelope

A recent purchase has made me quite happy, and Scott is happy that I'm happy, and therefore my house is full of happy.

Meet Queen Penelope, a.k.a. Penny:

She's a Lendrum :) And her name comes from The Big Bang Theory, of course.

Penny came to me used, from a friend of a friend, for $575. Now, of course you're thinking, "Anna, that's not a very good deal. You could have gotten a new one for close to the same price." Well, the woman from whom I bought it has four babies, and had no time for spinning like she thought she would, so she had bought a whole lot of indie-dyed fiber and then never spun much at all, so really, the wheel is pretty much new, and it came with ALL the fiber the woman had bought. There was at least $100 of fiber there, all in colors I like and would have picked out myself. So really, it was a fantastic deal.

Now, I've spun a bit on it, and let me tell you: it's different than spinning on a spindle. Much different. I feel like I have to learn from the beginning, because the hand motions are completely different, and you're controlling like five things at once instead of just two. It's a good thing I love this so much, because it's going to take a lot of hard work to get as good on Penny as I am on the spindles.

So here's what I've spun on the wheel so far:

The first bit is on the left, and the bit I just finished is on the right. They're all still better than my first handspun on the spindle, but still leave something to be desired compared to, say, Barbie.

It Stunk Up The Kitchen

A few weeks ago one of the women in my knitting group got a hold of about 50 pounds of raw wool (as in, straight off the sheep). I suck at telling stories that aren't mine, so I'll spare you the details, but her husband thought she had somehow bought 50 pounds of pot...the cops came over and everything. She had to show them the giant bag of wool in her SUV for them to believe her.

ANYWAY. So she wanted to get everyone together to learn how to process raw wool. Now, this isn't something I'm really interested in per se, but I would like to be able to say I've done everything except shear the sheep (maybe someday I'll shear a sheep. Who knows.). So here's my portion of raw wool, inside the old pillowcase it came in:

Yeah, that's dirt and grass and a little poo in there. It smelled awful. Scott was especially disgusted, but to be fair, I had warned him that at some point there would be raw fleece in the house...

Anyway, so you put small bits into a lingerie bag and put it through a series of soaks with soapy water, plain water, and vinegar. Each soak takes about ten minutes, so we're talking about a full hour of soaking total.

After it's "clean" (I say "clean" because the dirt and poo all comes out, but the bits of grass don't), you can either let it dry or go on straight to dyeing it. I decided to dye it:

 I just had to spread it out in a casserole dish with plenty of water, a bit of vinegar, and then food coloring spread out and mashed in with a fork. You can do this with other types of dyes, but on short notice food coloring is all I had.

I then baked it at 200 degrees to set the dye, and then drained and rinsed it all. I didn't let the dye set long enough (I got tired and wanted to get to bed), so the blue didn't take all the way and came out a grayish blue. I like it, though, so even though it wasn't what I intended it's fine with me.

Then all I needed was to lay it out on a towel and let it air-dry for a few days. It would have dried faster, but we keep our house pretty well air-conditioned.

I had my indie-dyer friend "flick" (brush out all the veg, a.k.a. grass and such) and card it into little batts for me to spin. I could have done that myself, but she has the proper tools and it only took her a fraction of the time it would have taken me.

I'm thinking I need to spin this into one long color changing yarn, then make myself (or someone very special) a scarf from it.

Now I've done everything except shear the sheep. And I'm in no rush for that.

Diameter Vs. Radius

One of the things we did when we were working on the house recently was to order new blinds for the entire house. The girl at Home Depot that ordered them for us did a few of them wrong (apparently the difference between diameter and radius was completely lost on her)...but fortunately, Home Depot is always totally willing to fix any mistakes, so aside from a little inconvenience, it was a pretty easy process.

Since for the most part they look the same as the old ones (but not chewed on, thanks BUSTER), I won't post pictures, but the one that I love the most we didn't have before, and that's the one for the semicircular window in our bedroom.

Scott, of course, installed it himself:

Here's a picture of the whole window:

It's a little difficult to see, since it was backlit, but trust me, it's gorgeous. Here's how it looks closed:

So that's my favorite new blind. Now, with it closed, I'll actually be able to sleep in without the light waking me up!

Less Soda, More CALM

So, do you remember how I was planning on giving up soda?

Yeah. It's easier said than done, apparently.

It's a worthy goal and I'll report my progress: I've only had soda three times since the beginning of June. Including right now. Right now I'm drinking a deliciously forbidden Dr. Pepper (full octane, not even diet...I'm a badass). Anyway...not perfect, but I went from drinking soda every day, sometimes twice or three times a day, to thrice in one month. That's an amazing improvement, yes?

Interestingly, I haven't lost a damn pound.

The reason I've gotten soda three times is this: I switched to a new medication. You'll see the connection in a few minutes.

Now, I really hate to mess around with my psych meds, since I'm more or less stable and new ones could possibly throw me off balance, and really, who has time for that? Not me.

But the Risperdal was really bad for me. In fact, I'd tried to go off of it once before, without replacing it with anything else. That was a disaster.

But even though that happened, I still really wanted to get away from this particular medication.

Enter Abilify.

Abililfy is supposedly more weight neutral (I gained 50 pounds in two months when I started the Risperdal), has a lower impact on blood sugar and cholesterol, and Mim had tried it for a little while and LOVED it (she went off it because it's not generic and she doesn't have insurance, and she couldn't afford it. It's something like $700 a month. If that's not something blatantly wrong with the healthcare system here, then I don't know what is...). So, I wanted to give it a try, as a replacement for the Risperdal.

The insurance company, of course, wanted me to jump through hoops to get it covered. They wanted me to try a different atypical antipsychotic, which is what Risperdal and Abilify both are, one that is generic and would cost them less. I was fine with that; I mean, for all I knew the Seroquel they wanted me to try would be even better for me. Everyone's brain chemistry is different, so with psych meds you really never know if something is going to make you better or worse. It sucks, sure, but what can you do about it? At least we have psychotropic medication. A hundred years ago I would have been lobotomized or something equally heinous.

So I tried the Seroquel. For only one day. Because I felt drunk. DUH-RUNK. And I went to work that way. It was BAD. I called the doctor and left a semi-rambling message about how I felt funny and I can't work or drive like this, blah blah blah. I probably sounded like a total lush, all slurring and whatnot.

Fortunately, that's all it took for them to approve the Abilify.

So how's it working out for me?

Well, my anxiety level is the lowest it's ever been in my life. No joke. Just that is the reason I will keep taking this as long as I need to, which might be forever.

Side effects so far: I feel a little bit more tired than I did on the Risperdal. I can deal with this. As soon as the new carpet gets installed (a post for another day) I plan on moving my treadmill back in from the garage and getting my ass on there for at least a few minutes every day. I think that'll help me feel more awake overall. That's the reason for the soda, by the way: I'm soooooo groggy some mornings. I really needed caffeine a few times, and coffee doesn't always sound good to me. There's a little bit of dry mouth, but I'm trying to drink more water anyway. Intestines don't seem happy with it, but since I live with IBS this is really something I'm used to dealing with. Appetite is down a bit, and motivation to get things done is down a bit, which is probably why I can't motivate myself to get on here and write about what's happening (and there ARE happenings, I assure you), and both of these things are probably related to being more tired all the time.

I'm hoping that the combination of the new medication, less soda, and getting some exercise will help me lose some of this weight that I gained when I started the Risperdal. We'll see.