Mama's Got a Brand New Bagg...

This Baggalini to be exact! It is appropriately named the "Only Bagg."



It's got a nice amount of space. Three pockets, two with magnetic closures and one zippered. The zipper pocket has a bunch of small pockets and can fit two knitting projects easily (currently the Central Park Hoodie and my Monkey socks). The other pockets both have a water bottle holder (which seem to be small for bottles, but handy for sunglasses). The straps are longer than my previous bag, so it fits nice and comfy even over a heavy jacket.

See!


On the same trip when I purchased the bagg (which happened to be Black Friday) I stopped at a cute yarn shop in Milford, PA. They were kind enough to allow me to use their restroom which no other place would. The store was called JillDeal Inc. If you are up in Milford, stop by, they look to be willing to help out if you have questions. I bought some Noro Taiyo. It was originally going to be for a scarf, but I think it'll make a rocking tank top.



Which brings me back to the fact that I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! Ours was good and filling. I had a bit of sickness/pain business, which seems to have gone away.

Next time.... The knitting dry spell is broken!

It's Been Awhile

So, I'm home sick today. I feel all around gross and my back hurts. I thought it might be a good day to catch up.

There hasn't been a whole lot going on in my life. There has, however, been a serious lack of knitting. I haven't knit a stitch in probably 2+ months! It seems like forever, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I'm not the most prolific knitter to begin with, it's almost to the point of ridiculous at this point.

What have I been doing instead? Nothing. Terrible. Though, on November 8 I did go hiking. Surprisingly I felt better that day than I have in MONTHS. That was the only day I felt that good, but the days have had a general betterness to them.

This was the next installment of our (my friend Dan and I with the dogs) quest to become members of the Appalachian Trail 2000 mile club. The previous hike was a 2-day, and my legs hurt so much the second day, I didn't do the second day. At some point I'll have to make that up.

We did 4.5 miles from car to car. It was mostly flat, there was a decent uphill at the start and the walk to the car was a Steep downhill with LOTS of rocks. I almost fell on my ass a number of times. That was my least favorite spot....I cursed....a lot.

Today's plan is to update Ravelry. Put up pictures of knitting I had previously taken of my progress. Working with knitting pictures is almost like knitting right?

Some hiking eye candy:

So when do you decide that outside help is really going to help? When does "down in the dumps" become more?

Frustration

So, what does it take for one to throw up there hands, declare loudly that they are totally being screwed and do something about it?

Off to a Bad Start

So, have you ever had one of THOSE projects? You know, where things constantly go wrong. Added stitch here, extra row there and you don't realize it until you're past a complicated section of repeats?

Well, this isn't like that, but it COULD be.....

I saw that the Central Maryland Knitting Guild was doing a KAL of the Central Park Hoodie. Not sure what flipped, but I have to make it. I have some Lion Brand Wool-Ease in my stash and I had all intentions of going to the meeting, but totally chickened out. Yes, I'm weird, I get funny about social events sometimes.

So, I cast-on and began the ribbing. Problem 1, I pulled a little too hard and ripped the plastic wire out of my circular needles. Wow, that was a new one. So I shoved it back in and it's been holding ok. Need to get some glue. I haven't gotten terribly far, but today I noticed something...














Maybe not so noticeable....but if you look close, the left side is smaller than the right. Yup, that's right, somehow I ended up with more rows on the right than the left. Definitely an interesting problem.

I have decided to rip it back and restart the whole thing. I also decided to go down a size. I was debating. Since it seems a lot was going wrong with the large size, I'll try the smaller and see how it goes.

On a different note...
The hubby and I went kayaking for our 5 year anniversary. He fell in and I missed it! Wish I could've gotten pictures. I turned around and he was on his way out of the water already. I did get this very nice picture of a family of geese. Hope you enjoy.

Interesting Meme

This looked kind of fun. Some of the pictures on Flickr are amazing.






















Here are the rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page of results, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

The Great Outdoors

Recently, I went hiking. Specifically, my friend Dan and I (and our pups) are working towards hiking the Appalachian Trail.....in pieces of course, in no way would I consider doing a hike through. This was supposed to be a "Two-Day" hike.

Day One:
Here we are on the trail....notice Emmy (my dog) checking to see if I'm ok and then everyone leaving me behind. Because, I'm slow.



We also saw many of these plants. I don't know what they are, but they are very pretty and surprising considering how much tree cover there is on this part of the trail.



The weather that day was rather humid. They were predicting rain, but they predicted rain every time we've gone. We hadn't gotten more than a sprinkling in the past. Here is one of the views when we first started to hear thunder.



10 minutes later, it totally poured. Actually, not only poured, but thunder and lightning also. It was quite thrilling. The trail turned into a mini creek (pronounced crick of course). Thank goodness for ponchos. Though they didn't help much with the mud I kicked up from the trail onto my legs.

15 minutes after that it stopped and most of the rest of the hike was incident free. Until.....we reached the camp ground. Then it really started to pour. Dan and I (and the pups) took shelter at the camp ground bathroom. Lovely place to wait out a storm. We ended up waiting an hour for the rain to let up, so we could hike out and meet the rest of our camping crew. After 7.2 miles standing for an hour, was not my cup of tea.

The bright side was hearing a bunch of young kids (I think part of a youth group) freaking out because their tents flooded. We then set up camp and went to dinner. Dinner was tasty.

The best part was the fire. The hubby is excellent at starting fires and he got a nice one going. We all sat around roasting marshmallows and trying to not get bitten by mosquitoes. We had a few other hikes stop by to steal some smoke as bug repellent. A nice gentleman named Dave who specifically does these hikes for the climbing.

Sleeping.....that did not go well. Achy legs, barking and growling dogs, giggling kids and full bladder all prevented sleepage. Ugh! Sum total, maybe 1-3 hrs of sleep.

I gave up on the second day, 5 mile hike! Packed up and went home! Yay to sleep in my own bed. Unfortunately, now I have to make up that piece of the hike.....