blackmoondog

We're home!

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Hanford with my family. We drove over Thursday morn to have a late lunch of turkey and all the fixin's with my dad, my brother, and his gf. Dad just bought a house in July so this was actually the first time I'd been inside (I peeked in the windows a few days before his escrow closed). We watched a movie and then I worked on his computer. We stayed with mom that night and had lunch with her, my bro, and his gf on Friday. And then I worked on her computer. It was actually pretty funny. Both my parents wanted me to switch their dial-up setups from AOL to elsewhere and deal with their printers (dad's wasn't printing, mom's was new and needed to be set up). This morning we drove home. I'm so glad I get to sleep in my own bed tonight!

On the way home, we stopped by Best Buy in SLO. There wasn't anything compelling enough to get us out in the cold, pre-dawn hours of Black Friday but we did want to check on a few things that Best Buy had on 2 day sale. I picked up a 512MB USB flash drive for $20 and a Shrek 2 dvd for $6. They were out of the $170 19" LCD monitors that Mark wanted to look at and they couldn't find the $40 UPS even tho the store computer said they had 6 in stock.

While at Best Buy, I fondled the 30GB 5G iPod. Holy crap that thing is small. And spiffarific. They had it playing Lost when we got there. They'd also loaded Pixar's "For the Birds" on it. I asked the sales guy how long their black pod had been on display so I could get a good gauge of how fast the front scratched up. It had been there for 4 weeks and I could see scratches but it really wasn't too bad. I've already got my InvisibleShield for when mine arrives so I should be able to keep it pretty scratch free.

Also, I finished knitting the *last* piece of the Cal throw for my sis-in-law! Woohoo! Now I need to wash the blue pieces to get the excess dye out and then duplicate stitch in the Cal logo and sew it all together. I've been kinda lagging lately because I have been trying to keep it away from the cats but whenever I sit down on the couch either one or both of them want to sit on me.

I broke my moratorium on knitting for myself by starting the yoga mat bag from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation. I'm probably close to 3/4 finished with it. I've also started the "Candy Striper Laptop Bag" pattern from the same book. I'm making it with Peruvian Collection Highland Chunky 100% wool from elann.com. This is my second attempt at a felted project. Hopefully, it will be more successful than the felted slippers I made last year. Anyway, the bag colors are dark wine ("grape heather"), charcoal grey, and a medium blue-grey blend ("mid indigo"). I dropped the 4th color that the pattern calls for and am just gonna use the blue in those stripes. Since I'm using a different yarn than they do in the book, I think I may actually break down and knit a gauge swatch and felt it so I can get a feel for whether or not I need to order more yarn and make the bag thicker. I don't want to carry my laptop in a flimsy bag.

Oh! That reminds me. Mom and I went to Joann's on Friday. I got a bunch of holiday fabric (on sale for 70% off) for gift bags and boxers, some T pins for blocking knitted items, buttons for making Mark's boxers, and a couple zippers for the laptop bag (the pattern calls for a 16" but I might make the bag a bit bigger so I got an 18" as well). At the register, they had coupons. I was able to use the "10% off the entire purchase, including sale items" coupon since we were there between 10am and noon. The line for the cutting table was pretty long but it wasn't too bad since they had 3 people cutting fabric.

So, to sum up... Good family time, good food, good shopping, but glad we're home. And now it feels like Sunday, but it is Saturday and we get a whole other day at home tomorrow! Woohoo!!!