The Monday after Daylight Savings Time starts (aka today) is always sort of brutal for me (and for plenty of others, I’m sure). So I’m a bit bleary and crabby this morning – bleary enough that I forgot to put chocolate in my desperately needed mocha. Blech. Don’t mind me.

What I didn’t expect from Saturday’s Stash Flash: that seeing my stash would make so many of you happy to discover that you didn’t have stashing issues in comparison. Hmph. However, I must now send you to see Dawn’s mind boggling stash, which cheered me up immensely. Here’s her office stash and her home stash (she has sofa and suitcase stashes!). I’ll wait. Back? See? I have a very reasonable stash. Moving right along…

For those wondering how one breaks a windshield while changing wiper blades: I had finally wrestled the old wiper blade off and the “naked” wiper arm slipped out of my hand and smacked into the base of the windshield. That’s it. Instant spiderweb.

A week or two ago, I added some of the lovely Sundara sock yarn to my stash. The color is Black Lagoon and the pictures below don’t really do it justice – the color depth and intensity are better than a lot of the Koigu I’ve seen recently!

“Why is this yarn in a bag, Mom? Don’t you trust me?”

The lovely Elizagrrl shared the details of the much beloved Red Catnip Mouse:

The mouse is from the Cat Warming Set in Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation. I used Lamb’s Pride Worsted, size five needles, and a combination of M1L, M1R, SSK and K2TOG for symmetrical shaping. For the insides, I made a little rectangular pouch for the catnip (a 3×3 piece of cotton folded in half and stuffed full of catnip), and wrapped it in a rectangle of quilt batting for loft…. Per my vet’s recommendation, I buy catnip in the bulk section at Wild Oats and Kally seems to prefer the toys made with it. Hopefully it doesn’t make Chaos too crazy! Kally was so mad that I didn’t give her that toy; I eventually caved into her whining and made one just like it for her. How she has me trained!

You must go see the picture’s of Eliza’s kitty Kally playing with Doppelganger Red Catnip Mouse! Too cute. Kudos to Knotty Mouse for correctly identifying the source of the mouse pattern yesterday – go check out Mouse’s very fun Maryland S&W buttons. This is my favorite so far (even though I’m not going):

Did you know that you can put a wicked crack in your windshield while changing your wiper blades? Or at least I can. And did. Curses. My inclination was to be lazy and have a shop replace them for me, but I decided I would be thrifty and change them myself. Heh. Let that be a lesson to all of you!

You may or may not remember that I won a contest over at Yarnivorous. The package from Lynne arrived at work yesterday. I had to take a picture of the wonderful Australian gluten-free goodies in my cube so that I could rip them open and chow down. I highly recommend the sticky fig and ginger cookies, er, “bikkies.” Yum. (My coworkers were a bit bemused by my picture taking. Best not to enlighten them.)

The package contained some gorgeous variegated blue sock yarn that Lynne dyed as well as some of her totally luscious handspun merino plied with purpley silk. (No, Jeanne, you cannot have my lovely blue Australian sock yarn…)

Hard to believe it’s Wednesday again, isn’t it? First, go wish Scout a happy birthday. I’ll wait…. You did? Good. Ok, now go do a happy house-getting and joyful Badger Bygone jig for Rabbitch. I’ll wait again… Finally, on to your regularly scheduled randomness.

Last weekend, I dragged out all my yarn bins to take pictures for Flash Your Stash this Saturday. Talk about an eye opener… After some calculations based on the number of Sterilite bins I have, I estimate I have about 1000 quarts (or 250 gallons) of yarn. About 100 quarts/25 gallons of that is sock yarn. When you consider that volume and then consider that my entire condo is only 637 square feet… What problem?!

Why don’t cats have any smell to them? Dogs do – a distinctly “doggy” scent. But not cats. Well, ok, maybe some cats have a smell. But Chaos doesn’t. I love his furry unscent.

How are they going to finish the Harry Potter movies with the actors they have?! Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) was born in 1989, so he’ll be what, 17 this year?? The fifth movie is slotted for 2007… You do the math. Won’t it look odd to have Harry, Ron, and Hermione be 25 or so when they get their O.W.Ls?!

I’ve turned the heel and started on the leg of my first Rainbow Jay sock. Last night I had a bad moment when I thought about how long the color repeats were and wondered where exactly my second skein started… So I started the second sock, with a wee bit of messing around and cutting so that the socks would match. All I can say is that I was very lucky to have started my first sock with the skein I did. If I’d started it with the second skein, I’d be cursing and stomping and rewinding and cutting right now. Whew!

My copy of Subversive Cross Stitch arrived last Friday, during a very rough day at work. The designs definitely brightened my day and had me giggling maniacally in my cube. Nope, I don’t cross stitch. But I do have one of the kits from the book and will definitely be making it at some point. (It’s this one, if you’re curious. Everyone at work knows things are really getting bad when I start dropping the F-bomb. Too bad I won’t be able to hang that in my cube…)

Both Jeanne and I had rough days at work yesterday, so we met to knit at a wine bar instead of our usual coffee shop. Really, who were we kidding? We were there to talk and drink some wine and laugh at old knitting books and the current issue of Knitter’s. Everyone knows that it’s too dark to knit in a wine bar – although I did pick up 13 stitches, then knit across those 13 plus 8 more stitches. At that point, I decided to rest on my laurels and not try to pick up the other 13 stitches for the heel.

Anyway, we each tried a tasting flight: Jeanne tried the shiraz/syrah flight and I tried the pinot noir flight. It was quite fun to sip our little glasses of wine, make notes on our flight sheets, and toss off pseudo-oenophilic jargon, describing one wine as “delightfully undistinguished” and another as having “deep fruity overtones.” (Well, we thought we were funny at the time…)

Yum.

Chaos? Hey, Chaos, can you come out of your “hiding” place and wish Peeve a happy birthday? And maybe send get well wishes to Mrs Pao’s husband, Pao, who had surgery today?

“How did you know where I was?!”

A few weeks ago, I tried out a small knitting group that met at Caffetto Cafe and Gallery in my neighborhood. They were nice enough, but, as Bookish Wendy noted so eloquently, the group was “not one I clicked with on a deeper level.”

However, I did snap some Project Spectrumesque photos of this very cool crocheted tapestry hanging on the wall of the coffeehouse:

Random Wednesday is the brainchild of mamacate and has propagated far and wide. A simple yet brilliant idea for the oh-so-rough middle of the week when I, at least, am beginning to feel more than slightly scattered… “She jumped onto her horse and rode madly off in all directions.”

Plus, I’m simply quite fond of randomness. A long time ago, I had a Siamese kitten I named Random (after Random of Amber – when I was little, I so wanted to be a Prince of Amber… the Princesses were a sorry lot overall, but the Princes had it made. I suppose that’s true of a lot of stories, now that I think of it.). Anyway. He was sweet, but not very bright, so he became Ran-Dumb-Dumb.

Do you have any weird abilities? I do – I’m a Finder. Wondering where you left something? If I’ve been in your house longer than 15 minutes, I probably know. I used to live with a guy who really came to rely on this Finding ability (and in fact gave me the nickname). He said it took him many months after I had moved out to get over the urge to call me when he couldn’t find it. Tragically, this gift is only useful for other people. I can’t find my own stuff or SRM for Chaos… yes, he’s lost again… Hmph.

Maeve alerted me to this nifty pattern for black cat socks. Thanks, Maeve! Cricket, Chaos says “Mraow, baby.”

Speaking of socks, check out these biking sheep socks – ok, ok, they’re already knitted, but they are cool.

Sounds like another snowstorm is heading toward the Twin Cities – perhaps another 4 to 7 inches of snow on top of the 8+ inches we got Monday. Well, the upside is I’ve been mightily inspired to go get new tires after work. I’ve been meaning to do that for months… All this snow could be completely melted by the middle of next week as we return to our unseasonably mild winter. (Heh, we Minnesotans can and do talk about the weather at the slightest provocation.)

Yay! I’ve had fun reading other bloggers’ lists of 100 things about themselves. I’m way behind in bloglines today (darn work, being busy and all that), but so far I’ve really enjoyed lists from the Knit Wit, Peeve, and Jennifer. Looking forward to reading more!