Zzzzzzzzzz.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Snoresnort...wha-what?

Lemme alone. I'm sleeping.

Lately, I've been having to get up earlier than usual, work my ass off, then come home and stay awake just long enough to barely cook something for dinner, then I'm fast asleep on the sofa. I usually turn the computer on when I come in the door, then I fall asleep, get up a couple hours later and put on my pajamas, turn the computer back off, and go to bed. So, instead of not working enough hours I'm now working entirely too many hours, or just enough to cause me to sleepwalk.

Besides the sleepwalking, the next-to-best part are all the weekend plans I make for e-mails, things I'm going to sew up or patterns I'm going to finally write down and post, or maybe write a novel and rebuild that time machine. Has any of that gotten done? Hell no.

Back to the sleepwalking. Fun fun fun.

I woke up one night and seriously thought Grady had hauled a whole nest of baby birds onto the bed. I could clearly see little gold & black birdies hopping around him. So I yelled at him and grabbed for a bird, couldn't catch it so I got out of bed, put on my glasses, and turned on the light. I was actually crawling around hunting under the bed before I completely woke up and realized that there were no effin' birds anywhere near me. I even picked the damn cat up in case he was sitting on them, because he does that to crickets he's torturing.

A week or so later, I woke up and looked at the space between the dresser and the doorway and thought somebody had broken into my apartment and stolen an antique standing lamp out of there and I nearly had a heart attack. I'd gotten out of bed to turn the light on but decided that they were still rummaging around through the apartment so I got back into bed and crawled under the covers so nobody would see me.

Firstly, there has never been an antique lamp in that corner, ever. It lives in the other room, next to my sofa. And nobody in their right mind would sneak in just to steal some manky old lamp.

A few years ago I had a similar waking dream where I opened my eyes and could clearly see scientists in lab coats measuring the stuff in my bedroom. I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn't ruin their experiment.

Another time I really thought Damien was thirsty, so I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to refill his water bowl and wound up pouring it all over him and my legs.

It's a damn shame I can't sleepwalk all the way to work and nap while I'm there. God knows, I've tried. Sometime during the sleepwalking incidents I picked up the hot end of a soldering iron a couple times and I've been dropping a bit more glass than usual. Yes, soldering irons are a tad warm, like 900 degrees warm. At this rate I'll never be a hand model.


I've been trying to crochet this beaded bag on weekends, but I seem to spend most of my time threading the damn beads on in the wrong order. I'm a little tired of crocheting a few stitches, shreiking "Why don't these look like leaves???" then having to cut the thread and pull off a section of beads to redo. I'm sure if I was awake at all I'd do a better job. I can maybe thread on about four rows in a weekend and then I crochet a dozen or so stitches when I'm awake. The beads don't scan accurately at all--they're supposed to be dark & light amber with darker stems and a black background.


I've been using black DMC size 8 pearl cotton (which is next to impossible to find on the internets unless you need a case of ten), a size 5 crochet hook, and size 11/0 beads. I'm guessing this may have originally been done with smaller beads since this monster is about 9" across and most of the antique bags I've seen were maybe 7" wide or smaller. It'll have a honkin' thick beady fringe like some of the antique bags at Tri-State Antique Center. (I dare any of you to stay away from this site. It's a veritable orgy of antique beaded bags.) That site gives me way too many ideas.


The pattern is from an M. Heminway & Sons manual from I think 1900-1910 and it was charted from an antique bag, but they inexplicably changed the rosebuds in the bottom section to oak leaves. No finished size given, of course. Remember kids, beads are cheaper than yarn! The expected price of the bag is maybe $18 altogether, not counting a purse frame if I decide on using one.

I really want to do one with more than four colors. I've got a handful of patterns I found since I started this bag, ones with floral wreaths and cabbage roses, and most of those are 10-15 colors. There will be much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over those.

But at least they're cheap.


Here's a cotton lace stocking I finished a while back. I haven't touched the other one in a couple months but I think I've actually knitted maybe seven inches on that one before I got sleepy and lost it in my UFO pile. I was trying to finish the pattern and post it for spring but you see how that worked out. It'll be ready for fall. That's it, fall. These are cotton lace stockings for fall, she says, not entirely convinced.


The Land Whale was a year old at the end of April. I weighed him on my new shipping scale and he's a little over 14 lbs. Fat bastard. And don't think that lolling around on his back is some kind of rarity. I've got several dozen more images very nearly exactly like this one, not counting the ones I've deleted. It's actually gotten pretty damned tiresome. Nobody wants to look at cat junk all day.


Spotted Things are great for TV reception. I think everyone should hie themselves down to the pound and snag themselves an Ocicat for that very purpose. See, I can get History International now.


Mmmm, spotted. But is he gray? Is he brown? Or is he an unholy conglomeration of both? Too much trouble to think about it. Taking a nap instead.