December Runneth Me Over

I'm not really sure where December went. I have a vague memory of Christmas parties, Board Meetings, Nursing Home concerts and Church Concerts, and brand new and very sick kitten. There was also a lovely stomach virus and computer explosion thrown in there somewhere. I now have a brand new computer and an upgraded internet service so all seems to be better.

Midnight Services were particularly interesting this year when a sudden and violent stomach virus invaded my body. I'm so very lucky that this Church is nice and had no problems with me running out during Communion and never returning. They even fetched my cello from the Altar area and helped me get everything packed up. Although, it might just have been that they took one look at me and just really really wanted me out of there. :)-

I'm gearing up for Tax Season now. Part of me hopes that I'm so busy that I tear my hair out, but the other part just wants me to make enough to pay my bills including the new computer setup. I think I'm going to aim for somewhere in between. Being self-employed has been wonderful yet frightening so far. I have a feeling that this is how it's always going to be, though. At least I get to work with a cat on my lap and music playing the background that's a definite upgrade.

I have yet again failed to take pictures of the baby blanket I finished last month, but here's a picture of another one I made last summer. Just imagine this blanket sans the cat and in teal. I really like this pattern. It's simple enough that I don't cry when the baby tears it up and since I always make it out of cotton the Momma can bleach it to her heart's contect and I still don't cry. I've seen a few of these being carried around by 5 year olds and they do seem to hold together even after being tortured.



Now I'm working on a simple prayer shawl for my neighbor. My forever project, a blanket for my sister, has been temporarily put away but will be returning after we've spent some time apart learning from our past mistakes. It's about double this size now after some late nights, but is still only half-way finished. I really need to think these things out better.

4 am Collie Frolicking

Yet again I started the day at 4am, 5am, 6am and finally 7:30 when I dragged myself out of bed. Rita Mae, my elderly collie has decided that cold frosty mornings are the best thing ever and insists on going outside for hours at a time. Of course, at her age when you wake up you must immediately use the bathroom so she knows that I'm going to put her out no matter how many times she asks. But watching a happy if slightly frosty collie come in is worth it all. Well, my sleep o'meter begs to differ, but most of me thinks it's good.

Yesterday was spent in another seminar. This one was a telecast of a panel of CPAs in Dallas talking about the changes in the tax law. Riveting. However, I did get about 5 inches of my sock cuff knit so at least something was accomplished. I do learn stuff at these conferences, but I really think they would be much more interesting if every so often something exploded or there were death defying acrobatics going on in the background. But the day ended well when a client took me out to dinner to discuss some tax issues. That's a definite perk of the job, although my waistline might not agree.

Today was spent running all over creation. I worked on a client's books, did my nursing home volunteering, shopped at Walmart (joy!), got a letter together to mail to the IRS, took a deposit across town for a client and met with another client in Bossier. I feel like I've spent most of the day in my car or talking to people. So now I'm relaxing with a cup of coffee, my knitting and Burn Notice. Not a bad way to end the day.

Here's Rita the Elderly Frost Loving Collie and my newish kitten, Castiel, enjoying dinner together a few days ago.

A Day for the Rearview Mirror

I made it to Carthage this morning and played for my friend's funeral. It was amazing. A full 60 piece choir, a string quartet, a pianist and an organist showed up to pay tribute. We played Handel's Hallelujah Chorus as the recessional. I've never played a harder "gig" or a more touching one. I started sobbing in the middle of our first piece and finally one of the choir members took pity on me and handed me a kleenex. But, I'm glad I was able to give something back to his family and help create such a wonderful tribute to the life he led.

I spent the rest of the day playing on Ravelry and dealing with the IRS.

Therefore, I have decided that the rest of this evening will be spent drinking hot tea and wearing my footie pajamas (it's freaking cold here). Now I just need to decide what I should watch while chilling out. Tough tough decision. I've got Burn Notice, Star Trek, Stargate and Stargate Atlantis on DVD or I could always look for the trashiest thing on tv and just veg out. No knitting has or will happen today.  I desperately need to finish up a baby blanket, but I have issues knitting on something that should be infused with happy feelings when I'm feeling this tired and depressed.

Tomorrow is another day and another seminar. Woohoo! The Annual Tax Update all as a webcast. So no interaction and lots of bored accountants sleeping, reading the paper, or (in my case) knitting.

I did do one fun thing today and stopped by the Jim Reeves Memorial just outside Carthage. There's not a lot to see, but I love stopping  there and walking over the guitar and saying hello to his statue. I almost feel like I've forgotten something when I don't get to do this. Here's a closeup of the guitar that makes up part of the sidewalk.

Seminars, Funerals and Knitting

'Tis the season for Christmas concerts. I played my first one last night for a large Baptist Church here in town. It went off pretty well except for the finding out that a dear friend had died just as I was going on stage. The conductor thought that I already knew and asked me if I knew when the funeral was. I had to ask him who had died. :( Totally not cool. I knew he was ill and in the hospital, but the last thing I had heard was encouraging. So, tomorrow, I will drive to Carthage, Texas and play his funeral along with other musicians that he performed with and students he taught. He was truly a wonderful man and I will miss him.

So, today I spent my time with the other profession I'm involved with...accountants. Whoo boy, are they a different breed of people. The topic today was "Small Business Accounting and Auditing Update". Isn't your pulse racing from just reading that title? The speaker was pretty good. In fact, no one fell asleep. Yay! Let's just say that the only reason I stayed awake was because of my knitting. I got a seat in the back and put my simple baby blanket under the desk and knit away. So, I learned lots of fun stuff about Engagement Letters and International GAAP Standards and.......  Hey! Are you still awake?? At least I should be able to finish the baby blanket for the baby that was born last week (whoops) if not tonight then tomorrow night.

Tonight I will be eating the Great Northern Beans I made in the crock pot yesterday and some cabbage and trying to get a good nights sleep before hitting the road in the morning. I'm trying to eat healthier and counting my calories. It's not terribly fun, but I've promised myself a season of Supernatural for each 10 pounds lost .Sadly I should be able to collect the entire series by the time I hit my goal weight. So, yay for Supernatural, boo for letting myself get so overweight. However, the chance to watch rather attractive men fight demons, etc is enough to make me turn down the cake and pick up the cabbage. It's a good thing that I'm rather easily bought.

Day Two of Stephie's Reign

I do believe this is a first with Laura's blog. I am blogging for her for the second day in a row. In case you missed yesterday's fascinating blog post I am Stephanie, the cat that owns Laura.

As promised I had pictures taken of all of her unfinished projects and the dirty quilt she dragged home from a yard sale. I must say that she has accomplished quite a bit on several of the projects but others are just shameful and only add to the clutter around the house. And, let me tell y'all, the Stephie Cat does not hold for clutter. My favorite thing to do is to move about the house and point out the areas that are mussy.

Anyway, here are the pictures. I had to enlist my Grandmother in the project so don't blame me if the pictures aren't up to your standards. I have no opposable thumbs, that makes picture taking difficult.

What you are seeing is a sock, the dark blue is the beginning of a rug, the red is an almost complete Christmas tree garland and the small blue thing is, I believe, the beginnings of a dishcloth. Please pardon the gratuitous dog picture. Grandmama just loves adding those little homey touches to her photography.

And finally here is a shot of the quilt. Laura keeps saying that she's going to wash it and make it pretty, but all I know is that she better hurry before I do something about it. My poor nose is still stuffed up from when I took it down to Grandmama's house. Again ignore the small furry creature she has snapped a picture of. I read somewhere that cat pictures can increase a blogs traffic, but still this is getting a little too much.

Ta ta 'til tomorrow.

Well, Well, Well

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Stephanie. I own Knittin' Pigeon (she thinks it's the other way around) and I guess that means that it's my duty to make sure she gets her job done. I see that this blog is one of the many things she has failed to keep up with, so here I am.

First things first. I will post a picture of myself so you can picture me when I speak. Plus, I'm drop dead gorgeous and it would add a little bit of pleasure to your humdrum lives to see me.

Now that I have been properly introduced and can move ahead with this post. I have tallied that Laura has 4 projects that she is working on at the moment. They appear to be Christmas tree garland, a rug, a blanket and a sock. Hopefully by telling the entire internet of her inability to focus I can make her clean up her projects and more importantly my couch. I am sick and tired of her moving me off of nice warm wooly things only to be told not to rip out her stitches. As if!

She also keeps talking about starting a garden. I've seen her reading magazines and books on gardening instead of petting me lately and this has definitely got me worried. I mean, why should you read a stinky old book about growing vegetables. I could understand studying methods of raising a few fish in a pond for cat snacks or even some chickens. But vegetables? Yuck.

Tomorrow I will take pictures of her incomplete projects as well as show you the nasty blanket she dragged home. She insists on gloating about finding a Depression Era Quilt that was made out of flour and cotton sacking. I really don't understand her need to keep collecting things that are dusty,

Action Packed Day

Any day that includes hitting two yarn stores for yarn and fleece, driving in torrential rain, receiving a brand new spindle in the mail and an attack by a herd of angry baby birds is a full day in my books.

First off, Stitches and Stuff in Longview, Texas puts everything in the store on sale for 20% off every July and January. So since I can still walk in my house I decided that I desperately needed to go. Also my Momma is having surgery at the beginning of August and I've been trying to get her out of the house as often as possible and I insisted that she needed a cool project while she's recuperating. She packed us a lunch of peaches and sandwiches and we headed towards East Texas. Momma thought that is would be best to go to Rosepath Weaving in Lindale, Texas as well because she decided that I need to learn to spin and that was going to be her big project while she's stuck in bed. I foresee lots of wailing and gnashing of Pigeon teeth this August.

The weather started off good, but just past Longview it started to rain. Then it started to rain harder and the big oil trucks were passing me and making it a very unpleasant drive. I'm a good rain driver and usually enjoy and good drive in the rain, but this crossed that fine line between raining and storming. One SUV had already skidded off the road and was lying in the median between the lanes of I-20. Let's just say that we were very happy to reach Lindale.

Rosepath Weaving is a wonderful store. They have everything from Needlepoint to weaving and spinning to yarn to beads. As I said everything. I got myself some wool to learn to spin and a book on weaving so that I can finally get my loom going. So far the loom and I are creating some magnificent crap. I hope to alter this. Then I went to the needlepoint section and gazed at a canvas that I've fallen in love with. It's a picture of a Native American Woman at a Navajo style loom. It's already been needle pointed and they don't have another copy, but the lady was in the shop today and told me she'd find me another one. Yay! So maybe y'all will soon see some needle pointing action from me.

The rain had slacked off so we headed back along US Highways 69 and 80 to Longview, but the rain found us again. The impossible occurred and it was raining even harder. I couldn't see the vehicles in front of me and the water was coming up over the road. While it was doing this there was no place to pull off the road and when I finally reached civilization and places to park it stopped. We survived, obviously, but my neck and back are still sore from gripping the wheel and trying that hard not to hydroplane. Very frightening.

At Stitches and Stuff I bought way too much yarn in celebration of life. Actually I picked up the edging for two prayer shawls and the 4 skeins of cotton I wanted. Plus I was inspired by a shawl in the shop and purchased enough wool to make a similar one for myself. I need to play with some stitch patterns, but I'm leaning towards a warm cabled shawl with buttons.

By this point we were both exhausted so it was off for home. I got extremely excited when I got a card from the mail lady telling me that a package was on my front porch. It was the drop spindle and alpaca that I had ordered from Big Horn Mountain Alpacas' in Wyoming. I'm very impressed with how fast they got that to me and with what's inside the package. I can't wait to get started.

In retrieving my box from the front porch is when I was attacked by the birds. I was bending over to get the box when I felt something soft beating me. I started to panic because I thought it was a wasp, but I didn't want to get stung, so I slowly turned around and was face to face with a teenage bird of some flailing variety. It was as freaked as I was and then it's siblings saw the mess it was in a started to come after me. I rushed into the house and those stupid things kept hollering at me for over an hour. I'm guessing that they're nest is somewhere in the eaves of my porch, but I don't plan to go and hang out there for awhile. Phew.

I think I'm going to go and knit and watch TV for awhile and gaze at my pretty packages now. I might even take something for my headache and grab a beer. Yep - that sounds like a dandy plan to me.

The Cat Whisperer Versus the Dread Pirate Misty

Those of you who know me over on ravelry have probably already seen stories about my Dad and his dealings with the colony of feral cats that made an appearance on his land. There have been no new litters for about two years so I think it's safe to assume that everyone has been trapped and fixed at this point. This still leaves a ton of feral cats that live in and around my parent's house and in the woods behind their house.

In the past the ferals have managed to take up residence in the small space between the ceiling and the roof so they literally had a couple of ceiling cats. It was kind of awesome to just be sitting there knitting and watching TV with them and all of the sudden the little thud of feral foot would sound overhead. The best was when they would fight. My Dad finally coaxed all the cats out with lots of tuna fish and closed their entrance.

Then there was the time that my sister had two semi-feral kittens that she had trapped and was trying to tame as indoor cats. They took up residence under her bed and eventually burrowed into her box springs for a better hiding place. When it came time to get them fixed she had the unlucky task of trying to figure out how to extract them. So she called the cat whisperer. He looked under her bed and found the wad of cats, took out a pocket knife and cut a cat wad shaped hole in her box springs and caught the very surprised kittens as they fell out of the mattress and shoved them in a cage. My sister said that she had never seen two more surprised cats in her life.

Having said all of this, my Dad has been thwarted by a rather stupid feral cat named The Dread Pirate Misty (thank you to my little sister for the name), aka Dreadly. Dreadly is a tortie and can usually be found sitting on their roof and meowing and begging for pets when she remembers that she likes humans. When you're a Dreadly cat, your memory isn't that good. Anyway little Sis's new German Shepardish puppy managed to gnaw a hole in the bottom of the door into my Dad's office. My Mom blocked it off, but Dreadly had already discovered the wonder that is "the Cat Whisperer's Office". First she figured out how to move the chest blocking the hole and then when Dad fixed that she discovered that she could remove the insulation around the window a/c unit and break in. Now she's back to tunnelling in through the door. My Dad keeps blocking her different entrance places, but she's always at least a step ahead of him. We're not sure what she's getting out of this whole breaking and entering thing since she only breaks in when Dad isn't in there and when Dad isn't in there the a/c is turned off to that room. Still every day or so Dreadly will perform her Houdini act. They are having to keep a close eye on her because well a) she's a feral cat and therefore not house broken, b) there's no food, water or litter box in there and c) it's been in the upper 90s and low 100s for the past few weeks which means that it's even warmer in the room.

As of this morning the score stands at:

The Dread Pirate Misty 7

My Dad, the Cat Whisperer 0

BTW - here's a picture of their little B & E artist taken during the great Louisiana snow storm last winter.

A New Order of Business

The past couple of weeks have been busy for me. I've finally decided on a plan of action and have been going at it full tilt. I'm opening my own accounting firm and I've been telling everyone I can find about it. A lot of cards have been passed out and one return has been completed. I'm supposed to meet with a couple more people next week to discuss their accounting work.

Unfortunately, this plus the heat wave has cut into my knitting time. It's just been way the heck too hot to knit anything other than dishcloths. I've spent a lot of time looking at all my pretty yarn and getting all sweaty just thinking about knitting with any of it. My poor air conditioner can't keep up. I've got the thermostat set at 80F and even that's a struggle. My elderly collie has taken over a box fan in my living room and gets quite upset when I turn it off at night. I tried to explain to her that I don't trust her not to knock it over, but you try explaining to an intelligence challenged, hot, elderly collie why she can't keep her fan on all the time.

I just finished playing a wedding. Nothing too exciting other than a photographer that seemed to be getting in a rather strenuous yoga routine while she took her pictures. Hopefully future gigs will provide more entertainment.

Kitties, Sheep and Rain

I'm starting to come out of the fog that fell over my life last week. I've gotten a couple of job leads and I'm starting to feel a lot better on that front. I've also been embracing my inner pioneer woman. I hit the sales at the local grocery stores and bought a ton of squash and zucchini to freeze. I also put up some applesauce. An old copy of the Good Housekeeping Cookbook and I have been close friends. I even managed to make popcorn on the stove and didn't set anything on fire. The last time I attempted that I managed to set the whole pan on fire. We're talking giant flames. Only my obsessive watching of Emergency! during college kept my house from catching fire. I distinctly remember screaming "What would John and Roy do?". Let's just say that I will not be turning this into a cooking blog within the foreseeable future.

I finally drug out the fleece I bought in New Mexico last year and started to clean all the thistles and fecal matter (to put it nicely) out. I spread a trash bag on my parents front yard and was promptly joined by several others; four cats and a bored neighbor. A girl cleaning a sheep fleece can attract a lot of attention. I had to speak firmly to the cats about staying away from the fleece and they took up positions around my like so many little furry, rolling, meowing sentries. The neighbor came up on his four wheeler to investigate and even he couldn't scare off my guards. He recently broke his ankle and had to have surgery and shouldn't be walking around let alone driving over to see what I was up to. Ah the allure of a girl with fleece.

It rained all this afternoon and after a rather scary drive home from the store with the wind buffeting my car and trying to blow me across the road. I decided to take to my bed with a good book and my knitting and watched CSI. Over all it was a good day and I hope to continue my forays into playing pioneer woman. I refuse to wear a corset, though.

Adventures in Dyeing and Cello

This morning my Mom and I went playing in the graveyards. No it's not what y'all are thinking. We got to talking about natural dyes and decided to start with lichens. And since lichens grow on oak trees we figured that the best place to find fallen oak limbs covered in lichens would be in the graveyards. So that's where we went. We started off just trying to scrape the lichens off at the cemetary, but quickly decided to just throw the limbs in my trunk to be harvested later. Let's just say that my trunk now has a very oaky/licheny scent. We also gathered some wild growing mimosa flowers while we were out.

When we got home we soaked the mimosa flowers in some alcohol but that didn't work. Tomorrow I will be gathering more flowers and trying the different methods of extracting the dye. Plus I've spotted some interesting looking berries in my parents' backyard and some wild black eyes susans in the ditches around my house. I could be gaining a rather random reputation if this keeps up. I also think I'm going to talk to my next door neighbor about buying her goats' milk and attempting soap. This could get very interesting. I hope I don't blow something up. If I do I promise to post pictures of the destruction.

After my adventures this morning playing nature woman I came home, freshened up and changed into my all black ensemble. I arrived at the Church early and spent some time reading before we played. The concert went well and I was surprised to see that several prominent local violinists joined us for the first piece, a Tchaikovsky, that was dedicated to the memory of the conductor's wife. She had been a rather well known violinist in the Northeast and I'm sorry that I never had the opportunity to meet her or hear her play. The way the conductor spoke about her made her seem like a very special lady.

Tomorrow I look for more plants and start cleaning a fleece in the front yard. This will be my first time playing with a raw fleece so wish me luck.

A Brave New World

Well, today marks the beginning of a new way of life for the pigeon. I've lost my best friend and I've lost my job all within a period of 4 days. It's either start over or keep making the same choices and mistakes. I've decided to start over. I've got some money in savings and a couple of months of severance pay coming my way so I have choices. I think for now I'm going to explore my options for making money on my own without an 8-5 position. I'm going to give myself until next June 1st to decide whether or not this is a good idea. I've got a couple of ideas up my sleeve that involve the cello and my knitting, both of which are passions of mine.

To start off my new way of life I'll tell y'all a story about the concert I'm currently in rehearsals for. It should be a really great performance, by the way. We've now rehearsed for three days straight and I've managed to only fall down the steps leading to the Church one time. I've got a lovely scrape up my left leg. Anyway the conducter is in his 80s and keeps telling us awesome stories about being a musician in the 1960s and the random concerts he's conducted. One involved a guy coming on stage in a complete non-pc Indian Chief costume and doing a fake war dance for 10 minutes in the middle of a piece of music. Ah the 60s must have been a grand time to be a classical musician. The problem, though is that he is now severely hunch-backed and insists on conducting while sitting in a short chair. The problem you might ask? No one can see his baton unless they're on the front row. Me? I'm on the back row because I got this gig at the last minute and was sight reading for the first rehearsal. The poor guy keeps getting upset that we aren't stopping when he stops and then he starts mumbling which makes it all the more awesome. I can still see the spark that made him a great conductor at one time, but in between are great moments of confusion. I'll let y'all know how this all goes come Sunday.

Tax Season and Jesus in Cowboy Boots

I'm still mired in tax season, but slogging through it all. I do have good distractions this week, though. Last Sunday I was able to watch my hometeam, the Saints, win the Superbowl and this weekend is Daytona. Tax Season isn't nearly as hard to deal with when there are such good distractions.

I promised last week that I tell y'all more about the roadtrip I took in December. I left after work and drove to Mt. Pleasant, Texas. I had plans to meet my friend, Erica, in southern Oklahoma the next day for lunch and to have time to get there and see Paris, Texas on the way I decided to leave a bit early. I stopped at a Super 8 Motel along I-35 and thought I'd get the typical cheap hotel room. Nope. I wound up with a freaking whirlpool tub. When I discovered that I could lounge in it and watch tv and read I thought about just staying in Mt. Pleasant for the duration.

The next day I went to Paris. Pretty little town with some random art installations. There is a replica of the Eiffel Tower with a giant cowboy hat on top and a statue of Jesus wearing cowboy boots on a grave.

More on that later. I'll just leave you to contemplate those two photos. Hopefully this time next week I'll actually have some pictures of my knitting to share. Wouldn't that be awesome?

BTW. Who Dat and Go Kurt!

I Have Not Forgotten About This

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted something to this blog. I'm now mired in Tax Season and just trying to keep my head above water. So no cool news about running off to join the circus or seeing just how many miles I can drive in five days anytime soon.

I've been knitting, though. I'm bound and determined to get a few WIPs out of the way. I think they've been breeding again. I got a lot done while watching the 24 Hours of Daytona Grand-Am race. No sleep, but lots of knitting. I am, however getting excited for the new season of Formula One. So many driver changes. I'm confused about having to root for Fernando Alonso now and attempting to jeer at Michael Schumacher. I refuse to give up my Michael Schumacher Seven Time World Champion Ferrari hat, though. It's comfortable and it still makes me laugh to think of the look on Kurt Busch's face when I showed up to an autograph signing wearing it.

My new projects for this year have been to read 100 books and knit 100 skeins of yarn. I finished book number seven this morning and I'm working on skein number 21. Hmmmm - something seems a bit off here. Let's guess what Laura's been more in the mood to do for the last month.

The only real excitement is the men that have been digging random holes in the field across the street from my office. There's been one guy showing up randomly for the past three weeks and digging. Today there were five of them and by the time I noticed them they had dug (by hand) a hole big enough that two of them were standing in it and only the tops of their heads were visible. Later one of the men went and started a new hole, but he didn't seem to get too excited about it. They also all drive white pick-up trucks. The plot thickens.

I'll sign off with a picture to whet your appetite about the four day roadtrip I took in December. I'll post about that in more detail later.