Alright,  marmots. Rampant rumors aside, I’m here to tell you that I am NOT dead, trapped under a pile of craigslist finds or detained in my sewing room, fingers stitched securely to my skirt and/or pigtails. None of those claims are true, and I (or my faithful spammers – “great article! keep up the good work”) will  be pursuing the lying liars who keep repeating them in due time. I  am, in fact, in the throes of the most mundane of time wasters. Work. That’s right. I’ve been working, working, working.

No sewing, knitting, decorating, craigslisting, painting or other fun things like that. In fact, since my last blog post there’s been very little actual cleaning and far too many late night dinners of nachos, fast food, or spaghetti. (“again?” asks Mr. Bug, a heartbroken tone in his voice.) Also since my last blog post, I’ve been in Minneapolis for nearly a week, Denver for a few days and either created or converted something like a hundred pieces of collateral due to an annoying massive rebranding where I work. I’m sure you are starting to see the reason for the radio silence!

On the NEWS front… hmmmm… we managed to decide on a paint color and got the house painted. We hacked down some holly bushes to do so, and they are already sprouting some new holly leaves. We got a gas grill (holla!) We took a trip to Paris, Texas, and toured the home of General Sam Bell Maxey. I didn’t recognize the confederate flag in one of the paintings (“what flag is that?” she asked, in her curiously flat midwestern voice. The tour guide sighed to herself, wishing she had closed up before that last tour of the day…) Mr. Bug sold our deep freeze to a guy named Jeff who plans to fill it with feral hogs he hunts down and kills with his bare hands. While in Denver, I got to catch up with a friend from high school who I haven’t seen in five years, but have now seen twice since moving to Dallas, finally giving meaning and purpose to the whole convention/trade show schtick. The temperatures in Texas have dropped to the 80’s/90’s, rendering our pool FREEZING (WTF, amiright??) I realized there’s a Lane Bryant at the outlet mall a few miles from my house and OD’d on $10 dresses and blouses of questionable prints. And a belt. Raided the early fall boot stock at Avenue and cowboy boot selection at Target, raising my boot count to something like 18 (counting both lefties and righties, leaving out the Uggs.) Got a Blu Ray player, watched the most recent season of DEXTER (SERIOUSLY, WTF Debra!!??) Downloaded Can’t You See by the Marshall Tucker Band, listened to it 300 times. Today. And hey! Guess what Mr. Bug and I decided to do??? We’re adopting!

Baby girl puppy #4 was born almost 3 weeks ago. In a few weeks we get to go and pick our puppy (the ones in the picture above are three from the litter) – when our pick comes up, there’ll be three girls left, so I’m relatively certain (hoping) there’ll be a puppy that we like. The puppy will come and live with us in early October. Lucy has NO idea how her life is about to change! And I’m dreading house training in a house that has carpet (whole second floor.) But baby bassets are the cutest things in the world. God is a crafty one, isn’t he?

This little guy (girl?) is a puppy from a previous litter of the dad-basset. It’s mom-basset’s first litter.

Awwwwww…. right?

Now before I leave y’all…. I was busting my poor little brain trying to figure out something relevant to blog about. And this silly thing came to mind for all you knitters. The company I work for makes plastic things – meshes, fencing… stuff like that. One of the things we make and sell in our online shop is this stretchy mesh in a tube and TWO clever customers have ordered this stuff as cozies for their yarnballs! CLEVER!!

  
[online shop]

Honestly, it comes in a giant roll (OK. 82 feet), so unless you have a HUGE STASH, are in a knitting club, or have a level of OCD (like mine) that make it seem perfectly reasonable to purchase a lifetime supply of yarn cozies at once, it’s probably a reach for most folks, but I thought it’d be of some interest to all y’all.  If you decide you want some, I thinks folks have ordered the ‘lightweight green’ style (item #058532.) And if you place an order say ‘hi patty’ in the notes!**

Here are some freaky unflattering pictures of me stretching the green stuff over my hand. Hand model, I am not.

And for you curious Kate’s, the sleeve is intended for more industrial use. Like sliding over metal helium tanks or something like that…

**NOT shilling for my company – at least, not during this post 🙂 Just think it’s a clever use and wanna know if any of y’all place an order.