Major acts of retail therapy are soothing my stressed-out soul. Girl's kitchen is nearly done - God Bless Target and their $9.88 sets of stoneware - two boxes, twenty bucks, yielded eight dinner plates, eight salad plates, eight bowls, eight glasses, eight mugs and some cheap flatware with plastic handles that I am sure will break almost immediately, but might get her through Christmas, when I'll buy her a decent set of something. She still needs a few basic pots and pans, but I think Walmart will provide something - Target has gotten very chi-chi in its cookware selection, and I really don't think she needs a full set of Bialetti cookware to make spaghetti. Target did, however, have a couple of nice dish chairs for $34.88 apiece, a George Foreman and coffee maker and toaster on sale, nifty cooking accessories to match the blue-trimmed stoneware, etc. Then Costco came through with a bagless Eureka for under fifty bucks. Of course she still needs a futon sofa, lamps and tables, some sort of kitchen seating and a decent desk chair, but that's it, the place will be furnished. I'm throwing in a Target torchiere lamp and a folding table from this place.


Speaking of retail therapy, I broke my "no yarn until the Knitter's Review Retreat" vow, and it's Knitter's Review's fault. Remember my yearning to felt Kureyon? Somebody on the KR forum pointed out that TheKnitter offers free shipping all the time, no minimum purchase. So I had to do it, I ordered some Kureyon - enough for a couple of felted Bucket -o-Chics, with probably enough left over for a cute cellphone case or other little doodad. That way I will get to felt Kureyon, I will not be making Yet Another Damn Felted Bag, and my ears will be warm in the chilly wind when I'm walking the Bossy One at dawn. You don't get a whole lot of wear out of a warm hat in Florida, but we do get very chilly, sometimes freezing, nights and mornings, so a warm hat is not totally frivolous knitting. And if I go "up North" to visit the Girl often, I'll wear it even more. So there.


This was a stressful and PMSful week, and I am having some Career Angst and this makes me miss my husband even more. I do have other friends to talk to but unfortunately the ones I'm most inclined to talk to have a dog in this fight, one really doesn't need to know about my angst, and the other knows already but is highly biased in his advice, for reasons which may become public someday, or maybe not. Anyway, I'm really missing coming home from work to rant and bitch about the corporate bullshit to my husband, who worked in a different industry but understood very well how Life Imitates Dilbert. My kids try to listen and sympathize, but neither has done hard time in the corporate prison system yet, (and God willing, they never will) so they can't quite relate. So anyway, I think it will be a fine evening for some decaf coffee with a little Bailey's (for medicinal purposes - PMS relief) and some more work on the market bag. I'm really enjoying the entrelac - I had put off starting the bag because somehow I thought it would be too fiddly for my addled attention span, but it's one of those elegantly simple patterns that has just enough interest to keep me moving on to the next square.


I'm glad I did the shopping this evening, because the sky is about to open up and rumor has it a tropical storm is headed our way for early next week. It's still just an early rumor, but the weatherpoodles are yapping hysterically in anticipation. We're already getting a ton of rain daily, I can't get too worried about a tropical storm, it's just more of the same, yet noisier. It may be a housebound knitting weekend. Awww...sounds just awful, doesn't it?