anagram of brat

WOOP WOOP WOOP WE ARE AT <10 ROWS LEFT THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Projected completion: Wednesday.

My gods, my hands hurt.

It's certainly coming along! With any luck (and hopefully a minimum of wrist breakage) hopefully I can get this done by next weekend? Maybe? We'll see.

Life has been... well. Pretty much this, and podcasts and TV and will likely be that until I finish this. Hence the lack of postings. The two kind of major bits being dealing with Moonbeam's recovery, since he spent the better part of the week shut in our bathroom, to no one's enjoyment - the other two cats were freaked out by their comrade being trapped in there, Moonbeam HATES being shut up away from people, plus the inconvenience of not really being able to use the bathroom effectively. But thankfully Moonbeam is on the mend, is once again continent (thank fuck) and there is no longer kitty litter all over the bathroom (yay) so there was that. He's still on antibiotics for another week and on the urinary tract food at least until we finish the bag/cans, but at least that bit's not quite as gross. As an added perk, his general smellycatness seems to have gone away as well, so maybe the hideous breath was a sign of something else going on that the medicine is taking care of. Either way win.

Not much else to report other than attending a lovely party at renegadethumper/deliriumdeva's new place in CT. Those two do love themselves old converted factory spaces. Also I have various home improvement/cat amusement projects in the works for when this thing is finished... they mostly at this stage involve lots of measuring and discovering that I have pretty much forgotten all of my middle school trig except for the Pythagorean theorem. >_< Meanwhile I am terrifying the husbeast with murmurings on twitter about possibly needing 1500 feet of sisal rope and a whole lot of PVC pipe. Hey, I said they were projects. :P

But... first things first. Let's finish this one first.

Tomorrow, much to my surprise, I have off for MLK day. I will mostly be spending it going in for my annual as well as making a crock of stew for the week, and maybe not pissing myself off with tumblr: land of social injustice, to mark the holiday? :/ And of course, the beading. All the beading.

...which is rather inexcusable, as while yes, life got chaotic and "interesting," bead stuff still happened.

I did have to put the Castlevania Forest project on the back burner so I could make a present for Amanda. I decided on a cuff bracelet with three diamonds in it. Between Things Happening *wince* and some shortage of supplies I didn't quite get it done for Christmas - in fact I only just got it done this evening so I'll be putting it in the mail tomorrow. I hope. *shifty eyes* Anyway, have a slideshow of THAT project:



And if the slideshow doesn't work, have a link instead.

Things I learned from This Project:

• I now know how to do picot fringe. I now also hate doing picot fringe. Also when doing pico fringe, order tiny round seed beads, not delicas, unless you're going for sharp looking. (It kinda fits with the design though.) But moral of the story? Fuck picot fringe. Fuck it right in the ear.
  
  
• Miyuki end tubes are the best findings ever ever amen. I may order some tinier width ones and some much much wider ones for Mysterious Future Projects.
  
  
• Next time I do this - four diamonds and much less chain.
  
  
• if you're going to do a lot with jump rings, suck it up and get a set of tiny bead pliers. After muddling along with tweezers and regular pliers I took advantage of a Joann's sake and got extra snips and a set of three craft pliers and oh my god, quel difference. I apparently mentioned buying these in my last bead post but DONTCURR they're awesome.
  
  
• There are almost zero local major bead and finding retail websites that aren't wholesale. The closest for beads is my go-to (delibeads.com) but they don't really have any findings at all. Thankfully it's not too bad paying $5 shipping for 2-day mail from fusionbeads.com but argh. I'm about half tempted to offer to build an online store for my local bead shop purely for my own self-interest.
  
  
• It is also damn hard to shop for exact shades of colors/finishes online. Not every retailer has every color, most of their search tools are absolute shit and considering these beads originate from Japan their descriptions/names for colors vary wildly in translation. (thankfully, their product numbers don't; I have the five shades of Game Boy Green memorized. There were a few points where I gave up in a fit of pique and built my own database. I might still, because ARGH.

In other news, along with some of the aforementioned hard to find findings, I treated myself to one of these bad boys, which came today and OMG I love it.



I know, it kinda looks like a pregnancy test. It isn't. In fact, oh god, keep this thing far away from your hoo as possible. This is a thread burner - good for taking care of those persnickity millimeters of thread you can't quite clip. You just BURNINATE THEM OFF with this thing. (and then Trogdor comes in the NIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT - sorry) It is also fantastic for taking care of those ugly patches where you have a visible buildup of wax in between beads/rows. BURNINATED. EEEEEE.

*cough* I might like hot things. A little. The only drawback is that burning nylon and wax smells exactly like burning hair, which isn't too bad of a thing if you've spent any amount of time in a black hair salon.

I started back up with Castlevania on Christmas: I'll post some progress pictures on that front in a few rows, but I guess for now have a bead count.

A little short of the goals I'd set, but not a bad amount of progress, really.

I have a POST but honestly I'm still all up in my feels and can't quite get it out on paper yet. Not thinking about it for now and knowingly, flagrantly sublimating into beading. And maybe baking. And maybe Christmas decor.

I'll probably take pictures tomorrow cause you can actually see enough of the tree trunks to make it interesting.

My end of month goal is half done: 76 trombones in the big parade rows. We'll see if I get there.

Woot! I have gotten to row 44! Which means I'm done with the eye bleedingly difficult top foliage and next row begins tree trunks. I know that just made no sense whatsoever and I should probably repost the pattern but I'm lazy and I want to go bed down with my book and boy.

First the non beading news. River seems to be joining the fantastic dying by degrees party and is grounded until cell23's next paycheck. We're hoping she just needs new transmission fluid and not, oh, a new transmission, in which case a new (to us) car might be in order. Not that we can afford one, but lets worry about that shit later.

In better news, yesterday was all kinds of fun. First some noodling around downtown Greenfield with deliriumdeva and cell23 looking for lunch. We ended up at a Korean restaurant, which was a bit of an adventure considering I'd never tried Korean, but I found a seaweed beef soup that was more than acceptable and I've gingerly tried kimchi and found that it's actually tasty. This was followed by the next stop in our Kidless Saturday Local Brewery Tours. (Seriously, we've been on three now, it's kind of a Thing.) This one was Lefty's - one, I love the name for obvious Reasons, and two, porters seems to be their specialty and porters and stouts seem to be the only beers that don't immediately taste like awful to me. (Another reason these brewery tours are kind of a hilarious thing for me to be tagging along to.) But anyway, they make a graham cracker porter (IKR?) that is more than acceptable, and the only other place that sells it isn't too far away, though I suppose it's not much harder to get it directly from the brewery.

The latter portion of my Saturday was supposed to be a trip down to Northampton to see HMS Pinafore with extrajoker and claxman, which did eventually happen, but due to Spontaneous Social Things, before the show I spent the hour beforehand having a light dinner and a draft cider with deliriumdeva, esotericscribe and avalon616 at the new McLadden's Pub, which I'll fully admit I've rather fallen in love with at first sight. I sorta wish I liked beer more - 101 on tap? OMG. Anyway, after that I met up with extrajoker and thoroughly enjoyed the performance of Pinafore, which I'd never seen live. It was admittedly a bit weird to hear music I primarily associate with Animaniacs and $amusement_park area incidentals in its original context, but the show is so raucously silly that I quickly got past the weirdness. :) After extrajoker dropped me home I found myself over at deliriumdeva's for a bit to wrap up the evening with some of the usual suspects - all in all a quite successful day.

Also I looked damn good:



Serving some American Horror Story Marie LaVeau realness, if I do say so myself.

Today? pajamas, antisocialness and BEADS BEADS OMG BEADS. My wrists are the sore of accomplishment, even if the side of my pinky's still a bit raw - I bought medical tape at CVS last night so that the thread would quit cutting into my finger when tightening it. Crafting injuries are so badass. *rolleyes*

Anyway, just completed row 40. 4 short of my goal for the weekend, but eh whatever, I don't actually want my hands to turn to useless noodles.And I've almost caught up from the several days of little or no progress so there's something.



It doesn't look like much yet because you can't tell that that's the tops of trees without, well, additional context. Also, shitty photo, but meh, I'll do better when it actually looks like something.

And with that, to bed with me.

Just a bead count...

I'm about a quarter shy of being done with row 30, but it's damn late and I don't feel like finishing it tonight.

Today was just full of runaround stupid and I'm really starting to fucking hate Wednesdays.

I had two doctor appointments today. Ugh. Remind me never to do that again. In fact, I'ma go through my calendar and make sure all my damn doctor appointments are spaced at least two weeks apart because UGH. But anyway. This morning was a follow up with Dr Kate about last week's drama (and to dig the stictch from the biopsy out of my elbow because ITCHY). Turns out the lab lost my tissue sample so I have been admonished to come back in the office the second it flares up again and maybe I get a small chunk taken out of a different part of me, huzzah.

At least I have the go-ahead to start weaning off the prednisone, yay.

Doctor #2 in the afternoon was going to my GI for my check in, which I kept because I had put it off a couple times before and I wanted to discuss the rash with him. I was apparently tested for sarcoid before and came up negative (guess I'd brought it up before) so between than and the lost biopsy rash remains a mystery. Game plan for now is to get off the steroid and back onto a regular schedule with my other meds and check back in in 3 months, or before if rash=yes.

I also had to sit and go through my huge file of gastrointestinal fuckery with him because they're transitioning over to digital records and some of my files weren't jiving with other ones. (Turns out a years worth were not, in fact missing, but refiled because I apparently became a different person once I got married. Whut.) While doing this several photographs of my small bowel the night before it exploded cropped up... scary shit I never want to see again.

I had just enough time to scratch kitties and pee before heading back out to bells.... and then home to what would have been a nice evening with the husband and deliriumdeva except Moonbeam peed outside the litterbox in a corner of the kitchen and it was pink. Because great, the last thing I needed at the end of my day was elderly cat UTI. Calling the vet first thing tomorrow, and meanwhile kicking myself for forgetting to put down water for them this morning, and having a good old grump about some folk back home and their unwillingness to take care of cats properly.

After all that the fact I got even one row done of beading seems heroic.

4420 / 25840 beads. 17.105% done!

There were nice things about today too. Bells was good and I like our holiday piece. Drew unexpectedly met me in town for lunch off the Amherst halal cart which was soooooooooooooooooo good. I spent much of my day working remotely from the Jones Library, which was lovely. And I continued to unravel bits of code and put it together better today, so it wasn't all a wash. And now I'm going to have a nice shower and maybe watch American Horror Story before bed.

Here's hoping tomorrow is a bit better.