fishie’s aquarium

When I was working at Value Village, I was the bed and bath pricer. This meant I priced bed and bath shit, all the accessories like purses and ties, and… all the craft stuff. So I not only did I get DIBS on the knitting crap… I DECIDED HOW MUCH THEY WOULD COST. I got a 50% discount, so I’d price things in a way so that they’d be JUST BARELY too expensive for somebody to just buy, but with my discount, it would still be really fucking cheap. If I even priced it and put it out on the floor instead of accidentally leaving it in my pocket before I went home.

One day, I found heaven

My heart skipped a beat in the same way it did when I found $90 in a crappy wallet. Could this be? Did I really find the holy grail of ugly vintage knitting patterns? I opened it to the first page, and I realized my dreams had come true:

It was love at first sight. Normally when I find a book or magazine of knitting patterns, I’ll like ONE thing in there. Maybe. But this… The book is FILLED with brilliance. Like…

A beautiful sweater dress

and

KNITTED PANTS AND MATCHING PONCHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I’ve been needing SOME kind of motivation to get knitting again.
I bought lots of yummy yarn for an even yummier shirt, but it’s still not enough to get me going.

Before Chris embarked on a long journey to California leaving me all to my lonesome, I wanted to go yarn shopping so I’d have something to keep me occupied in his absence. I knew what I wanted to make (see yummy shirt link above) but I didn’t have the materials to make it. There’s a yarn store within walking distance of the house, and I’d never been there before, so there we went. It being close and a nice day, we went for a walk, and Chris took Athena. For those of you who don’t know, this is Athena with me as a size comparison:

So we’re walking walking walking. And I’m wearing my flip flops because pfft like I wear real shoes anymore, and we’re walking walking walking. Athena likes to walk RIGHT in front of Chris, which is inconvenient since the leash is about the length of her body. I was walking behind Chris at one point in a cross walk because other people were crossing the other direction, and I was walking too close behind Chris and OW! my toe!! The back of his shoe hit my left big toenail as he was lifting up his foot. I didn’t pay too much mind right away since he’s done stuff like that before, and at this point my feet are getting used to being tortured. I mean, the nasty black part of my right toenail just fell off, so why should I try having normal looking toenails?
After we’ve crossed, my feet are REALLY hurting, and I look down. And see this:

Not one, but THREE toenails were damaged in the incident. Normally my big toenail just gets bent a little. No, Chris tore it RIGHT OFF. Luckily I had a napkin in my bag, so I had something to wrap around my GUSHING toe when I wandered around the yarn store and bought

I spent $127 on knitting paraphenalia. But I bought four sets of circular needles, so the yarn wasn’t actually THAT expensive, and I joined their $10 annual fee club deal, where after I spend $250, I get $25 of store credit. $250 isn’t a whole lot of stuff, and I’m halfway there already after one purchase.