Day Two of NaBloPoMo

Well, here we are on the second day of this NoBloPoMo challenge. I finished yesterday's post pretty late, so not much has happened since then, as of this writing at 11am. I am going to try a pseudo live blogging format today, to see how I like it. I won't actually post this until the end of the day, though. So not really live, I guess just an hour by hour post? I don't know, I'm still sleepy.

11:00 am: I've been up for a couple hours. I had an important phone call just after 9 that I had to deal with. She's going to be calling me back later today to give me all the information. Sorry to be vague about this, but it's concerning some legal matters that I'm just not comfortable sharing here right now. I'm not in trouble or anything, so there's no need to worry about that.

I've knit quite a bit on the one shawl I have on the needles. This is another arrowhead shaped shawl. I had to undo a few rows because I'd dropped a stitch, but I've made it past that point. I'm trying to decide if I want to add yarn overs every few rows to give it some lacy detail, or just live it solid garter stitch. The yarn is slightly thicker than worsted weight, and sort of fuzzy, so I'm not sure if it will look strange being lacy.

12:00 pm: I decided to go without the lace. The other shawls similar to this one don't have the lace, and I want to be able to keep things consistent as far as pattern and price. I'm trying to have a few standard items so I can have prices that make sense. I want to get away from the completely one of a kind items. Those make pricing difficult.

2:00 pm: I got all dressed up, and had somewhere to go! I seriously woke up in the middle of the night last night with my outfit planned in my head. There was only one change, which Rick suggested, and the outfit was pretty much perfect. I loved the way this outfit turned out, and I asked Rick to take a quick picture so I could share it here, and this is the only one where I don't look like a complete ding dong.
Head to toe:
Glasses: Emporio Armani (from a couple years old)
Lips: essence stay with me in 04 trendsetter
Short Sleeved Sweater: Hand knit in Iceland, purchased at Handknitting Association of Iceland (also seen here)
Long Sleeved Shirt: Mark's Work Warehouse (glamorous, I know!) I initially bought this to wear under my fleece vest at work, which I do regularly, but it was perfect for under the sweater. This is the one change made. I was going to wear a grey striped long sleeved shirt. Rick said there was too much going on in the outfit, so I changed to a plain shirt, and this is what came of it!
Shorts: Gap I bought these when we went to the mall the other day, and paid about $15 for two pairs. Love them!
Tights: Zellers, I think. For like $1. I picked up a few pairs when I saw them. I got this same pattern in grey, and a solid grey. I thought I'd grabbed a pair of this pretty eggplant colour in the solid tights, but I guess not. I was a little bummed out when I looked through my drawers and couldn't find them.
Shoes and Purse: Payless. The shoes are sparkly silver, and I LOVE them.
I'm not sure if I will make outfit posts a regular occurrence here. I felt awkward as hell taking the photo in the mall. Maybe we'll just have to find somewhere less public to take photos. And maybe use a real camera, instead of a phone.
We went to H&M so Rick could exchange his coat that he got when we were at the mall on Wednesday. It was a smidgen on the small side, so he got one size larger, and it fits him perfectly. I'll have to get pictures of us in our winter gear, or at least of him, so you can see how handsome he is.
We made a quick pit stop at Mrs Fields/The Pretzelmaker for a yummy pretzel each. We were both super super hungry, and needed something to hold us over until dinner time. I never liked pretzels of any kind growing up, and now I really appreciate soft ones.

5:00 pm: We met up with Rick's parents, two brothers and the one brothers girlfriend to go to the buffet. We have a Caesar's casino in Windsor, and their Market Buffet is pretty stellar. The food, for the most part, was really good. I had breaded shrimp, macaroni carbonara, mac and cheese, Brussels sprouts, mashed sweet and regular potatoes, smoked trout and a bunch of other stuff. I was only disappointed by a couple things. The dessert was great. By that time, I was stuffed, but I needed to get something sweet in me. I had a mini cheese cake, topped with bananas, a tiny vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting, and a vanilla eclair, which I only finished half of. I was really looking forward to getting a dessert crepe, but I was so full, I just couldn't do it. I hit that uncomfortably full spot that is never fun. As soon as the meal was finished, I was so sleepy.

7:00 pm: We finished dinner and sat for a little while. Afterwards, we went up to the gaming floor where a couple members of our party tried their luck on the slots. I'm not much of a gambler, and money is tight right now, so I just watched. Rick's one brother has awesome luck at the casino, so he pulled the lever and pushed the buttons quite a few times. His parents both played for a little while as well. We ended up leaving around 8:00, so I'm not sure if anyone won anything worth writing home about. I made Rick take a picture with me in the mirror in the elevator. He made his grumpy face, I was looking at the screen on my phone, it's grainy, and we're not even centred, so it's a pretty terrible picture. But, we have very very few together, so I appreciate what I can get. He's also wearing one of his Icelandic sweaters. I love all three of the ones he got, but I think this one is my favourite.

8:00: We made a quick stop on the way home to drop off some coupons for the goody bags that are going to be given out at the craft show I am doing at the beginning of December.  I'm getting really excited for the two shows I have coming up. The Made In Windsor show is in just a couple weeks, and I can't wait for it. I did incredibly well at it last year, and I'm hoping to do just as good, or even better, this year!

9:30: Home sweet home! The drive home was uneventful. When we got back, it was pyjama time. Those cute shorts I wore weren't very comfortable with all the food I had packed inside my belly, so I needed an elastic waistband as quickly as possible. After that, I watched Rick and Winston play for a while. The poor little pup had been cooped up in "his bedroom" (which is the office on the main floor of the house) since we left for Windsor. He had lots of pent up energy that needed to be released before he would be able to settle down for the night. The two of them playing together is hilarious. Rick can get Winston all wound up pretty easily. I'll have to post a video of them playing at some point.

11:30: I've been working on this post off and on since we got home. Writing 1667 words a day is going to be tough. I'm hoping that I can make it through this month and reach my goal. There are definitely going to be posts that are a lot of filler, and for that, I'm going to apologize now. I'm going to really try to have quality posts for as many days out of the month as possible. And by quality, I mean with knitting content, in addition to the day to day stuff that I will also be posting about. This is a knitting blog, after all.

My 365 photo for today is of some of the carpet at the Casino. We had to wait a little while for the rest of our group to join us, so Rick and I sat and people watched for a while. There were some interesting characters coming and going. Most of the crowd was in the over 50 age category, but there were some younger people as well. It was neat to see how some people got all dressed up to go out, others were still in their work uniforms, and others just treated it like any old day. I also watched one of the cleaning ladies dust all the ledges around where we were sitting. She came over by us, and cleaned the window ledge, and told us we should move over, because that part was clean now. She seemed to love her job, and really appeared to be genuinely happy to be there. I said to Rick that I love when people who aren't necessarily working directly with the customers are still so customer service oriented. She was smiling while dusting, and greeting every person that came near her. Now, I'm not sure if this is a job requirement or something, but she was super nice regardless. Every person we encountered while there seemed happy. The servers at the buffet were all really upbeat, and chatted with us while they changed our table arrangement around when we showed up with a much smaller group than what we reserved. Overall, the night was a really great experience, and that's why I chose this photo for the 365 project.

Once again, I really hope you've stuck around this long! If you have any criticism, constructive or not, I would love to hear it! Any and all comments on this or other posts are greatly appreciated. If there is something you would like me to post about, feel free to share!

This post has 1736 words.

I am at 2970 total words for this month.