Lesson Learned

A lesson learned indeed. I have common sense, and my common sense did tell me "Don't save your credit card!" "Don't be lazy, enter it manually!"...what am I ranting about? Well, I do alot of shipping for either my swap packages or my Traveling Scarves group, and so on, so I try to make my shipping tasks as convenient as possible. These past 2 weeks I had alot of packages to send out, and I was on USPS.com and because I had more than 3 packages to print shipping labels for at one time, I saved my credit card info so I wouldn't have to manually enter it for each shipping label. I thought "It's USPS, it should be ok". Well Friday evening while I was knitting at about 10 p.m., I got an email alert. I went to look at my checking account and found purchases at USPS.com for items I didn't charge, all equaling over $300! I immediately called my bank, canceled my card, and so on. I've been on a "cash only" basis for the past week since my account is all messed up, nothing I can do until the fraudulent items hard post to my account. Right now, it's just in a pending state. It's pending alright, pending my A**, I can't use my account, pay invoices I have from PayPal, nothing. It's a lesson learned, no saving the card anymore. Phew! Ok, I'm done, got that off my back.

Onto my therapy, yes 8-) my therapy.

I received my Christmas 2008 Swap package, and it is a wonderful Christmas package indeed!
My secret spoiler is HarlemQueen on Ravelry.



She knitted me a beautiful Santa dishcloth, a cute white bag cozy, filled with my FAVE Chai Tea, 1 skein of Blue Sky Alpaca 100% Organic cotton in Black, 1 Angel bell ornament (totally pretty), 4 of the most glamorous beads I've ever seen, and 1 Statue of Liberty ornament (I'm in love with this one, I've never been to New York, I dream of it, and this is just the sweetest closest thing to it), and 1 wrapped "don't open until Christmas" present (already nestled under my tree). Thank you HARLEMQUEEN!





Another great package came, and that is my "Peppermint Patty" kit from Woolgirl. I love the yarn colors and all the contents, especially the candy cane tape measure.

Contents are: 400yds. fingering weight of Miss Babs Peppermint Patty, a mini-skein of Miss Babs Red, 1 candy cane stitch marker, 1 candy cane tape measure, 1 peppermint chocolate cocoa, peppermint pattie chocolates, candy cane mints, Peppermint Patty lip balm & cream, and a knitting pouch.





Last, but not least, I received my Snowman Stitch Markers I won on the Nautical Knitter's blog, thank you!!!



In other news, I've been teaching myself how to knit faster without a cable needle doing cables, links for this given to me from a good friend Devotion2Knit. She gave me the link to Grumperina's instructions on this. It's been challenging and I'm fighting off that "bad taste" in my mouth for this project, I need to get this done. I've done a few repeats with the new method, and this is about as far as I've gone, doesn't seem like much difference from the other day, but it is moving along.



Well now I gotta go and continue knitting this beanie, wish me luck!

My Friday

For today, I just need to get through this early but short day. All week I've been working 6-3, and it's nice getting off at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, but just tiring getting up to be at my job at 6 a.m., but not too bad considering I have about a 15 minute drive, if not less. I have no issues getting up early, but this week has just been tiring for me. I do feel I was very productive this week though, with all my personal stuff that is.

I got all my 5 swap packages out to all my spoilees, this was a task in itself. Just packaging everything making sure I had all the requirements for the swaps and also making sure it catered to my spoilees preferences. I hope the packages are greeted with acceptance and glee!

I also sent out 2 Traveling Scarves packages, one for my Group 37 Noro Combo, which was Gramma's gorgeous scarf and also for my Group 42 Tweed, which I totally flaked on, well inadvertently.

I had finished Cristi-Lael's pretty tweedy scarf weeks ago, put my notes in her journal, packaged it and left it on my desk in my office to send out the next day. Well my son or daughter, one of them, both won't own up to it, moved the envelope package and covered it with my son's binder. It was out of sight out of mind for me, and the other day when I was going through my office I came across it and was just in complete horror! I immediately updated my post for the group's tracking thread with an apology. I think I'm going to have to buy a lock for my office cause my kidees seem to like being in there and also using it to discard of unwanted things.

One cool thing I found out from a awesome Mod in my RR group on Ravelry (I apologize I don't have her Rav ID), which if you don't know, you gotta try, is being able to ship First Class Mail packages from your doorstep without having to actually visit the Post Office.

You say how is this?

Well if you have a PayPal account, then you can! Logon to your PayPal account and go to Products & Services, select Multi-Order Shipping Labels, from there Create a New Order, I use a fake Order #, like for Group 37 Noro, I used 37-1, 1 signifies my first package sending out, the next Noro package I send will be 37-2 and so on. Fill out all the info, and weight, and delivery confirmation, then do Pay and Print, and voila, you have a valid, paid for, label printed for you from your printer. Tape to the package and put in your mailbox for your Post Man to pick up. I just love this! It's so much easier than having to go down to the Post Office. If you need to ship a package and don't want to be hassled, this is a pretty easy way.

So, speaking of my TS Groups, I also finished another scarf, Purpleturtle's Group 25 SO, but still need to weave in ends and package. It should go in the mail tomorrow, which will leave me with only 1 TS scarf! WhewwHoo! (can you feel my joy?) I do love participating in the TS groups, but sometimes it can get just a wee bit overwhelming, especially when you start getting a bunch at once.

Contest info to share, I submitted my comments and post to "The Nautical Knitter's" site the other day for the Snowman Stitch Markers Contest she was having and guess what, I visited her blog again and found out that I was one of the lucky winners! Thanks so much DK! I can't wait to use them. Congrats to Deb (aka iaisknitter on Ravelry) and Yvonne from Purlin’ Goldens who also won some cutesy stitch markers.

These are the cutesy Snowman Stitch Markers I'll be getting soon!
Photo courtesy of DK the Nautical Knitter's blog



Now onto some gritty stuff, this weekend is going to be a huge boxing fight, yes the De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao fight!



I'm pulling for the cutey, De La Hoya, I've always been a fan of his. I must admit though, I am not a 100% convinced he can beat Pacquiao, who himself is a very strong boxer. Pacquiao is fast and has good stamina. In De La Hoya's 24/7 series, he says there will be a knock out, I'm thinking it will go 12 rounds. I'll be having a nice little boxing party get together at my house Saturday for this, complete with dip, spicy buffalo wings, pizza, and of course beer and wine. Only dilemma I have is choosing what knitting project to do during the fight, needs to be something I can do blind.

There are many other things going on for me this weekend, but none as exciting as the De La Hoya fight. I hope you all have a good weekend! **Go De La Hoya!**