I don’t do “horror”.  I don’t like scary movies.  I don’t enjoy suspense novels.  I can’t even handle haunted houses.  My husband however, loves the stuff.  His fondest memories from high school are of working the haunted house in town.  He thinks Steven King novels don’t qualify as “scary”.  Monster movies are totally his thing.  He’s been reading The Walking Dead comics since issue 1 came out way back when.  So, needless to say, he got very excited when he found out they were turning his favorite comic series into a t.v. show.

Yesterday, we watched episode one of The Walking Dead. I don’t know how he conned me into watching it, but he did.  All my facebook and twitter feeds are full of praise for this show, and honestly, I can see why.  It’s visually stunning, well plotted, and scary as all get out.

The problem is, it gave me horrible nightmares.  Plus, my 20 month old isn’t talking yet, and in the middle of the night, his grunts and whimpers in his sleep sound awfully zombie-like.

Add to that the time change, with kids being up and ready for the day at 6 a.m., and I’m not sure I’m going to make it through the day.  Every time I close my eyes, I see a half corpse-zombie crawling through the grass.  Or a horde of zombies attacking a tank.  (If you’ve seen episode 1, you know the scenes I’m talking about, if you haven’t, don’t worry, I’m not giving out spoilers.)

So, I think today may be a huge quantity of coffee day.

I understand episode 2 premiered last night.  Ugh.  Pray for me.

In other news, better news, happier news that may just distract me from the horrors my darling husband inflicted on me, I have winners!

I plugged the numbers into a random number generator.  Okay, really, since there were only 10 entries I grabbed 10 scraps of paper, wrote 1-10 on each of them and laid them on the coffee table this morning since we were up at 6 a.m. anyway.  Asher grabbed two of them and brought them to me.  Well, no, Asher grabbed two pieces of paper and shoved them in his mouth.  I fished them out and figured out who our winners are!

Drumroll please!

The winners  of a $50 gift card courtesy of Kodak Gallery are . . .

Entry number 4, Jessica Garcia and entry number 1, Dreamsweaver. Watch your email for a message from me.  I’ll need your address so I can have your prizes shipped to you.

Those of you who didn’t win, keep reading because we’ll have another give away soon!  Have a great, zombie free day!

Who loves photo albums?  You know I do!  I bet you do too. Well, lucky for me, I got on a list.  What kind of list?  A blogger list!  Somehow, Kodak found out about little old me and decided to give me a free photo album, and to give two of my readers free albums too!  You lucky readers you.

For Halloween, Kodak made all sorts of amazing new halloween themed photo albums, and through the 11th, you can order one for your very own.  Or you can hang on to your giftcard and do albums for holiday gifts, or for yourself of the year, or whatever.  Don’t tell Kodak I said that though!

So now that you’re all hot and bothered for one of my two $50 Kodak gift cards, allow me to sweeten the deal!  Now through the 11th, in addition to the really cool Halloween theme books, you can get 50 free Mommy Cards, and free prints if you order a medium or large size photo book.  I’m over the moon here myself.

How do you get one of these amazing cards?  It’s easy!  Head on over to Kodak.com and take a look at the goodies.  Then come back here and comment on what size book you like best, or what card design, or whatever.  Basically, tell me what you would order if you were lucky enough to win one a gift card for free Kodak.com products.  It’s that simple.

Somebody is going to win, actually, because Kodak and I are so generous, two somebodies will win.  It might as well be you!

You have until the end of the day on Sunday, the 7th of November to enter my giveaway.  It doesn’t give you much time, so hurry up and comment already!

Just for my own purposes:

1. Pirate Latitudes – Michael Crichton
2. Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
3. The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry – Kathleen Flinn
4. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) – Rick Riordan
5. Steamed – Katie MacAlister
6. The Sea of Monsters – Rick Riordan
7. The Titan’s Curse – Rick Riordan
8. The Last Olympian – Rick Riordan
9. Angelology – Danielle Trussoni
10. The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time – Judith Shulevitz
11. How to Knit a Love Song – Rachael Herron
12. The Last Oracle (Sigma Force, No 5) – James Rollins
13. The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, Book 1) – Rick Riordan
14. Hannah’s List – Debbie Macomber
15. This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection – Carol Burnett
16. Lunch in Paris – Elizabeth Bard
17. Summer on Blossom Street – Debbie Macomber
18. Between Friends – Debbie Macomber
19. The Blessing of a Skinned Knee – Wendy Mogel
20. I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage – Mary-Ann Kirkby
21. Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook – Anthony Bourdain

This is love. I’m sure I mentioned the elephant, well as you can see, he is complete, and well loved already. The pattern is Elijah by Ysolda Teague, but as Miriam has an Uncle Eli, we’re going to have to come up with a new name. I’m thinking Olie, what do you think?

I think he looks like an Olie, but maybe you have a better name idea. I’m sure that eventually Miri will come up with a new name, probably something quite original like Mr. Elephant, or Thomas; but in the meantime the elephant needs a name. So, help me out here!

The elephant was completed in plenty of time to meet Yarn Harlot, and the plan was to have Miriam in the Passover Dress, and take along the elephant to show off. Well, it all made it into the diaper bag, but I never got around to changing her clothes or bringing the toy out.

There was no disappointment though. Yarn Harlot finally made it to Chicago, and she was well worth the wait. She was charming, and funny, as we all expected, but she also came and hung out with us at Nana’s Knit, which was just the surprise of the day! That woman can knit. If you’ve never seen Irish Cottage Knitting, you need to find someone to watch. Wow. I’m never going to feel accomplished with the speed of my knitting again. Her needles just fly! I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The right needle is stationary under her arm, and the left does all the work, while her right hand “Vanna’s” and looks like it is presenting. I can’t explain it any better, but just wow.

South Suburban Stitch ‘n Bitch had a wonderful time, and will probably be talking about Harlot Day for weeks to come. Especially as we are all starting the same project.

Yup, we’re having a knit-along. Nine women decided yesterday that Windmill Berets will be ours, come heck or high water (which with the weather is not at all unlikely). It’s amazing to me the different yarn combinations we selected. I’ll post pictures as we go along, but I think these will all be beautiful.

Storms coming, so I’m going to end this disjointed stream of consciousness post with a quick sum-up. Miriam loves the elephant, we all love the Harlot, the Harlot loves babies, I love completed projects, and I love my friends who are all sheep, just like me, and caught the Windmill Beret bug.

Life has a nasty tendency of getting in the way of all the things I want to do.  Planning a wedding, family stuff, and all those other things conspired against me, and then the guilt of having not updated in a while, combined to make me not update.  Isn’t it a nasty cycle?

Well, I’m back now, and hopefully the next absence won’t be until I’m out of town for two weeks on our honeymoon!

Welcome back to the new and improving K2P2.net.  We’ve got a lot to cover.

My friend Chris and I went to see Yarn Harlot speak at My Sister’s Knits back on July 24th.  Wow,  I am far behind!  I took lots of bad pictures, here are the best ones.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was fantastic, as we all knew she would be.  I have lots of pictures to share, so I’m just going to plug them all in here and we’ll go from there.

1.  Half of us knitters waiting for Yarn Harlot and doing what we do best.  (It was HOT in that room).

 2. a blurry picture of Yarn Harlot.  I never claimed to be a great photographer.

 3. Yarn Harlot signing my books and me smiling like a knitting fool.

4. The line at My Sister’s Knits as we were leaving!  People were still waiting to get in!

5. My signed books!

6. I can’t leave a yarn store without buying SOMETHING.

So, those are the pictures I took at Yarn Harlot’s book signing.  We had a wonderful time.

I was halfway through my Yarn Harlot entry and the computer crashed!

I have to run now.  

Will rebuild later.

Sorry for the delay.

Must not cry . . .  

I’m about to head out to go see Yarn Harlot.  I can’t even tell you how excited I am.  I’ll post pictures when I get back!

I get to meet my inspiration in real life! Gosh I hope she’ll sign a book for me! 

Fan? Who? Me?