knitting mojo, where are you?

I left my f-ing knitting bag in Alabama last weekend and I had a nightmare about it last night.  I am going to see if I can trick Steve into driving there to fetch it.  I can't go because I have a shit-ton of work to do.  This includes cleaning the entire house since I fired the cleaning lady a couple of months ago (she was really not worth the money or the effort to keep from strangling her).  So now I am behind at work-work and house-work as evidenced by the cat hair tumble weeds rolling through the house.It was almost a waste of time to go to AL because we can't get the boat out and you can't go swimming.  No oil in the yard - yet.  We went down to the beach one day and, despite the heroic cleaning effort by the beach cleaners and an armada of skimmers and boom, found tar balls in the sand.

I have been taking pictures of the pool building progress but that has gotten pretty boring because there is not much progress.  The only good thing to come out of the mid-summer construction project was tickets to the Jimmy Buffett show in Gulf Shores, AL.  Our contractor seemed to have no end of spare tickets which were tough to come by. Jimmy did a fine job and he seemed to really enjoy playing a gig back in Alabama.  It was hot and the bathrooms were far away from the stage which set up the precariously imbalanced high beer consumption low bathroom ratio.  You can imagine how that went over with Steve, a man with a tiny bladder and dislike of large crowds. I had a great time, however.

My knitting ambitions have really taken a nose-dive and production has screeched to a halt. Simple projects are slow and full of mistakes.  But mostly, I am disappointed in the final outcome of my last few projects and I am not sure what I am doing wrong.  I want to elevate my knitting to a level where I can handle a cabled sweater or lace shawl with confidence but lately I really have my doubts.  I need a knitting-win. 

The cats really could care less about my knitting problems.  They are obviously having trouble getting comfortable: