How to drive someone crazy from 1100 miles away

29 August 2006

Sometimes too much stuff happens all at once and I don't get to update here about all the goings on and then you are all uninformed. Sorry.

First off, there was a scorpion.
He was tiny. But still, a scorpion, and any scorpion is big enough to scare me, as I have never seen a scorpion outside of movies about cowboys in the desert. Not possessing a revolver, horse, cowboy hat, or even enough rope to hang a man for cattle rustlin', scorpions do not fall in my general catalog of everyday creatures. So, after the scorpion, there was a bug guy.

Then, there was a dish towel. A simple humble dish towel, so I can feel prepared in the event that Yoshi ever introduces me to his mother. Don't get me wrong, she lives far away and Yoshi barely sees her himself, not even holidays, and that is why I haven't met her in the year and a half we have been together, but still. I am important to him, and to the rest of the world that means I get to meet your mother. I understand it's just the convenience factor and he's not really a family oriented guy; and I love him for being different from the rest of the world. But really, I've been his girl for a while now, and I think that once it had been a year I should have some sort of hostess gift for her when I meet her. It's only polite.


He tells me she likes red things in her kitchen, so red cotton textured dishtowels seemed nice. If we break two years and I still haven't met her, I fear I may need to make her hot pads, as well. I am dreading the inevitable tablecloth.

Walter and her lovely mommy are still cute. Walter has managed to not destroy anything of mine lately. Oh, except my willingness to concieve a child of my own, but that is just maintaining the status quo. She's the best birth control I've ever been on.

And then there is the job. I am sad to say I have no pictures of me quitting my job; you will just have to trust me that it happened. YAY!

I went to the computer yesterday to see about updating my resume, and found it did not exist. I imagined it must be saved on my old computer, which was being stored at my parents' house (about and hour and a half drive away), so I called in the reinforcements (read: Daddy). He tried to hook up the ancient thing and see if he could find it, but for no good reason, the thing wouldn't turn on for him. So he drove all the way to my house this morning (gotta love a good Daddy) to bring it to me so I (read: Yoshi) could futz with it and see if my resume could be recovered out of it. Still, no go. So, I either have to make up a new resume and dredge up all that detestable history, trying to remember the name of some crap manager I had who I disobeyed in the name if good common sense or some address that I decided ages ago was best left forgotten (why else would I have forgotten it all? Maybe it was the drugs...), or I have to job hunt without it. Restaurant work is pretty easy to come by without a resume, so I put in an application today somewhere where I have a friend. It is unfortunate that I can't show documented proof that I can do a decent job, though.

Whatever; I can't be bothered with it with all this new yarn lying around.

Look how purty! Spring colors, and sock yarn. Swan just sent me sock needles, so I thought I'd give 'em a whirl. I'm thinking a slip stitch colorwork pattern or something. Not stripes. Maybe Fair Isle. Hmmmm. Ideas?

After I reconvened with Jenn (she hung out at the bookstore while I had my job interview), we felt our traumatized souls needed some good lovin', of the kind only delivered by the LYS. So, of course, while I am between jobs and can't really afford it, I had to indulge myself with some sock yarn. Walter had a great time at the yarn shop, btw. Lots of pretty colors and soft, soft, soft for her. Fortunately, the owner is really nice about babies in her shop, and was very gracious about the tiny terror trying to drool on the mohair.

I am also sad to say there are no pictures of Walter drooling on the mohair.

Jenn got some ridiculously soft baby blanket fodder, too; I am going to write her a pattern myself with log cabin techniques and minimal futzing. We're psyched.

Oh, and apparently there's a hurricane on the way. Gonna go stock up on batteries and beef jerky now. We've got emergency yarn, don't worry.

22 August 2006

Proof positive

I have the best boyfriend ever.

UPS just rang my doorbell, delivering a package from amazon.com. Yoshi had told me to expect them today, and to open whatever came. He's been anticipating a package for about two weeks now, and he said it was for me.

The box contained this.

I am overwhelmed. He must have really looked for something great for me, and man, oh man, he found it. It's the most beautiful book; clear color pictures, gorgeous colorwork. I guess he realized I need a new challenge, and I guess he decided it wasn't bookmarks. It's extreme fancy pants colorwork. When I think of the research he must have done to figure out that Alice Starmore was where I needed to go, I am amazed at his thoughtfulness. He must have also spent some time staring at my knitting library (reasonably extensive for my one-and-a-half year old knitting career) to make sure he didn't get me a double of something I already had, something that happened when he was indulging a new love he inspired in me (comic books, mostly Neil Gaiman; yes, I am the biggest dork you know).

I hope he realizes that now I need more yarn... And that now I have to knit him a Cosby sweater.

I fall in love with him a little more almost every day. And the days I don't for some stupid reason, he makes up for it the next day.

And sorry, ladies, he doesn't have a brother for you.

21 August 2006

Nuff said

You know, I hate to waste this. Blogger actually uploaded this picture on the first try tonight (not that I didn't try several times this afternoon), and all I wanted to say about it was, look how cool Henry Rollins is. Doesn't he look like he's ready for an interview, with his little smirk and his cute jeans?
By the way, for extra crafty props, I refinished that chair myself. Yeah, that is dragon brocade on the seat, what else would it be?
I rock. I'm going to go find something else to do now that will make me rock even more. And not in that creepy way the criminally insane rock, either.
And Henry would really like it, Swan, if Joey Ramone could perhaps sprout a head and come out to play.

20 August 2006

Starting again

I am getting to that dangerous point again, where I need to cast on a pile of stuff or tempt fate and be killed by too many FOs. What with the stocking so close to finished, Henry as well, and Yoshi's damn sweater boring me to death, I need something interesting. And the lace, well....

The lace is sitting at the bottom of the UFO drawer as we speak. The conditions needed to get some actual progress made on the lace occur so rarely that I have nearly given up on the poor dear. I keep thinking "Why didn't I make a bookmarker instead of trying for 46 inches of damn lace?" So I think I will start a rash of bookmarkers. I think Jenn can get into this, as well, because she wants to branch out a bit and I have so much crap yarn for her to swatch up with. Not to mention the leftovers. Every once in a while, Yoshi will ask me what I can do with the rest of a ball of yarn once I've completed something, and this may soothe his worried mind about the waste. But the lure of the Stitchionaries is powerful stuff, so I think Jenn and I should just start swatching. Cables! Lace! Funny shapes! Stripey checkerboarded goodness! Excitement and instant gratification!

Save the sweater for TV watching; I need something random and short and suitable for my spazz attention span.

We could start a whole movement of short-attention-span knitting. We could dye up some KnitPicks and make a thousand little strips of fabric in our own original colors to give to anyone who knows how to read. We could revolutionize the multi-tasking world with our do one thing at a time and do it REALLY REALLY WELL. We could focus. We could learn. We could never make huge ass sweaters again!

Ahh, pipe dreams.

Better go make some progress on the stupid scarf before I put on a beret and start resisting anything. Sigh.

18 August 2006

The return of the PL Blankie

I woke up this morning with a craving to warm up the world with garter stitch. Fortunately, Swan sent the PL Blankie back to me this week, so I threw on any old pants I could find and camped out on the couch for some me-time.If I look like I just woke up, there's a very good reason for that. I have developed a habit of taking the shirt Yoshi wore that day to sleep in. It's already warm against the cold sheets, smells like him, and it's just nice in general. So, yeah, that's why I look like that, in Yoshi's shirt, in which I slept, and yesterday's jeans.
Good things are happening. Along with the PL Blankie, Swan sent me some size 4 DPNs (Brittanys, no less!), and some gorgeous beaded stitch markers. Also a Chibi with tapestry needles (she's trying to get me to weave in her ends on the blanket, I just know it), a magnet, and two balls of super cheap bright red cotton to make Yoshi's mom a hostess gift in the event I ever meet her. Someday. Thanks, Chicky, but we have a bone of contention between us, don't we? I'm calling you out.

So, what's up with the ends, Swan? The rules for the project are as follows, as I sent them to her in a letter with the blanket:

You will have either two or three weeks (your choice, but let me know soon) to get this sucker back in the mail. Do as much as you can or care to, but here’s where the challenge is: Notice, I didn’t weave in any ends. You weave mine and I weave yours. That way, the challenge is to send me more grunt work than can I send you. It’ll get harder as it grows to do more than the last, but that’s why it’s a challenge. If you don’t like this idea, send it back with all my ends just a-danglin’ free and I will take the point. If you go over your two or three weeks, you have to weave your own damn ends and send me a present, and vice versa, and no, there is no grace period.


She went over her time limit and sent me presents. She did weave in my ends, but left me hers. Do I be big about it and just weave in her ends, or do I send it back in three weeks expecting her to do it all? I get the feeling I'm going to be extra nice to my friend. So, I hope everyone enjoys me pouting about it. Really, if this is my biggest problem, I'm doing okay.

Other good things happening: Had a good night at work Wednesday (which led me to not go apply elsewhere Thursday), made Yoshi peanut butter banana French toast, as well as a ham and cheddar gratin (he loved both), drank too much coffee, ate a lot of carrot cake, played in the book store, bought a good bit of junk food, got romantic with my man, started a pretty good book, and yeah. Just enjoyed. Life is not bad.

Except for the caterpillars. Apparently, their lives could be better, because they don't seem to be hanging out on the tomato plant any more.

16 August 2006

So close to FOs that I am avoiding my real issues

Had a long talk with the Swan this evening about the ennui. There's just too much to it that I don't want to say here in the interest of protecting the innocent (me, etc.) or not so innocent (not naming names, defeats the purpose, eh?).
So. In order to not discuss what I have already discussed, I kitchenered the Xmas stocking and did an assload of embroidery on Henry Rollins' face. And the back of his neck, and his arms, because that guy has a lot of tattoos.
In order to not get the eye to suck back into Henry's head, I came up with a Brilliant Plan. The Brilliant Plan was to stitch a small square of Aida embroidery cloth to the inside of Hank's head to provide stability and utilize the tiny holes to hold the French knots onto the outside of his wee head. And it worked!


I also duplicate stitched his hair on, which in practice did not go as planned. However, if one examines very recent images of Mr. Rollins himself, one will notice that the man is gone quite gray, so I left the patchiness in, in keeping with his recent changing of hair color. Oh, and lazy. Don't forget that I'm lazy. To make up for that, I added more of his tattoos.
Ooooh, sorry about the horrible picture....

I think he's charming, and hope Yoshi agrees. As of writing this, he is still at work, and has as yet to see the glory of the Search and Destroy punk rock icon of doom.
Just need to sew his legs on, stuff and seam him. Yay!! Yay weaving in ends as you go!!


So, the Xmas stocking...
Despite not knowing why, I kitchenered the toe shut. Maybe it as something to do with picking up the toe curl stitches from the sides, I don't know, but against my instincts I followed the directions. And it's... not bad. Need to do the toe curl and fluffy cuff, fluffy yarn pictured next to the stocking. See how nice the Noro looks? And how cool it's gonna be with the blue-grey fluff? Yeah.

OKAY peoples, I have been fighting Blogger for two days now to get the pics onto this post, so appreciate it, damn you. Seriously, I finished these things Tuesday. Yoshi loved Henry Rollins and the stocking still needs a curl and cuff. Hey, a girl's gotta go to work someitmes.

15 August 2006

Late summer ennui

I'm tired of hot. I know the rest of the country is dying in a heat wave and that of all places Sunny Florida is having a "normal" summer, but damn. I am tired of hot.
I am also tired of the temperamental central air in our house that doesn't realize that it is 65 degrees near the thermostat but 90 in my office.
Cranky.
Did a good bit of work on Yoshi's Xmas stocking last night. It is the Curly Toed Elf Slipper from Weekend Knitting, and yet again, patterns are not my friend. Couple things about it:
  1. Gauge. I could only achieve gauge by doubling up the Noro Big Kureyon I chose for it, with the help of great yarn ladies in NC. It does say in the pattern, "use doubled throughout", so you may be thinking it's my own fault that I couldn't get gauge, but if you could see my copy of the book, you'd know. It's placed in an odd place to be telling me that the only way I can get gauge is to double up my yarn.
  2. Toe instructions. It tells me to kitchener the toe closed and the pick up stitches around the graft and make the curl. Fine, but why kitchener shut stitches that I am about to pick up? Why not just knit on?
  3. Um, that's as far as I got. I'm sure there will be more later. The self-striping Noro is really nice, though.

There are a pile of projects that need finishing work (Cookie Monster, Last Summer's Tank, Henry Rollins) and I just can't bring myself to work on them. Lace is sitting her happy ass in the drawer in the living room, patiently awaiting my return. I haven't touched her in about a week. Jenn is extremely excited about making jams and stuff and dreaming those big dreams about selling it, but I hate to reality check her. Really, we've made four things, and she wants a store front? Come on... Although those four things, really tasty. Strawberry lemon marmalade, carrot cake jam, watermelon jelly (which smells like vinegar but tastes like watermelon), and tomato sauce.

And we still have caterpillars, they don't care about dish soap at all.

I just want to nap until September, is that okay?

09 August 2006

Damn bugs.


There is a criminal in this picture. Sorry about the blurriness, but maybe you can make out the caterpillar munching shamelessly on Yoshi's tomato plant. We tossed one into the woods yesterday, and here's another one. Where are thay coming from?

And how do we send them back there?

Yoshi put a lot of work into this tomato plant. He didn't adopt little plants and raise them as his own; he planted his own seeds and they are his very own babies. If only we knew how to keep the babies from hanging out with the wrong crowd, like FUCKING CATERPILLARS.

What to do? I thought having no kids meant I didn't have to worry about this kind of thing. Not that I really believe there is a comparison, but damn.

Tomorrow we make watermelon jelly. Mmmmm, watermelon jelly. And make a decision about insecticide. Sad.

08 August 2006

Many pink things

In our perpetual quest for crafitness, Roomie (hell, let's call her Jenn. She has very little innocence left to protect.) and I decided that canning was the next natural step. I ordered a great book from my book club, and we set out to purchase lots of super fun equipment and produce, and then try not to burn ourselves.
We started out at the Farmers' Market/Flea Market near my mom's on Sunday. Kind of a wash, honestly. We couldn't find any of the produce we really wanted (mostly tomatoes and peppers), so we settled for plants. We acquired pickling cucumbers, and for no good reason, eggplant. It just looked really cool, and since when I say "we are going to grow cucumbers and eggplant", what I really mean is "we are going to talk Yoshi into growing us cucumbers and eggplant", well, you know. I thought it would be interesting for him. I have no idea what to do with canned eggplant. But whatever, it looked good. When they all grow up, we will make dills with fresh dill from our herb garden.
We then hit two different Ace hardware stores for canning tools. We thought that since we were out in the sticks, it wouldn't be so tough to find, but man. We ran all over. We were really hoping to find something at the flea market, but oh well.
Bought some produce at the Albertson's, and then....
We made Strawberry Lemon Marmalade! We did not burn off any appendages!!
Here's Jenn playing in the boiling water after I said "Open the pot, hold the tongs and try to look convincing."

I think she did very well. I am totally convinced.
Skimming foam off of boiling strawberry sugar mess is not as easy as it sounds. I never felt like I got it all, but Jenn was satisfied, and she's pretty obsessive compulsive, so I figured it would be okay.
Ewww. Foam.

Here it is, all processed. Does anyone know why the hot jars seem covered in some powdery stuff when you take them out of the pot and they air dry a second? We figured hard water, but I don't really know. We got brave and rolled the jars around a bit to get the gel you see in the bottom to mix through, and now every jar (20 hours later) is uniform and pinky pinky.


We had extra that we didn't get to can; wouldn't fill up a jar. I ate it on toast for breakfast. It was fucking phenomenal.

And for anyone who can't stand the suspense any longer, here is the Walter Halter. It needs the body finished up, one quick seam and the kid is dressed to kill. It is, in fact, much pinker than it shows here. And if you take the cups before overlapping them onto each other and hold them up to my body, Walter and I have the same sized boobs.


05 August 2006

mermaid hair



Mermaids knit better with beer, donchaknow.

04 August 2006

We hit the beach for some hot SEX!

Stash enhancement expedition, that is.

So much to say... Yoshi and I made a short trip out to Cocoa Beach (about an hour away) to check out a yarn shop I hadn't seen yet, All Strung Out. Nice lady, Gail, who owns and runs the place, immediately thought she knew me. Alas, no, there's no way she could, because I live under a rock with lots of yarn. Her shop, complete with the Colinette Wall:

The careful observer will notice Yoshi's arm next to the Colinette. Who knew he had such expensive tastes? Ms. Gail said he was such a great catch to sit quietly while I picked out yarn. I told her she was right.: Here's how happy Yoshi was to go to shop for yarn an hour from home:

He's singing. No, really, singing. Not crying at all.

We went for lunch at a place on the beach where the waitress actually hit him with a menu. On the head. On purpose. Yeah, he liked it. I told her he would after she accidentally stepped on him.

So, here's my treasure from Cocoa:That's about 1200 yards of green silk. Sweater baby, yeah! And impulse sock yarn. Evidently not well-thought-out sock yarn, as socks drove me mad, black yarn makes me barmy, so the obvious conclusion was black sock yarn. I am so brilliant, it makes me nauseous just to think about it.

Other random bits: I was lately defeated by a Slim Jim wrapper, found a meat market/produce stand with the weirdest stuff outside an Asian grocery store I've ever seen, was extremely saddened by the end of You Knit What? , offended someone I don't even know by not caring what they think of me, and I am still homeless for Rhinebeck. Cyn and I need to get on a room, asap.

Speaking of Cyn, where's the PL Blankie?

01 August 2006

Success!

Our plot for Swan's birthday went off spectacularly. I got Mr. Swan in on it on Friday night, making sure that no inappropriate purchases were made until the gift arrived. I hear he had a blast singing the "I know something you don't know" song all weekend. After telling him, I just waited in the wings to hear from her. Apparently, Janet from The Wheel Thing sent Swan an email, which she opened Monday morning and then promptly emailed me. Here's the email, completely unedited:


I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!!!!!

Honestly, I don't know what to say. I am amazed. Big, mindblowing, can't comprehend kind of amazed.

I'm not ashamed to say that I cried at work when I saw Janet's email.

As I will get to in the blog (I started a post today that Blogger ate), this was a kind of crazy weekend (we still don't have internet). 18 hours with no electricity (we took off after 14). Wheel shopping, farm visiting, mountain climbing, AT hiking kind of crazy. But nothing is nearly as cool as what you organized, sweetie. I honestly haven't been able to comprehend that yet. I would like to say wonderful things, here, but I'm likely to cry again. Hell, if I could think, I will cry anyway, not caring that I am at the reference desk. Shocked, just shocked. That's where I am.

You are a Captain, with a hell of a pirate crew.

I love you,

Cyn

Yeah, that's me. I'm a pirate captain. I always knew it way deep down inside. Think I'll go get some sparrows tattooed onto my arms now.

When I phoned her last night, she couldn't stop squealing and stammering. It was delightful in a high pitched unintelligible sort of way.

Yeah. We did good.