thug life, shifty rolls the dice, snake-eyed surprise

once upon a time, i foolishly knitted an all-wool hat in new york city in the middle of the frakkin' humid, hot summer in a starbucks and a rent-controlled apartment in washington heights.

it was the famed hat of kittyville.

i gave it to the purtiest, snarkiest opera singer i know.

everyone loves a german girl in cat ears.

opera singer ridiculously had a metamoment and put it on her cat who was highly displeased to be wearing extra cat ears.

then, i made one for me in my tiny house in denver. i added racing stripes so i could Go Real Fast. it made me paranoid.

the time came to wear the kittyhead once more, and immediately, the large mouth bass was smitten by the kitten. so she asked me to make her one. which i did right away. and i was finishing it in front of her when suddenly i realized my fatal error. i didn't give her any racing stripes so she could Go Real Fast. i learned this when mr. large mouth bass mentioned she had been talking ALL WEEK about how she can't do anything fast yet, but once she got her kitty hat she'd totally be able to Go Real Fast. doh!

oh no!

luckily, people all over the webbernets who knit have been going crazy by hacking into their knitting with scissors. what with my newfound ability for grafting, i decided to go bold and do the same.

i added some Fast stripes, grafted her back shut, and gave the hat 6 balls pom-poms. and now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you:

kittyville, the large mouth bass edition.

FO Report
pattern: kittyville hat
yarn: sensations bellezza tesoro 100% wool in blue, cream and yellow (dude, this stuff was on sale at jo-ann for $3 a ball. it's REALLY soft, sproingy and stretchy, too.)
needles: knitpicks options US7
date started: 12/26/06
date finished: 12/27/06
date hacked in half and finished again: 12/28/06
mods: um, the whole cutting it in half thing. i also did the italian tubular cast-on which is currently my favorite cast on for hats, socks, and stranded mittens, but that wasn't really a pattern modification. other than that, not really much of anything.

let's hug it out, bitch

last night, pants and i went to pants' bff and coconut/large mouth bass' house to watch entourage and play crazy bridge (aka, oh hell).

in true form, i once again lost at cards. i blow at cards.

however, entourage rules. why don't i watch HBO shows more? WHY, people!?

anemoi mittens again

anemoi mittens again
Originally uploaded by swandive00.

and i need to frog them again. these are on the funky addi US1.5 needles and too small.

again. but i'm liking the colorwork (the technique and how it's coming out in those colors).

but i've just gotten myself on a hat kick again.

i also finished pants' scarf, and didn't take a picture of it. so, yeah. sorry.

sleepyheather goes bye bye.

but most of all i wish you joy

merriest of christmases to you!

i wish you peace on this day.

i wish you laughter.

i wish you contentment.

i wish you celebration.

i wish you good times with your family.

i wish you happiness and health and love.

safety first

pants and i were at the mall getting me new glasses, when i espied this little beauty.

i have a special place in my heart for stick figure icons instructing the illiterate peons. my favorites involve dogs. like this one. or this one.

but pants is brilliant. he thought the only way that tiny cone could be better was if it looked like this:

it's a tough call... but i'm inclined to agree.

pants should skip this post

it's about knitting, which does nothing for him at all.

okey dokey - first up? my momma's jaywalkers!

making socks for my mom is interesting. she has two drastically different sized feet, so i made them in two different sizes on addi 2.5mm needles (which are technically US1.5 needles, and not the US1s they purport to be. stupid addi). one of which was in the larger sized, 9" foot. the other was in an even larger 10" foot size. it may have been from the mods available on grumperina's page for making a larger jaywalker, but i honestly didn't look at that.

notice the difference in lengths? that's also because of the size difference - those bad boys are precisely the same length in the leg. stupid cuff-down socks... if they were toe up, we wouldn't have had that problem, mark my words... anyhow, i could have made them toe-up but didn't. here's the FO report!



pattern: grumperina's jaywalkers
yarn: lorna's laces supersock in georgetown
needles: addi turbo 2.5mm
date started: um, dunno. 2 weeks before my mom left for rome? so late november?
date finished: um, again, dunno. after she got back from rome because i had to wait to have her try them on before i grafted the toe on the second sock.
pattern mods: made it bigger. used larger needles. made the toe wider and boxier and less form-fitting upon the recipient's request. made the socks 2 different sizes which resulted in drastically different stripe widths from one sock to the next.

hey! i finally understand grafting!

pei lo mein will understand the significance of this

You're Anne of Green Gables!

by L.M. Montgomery

Bright, chipper, vivid, but with the emotional fortitude of cottage cheese, you make quite an impression on everyone you meet. You're impulsive, rash, honest, and probably don't have a great relationship with your parents. People hurt your feelings constantly, but your brazen honestly doesn't exactly treat others with kid gloves. Ultimately, though, you win the hearts and minds of everyone that matters. You spell your name with an E and you want everyone to know about it.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

shamelessly filched from jay are

as they croak i see myself in the pistol smoke, fool *

dude, you guys must really rock what with your good wishes and warm fuzzies and whatnot.

(especially bryan who is china. )

because the phone interview, which was sort of a prelude to an interview went well enough that they're flying me across the country for an in-person interview in 3 weeks. (no, chris, it's sadly not the job i was telling you about, but it's a pretty freakin' awesome job!) so we'll need to keep on keepin' on with the warm fuzzies, and hopefully it'll be a real job one day. (why did that make me feel like pinocchio? one day, i'll be a Real Boy!)

i'm slightly bothered that i have as many parenthetical asides as i do proper sentences in this post. (but not bothered enough to say what i actually mean without wandering and meandering down the wending way of the tangent.)

*not sure why this is stuck in my head. (i'd count that as a sentence without a parenthetical aside, but it's a sentence fragment. and this is a parenthetical aside.)

2 things that are lovely

1. i have a job interview tomorrow. for a real bonafide job. wish me luck.

2. haiku girl is a good friend that i'm sad i've never met. i think that we were meant to be friends in real life, and if we can ever get our crap together, we should hang out and knit stuff and paint and talk about boys.

hope beyond hope

(this may get confusing... sorry)

on sunday, my cousin ann and her husband jay baptized their third (and final, according to her) child. later that day, i found out jay's cousin michaela married jerry "nikko" cooke in new york a little over 2 years ago.

nikko is one of the climbers missing right now on mt. hood, so if you have a spare thought, hope, or prayer, please say it for nikko, brian hall, and their families, as well as for kelly james and his family.

while there would never be a time that this would be easier, the holidays are an especially hard time to be wracked with grief, loss and worry.

everybody's got one

i'm more than a little obsessed with nbc's heroes.

and i've been thinking about this, but i'm pretty sure everyone has a superpower. whether it's slightly lame like identifying the wall art at chili's, or like a friend of mine who can see the wind, you have got at least one.

one of mine is that i can bend my body into all sorts of interesting contorted positions at any point in my life regardless on whether i've been working on yoga or contortionism.

but that's not my real one, because we all need secrets.

spill yours.

merry freakin' christmas everyone.

in an effort to increase my christmas spirit, yesterday i did the following:

got a pedicure. when asked if i wanted a design on my toes, i exclaimed, "YES!"
she asked if i wanted flowers or a christmas design, and i opted for the christmas design. which resulted in one of the ugliest pedicure designs i've ever seen. at the risk of bringing on the foot fetishists, here's a shot of the green and white snowflake:

i came home, turned on the christmas lights, and started making dough for GF sugar cookies. while the dough was chillin' in the fridge, the pants came over and brought me expensive persian food all the way from irvine... yum! that part is totally unrelated to christmas spirit, but is rather an illustration of how he's a fantastic bf.

after dinner, pants had his first sugar cookie experience. i taught him to roll the dough, we cut out the cookies and baked them. me, being a dork, forgot the second batch in the oven because we currently have a defunct microwave, and our oven timer is on the microwave. so they got about 5 extra minutes (pretty significant on a 6-minute cookie). half are well done. anyhow, then we made green and pink red icing to frost the cookies. pants did about 2 before declaring he didn't have the patience for that particular task. sadly, neither did i, but i pressed on.

and now the cookies look like a 2nd grader on LSD decorated them. if i had kids, i'd TOTALLY tell you they decorated the cookies.

here's a particularly terrible section:

look ugly, taste gooooooooood

i also made mulled cranberry cider.

that's the smell proustitute was speaking of in this comment. this didn't turn out so well, either. my fatal flaw was looking up a recipe on the internet. i've never used a recipe before. heck, i'd never even heard of it before i just decided to make it out of the blue about 10 years ago. so, i sorta followed a recipe and it came out way too freakin' sweet. so i cut it with water, and added too much into the pot. (the mug i had came out well with a little water added) so, i'm going to possibly remake that later today.

i also have another half section of cookie dough in the fridge to roll out and possibly take a second shot at decorating.

maybe not.

mittens make me happy

corrugated ribbing, however, does not.

i've mastered the italian tubular cast on (except for the initial fiddliness of it, but that's the nature of the beast). i've memorized the corrugated ribbing pattern. er, the semi-corrugated ribbing pattern, that is. because i've done the cuff 5 times on the first anemoi mitten. yay! anyhow, here was what i had as of last night:

(i'm completely blanking on the yarn i am using here)

tension's pretty awful in the ribbing, yes? that's because it's FREAKISHLY TINY. and because the tension was a pain in the arse to get right, which i didn't necessarily do.

i got only like 12 rows into it and the back looked like this:

the palm looked like this:

i switched colors between my left hand and my right hand because the pattern was being eaten. i also thought there wasn't a good enough color contrast between the CC and the MC.

so i started from scratch and frogged it.

rip rip rip rip. two-color frogging is just annoying. but not as annoying as semi-corrugated ribbing.

i took the opal that i was using for the norwegian stockings and paired it with the mystery off-white. (green is MC, off-white is CC). i did the cuffs in size 1 needles (to be fair, they're addis US1, which is really a US 1.5, even so it's a little tight getting over my giant hand) and i've gotten this much done as of tonight:

tension's still pretty crap in the ribbing, but i'm fairly certain that use and blocking will help even that out over time. the straightforward stranded knitting is actually not really that much of an issue, after i got my yarn dominance straightened out.

hopefully i'll get some more done fairly quickly - it's actually pretty quick knitting... but because of the asymmetry of the pattern on the back of the mitten, i'm pretty much married to the charts, so it's not great for TV watching...

at least most of my shows are on hiatus.

an interview with the pants

the pants has agreed to sit down for a little Q&A session so that the blog readers who keep asking for his picture will think that he posted an interview and therefore, he doesn't really need to put up his picture on the internets.

HF: hello pants! how are you tonight?

P: I'm doing fine, Heatherfeather. Thank you for having me. And I guess I'm okay with being called "Pants."

HF: So tell me, why are there no frakkin' pictures of you on the internet?

P: [pants provided an answer here, but it wasn't a good enough one in my opinion. hey, it's my blog, and i didn't have to tell you i was changing it anyway. besides, pants gave it the "sealed by pants" stamp of approval.] Because I'm so blindingly handsome that men would weep with feelings of inadequacy and women would tear out their hair at not being able to have me.

HF: Glasses or no?

P: I don't wear glasses, although I probably need them. If the question is do i like glasses on women, I love it when women wear Tina Fey librarian-ish glasses, especially when rhinestone-laden. [Pants gets extra points for sucking up to the interviewer by talking about liking her glasses]

HF: who is your favorite karate kid character?

P: Dutch, because he looks like he's on speed, and karate guys on speed are really fun to look at.

HF: in an erotic way?

P: [laughs uncomfortably] No comment. But Elisabeth Shue was very hot in a non-teenage girl teenage girl sort of a way.

HF: are you heading for a career in politics with that sort of spin tactic?

P: No. [Pause] However, I would very much like to enter politics if I could work for the perfect candidate.

HF: Oh, so you're a Democrat?

P: No, I'm a Republican. Seriously, I am.

HF: How did i wind up dating you, then?

P: I recall there was some drinking involved and also you were giddy at having recently finished your last class [in grad school] and also you were intrigued by my ability to play you evenly in Trivial Pursuit.

HF: Yes, when we've played I've won about half the time and you've won the other half, right?

P: Technically, you've won every time, but that's only because God has sided with you, and it's taken literally miracles to defeat me. [editor's note: you're allowed to stop reading this answer after "you've won every time."]

HF: what is your favorite song at the moment?

P: At the moment, my favorite song is "Boston" by Augustana for a couple of reasons:

1. I find the music to be compelling and pleasing to listen to.
2. HeatherFeather talks about her time in Boston, often longingly, when she listens to the song and that makes me happy.

HF: So you like it when I long for something I don't have? [See audience? See how i did that? Girls rule.]

P: It's not like you don't HAVE it all the time.

HF: Touche. Is there a secret you've never told anyone that you'd put on the internet?

P: No. (See: Large Mouth Bass)

HF: Moving ahead. (Large Mouth Bass, drop me an email, mmkay? thanks.) What is the best g-rated feeling in the world.

P: Holding HeatherFeather's hand.

HF: You do realize you just made maryam vomit.

P: Now THAT is the best feeling in the world.

HF: Indeed it is. Last question, since this is a REALLY LONG POST. if someone offered you $1M to streak on the steps of the US Supreme Court, would you do it?

P: Yes.

The End

knitting pragmatist

since i've started knitting in earnest, i find myself incredibly reticent to buy sweaters. i look at them (especially cheapie ones from places like old navy) and think "i could make that in much nicer yarn from someplace sorta cheapy like knitpicks, do a better job, and it would cost less."

but what with the omnipresence of cableknit sweaters these days, i'm having an alternate thought: i could unvent that cable, and knit it for myself.

the only sweaters i'm tempted to buy are the tiny tiny ultrafine gauge knit sweaters that i'd never make - for instance a knee-length duster machine knit on what appears to be size 000000000000 needles.

but my temptation is fleeting, and then pragmatism takes over again.

however the result is, that i currently have very few sweaters because it takes time and resources to knit sweaters, people.

holy crap, what a boring post.

i'm feeling memey

2006, month-by-month (stolen from sandra)

Instructions -- Copy the first sentence that you posted in each month of 2006. Post it in the following format:

January

i went to the drive-through gas station car wash yesterday because it looked like someone sluiced the granny plow with a bucket of grey sludge when i was out of town.

February

my first kiss was with chris zahnheiser when we enacted the first kiss from romeo and juliet in 9th grade.

March

it's ash wednesday.

April

yaymee was on instant messenger TWICE in the past 2 days and i missed her both times...

May

so, alpineflower (no blog? what? who doesn't have a blog these days?) and i are going to go to the lamb shoppe in the future...

June

i finished my last class in grad school about 3.5 hours ago.

July

i've been chugging away on the ribbed corset by annie modesitt.

August

my mom, sister and i play games a lot.

September

the september magknits is up.

October

i have two, TWO, TWO FOs to report today.

November

it was pretty quiet - not many kiddos came to our door begging for candy.

December

i can't find my camera cord.

scroogey mcgrincherson

one way in which i suck is that i hate decorating the family house for christmas.

hate. it.

don't get me wrong - i love christmas, i love seeing people's decorated houses, i love listening to new age christmas music (wait... really?), i love singing, i love the anticipation, the making of cookies, the drinking of the only food item* which causes more polarized responses than starbucks' green tea latte... but i hate decorating my family's house for christmas.

mostly i have a lot of bitterness wrapped up in decorating this house by myself 2 days before christmas so that everyone else can feel christmassy and i just feel like the decorator.

there were several years when i got home literally on the 23rd, and no one had decorated because everyone was too busy, but since i was there, i could decorate for the family.

there were several more years where everyone came down with bronchitis around the 18th and when i came home around the 22nd, no one had decorated, but since i was there, i could decorate for the family.

we've been in this house for 10 years. i've lived in this house full-time since the end of july, or 4.5 months out of those 10 years.

last year, my sister decorated the house before i came home for christmas.

i've done it by myself for about 6 of the past 10 years (including this year).

2 of those years we had no decorations, not because everyone else was sick or too busy, or got around to decorating more than 4 days before christmas, but because i was flat-on-my-back sick with the flu one year, and in and out of the emergency room with a 5 day migraine for the other.

out of those other 6 years, i've grown to hate and resent decorating the house for christmas. it was different when i lived on my own and i decorated my tiny christmas tree, but that was because it was mine, and i could decorate it on my own time because i wanted to decorate for christmas.

i think the difference is i grew to resent being the one whose priorities, limited time at home, and health was sacrficed so that everyone who wanted christmas decorations but didn't want the hassle of doing it themselves could have the decorations.

today, my sister and i hung christmas lights on the house. she was too sick to get up on the ladder, but not too sick to tell me that any idea i had wasn't a good one, and basically steamrolled every opinion i had.

today, we hung christmas lights, and now i'm in a pissy mood.


*click on that link and you'll learn that the "name is a concatenation of egg and nog" much like mankind is a combination of mank and ind which doesn't make sense, but neither does mankind.

i am nimrod, hear me gurgle

how do i do this so often?

so, friday night i'm at the batting cages with the pants, the pants' BFF (avocados still intact), the pants' BFF's fiancee, and i take another ball to the hand.

[cough]

a softball.

anyhow, the thing is, i've taken a 50 mph and a 60 mph baseball to the hand, and still have no fear of being hit by the ball. but why does the slow pitch softball draw blood?

now, i have a swollen, bloody thumb and, it turns out, a propensity for standing in front of the ball.

Um, ew

Um, ew
Originally uploaded by swandive00.

because who wouldn't like imitation "abalone style" strips?

twice the fake, twice the tasty.

for those of you not quick on the sidebar button

winter knitty is up!

the good:

• um, hello, it's called monkey.
• heavens help me - i like a wide headscarf.
• i know too many nerds not to like it.
• purty with some mods.
• it's okay, but now i have mr. jones stuck in my head. sadly, i still love that song.
  
• i still want to make the big one, too. but with a totally different cable pattern. that lines up with the ribbing.
• baby sweaters are so small.
• dragons!
• TURTLE!!

the not so much my favorite:

• i like its construction, but wouldn't wear it. of course, this probably means i'll wind up in love with it and make it anyway.
• unlikely to need it with the 80-degrees-at-christmas weather we have here.
• too much obsessed with eunny's anemoi mittens to want to make these.
• ditto.
• not so much, thanks.
• funny, but no.
• i don't want coffee on my handknits.
• same thing with tapioca.
  
• the lace thing is cute, but not as cute as jenn's hair turtlenecks.
• file under no-way-would-i-ever-knit-mini-versions-of-patterns- i-haven't-knitted-full-versions-of-much-less-put-them-in-a-book.
  

i can't tell if i like this or not

Christmas Elf Name My Christmas Elf Name is Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com

i need your help

ladies and gentlemen, vic wants to cry.

i'm taking suggestions for how to achieve this.

feel free to exhale

my lifetime undefeated at trivial pursuit title remains intact.

the winning question?

"what purina chow uses the slogan 'tastes so good, cats ask for it by name'?"

i knew you were on the edge of your seat.

please, please don't eat the daisies

i am an unusual girl. i don't like getting flowers. there's something intrinsically sad to me about receiving dead flowers that you have to watch die and then throw away. i'd rather see flowers growing in the ground, watch them bloom, grow, wither away, and bloom and grow another day.

i also don't want to receive flowering plants because i can't take care of plants because of my refusal to touch dirt.

except... for daisies. i have a very soft place in my heart for daisies. i always have - even before meg ryan proclaimed daisies to be so friendly in you've got mail.

so today, the pants sent me some daisies in honor of our little milestone.

what a good man.

go ahead. click on the toes.

you should read the comments!

because a bonafide footwatcher (you say watcher, i say fetishist) likes pei's toes!

i'm afraid to leave my home

not from xenophobia or agoraphobia.

but because this morning the pants asked for my street address, and a few hours later asked me if anyone's come to my door today.

i have some errands to run, but my interest is piqued!

it could be because this is 6 months from our first date, and tonight we're re-enacting our first date (mexican food, and me kicking his ass at trivial pursuit) except probably shorter because said date wound up lasting 10 hours (because we were talking then i played guitar then we started watching movies, not because it was dirty, you filthy-minded scolds). it was also not going to be a date when it started, it was going to be a hanging out with a friend. but it turned into a date. and then it turned into me calling a perfectly nice man "pants" on the internet and people making fun of him for being called pants. if you're wondering, i call him pants because it makes him think he wears the pants in the relationship. and because he wears pants when he's out in public which avoids very awkward conversations when we talk to priests and very old women.

for the record, since i'm speaking of that night, here's a message for you single boys: most girls love it when you ask if you can kiss them. but it only has the magic that first time, so don't miss your opportunity. and don't shove your tongue down her throat. give a quick kiss and know that it's time to make your exit.*

*also for the record, pants did this exactly right.** i'm sure he's thrilled that i'm sharing this with you, and i'm sure vic will mock him, but if vic mocks him for this, i will make him cry. got that, vic? just so we're clear. :)

**if my dad were still alive, i'd add the caveat here that he's never actually kissed me, and we're waiting until marriage before he's allowed to kiss my hand. our fifth anniversay he'll be allowed to kiss my cheek.

too much fun, people

well, in an effort to find my camera cable, i did what any self-respecting person who knows anything about karma would do:

i bought a new one, realizing that by purchasing a new one, opening it and using it, i'd instantly find my other one.

i'm still waiting for the other, but it will reappear soon enough.

anyhow, i dropped pei off at the airport about an hour ago, and now i'm bummed, because i had a great weekend. it was so much fun! we did many things that were silly, many things that were not. in true (albeit lately somewhat neglected) heatherfeather fashion, i present the photo essay with BIG PICTURES.

we got pedicures

and pei lo mein peer pressured herself into getting flowers on her pedicure

we posed in front of the mountains at the end of my street

(good lord, i look like crap)

and pei pretended she was asian

we ate at chipotle (okay, yes, i realize they're everywhere, but whatever. it's my story)

and we ate korean bbq

(i forgot to get pictures of this, so you'll just have to pretend)

we went to the getty and saw the photography exhibit called "where we live." that was what i really wanted to see. so we went into the south building or whatever, and saw the main floor which was sorta meh, we went upstairs and looked at some classical art which was also sorta meh, and finally, i said "let's really go see where we live!" because i've never seen where we live, evidently. so we went down level, and walked in to the gallery. at which point my friend alan turned immediately around, proclaiming "this is NOT where we live." so we went down one more level. i learned that day that there are antler archways andd people camping and falling down houses where we live, but very few people. which made me sad because it's the people that interest me. anyhow, here we are over l.a. we would have taken pictures over the ocean, but the sun was setting and it would have taken out your retinas.

here's alan, too

yesterday, we went to a local winery and tasted, duh, wines. i bought a bottle of sauvignon blanc/semillion melange which was super yummy and extra dry. our friendly wine expert tim was kind enough to let me photograph him doing something wine experty, like pouring wine. or in the case of this picture, pretending to pour wine.

we also found cutout campy photograph scenarios. so i took a picture of pei who was unhappy to be stomping grapes, even WITH her excellent cleavage

(proof that lifting your skirt and having excellent cleavage doesn't make you happy)

and me, all too delighted to be hopping up and down on grapes

before taking her to the airport this morning, we had breakfast and the most excellent guasti cafe, and tried to burn a cd with pictures on it just for her. alas, it was not to be had. so i'm going to compress the photos into a bunch of zip folders and email them to her. or send her a cd through the mail, because who doesn't like getting mail? NOT ME! i miss her, and can't wait to hang out again sometime in the future... because that'd be rockalicious.

if you'd like to see all the pictures (and this WAS most of them) please feel free to click on the crossing for danger tractors thumbnail.

mother of frakkin' pearl

i can't find my camera cord.

and i've got pictures from the weekend...

grrrr............

this is gonna be a good one!

a good weekend that is.

you know why? because this lady:

is going to be here this weekend! the one, the only, pei lo mein! yay! yay pei! and the only reason i used that picture is because it's just only the best costume ever! um, hello, morning-after-geisha? yes. and her makeup was kickin'. i did it.

however, this is a better picture of the lovely pei with the lovely me:

nope, that's not it.


no! i am anjou! whoops, still not the right one...


dang it!

oooh... this has to be it. i have a good feeling about this one:

yay! this is the one i was looking for!

so this weekend, we're gonna get pedis, and hang out and eat foods, and hang out with the pants and some of the pants' friends, and go to the getty with p.l.m., pants, and my ex-bf (what? really?).

good times ahead!

the wind is ruthless, the trees shake angry fingers at the sky

how i've missed these giant winds. the kind that makes relatively young palm trees uproot themselves and commit hara kiri in front of your car, the kind that finds the tumbleweeds that were exiled from the western sets at paramount studios (the ones big enough to completely engulf a european car if so inclined). the kind that makes you lean forward with all of your strength to walk into them.

however, pants is driving up here in his fairly lightweight car through canyons and at the base of the mountain passes. where the 65 mph gusts are channelled as high as 100+. the kind to tear up your fence and whisk away your little dog too.

i'm checking the CHP logs and i haven't seen any accidents, but i'm still a teensy bit worried. i'll be glad when he gets here, and loathe to let him leave. but that's also 'cause i dig him.

it's only like work because you work at it

there are so many times when it's easier to fall asleep. to fall into that deep, velvety pit that opens a gateway to the world of surreality, comedy, tragedy, terror and tears that are covered in a faint haze of memory the next day. it's escape. it's living who you aren't quite. it's like living in a movie.

i don't want to fall asleep for this. it's been scary, it's been sad, it's been harder than almost anything i've ever done. but i wouldn't trade it for sleep. i think and think and think and think; sometimes my brain hurts, often the hurt is lower down. somewhere closer to my thoracic-abdominal line. a little line i like to call my diaphragm. sometimes it aches with the memory of the pain. sometimes it doesn't hurt even a little bit and it's like a scientist examining a foreign object, holding it with forceps and squinting a little at the unusualness of it all.

it's also been better than anything i had imagined. it's been fun, it's been exciting, it's been steeped in that quiet sort of peace that i call joy and that everyone else calls contentment. joy is a quiet, delicate little creature that will scatter at the smallest flutter of sheaves of paper. i go through periods where i tingle from top to toe for just long enough that i almost forget that i'm tingling. then i stop just long enough to remind me again.

when i was ten i hurt all the time. my legs made me cry at night because they hurt. we shout "grow up!" to childrenpeople like it's an easy thing to do, but time made us forget that it aches and pulls and makes you long for advil and heating pads, and especially for your dad's spaghetti. when i was ten and a half i decided that i liked the pain. not in a sick and twisty way, but because it was actual proof that i was growing. pencil lines on the wall don't change day-to-day, hour-to-hour. i liked it in the way that it sort of feels good when a molar is growing in and you prod it with your tongue and your fingertips and you bite on the end of your pen to feel it more. because when you feel it, you're know you're growing. and if you're growing you've got to be alive.

that's the same reason i like the hurt now. it's not constant, and the source of it changes from day-to-day, hour-to-hour. usually it's from the same vicinity. but you sit down at the end of the day, take account of your aches and pains, and think of all that you've fought for and lost, all that you've fought for and won.

at the end of the day, i can't help but notice that everything i've lost makes everything i've won that much more precious. in fact, i realize that i've had to lose it in order to win. some might call it collateral damage. but i really know it's part of the balance. and it's all about balance. it's not music without the silence between the notes.

so i'll wrap it in yellow silk, drop it in my pocket, and fight to the death for it again tomorrow.

there's nothing wrong with working a long day, every day, for what you know is important.

and this is important.

stupid syndication...

so, sometimes my rss feed isn't updating. and i've seen a lot of people on blogger having that problem.

(like how i attribute the lack of posting to the rss feed instead of me not posting?)

and i'm also seeing people say that changing the feed url to one ending in rss.xml instead of atom.xml takes care of that.

but if you do that for my blog, the most recent post is from august 25. so i don't know what to say other than what i always say:

stupid blogger.

i must be doing something wrong

at the end of yoga today, there was blood on my mat. a lot of blood. not like i severed an artery, but more than a speck.

that must be a new asana with which i am unfamiliar.

in good news though, i almost fell asleep in savasana - it's rare i actually take that time to really relax.

so much gratitude

yesterday was a good day. there was so much to be thankful for, and in so many ways i never saw coming. we were even able to discuss religion and politics without anyone being offended! i made the pants a pumpkin pie, he made us mashed potatoes - the food economy of family.

also, my sister googled pretty ways to fold napkins for our thanksgiving china. she did this cool thing:

if you'd like to see the jacquard pattern on the napkin and tablecloth, here's a shot with a blinding amount of flash:

i hope your thanksgivings were as lovely as mine. may you remember to be thankful every day.

internets, i know you can do it!

it's time to send your collective good thoughts and healing vibes to my college roommate, callous lily.

you see, she kicks major booty. she's a roller derby girl. she is one tough mama. and last week, she took a clean hit that sent her ass-over-teakettle, with her landing on her shoulder then her face.

and broke her shoulder. but not her face.

so she's in a hurty and immobilized way.

but what a freakin' awesome reason to have a broken shoulder.

in which i try to do a blog post, but wherein i'm simply posting to give the pants' best friend the opportunity to mock him because i call him pants

pants and i went on a date on friday night. it was clearly time, since we hadn't had one in quite a while and we were respectively planning our own dates with one another.

but we settled on pants' date: indian food and the new james bond flick. is it just me? i find daniel craig to be ridiculously unattractive. he looks like a monkey to me. but that's neither here nor there - it was a decent flick. i liked that it wasn't so much about the gadgetry as about the development of bond into bond... seeing the development of the gadgetry, the callous philandering, the ability to be beguiling and scheming (although that may be innate in some anyway) at the same time.

i also realized that somewhere along the line, i developed a fear of heights. i was having major issues with the first fight scene where they're fighting on construction cranes hundreds of feet over the ocean.

the indian food was good too - we went to haandi. now, it's no maharaja's ravi's in colton but it was pretty freakin' good. and we split an india special reserve beer which was quite tasty. the hoppiness of beers is growing on me... i'm no longer all about the malt, baby.

i have officially become a blogger who sucks.

and hi pants' best friend! mock him all you like - this post was for you.

call for geekdom

if anyone has a good hex color code for my tagline and my postings (because i'm just not geeky enough to figure out how to change one without the other), leave it in the comments and i'll give it a shot.

please?

i'll even apologize for using the term geeky instead of savvy the first time.

tidying up the place

i went chicklike with the design. i spent 2 hours fidgeting with the template (if you see any major bugs lemme know - other than the permalinks having the old templates... i just like keeping my taglines throughout the ages, so i just republished the index). i made the posts wider so that i could post images up to 500 pixels wide without wonkying up the sidebar situation.

there's pink incorporated into the design. clearly, i'm losing my mind.

or i just need a job.

it's softer than the belly of a puppy

good heavens, i have felt the softness and will never be able to rid the memory from my mind.

i've heard about it in legend, but it's softer than i ever thought possible for a merino.

i'm talking about malabrigo merino. i was at the yarn deli in redlands looking for sweater yarn for my momma, and they had a wall of it.

a wall of silky squashy softness that was kettle-dyed by uruguayans.

it makes me think that i'd like to buy enough to make a new and totally different hot lava cardigan since i don't really like the one i made in new york last summer (it's got crazy row gauge, making it baggy across the back, and i got bored of knitting the bolero and made it too small. so it's both too big and too small all in one fell swoop).

either that, or roll around naked in a huge mountain of it.

stuff i stole from steve

thanks steve!

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Your Inner European is Russian!

Mysterious and exotic. You've got a great balance of danger and allure.

Who's Your Inner European?