enemy sighted, enemy met

i think the fact that it's neither occured to me to post, nor have i felt much like knitting is a good thing. AND i was in public for most of the day which hasn't happened for a good long while.

while i hesitate to say it lest i jinx it (february is my least favorite month of them all), i may be coming back into sorts. because the past month i have been OUT of sorts.

just if you're curious, the title of the post is because i've had REM's "exhuming mccarthy" stuck in my head for a good portion of the day. "by jingo, buy america"

other good news, my danifriend from college (round 1, the boston years) is going to come visit me. we have stayed in decent telephone and email touch but haven't hung out since thanksgiving 1997. and, she may be coming the weekend of the grad school prom, so i can have a hott date. however, as i learned listening to the student government when they were meeting in the cafe at school, they haven't planned it yet, but are shooting for the beginning of april... 5 weeks later than last year. hmmm... those are my updates.

those of you here for knitting p0rn have to read a separate post.

aliens suck

i'm not REALLY friends with her.

i'd sell your mother...

...for a plate of freeman's crack and cheese and a new york sour (made by a bald australian bartender), and a lemon yummy cupcake from sugar sweet sunshine.

hmmm... maybe it's not gone...

so i had talked before about thinking my run as a fertility idol may have wound down.

however i just learned that someone else is pregnant! yay! congrats to you guys - if nothing else i'm always superhappy when other people are having babies!!

my mom is funny

i sent her my ernie tandoori picture.

she said in response:

Pink dog looks sick, do not do that again!

plugging my friends

so, the time has come for me to plug a friend again.

michael tiernan, singer-songwriter extraordinaire, scrabble champ, and all around good-guy is coming to denver in a few weeks. he'll be playing at the following places in CA, TX and CO:

February 8 - Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, CA at 8 pm
February 9 - Humphrey's by the Bay Backstage Lounge, San Diego, CA 8 pm
February 10-11 - Folk Alliance Conference, Austin, TX, 9pm11 pm, respectively
February 16 - Swallow Hill, Denver, CO 7:30 pm
February 18 - Capuvino (wifi study mecca extraordinaire), Denver, CO 8 pm

since there are some readers in san diego, who travel to austin, and in denver (more than i can link right now), please please put out a good showing - he's a great musician, he's a good friend to my family, he keeps winning all these awards and stuff, too.

tell him heather from redlands sent you, and thank him for playing at my dad's funeral - he, francis and audrey did an amazing job.

something afoot

there's a post percolating beneath the surface...

it's somewhere between serious and waxing all wordy and whatnot...

but right now it exists in the merest of embryonic traces. i'll read something and a little more will come to life. something i see will trigger it.

but i don't know what it is yet.

i just have to wait and see. could be brilliance in development, could be the sinus infection.

while we're waiting, won't you go here and listen to david's lurvely voice as he sings about the environment? i hadn't realized how much i missed his singing (and singing operatic feminist folk in duet) until i heard these.

update: holy crap. i almost don't want to say it. this hasn't happened to me in YEARS. i don't think i have a blog post percolating, waiting to be written.

i think it's a song.

more about dreams

i felt SO sick last night, and still feel pretty icky today - i think it's either a sinus infection fo' reals yo, or its me finally inheriting the most lovely PMS symptom that runs in my family: the migraine-sinus headache hybrid. either way, i went to bed earlyish (after turning the heels in elfine's socks - most likely, pictures later).

and had another icky dream.

i dreamt yaymee still was in denver, and it was her last night before leaving for guinea. she and i were at her house with her mom (she lived with her mom in actuality), and i had clearly been out of town because her mom was watching ernie. at some point in the dream, yaymee's mom turned into homer's mom, yaymee disappeared, and it was homer's house i was at.

(back in real life commentary) i am going to adopt ernie out to someone in the next few months - could be sooner if dream job comes through, as it's overseas and i'm not going to do that to him. (back to dream) homer's parents and brother agreed to keep him and were going to fix the fence in their yard. they were very happy as they had just put their dog, snickers, down and there had been a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. (commentary: ernie is a GREAT guard dog. he will move heaven and earth to protect me. by move heaven and earth, i mean he will eat you)

then, i was suddenly in a classroom taking a general knowledge exam. it was set up like a jeopardy entrance exam, and i was doing poorly as most of the questions were about the nuts and bolts of major corporate scandals - which bore me to tears. as we were going over the answers, a girl in the front row kept asking the examiner to define certain words which had nothing to do with the exam. someone told me in the middle of the answer review that my dad was on the phone.

i thought, hey that's weird my dad's not alive, and got to the phone, and sure enough it was him. he was calling to tell me that my sister died during surgery, and that i needed to move home to be with my mom because she would be alone. i fainted.

then i woke up.

calm beastie

calm beastie
Originally uploaded by swandive00.

i done played an electric guitar maybe once.

i've always been an acoustic guitar person. i like the tone, the resonance, the wide variances available from the different types of wood, body shapes, strings, etc.

i play the lyrical folky stuff a lot - but i can also tear shit up too.

people don't usually believe the acoustic guitar can do that. but with a little creativity and a decent loop, you can seriously tear shit up. (first song is just GOOD. second song? who knew it would do well this way, too!?)

by the way, i heart kt tunstall - her album comes out in 2 tuesdays.

(thanks to p-man for the link. he thanks aaron and jon for the link, so thanks to them, too!)

oh, yeah... that.

i finally hauled my posterior to yoga after hemming and hawing about it for, um like 352621 weeks.

my default status is insanely flexible. i gain strength and muscle really quickly. but i forgot how much work the first time is after not doing it for [mumble mumble].

i also forgot how much stress and how many toxins i store in my hips and shoulders.

what is good about my practice today is that i started moving those stagnants around.

the bad news is i'm still more than a little dizzy (my vision started blacking out a bit) and insanely nauseous now.

hopefully the shower i'm about to take will help.

i hate yoga. i heart yoga.

ernie tandoori

ernie tandoori
Originally uploaded by swandive00.

for those of you concerned that i colored my dog with an - albeit non-toxic - highlighter, fear not. this is just the newest installment of "heather plays with her camera's color settings".

color blocking

i either have a great sense of color or a terrible one.

i usually combine blocks of solid color that you don't expect. i think i pull it off, others have told me so as well. one of my favorite combos is my brown cords with a light blue shirt, sage green cardigan and an orange scarf. i dunno. maybe i'm insane. maybe i'm brilliant. if i weren't a girl, i'd wonder if i were color blind.

but i was about to go to bed and stumbled upon my camera manual, opened to a random page and started reading about how to manipulate color.

and started playing.

my standard "kermit on acid" track jacket is navy with super white racing stripes.

click through to find the whole set... it will probably grow over the next few days... hopefully the subject will change, too

okay, internets

i need all of y'all to collectively cross your fingers and toes that i get my DREAM JOB WITH THE AGENCY THAT HASN'T HIRED ONCE IN THE PAST 18 MONTHS I HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THEM.

one if by bubble, two if by cup

i found a place to do madlibs online.

here is mine:

The Missing Food Mystery

Dear fred,

Last week I helped solve a mystery and had a real sly time. When it was lunchtime, I found out my green wombat stew was missing.

I told miss thoreson* and she said the whole class could help me find my wombat stew. mariama thought she found it, but it turned out to be a small limb. particleman thought he found it, but it was someone's inside-out chick**. Finally, I found it under the window. It gallavanted out when I opened my lunchbox.

Next time, I'm going to put my wombat stew in a closed hobo so I won't lose it.

Your friend,
heatherfeather

*miss thoreson was my 7th grade science teacher. she was fun, but ditzy. in fact she never learned that my name wasn't the same as my sister's name, and in fact when i won the science fair with my AMAZING science project (dealing with the presence of food in the stomach when taking pain relievers), she made out the certificate to my sister. and she never learned how to spell fred's name correctly, either. and she nearly married a gay man.

** ew, this just turned into CSI

mmmmmm, hat!

cherz is fun.

he got his hat and did a photo essay in the particleman tradition (links to the particleman tradition on cherz' page)

maryam is the only one who will likely understand this

i've had 3 dreams this week with nikolai in them. last night there was something to do with a jetty, a flag (not american), a coffee shop, a neil diamond song and a new weapon of mass destruction.

whoa

someone just asked me what song on my iTunes (ahem, particlehombre) is my most frequently played. i've never looked, and i think my stats are skewed a bit since i had to reinstall iTunes after my computer died and i resurrected it in december.

something smells good in stinkville - there are two songs tied for first with regard to playcount - one of which i don't even like: "take a chance on me" by erasure (gah!) and "beestung" by kristen hersh.

at 1,885,628,525 plays apiece.

(click through for legible sizes)

for those of you not liking to count commas, that's nearly TWO BILLION plays apiece. and it's the same number for each of them.

followed in third place by "center of your heart" by kathrin shorr with 700 plays. which makes more sense - especially if i've ever made you listen to me play the guitar - that's the one i start with.

speaking of the guitar, i lost my damn capo. grrrrrrrrrr.

it's funny to use words

last night i was IMing with someone who just got a new job. i said that i hoped it had better hours and more monkey money.

because who wouldn't want a job with a 9% increase in monkey?

not the first time i've done it... certainly not the last. but it's the second funniest instance of that happening. this is the first.

the mind is a mysterious thing

dreams - seems to be a theme around the blogspot lately...

i was quite happy when my alarm went off. i was having a dream that was scary and sad... i dreamt that my dad was still alive and teasing my mom on the staircase in their house, when he disturbed a rocket spider. as far as i know, rocket spiders are fake, but in this dream, it was a mx between a wolf spider and a tarantula... sort of like the venezuelan spider in arachnophobia. (whilst watching that movie in the theater, the scene where the spider jumps up at the photographer in the jungle startled me SO badly that i jumped and learned that if you throw a box of jr. mints all over a theater floor it is NOT quiet)

i was lounging in an easy chair beneath the staircase when it was roused from its slumber by my dad and it fell on me and it scared the crap out of me, so there was much jumping and screaming and gagging. my sister was also terrified so my mom came to help get it off of me. the spider sort of disappeared, and my mom and sister and i were left noticing that my dad was gone which made us sad...

then there was this segue to this random penthouse in san diego where we were calling out a doctor or psychiatrist and wond up trying to catchhim before he hurt someone else - i think he was my sister's doctor = and he beat us to the elevator and we got to the lobby and found ourselves in a hotel we used to stay when we were little, where my cousin dan would bug the concierge for donuts. (not a real hotel from my past, dunno if my cousin used to do that to concierges) and we couldn't catch him and were really sad about my dad being gone.

i was really glad when my alarm went off even though it was 5:30 am.

i know why joe don't wear no socks...

there's a camp song called "Socks" that you sing as different ways of insulting your friends.

but that's not what this is about. it's about knitting (duh) socks. i have 1 WIP - elfine's socks. and i used to be a one-at-a-time girl as far as WIPs. but i wish i had something else to work on. i have another sock yarn (and after avowing publicly my general disdain for variegated yarn, it's variegated sock yarn) with which i am intending to do the ubiquitous jaywalker socks because that is a sock that looks good with colorchanges.

but i want something else to do on reasonably sized needles.

so, i'm toying with the idea of designing a cable knit car coat with the remnants of mariah.

i'm flipping through my stitch book looking for cables and deciding which ones i'd like to juxtapose and how i'd like to construct it. because it's just my style to start without thinking it through (waist shaping? buttonholes? button band? collar?) and getting annoyed and never touching it again.

clearly, since i've not done the most sweaters in the world, and haven't liked a good percentage of my execution OF those sweaters, i'm going to borrow a shape from an extant sweater to get an idea. i can't decide if i want it to be a raglan (bottom up) sweater - but that'd create a nightmare cable situation for me - or not.

so i'm thinking now, swatching out some cable patterns tomorrow whilst the baby sleeps. hang on, hang on tight!

ask the internet, a new question

for those of you who heard my (speaking) voice - i was informed today that i have a bit of a midwestern accent.

agree or disagree?

lazy message conveyance

fritzie, pei lo mein is joining us for lunch today.

inside out ear

gratuitous ernie shot.

ask the internets

should i? or should i not?

list your rationale along with your answer, please. (also of note - this is entirely by distance, so i could have me a "real job" while i'm doing it. if i were in DC, i'd want to do this one)

it's driving me bonkers

this morning in my foreign policy class we were talking about the upcoming trials of the khmer rouge for crimes against humanity.

and "holiday in cambodia" has been stuck in my head ever since.


pol.


pot.


pol.
pot.

pol. pot.

learn how to count, dummy

i just saw a commercial for ancora the new album from tenor quartet il divo.

the album has a song featuring celine dion, which they called a duet.

i believe this would be considered a quintet.

balance

i need to learn to balance my hobbies.

when i do something i usually do it whole hog. but i don't have time to do the other stuff.

since i've started knitting in a prolific manner, i almost never play guitar, read, sketch, take pictures (except of knitting and my hair), do yoga, or go out with people.

and i miss doing all of that.

but knitting is like a debilitating habit - "i'll learn a new song i've been listening to after i finish this sweater/hat/gloves/socks" but as soon as i finish one, i see that i've already started something else that needs finishing or that i'm dying to start something else that's waiting in the wings.

too bad you can't do a pigeon and knit at the same time. because, hoo boy would my hip flexors appreciate that. (randomly, i'm one of those people who wants to puke while doing camel)

fritz is funny

he gets worried when this is my away message:

it's okay fritzie - it's just a song.

i am needing some order

i can tell there's an organizational streak about to break loose, because the only thing i've been able to think about is how my knitting stash needs massive labeling and sorting by fiber content and/or project intentions...

i also want to design an all-over cable car length shaped cardigan. the question is, when will i possibly have time to do that?

update: elfine's socks after 2.5 repeats of the 16 row pattern (GREY LEAVES! i have strange inclinations sometimes)

and a shot so that i can whine about knitting on size 0 needles again. look at the pencil tip in relation to the size of the stitches. thank god for super macro mode on the camera. and boo for lazy focusing on my part... (in all fairness, it just took some getting used to, and it's not so bad anymore - and i love the tiny neatness of the neat and tiny stitches)

in completely non-knitting related news, i really would like to have a full length mirror that i could lay lengthwise on the floor because there's a self portrait i really want to take that i have to take on the floor and in a mirror... contrary to where your pervy minds may go, it's not a dirty shot. it exists fully in my head as a portrait of line and light... i might need to wait until i move in june to get the shot i actually want.

i also need to go through my clothes and donate about half a ton to people who don't have clothes, because i ain't wearing them. i just have to remember not to donate all my summer clothes or else i'll be naked come june.

all in due time.

i love when i do that

i parallel parked in a single maneuver tonight.

the cherz hat

why does he get a hat when so many of you have asked and i've hemmed and hawed? well, first of all, i heart cherz and he rocks. but mostly, if he gets a cherz hat, i get a banana problem shirt. yay!

anyhow, the story of this hat:

i learned the figure 8 cast-on for socks on thursday, and decided to try it for a top-down raglan hat for the cherz. see the top?

i used lamb's pride worsted (duh) in silver sliver, brite blue, turkish olive, and old sage. and i just randomly knitted and changed colors. because i'm lazy about ends, i did me felted joins for the yarns. so it was really surprising where the colors would change. which drives my anal self nuts, but what can you do. what was interesting was how the stripe widths even out a bit toward the bottom you can take the anal out of the process, you can't take the anal out of the knitter.

i also started this hat four times because lazy me didn't swatch with this yarn on size 8 needles. although now, upon reflection, i appear to have done a very proper swatch with this yarn on size 8 needles before i did me some angelica... nuts. anyhow. so it was way too small, then it was way too big, then i thought i should ask cherz how big his head was... doh. anyhow, it felt perfect on me after a bit, but it's known i have the Largest Head On Earth, so i decided i needed to do some decreases. which you can see in some of the pictures. i also switched to size 6 needles toward the bottom to snug it in a bit.

i knitted it very long since it's a roll brim, so that it could be tightened that way, too. and also so cherz could cover his ears whilst snowboarding.

see how long it can be?

specs:

• pattern: none, top down raglan
• yarn: lamb's pride worsted in silver sliver, brite blue, turkish olive, and old sage
• needles: addi natura size 8 and size 6
• started: 1/20/06
• finished: 1/21/06
• techniques: raglan increases, figure 8 cast on, felted joins, frogging 4 times without commiting homicide
  

silly patrick...

so patrick (i'd link, but he's blogless) said this about me:

"[Heather] could knit a slipcover for Delaware in three and a half days."

what's ever so interesting about that statement is

a) that's really funny - delawarians everywhere would freak out at the giant knitted total eclipse of the heart sun.
b) Delaware's the one state i sorta don't believe in. (conspiracy of cartographers and whatnot)

i am seriously declining

i've always been an "old lady" in that i'd rather stay in than go out, go to bed and wake up early...

but this is too much.

whilst knitting socks on size 0 needles, i need to wear reading glasses.

pregnant? (not me)

it appears that my run as a fertility idol has either ended or gone on vacation.

the baby boom of 2002-2005 is at an end. in that time frame, i know of over 50 (fifty!) babies that were born to friends and family.

now is the time to inform all of you who recoil in fear that i use my powers for good and not evil evil and not good (oops, freudian slip at 8 am on a sunday morning) - i only knocked up people who were married and wanted to be pregnant. and twice i got people pregnant who didn't think they could.

at the moment, i have heard of one (maybe two) couples who are pregnant (anyone able to confirm that michael and clare t. are in the family way again?) which feels, um, weird. i haven't been layette shopping in ages. by ages i mean 6 months.

my checking account sort of appreciates the respite, but i also miss the newborn age - i hold them while they're crying, i change poopy diapers, i'm all for giving new mom and dad a break and a chance to use their arms again.

but that boom is over (the wedding boom is over too). wow... that suddenly made me feel very unmarried.

that's bad. (shakes it off)

saturday night knitting update

i'm too hip for the bars, too hip for the parties, too hip for the club scenes.

instead, i stay home and knit while watching austin powers on vh1.

anyhow, i've started the elfine socks for the third time. and i don't even mind. this is because i've ventured for the first time into sock territory. i didn't think i would, but here i go! anyhow i'm using knitpicks essential in ash. this motif is essentially the same as in kiri which leads me to believe i may be fixated on grey leaves. grey is such a color of botanical life and vitality, after all.

anyhow, i started them on thursday and got 3 repeats into the lace pattern, and tried it on. it was too big on #1 needles. so today when i was buying new tires for the granny plow (yay tires!) i started it again on size 0 needles. and all was going well until i started the lace pattern and clearly lost the ability to count - i wound up having the right number of stitches, but stitch off by the end of each row.

so i cast on again a half hour ago, but since i loathe knitting in pairs, i cast on BOTH socks, and am doing it that way. (sleeves and gloves are the death of me - part of the reason i've never jonesed to do socks)

not enough for any sort of pictures. but BOY are size 0 needles tiny and hard to hold. anyhow.

i have another FO, it's a stripey snowboarding hat. i'll post pics later, with the details once the recipient either recipients it or he says its okay, but i will say that starting socks and learning toe-up cast-on methods made this hat way more fun.

i did a figure 8 cast-on and a top-down raglan hat. since i used lamb's pride worsted (duh), i did felted joins for the stripes and voila! i only had 2 ends to weave. yay!

knitting without pictures. so much fun, yes?

i heart my ipod and becca

becca is my barista. if i get a small drink, she doesn't charge me. if i get a medium, she charges me for a small. if i stay there for a few hours knitting or doing homework, she'll toss me a free brownie. all because we griped about boys together a few months ago.

ipod played the greatest songs for me. evidently i want to return to jr. high, because the ones that made me happiest were from then.

can you identify those songs by their lyrics without the google?

1. "if you need me, me and neil'll be hangin' out with the dream king." ('tear in your hand' by tori amos)
   
2. "when i see you kitten as a cat, yeah as smitten as that, i can't get that small" ('high' by the cure)
   
3. "wake up every day, that would be a start, i would not complain of my broken heart" ('regret' by new order)
   
4. "me, i'd like to think that life is like a drink, and i'm hoping that it tastes like bourbon" ('the size of a cow' by the wonderstuff)
   
5. (i forgot to add this one) "he had a ponytail and he didn't talk right" ('long haired guys from england' - woo! - by too much joy)

updated: booyah to mina for the first two and correctly identifying which neil, booyah to elspeth who got the last one, and a head-shaking booyah to elspeth for circumventing the rules and using yahoo for the rest. :)

i'm never gonna know you now, but i'm gonna love you anyhow

for the past 36 hours or so, i've been listening to certain songs on repeat. one at a time, for hours on end. these are the songs:

• "sick of myself" by matthew sweet
• "waltz #2" by elliott smith
• "we're both so sorry" by mirah
  

oh boy.

this scares the crap out of me (free registration required)

wherever you go, whatever you do, i will be right here waiting for you

my sister shipped me some yarn that's been hanging around their house for 9 years. it arrived today.

i bought it when i was living in boston in either late 1996 or early 1997 - there was definitely snow EVERYWHERE. i went to a yarn shop barely west of boston - i took the D line outbound a few stops. it was tiny, it was cozy, it was warm, they were helpful. either in chestnut hill or brookline...

i bought it and an aran sweater pattern - now hopelessly lost and was going to knit an aran sweater, by golly. i bought this 5 states and umpteen addresses ago. it was waiting for me to be ready for it. what a faithful lover is yarn...

i never did. i wound one skein into a ball and forgot about it. my sister tried to learn to knit from that ball o' yarnyness. it's a grapey-bluey purpley color (the color's pretty true on my monitor):

(ernie's my equivalent of the US Postal Inspection Service)

and it appears that i've been obsessed with brown sheep for quite some time:

it, for all intents and purposes, feels like lamb's pride worsted... that wool and mohair blend to which i always come back.

i have 16 oz. woot!

they also sent me a vitamin c peel from philosophy, the cell phone charger i left there over christmas, and a button i made in what appears to be 8th grade.

remind me sometime to tell you about the genesis of my cow obsession. but semaphoria may have to tell you where muffinhead came from as i either forgot or blocked it from my memory.

japanese night

i mentioned japanese night when i was talking about porch day.

that was fun - it happened for approximately 10 weeks on tuesday nights. david and i bought food from the asian grocery store in... either metairie or kenner... i think it was in metairie. we cooked food from the vegetarian table - japan, because at that time david, mina, and lynne were vegetarians. (that summer, however mina broke the seal by craving chicken marsala when michele was in town, and they ate chicken. i think david started eating meat again too, but can't be sure). we got $5 from everyone and ate at the coffee table that used to be an OLD barnes and noble bench sitting on pillows from the yellow corduroy couch. we made dashi, we made miso soup, we made tempura, we mde shiitake and enoki mushroom soup..

we were adventurous (and tempura for the uninitiated is SO messy). neither mina nor i liked the okra and crispy noodles in tofu sesame dressing. i personally don't like okra or almost dying while eating. that night we also tried to watch rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead but i fell asleep because of the obscene amounts of benadryl i had taken.

and i had totally forgotten, it was always a game of "NOT IT!" for who had to wash the daikon. sucker. (thanks mina - sometimes i need some remembering help)

i still have the cookbook, but like all my cookbooks, it's in bad shape from the flooding apartment incidents i've had in denver.

dang it, i'm going to whole foods for some freakin' sushi for lunch.

it's a tough call

do i make friends with the guy on myspace who sent me a message that read :

whatz up with u gurl holla back i wanna get to know you gurl

or do i maintain the status quo?

heatherfeather's theme song for the past fortnight

"sick of myself" by matthew sweet

let's see how this goes

i've been watching the cursor blink onscreen for about 3 minutes. and i'm not having anything coherent to say.

i've got stuff going on but haven't been able to sort out my own head. rundown

iowa
i've always had a strange fixation on iowa. i've wanted to live there on and off for at least 15 years. i have no idea why. part of it is jane smiley, part of it is the song by dar williams, part of it is the writing program in ames, part of it is my (significantly misinformed and highly romanticized) thought that farm life is easier than not. it doesn't address my increasing abhorrence of winter, or the fact that it's iowa. and there's a job that i'm thinking of applying for in a town of 25,000 in iowa.

snow
so not happy with it. i need new tires need a car that doesn't have rear wheel drive, i need to never drive up hills. i need to never turn corners or try to stop on side streets. because the dishtailing and runing into curbs? not so good. i'm just glad i didn't run into people, cars or poles (in that order). i'm buying new tires tomorrow.

job applications
i'm not loving applying for jobs. i've spent probably 20 of the past 96 hours doing resume tweaking, cover letter writing, hunting and applying for jobs. i've applied for jobs in all the continental US time zones, a few in time zones ahead of greenwch mean time. in seattle, san diego, santa monica, las cruces, iowa, new york, washington, and vienna. so if i roll my eyes or vomit if you ask me what i'm doing after i graduate in june (june!), that's why. i have no freakin' clue.

birthdays
today's my sister's birthday (happy birthday chimellie!), a few days ago was mary's birthday (happy birthday mary!), as well as dominic's birthday (woo dominic! it feels like just yesterday when we were wondering if your mama was going to birth you on my bed as she napped through new year's), and ermie's birthday (no, that doesn't say "ernie" nor is it a typo. happy birthday ermie!).

misc.
freakin' tired. so. freakin'. tired. all the time. but i know what the 2 reasons for that are (neither of them illicit or of relaxed morals).

also thanks to jess for posting the craptarsia cow on her blog - it became my photo with the most views on flickr in ONE DAY. this proves she is popular, i am not. it also answers the question as to why i had so much traffic on my lo! posting today. jess, welcome home - sorry today was sucky... :(

mullet

cherz drawed me this picture. i totally heart cherzie!

of note, the vaguely homosexual - yet bilingual - shirt, the aqua hot pants, and the alarmingly large nostril.

something strange this way comes

i don't have any WIPs.

none, nada, zero, zilch.

i am going to start a pair of socks later today (i think elfine socks - link later, too tired now), but this feels weird.

no UFOs, no WIPs? none even at all?

another notch in my (woollen) belt

she's done, she's blocked, she still smells like wet wool, and my hands are sticky with lanolin. i love knitting, i love wool...

and see what happens when i turn on my brain and don't drink?

the keyhole shrank nicely with the detail - i was concerned about the size of it before. (bad focusing, bad)

and i like the button after all

the report

• pattern: glampyre's angelica
  
• yarn: lamb's pride worsted in old sage
• needles: addi natura 40" #8, 40" #6
• started: um, don't remember, but i will eventually find out
• finished: 11/18/06
• pattern mods: see below for keyhole detail, picked up 16 stitches on keyhole instead of 18. i did the m1l, m1r on the sleeves, but not on the hip increases. i wish i had on the hips, too...
  
• misc: i loved knitting this... it was fast for a sweater, it is a good cut with interesting shaping! and i need to stop knitting sweaters that are this color.

these are boring things

things that have happened today:

• i snorted in class because my professor defined limited and unlimited strategies of warfare as "the decision to fight a war on a limited or unlimited basis."
• i got blisters on the balls of my feet from walking fast to keep up with tall boys in shoes with 3 inch heels that are too big (i'm in 3 inch heels, and the shoes are too big)
  
• i had lunch with scott, james, and art at tokyo joes and we made fun of the annoying people in our class
• i went to the hospital and did some work
• i made plans for my boss to buy me lunch next week
• i got the first love, last rites soundtrack in the mail after getting off my posterior and ordering it last week
• i finished angelica (well, i haven't finished it yet, but i'm so bloomin' close i may as well)
• i learned that if i'm sitting, and my dog is standing, when i lean forward so i'm resting my chest on my lap my dog does a downward dog
  

have we really gotten that dum?

i was catching the headlines on today and heard the following (paraphrased except the dum parts):

"it was a one in a million chance: a woman gave birth to identical triplets without the aid of fertility drugs. they were all boys."

i'm falling for midnight, for lovely worlds of ice and stone

there's a lot of metaphysical angst free-floating around the internet.

some i know of for sure (i've heard 2 mehs, 3 blahs, and a couple of ughs), upon certain others i may just be projecting my own.

so i made a very short playlist that's suiting me tonight. because you totally care what's on it, here's what's on it.

• pink moon by nick drake (the whole album)
  
• "six different ways" by the cure
• "orbiting jupiter" by cheryl wheeler
• "space dog" by tori amos
• "pinch me" by barenaked ladies
• "rainbow connection" by kermit da frog
• "soul to squeeze" by red hot chili peppers

the past is sneaking up beside me

all of a sudden i've found all of my college friends...

my college friends - we had a weird fluidity of housing between the five of us, david, jake, mina, lynne, and i. luckily, since we lived about five blocks from one another that was ok.

luckily since new orleans in the summer molests you like a sweaty man at a rave and we had superior air conditioning we spent a lot of time at our house.

there was the summer of wine - a cheap merlot, talus, that we bought for the magritte-like label. we drank it on the porch. one night we drank a LOT of merlot on the porch and unexpectedness (none of it lewd or lascivious) happened.

there was japanese night where david and i cooked our way through the japanese vegetarian table for our friends. (complete with one very bad night that taught me sesame was forbidden forever)

there was sushi at ninja, which is the origin of the shirt which is the origin of the euphemism.

there was wandering hither and thither down maple street, buying books, drinking iced mochas from PJ's, getting a mushroom deluxe sandwich at favori, and dinner at that amazing, delicious, affordable french restaurant.

there was spontaneous poetry night.

and there was Porch Day (whoa, look out kids - she's broken out the capital letters)

the day that we sat on the porch from sunrise to sunset. we were allowed to leave the porch for tinkling, or if we needed something imperative to making porch day perfect. and later, so we could climb on the roof through mina's window. (i should scan these pictures)

i made 2 loaves of soda bread the night before. jake and i were on the porch at sunrise - the others were later risers.

we read. we told stories. we read stories. we drew. we took pictures. we took pictures of the impossibly tiny, impossibly gay man in the impossibly tight lycra sailor suit who was walking his impossibly huge great dane (whose back came up to the little man's armpit) down the streetcar tracks. we noted the odd number of tour buses who stopped to look at our house. we sang and played guitar. we wrote, songs and poems and stores. we climbed on the roof. we took pictures of mina blowing bubbles on the roof.

when the sun went down, we went inside and had dinner. it was a bird's eye frozen dinner in a bag dealio. i can't remember the name of it, but i remember we bought it because the woman at winn-dixie gave jake and me a coupon and mispronounced one of the words.

i remember. it was chicken voila. and she called it chicken viola.

that was a Very Good Day.

that's it?

i thought i would have been closer to $2299.00 for a 6" pot.

no drinking while knitting

i finished two sleeves yesterday afternoon (i did them in the round because i don't like seaming).

and i decided, by golly i'd just finish angelica last night!

while i was drinking wine.

and this is what happened:

yes, i did the detail inside out. i started on the left (as you're wearing it) side instead of the right and instead of having two purl ridges divided by a knit, um, valley, i have two valleys separated by a purl ridge.

i was going to say pffft and bind off, but i thought better of it and went to bed.

i'll fix it tonight...

yeesh.

monkeys

yaymee made it to guinea!

the best part is, she's having a hard time concentrating on training because of sheep and monkeys.

dang, if i didn't know better, i'd wonder if i were supposed to be there...

the game show sensation sweeping the nation

okay, we were going to play the hit guessing game Bruise or Hair Dye? but it's pretty plain to see into which category this goes

the disconcerting thing is i have NO idea how i got this - and it looks like it should have hurt a lot. the bruise itself hurts mildly. it's not the bright reddish-plummy purple of a new bruise, nor is it the sickly greenish of an old one.

i really wonder what happened.

must have been an alien abduction.

i've also created another brand new tag on flickr.

to boldly go...

i am the first person on flickr to tag photos as "crappy knitting".

them thar interwebs is crazy

because my roommate from new orleans and athens just found me on myspace. hi mina!
and mina has started KNITTING! yay knitting!

and lo! a pile of crap was born

i had told moocow i'd knit him a hat. he likes things that are funny. so i decided to get bold and adventurous and try to knit a modified version of his icon on a hat. actually, i used his old icon and threw a peep on top of it.

me, having only ever done a teeny bit of the intarsia, went whole hog and tried knitting intarsia in the round without thinking about how it would work or how the floats would be at the wrong side of the pattern when i got back, making me float them across 31 stitches. and it was looking bad.

(i call my technique craptarsia)

so i frogged it and googled "intarsia in the round" and found a site that told me to either knit it flat and seam it, or turn it inside out at the end of a round and purl my way back across.

there was some explanation about how to make a seam with a YO which didn't make sense, so i came up with my own technique:

knit one stitch past BOR marker, slip it back on the needle, and turn the bad boy inside out (or right side out - depending if it was a RS or a WS row) and the seam came out sorta pretty:

and i finished it a little while ago - the tension's still abysmal and although blocking may take care of some of that, i forgot one thing: HATS NEED TO STRETCH. this doesn't stretch well.

so even though i like the raglan decreases

the whole thing looks like crap and is too small for most adult heads. and even though he's a punk, i still won't give him a crappy lookin' hat.

sorry moo. looks like i need to do a new design...

all them tremendous brunettes around

true to form, i had a rough week, and decided i needed a change. since i'm a starvin' student, it had to be a change of the $10 variety.

hence, a box of feria in midnight ruby seemed to be in order. oddly enough, my idea of a change was dyeing my hair as close to its natural color as possible. but that's somewhat because it's winter and i'm pale (well, pale for me, anyway) and when i'm light, i like my hair dark.

that's why i like my current profile picture, actually.

and also for a change, i went outside to take pictures. because it's goregeous today. it's january 15 and i am wearing a tank top outside and it's 58 degrees. it's been a WEIRD winter. you can also see that it's severe clear today - there are some puffy clouds, but the UV index is blinding. you can see this by the wrinkles on my forehead.

the "trying not to look directly at the sun shot"

and i like the light in this picture. i don't like how much i didn't notice i needed chapstick and the sleep deprived bags under my eyes.

there you go.

for the previous installments of this series, go here and here.

what's interesting to no one but me, in most likelihood, is that outside it looks dark brown. inside it looks nearly black. but i'm willing to doubt no one will be able to make that distinction but me. my hair is nearly black, but not quite. and a lot of grey lately, but the dye took care of that...

shopping list

i remembered what i was going to post.

i love love love going to the grocery store and finding other people's grocery lists in the cart. it's totally voyeuristic and nosy, but good fun all in the same (when i lived in new orleans i found that someone left a list whose last item was "crack" in the cart)

the list

• scallops
• milk
• 8 oz cream cheese
• hewy cream (ed: common sense leads me to believe this says "heavy" but it doesn't look like it, so (sic))
• bananas
• strawberrries (sic)
• 25 mushrooms
• salad (2)
• 3 potatos (sic)
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery
• waffles
• pancakes
• onions
• frozen dinners
• bread
• jelly
  
• cereal
• 6 1/2 oz crabmeat
• horseradish
• pam
• canned tomatos (sic)
• chicken stock
• 8 oz mushrooms - sliced
• dry white wine
• thyme
• batteries
• hair bands

in the upper left corner there are the letters S M T W Th F which are all crossed off.

i guess saturday is for eating out.

this post was made in the hopes that no one would notice that a vibrant young 20-something as myself is at home and blogging about someone else's shopping list on a saturday night. in other totally unexciting news, i'm going to dye my hair again tomorrow. i was so envious of the loveliness of semaphoria's hair that i was thusly inspired. pics to follow (of course)

i totally got distracted

i had a post all worked out in my head when i was driving home from super target (by the way, behold, it is nirvana)...

but i got distracted by the 100 yard rush champ bailey made from the patriots' end zone in the third quarter.

i'll figure it out later, i s'pose.

so there.

thomas told me that i look like i never smile, if he were to judge solely from the pics i post here. this is not true. besides, his latest girlfriend is sorta pretty (if not for the suspect hairdo), so he has nothing about which to complain.

i'm just a control freak and like controlling every. aspect. of. my. pictures. so i usually post pictures i've taken of myself. and i feel like a dink if i smile in pictures i take of myself.

but not always. to prove this, here's proof that i smile (some are self-portraits, others are not):

sharing my inner disney


more pigtail-age


hey! look! a camera!


i heart sushi


i heard a funny


i'm happy because i have antlers


happy that my best friend had oranges as her centerpieces but weeping inside that she wasn't all that interested in taking a picture with me

see? i do smile. i have a dimple, i have very straight teeth. i just feel like a dink when i'm smiling into a camera when i'm by myself.

so there.

the truth it wears short clothes so you cannot undress it

speaking of shudder to think, i feel a massive shudder to think kick coming on.

x-french tee shirt
own me
so into you
day ditty
full-body anchor
hit liquor
kissi penny
no rm. 9 kentucky

i love the pony express record... it's so good and i listened to it once on repeat for 7 hours when i was driving from new orleans to athens... i didn't believe jake when he said that i'd eventually get tired of it... but i did.

in great news, shudder to think - being seriously rockin experimental rock music - tends to put me in a good mood. which i could use.

first love, last rites

i really want to see this movie again. it came out in 1997, officially, but i very clearly remember going to see it in its cinema release with mina, jake, lynne and david. jake and david didn't move to new orleans until 1998. so who really knows what that's about.

i don't remember whether i liked it all that much, but i remember three specific things:

1. the soundtrack is shudder to think - whom i love love love, and jeff buckley's last finished recording ("i want someone badly") is on this soundtrack. it also has a great version of "day ditty" by angela mccluskey. ("i finally say, oh sweet darling with you makes me feel all right. but now, i'm so tired...")

2. she boils their records.

3. one of my "favorite movie quotes that no one ever knows is a movie quote" quotes is from this movie: "you're so f**king loopy sometimes."

i think it did poorly in the indie circles and reviews. but it has a happy place in my heart. and the imdb summary is really funny:

Joey and Sissel are two misfits spending most of their time together talking or having sex. Gradually and slowly their relationships are becoming boring for them.

DNA - not in the icky way.

so, it may seem that i finished 2 WIPs within 24 hours. that's true, but misleading.

see, i started the DNA hat (aka, "knitted protuberances hat") in november. strike that, i started this version of the knitted protuberances hat in november. i started one in october that didn't work out so well.

anyhow, this languished in my highly disorganized stash basket until a few days ago when i did a few rows.

today, i bit the bullet and finished it. i've been highly uncomfortable with the sheer number of WIPs i have going on - i get nervous over 2, and i've had 4 going.

now i have one, because the DNA hat is done.

here it is before seaming and blocking:

and here it is on my head, protubering (still unblocked):

it's hard to capture the color of this hat.... it's called dolcetto lime. but i get ahead of myself.

the stats:

• pattern: sorta slapdash. but it had june oshiro's dna cable pattern up the middle
• needles: susan bates #9 clear blue acrylic straight needles (they have a festive name, i can't remember what it is now)
• yarn: sensations bellezza collection dolcetto wool/cotton/nylon blend in dolcetto lime
• started: sometime in november
• finished: 1/11/06
• for: me, unless i meet a geneticist with a sense of humor and a cold head
  

all-over lace faroese shawl

in its insanely unblocked glory and entirely unflattering angle, we have my sister's christmas present.

which i determined would arrive before her birthday next thursday.

which means i still have to solve the blocking problem before, say, tuesday for mailing purposes (i.e. having nowhere to block a shawl)

the details

• pattern: all-over lace faroese shawl
• needles: addi turbo #7, 40" (never again for lace - like knitting with fists instead of needles)
• yarn: knitpicks palette in petal
• started: 12/19/05
• finished: 1/11/06 (10 day hiatus while waiting for more yarn)
• mods: instead of finishing with 12 rows of garter stitch, i finished with 6 rows. mostly because i was sick of knitting this damn shawl.
• misc.: spending 70 minutes binding off seemed unnecessary.

slime and snails and puppydog tails, thunder and lightning

ivar made me think of labyrinth.

i'm going to dig through my vhs tapes and see if i can find it because that would be a good movie for me to watch tonight.

"nothing, nothing? tra-la-la?"

how did i get here?

is this week over yet?

if it is, is next week going to be any better?

because i can't take another week like this.

this is more because of me than anyone, but there you go.

yay!

semaphoria gets renown for pissing off her baby!!

luckily, he's cute when he's pissed.

when in doubt, do a photo essay

yesterday i was going to post this, but my eyes were so puffy from all the crying the night before that i couldn't.

today is better.

anyhoo... these are macro, done indoors with crappy indoor lighting

the different incarnations of my eyewear, from oldest to newest

the tortise shell cat's eye:


the birth control glasses:


the red glasses:


the conservative grown-up glasses (new!):


and the glam-a-ram-a-bling-dong glasses (new!):

(notes to self for before taking macro shots of face: wax eyebrows, grow less oily skin, use a clay purifying mask, wear makeup every now and then)

there's a political scientist whose last name is krauthammer and that seems racist to me.

the german pig song
-antje duvekot-

Ich kaufe mir einen Schwein ein Villa oder auch zwei. An einem Privatstrand auf Hawaii. Bist du dabei?

Ich traf meine Sau auf dem Markt. Weisst du was, hat sie zu mir gesagt. Du bist mein Lieblingstier auf dem Markt. Geh mit mir zu dem Tanz heute Nacht!

Ich kaufe mir einen Schwein ein Villa oder auch zwei. An einem Privatstrand auf Hawaii. Bist du dabei?

(translator in the sidebar)
(thanks for the help with the lyrics, fritzie)

you say goose, i say 10 points

it's goose-crossing season on downing street in front of wash park.

who do these damn geese who like to mosey across the street and stopping to eat little bits of street meat, or whatever they nibble off of the road think they are?

hmph. canadians.*

*she said hoping to get those canadian lurkers out of the woodwork and into the comments box

five quarters of the orange

will someone please call a surgeon who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart, part 2

today has been awful in nineteen different directions.

will someone please call a surgeon who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart?

There’s something I’ve been dreading doing that I did tonight. There’s actually a few things I’ve been dreading, but tonight’s thing had to be done tonight.

I had to say goodbye to yaymee. I’ve been putting it off, and delaying to the last minute. It’s the last minute. I have class tomorrow morning from 9-12 and her plane leaves at 12:48 pm.

These were my thoughts from before I went to her house tonight.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been the one left behind. I’m usually the leaver – in fact I’m really good at leaving people behind. I’ve talked about this some before… it’s explained well in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams. When things get hard, I buckle up my tough old heart and hit the road. Usually I’m not leaving people behind on purpose, I’m trying to leave bits of myself that I don’t like behind.

But this time it’s different. Yaymee’s going to West Africa to serve in the Peace Corps – it’s the toughest job she’ll ever love. And I’m… well, I’m staying here. In fact, I think the last time I was left behind was when Semaphoria up and moved to Utah with her family in 1992. And I dealt badly with it then, too.

I spent the last few months I had with my very best friend distancing myself from her, putting up subconscious barriers to make it hurt less. I wound up hurting her in the process, hurting myself, and all around we all hurt more.

I find that I’ve been doing that again. I think we both have – the past few times we’ve spent time together by ourselves it was… muted. Africa was the elephant in the room. Don’t get me wrong – I am so happy for her, I am so proud of her, I can’t imagine anyone doing better and thriving more.

I’m just jealous that Guinea gets to have her and that I don’t.

So I’ve pulled back. And it stinks. I didn’t want to do that, my sadness has just been stronger than my will with her in the past month.

But because I love her, tonight I will ring her doorbell with the best smile I can muster, spend some mellow time with some friends. When it’s time to leave, I will walk up to her, wrap my arms around her, and give her the tightest and longest and best hug I know how to give.

It has to last until 2008.

tangled yarn

i was a little careless when i was niddy-noddying this yarn. when i went to wind it into a tidy little ball, i noticed that wasn't going to happen.

who can spot the metaphor?

just unplug the internet, already.

or, songs to which i can't stop listening

• "your misfortune" by mike doughty
• "annabelle" by antje duvekot
• "on love, in sadness" by jason mraz
• "so are you to me" by eastmountainsouth
• "it's a war in there" by dar williams
• "sweet baby james" by james taylor
• "the lowlands of holland" by the chieftains (with natalie merchant)

school is totally getting in the way of my real life. i'm trying to have an existential breakdown over here, but have to write this stupid paper.... the more i complain the longer it takes to write, i know.

and i can't stop sneezing, no matter what (i've sneezed literally about 46 times in the past 20 minutes)

i must go grocery shopping - officially out of food on my end.

more procrastinating on that damn paper

instead of writing a paper this morning, i decided to finish the body of angelica, since i knew i could finish it before noon.

here you go:

i wound up doing the double increases at the hip that are so common in cables (k1fb, pick up bar, k1) and they're pointy! however i think i can wiggle them around in blocking.

also, could the keyhole BE any bigger?

the size came out a tad more snugly than i thought (but i anticipated that because of my gauge swatch - a proper one this time!), but it's still workable and will make me go to yoga this afternoon (when i'm still procrastinating on that paper).

inspired by katie's YO triangle, to keep myself amused between the darts and the hip purl bands, i put a YO diamond on the back. i couldn't get a good picture of me wearing it, so i took it off for this one:

if i weren't so lazy i would have done a hexagon to mimic the keyhole in the front.

here's a close up of the lazily attached button for photographic purposes - not sure if i'll stick with it or not:

all in all i like how the lamb's pride worked with this pattern - i was curious how it would sit and feel compared to the silk blend yarns. the body has used almost 3 skeins of LP, and i have about 3 more with which to do the arms and the keyhole - shouldn't be a problem.

all that's left are the sleeves and the keyhole!

yay!

also, yay for self-timer function for knitting pics, you can see the whole thing!

and yay for jess for giving me a new reason to want to play with my camera (and want to buy a light box) instead of writing the damn paper. (seriously, it's on stalin's response to churchill's "iron curtain" speech. yeehaw)