ar-go-sy

FO Report:
pattern: argosy from winter 06 knitty
yarn: 2 skeins debbie bliss cashmerino DK in... something numerical which translates to blue-ish sea foam green
needles: addi natura US6
date started: maybe 2 weeks ago?
date finished: 1/29/07
pattern modifications: 23 repeats of center section instead of 27 due to yardage issues.
notes: easy peasy pattern to memorize, not the most excting knit, but also not nearly as boring as many scarves.


i like it. the yarn is stupid soft, it's knit on the bias which is always interesting and entertaining for me. it's also not super wide, which i like, and not as long as many of my scarves which i like too. although i love superskinnylong scarves.

not a whole lot more to say.

in which the author reveals too much about her significant other

[while watching an episode of star trek: the next generation]

pants: romulan women are totally hot.

me: what? is it their hair?

pants: it's their hair and that they're totally hot! i would totally mate with a romulan.

[pause]

me: you know i'm going to put this on the blog, right?

pants: yeah... i know.

why, yes. yes, i am.

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary. You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward. Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts. All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

What Time Of Day Are You?

thanks steve!

in sadness

i just heard that an old friend, fellow guitarist, and apartment mover extraordinaire chris branson of guarding virtue just passed away. may he rest in peace, and may his wife and 3 kids find comfort this night.

overhaulin'

so, they finally figured out how to make my giant blog a new blogger blog.

and i am using this template for a while until i find a free one that lets me use the fun widgets!

i would like to say widget some more.

now it's dinner time.

i am getting old. this must be the year i turn thirty.

i creak when i descend the stairs.

my knee gives out when i stand from a seated position.

i have had the muscles in my back, shoulders, neck, and chest compared to a sheet of steel i'm so tense.

i have a tendon in my left shoulder that repeatedly slips out of place and hurts like crazy when i use my arm because of this. likewise, when my sister puts it back in place, it Really Freakin' Hurts.

3 of my ribs pop out of their little resting places also because of this.

i need $500 for a spa weekend, please.

thanks.

dream dream

last night i dreamt that semaphoria and i spent time together. during which i gave her a... thing that i can't remember, and she gave me a goregeous collection of books bound in silk, and wrapped in a goregous indian silk blanket. we talked about different songs with lyrics that were too fast for singing along by they might be giants, and songs that had words spelled out in them.

we shared a room that was eerily reminiscent of a room i think i may have stayed in once in san sebastian, spain. we took turns plugging our respective iPods into the clock radio, and later dr. forkbeard showed up and we had breakfast on the veranda.

it wasn't as surreal as the octopus dream, but it was lovely all the same.

le sigh

there are so many things to love in the IK spring 2007 preview...

ahh... the winter season on fox

yes, i am more than a week late getting to it, but the sixth season of 24 is upon us!! hurrah for rogue agents! and magic hoodies! luckily, this year, jack had spent 20 months being tortured by the chinese, during which he uttered nary a word.

but when the time came for him to talk again, he had to whisper 3 words, and then had his normal voice back again. it couldn't have been the hoodie, because he didn't have it this time.

since we've seen the CTU gang last, bill buchanan (head of the LA office of CTU) married karen hayes (i believe secretary of homeland security), chloe (the worlds most irritating and disprespectful human on the face of the planet who also works for CTU) got back together with her ex-husband morris (british expat who worked for CTU, then sold women's shoes, and works for CTU again), and milo (who once received a severed human foot in his locker on six feet under's first season) and nadia are people i've never seen before who are promoted in over chloe because she has issues with working within the system.

this season, while there is a dearth of Centox^TM, we've got suitcase nukes, the brother of the assasinated president as the president, his sister as the lawyer/life partner of the head of an islamic-american association under susupicion of terrorism to bring awareness to ethnic and religious profiling, and a jack who's wrestling his PTSD demons and kicking suicide bombers off the red line.

i'm still one hour behind, as it was on opposite heroes, and um, hi! heroes! the show with the woman who absorbed the ultraviolent (oops, i typed ultraviolet) personality of her dead twin, and peter petrelli - the power absorber - running off to protect himself from nuking new york to the NEVADA TEST SITE (because there's no better way to prevent yourself from becming nuclear than to run to the test site). parkman is awesome. claire is okay (i might like her more if i didn't secretly worry she was prettier than i). hiro rules. why does the invisible guy need money if he just steals things, anyway? and more of micah's powers, please.

oh, i forgot this was a post about 24. oops.

good evening, welcome to the next episode of insane dream theater

on saturday night (actually early sunday morning - i was up until about 5 that morning), i dreamt that i was driving in a semi with david the coal miner from the amazing race up the side of a mountain in colorado. because the company we were working for was somewhat shady (with the ultra-creepy name the Center for Learning and Knowledge, which sounds like a cult to me, but for which a google search reveals nothing definitive) and involved with the illegal processing and transport of nuclear materials, we needed to have something with us to indicate that we weren't being exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. a canary in the mine, if you will. so, we had a reanimated octupus carcass that had an elephant heart transplanted into it. let's repeat that just in case anyone missed it.

a previously dead octopus that had been brought back to life and given an elephant heart.

to prevent radiation sickness.

anyhow. the three of us are in the cab, and the giant (and i mean probably a 20-foot tentacle span and a head about 3 feet in diameter) octopus is seat belted into the passenger seat. it being my first trip to the Center for Learning and Knowledge, i was concerned about being attacked by the frankenstein octopus who was using its giant tentacles to punch out the windshield and catch birds and bugs to eat on our trip. luckily, it was very happy punching out the windshield and eating birds and bugs. until it accidentally got one of its tentacles fed though the grill on the front of the truck and was sucked under the hood and shot through the engine, like those sad little birds that happen to cross the path of the engine of a boeing jet.

we stopped at the rest stop to make sure the truck would still run, and found that the reanimated octopus was chopped up into small bits, and shot into the air and was somehow magically transformed into tiny, living dinosaurs caught in fishing nets. the tourists at the rest stop were catching tiny, cartoon versions of pterodactyls, brachiosaurus, velociraptors and the like, all wiggling around in their nets. yeah, so they were picking up and carrying around baby, cartoonish dinosaurs in their fishing nets, presumably to take home as pets or surreal little souvenirs.

there was more, once we got to the top of the mountain and checked into our motel rooms, which i remember very clearly for their flimsy doors and beds that took up the entire depth of the rooms, and there was something i do not remember clearly that had the pants staying in the same motel, working at the center next door to the Center for Learning and Knowledge, which was a front organization for the Center for Learning and Knowledge. but that was nowhere near as interesting as the first part of the dream.

i should be hoping but i can't stop thinking

thanks to everyone who's being lovely and dwarfy and hopefully when i'm being grumpy and busy and stressy.

random: i love gmail - they advertise things like morning monkeys.

things are actually going really well in some ways, and really challenging in other ways - unfortunately the challenges are directly related to the going really wells. so i work. i try very hard to figure out how to balance these things.

and i send more monk-e-mails!

i'm still here

i'm just busy and grumpy and stressy.

you may continue with your lives.

there is a beast that cannot be tamed

and it's a hat-making beast. i had forgotten how quick and instant gratification hats were! and i was at the enchanted unicorn (um, hi. i'm even a girl and that name makes me want to barf) and saw a whole bunch of rowan yarns. and that reminded me that i wanted to make a shedir hat out of some rowan calmer.

they didn't have calmer so i got the debbie bliss cashmerino DK, because having never used calmer before, i decided it was a DK weight yarn for no real reason. and i'd been wanting to make a shedir from the breast cancer knitty issue. and i am a whore for the softness of yarn, which cashmerino is very softness of yarn... ohhh... it's sooo soft...

so i bought some - i hadn't looked at the pattern in probably a year, and had no idea how much DK yarn it takes to make a hat - so i bought 3 in a nice sea foamy-sagey green color, and without even looking at gauge, cast on for shedir. after the first 9 rounds of ribbing, i decided to look at the gauge, because um, hi, even my gigantor head isn't that big. anyhow, i omitted2 pattern repeats and started again. it took exactly one ball of the cashmerino to make the hat (i had about 1/2 yard left over). and it's actually too small for my gigantor head, so i'm looking for a home for it (i've already got a home in mind, so unless there are promises of money and/or glory, sorry!)

and for you specs junkies,

FO REPORT!!
pattern: jenna wilson's shedir (link above)
yarn: DB cashmerino DK
needles: inox prym 40" 3.25mm (US3)
date started: january 9, 2007
date finished: january 11, 2007
pattern mods: um, different weight yarn, so i cast on 96 stitches, omitting 2 pattern repeats in the circumference. i also only repeated rows 13-20 four times instead of five.

even more behind the curve

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Honourable Lady Heatherfeather the Ceaseless of Goosnargh Leering Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

thanks, the very rev. chris!

no one will care about this but me

but it's my blog, so i'll link to wherever i want.

dear sinuses

would you please stop being so gross and congested and making me have a blinding headache and revolting nasuea and puking?

i'd really appreciate it.

thanks,
hf

stresssssssmonkey

i have a busy month ahead of me. i have interviews, i have cross-country travel, i have homework to do.

what is a girl to do? she'll think about what she'll knit on the plane. like gerda's stole in the alpaca cloud (in horizon) laceweight (on US3s or 4s i'm thinking) maybe on some bryspun straights. because those aren't metal or circular, they have pointy tips for the lace, and semaphoria just might leave her husband for bryspun straights.

or maybe the shetland triangle? something lacy... not ene's scarf - that pattern done pissed me off one times too many, hence the unassigned alpaca cloud in horizon. i've heard enough people were bored of icarus that maybe not that one... unless i'm confusing icarus and the shetland triangle.

anyhow, i've got 3 or 4 sk of the alpaca cloud and am taking suggestions of what to knit with it.

it's 5:22 am

and i'm already 1 hour and 18 minutes into a pretty freakin' crappy day.

i love the clearance shelves at mervyn's...

speaking of kittyheads, this is what i could conceivably decorate with next christmas.

the question is - is this a person with a cat head or a cat with a person body?

et voila!

FO report (the first of 2007!)
pattern: clapotis
yarn: patons decor in mountain top variegated, 3 sk.
needles: knitpicks options 24", US8s

date started: um, sometime last week maybe? new year's day perhaps?
date finished: 1/07/07

mods: none
notes: this is the closest i've ever come to running out of yarn... but it wasn't breath-holdingly close - i had probably about 5-6 yards left over. this did not pool anywhere near as badly as i thought it might... there's a little pooling at the beginning and ends where the width is constantly changing, but none at all in the straight rows. overall - i like it and it was nowhere near as painful of a knit as i thought it may be.

totally late to the party

let's go back to fall 2004.

almost 2.5 years ago.

it's when the infamous clapotis pattern was published.

as of publication of this blog post, there were 2,230 pictures tagged "clapotis" on flickr. and five of them are belong to me.

i flat out refused to make this wrap because i feared the endless stockinette would drive me nuts. twisted stitches, YOs, dropped stitches - none of it would distract me from the fact that this was a stockinette wrap that had hundreds of knit one row, purl one row. don't get me wrong - i actually love the finished project - it's well designed! a parallelogram knit on the bias? not to mention i know people who love theirs.

but i started it anyway in patons decor (what? mostly acrylic, slightly woolen?), and am 2/3 of the way through the straight row sections. and i've learned a valuable lesson.

although knitting miles of stockinette is deathly dull, it makes for way easier teevee knitting than lace, cables, or colorwork.

i looked up, i looked down that lonesome old road

when i first bought cry, cry, cry in... 1998? the song that leapt out at me was the a capella version of "northern cross" in aching, haunting three-part harmony. several years later, i decided to hear what the original version sounded like, and was even more haunted by its lonely bluegrassy feel.

a few weeks ago, i bought leslie smith's these things wrapped on iTunes. i'm getting lamer as i get older because i'm gravitating more and more to the mellow folk that blurs the lines with bluegrass and country. but i will still mock my friend mary for listening to country. because she listens to slick, glossy, poppy country that's about pickup trucks and twangs and e-lectric gee-tars. i like the appalachian acoustic stuff. and even if you can't hear the difference, it's an important distinction for me to make.

anyhow, i love love love this album. it's good driving music when you're frustrated and sad and calm and peaceful.

the other album i recently purchased (after hearing a minisample of one of the songs on folkalley.com - yes, i'm a giant folk dork) was abigail washburn's sparrow quartet ep. "fall on my knees" is a decidedly bluegrass tune (complete with bela fleck on the banjo) that somehow made it on to my lewd pop and hip-hop workout album and still doesn't break my stride. hey! wanna hear the songs on this ep before you buy it? 'cuz you can (real audio). but if you like it you should buy it, because i'm all about supporting artists.

that's the end of my totally folktastically boring update.

this is my mantra. i must keep repeating this.

reposted from 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.

glampyre

does anyone know why glampyre went password protected?

just once i'd like to be able to say, "yeah, i'm not feeling so good. my leg is haunted."

uggggggggggggggggh. i'm horribly allergic to southern california. especially in winter.

so i am feeling like poop because of my allergies.

how lame is that?

the last knitted object of 2006

sillyhead 001
Originally uploaded by swandive00.

it's the sillyhead hat. i made it surprising.

it got stretched out. i shoulda used one size smaller needle.

it's made of lion wool in dark teal and cream, knitted on size US8s, circularly, and then grafted across the top without decreasing.

i gave it balls on the corners, because, well, how could i not?