the most i'll probably ever say "placido domingo" in a single post

i have seen many things this weekend. and the best of all? one of the things i seen was the lovely mariamamama with her supercute hair!

we went to jaleo for dinner with pants, and back to her hotel, where there's a slim chance she forgot her room number and tried her key in 18 of the 20 room doors on the floor. her room would have been the 19th. there were...um, sounds... coming from some of the rooms, so we deduced those were probably not hers. at least we hoped so.

we got into her room, she gave me truffles (god love her), and i was amazed that she had a prime number of pillows (if you don't count the brown one) on her bed all lined up sideways.

at any rate, mariamamamamamamama came down from nyc to sing for placido domingo!

the crappy part of that was she didn't sing for placido domingo because he wasn't there.

but i went and picked her up after her audition, and pulled up in front of a limo. out of which popped placido domingo! good ol' placido checked out mariama in her smokin' hot dress and blue converse, and mariamamama hopped into the car, and away we went.

i also saw the airbus 380 through my boss' window yesterday as it flew near washington DC. what a gigantic plane. it looks like it's gonna fall out of the sky. let's hope it doesn't.

a sobering thought

this morning when my alarm went off, i thought, "holy cow. i'm going to be waking up at 5:30 am for the rest of my life."

i'm so classy!

today was my first day at The Wonderful New Job. i filled out forms, had a picture taken for my ID badge, and met everyone in my small office - who are all geeky in the way that i am. i was wearing my fancy black suit.

heck, i even wore pantyhose.

if only i'd noticed the run that went from my toes to my middle thigh before i left the house.

knee sock with dog

knee sock with dog, originally uploaded by swandive00.

behold my sock in progress (SIP?). it's a knee sock and there's no end in sight. to contain my giant filipino calves i'm knitting forever and the row gauge is deceiving because it shrinks when it's being worn. i have about 2.5 more inches in the leg (as you wear it, not as you knit it) until i do the 2" cuff. pattern filched and adapted from here (i found the stripeys to be quite beguiling)... however, she does 8 increase rows (increasing 2 stitches every 10 rows), and i've already done 14 increase rows (2 stitches every 8 rows) and have at least 3 or 4 more sets of increases before i can stop making them grow. and our gauge is exactly the same.

the yarn is the opal uni in grey and fortissima socka in the light blue, being done on addi turbo US0 needles. i don't know if i'll make a second sock.

heck, i have no idea if i'll even finish the first.

it was 82 degrees yesterday

right now, it's hailing and 37 degrees. and i'm the genius who fell down the stairs.

again. but this time it was from slippery TILED outdoor steps. who tiles their outdoor steps?!

my landlord, apparently. but i caught myself before breaking my coccyx, and now i'm bruised and abraded but unbroken.

yay! knitting picks of 40% of a pair of socks later maybe?

this makes me very sad

"will stretch to fit a calf circumfrence of up to 14.5 inches."

mine's currently 17 inches, and is unlikely to get smaller.

stupid filipino calves.

(yes, i know - i can modify it to do more increases in the side panels. and probably will.)

we could pretend that i knit really fast

we have discussed them here. the problem was first the color palette and then the gauge. then we had them here. and gauge was STILL the issue.

i finished these a little over a month ago, and had been too busy to photograph and post them. but now i did it. here they are, the mittens of anemoi!

(pardon the hair issues. i'm having issues with my hair. evidently)

FO Report!
pattern: eunny jang's anemoi mittens
yarn: opal uni in something obnoxiously green and fortissima socka yarn solid in cream-ish (i should work harder on saving ball bands for this moment...)
needles: addi turbo 3.00 mm
date started: sometime in december, then december again, then january 2007
date finished: february 4, 2007, taken off the blocking board at 6 am on february 5 so as to be worn during my february trip to washington.
mods: none
notes: oy to the vey, people. the pattern was flawless (except i don't like eunny's direction during the italian tubular cast-on to do k1tbl, swyif during the set-up rows... it gives a twisty look to the yarn, and not the smooth, classic tubular cast-on). this being my first colorwork project, i didn't mind the starting and restarting. however when i was doing the second mitten, i wish i had tried it on periodically as it wound up WAY GIANTER than the first mitten. do you see?

let's pretend my purl column doesn't suck, tensionwise, while we're here.

if you can't see there, look at this:
right mitten (first mitten) 10.5 stitches per inch

left mitten (second) 9 stitches per inch.

(cough. okay so i also didn't get pattern gauge, whatever)

so, it's way bigger and looser and not nearly as warm as the first mitten. i may frog and reknit this mitten on my brittany birch 2.75mm dpns, if i'm feeling up to tackling colorwork on dpns. maybe... we'll see... in the meantime, they do what they oughta...

fox in socks

i finished my momma's socks. they need a bit of washing before they can be worn, because my sister's allergic to my old favorite roommate - the ernie. however, that's no biggie. she bought me this yarn to make her socks in november. it's march, and i just finished them. but not for lack of trying - this was the socks' 6th incarnation or so. none of the previous patterns i used had worked.

so i made up my own eyelet pattern when i was watching the superbowl and stuck with it. nothing fancy, but slightly lacy, with an eye-of-partridge heel, and voila! we have the momma socks.

FO Report!
pattern: mine
yarn: cherry tree hill supersock in... water? maybe? (this is a time when i was confused by the ball band)
needles: brittany birch 2.75mm for the left, addi turbo 3.00mm for the right
started: superbowl sunday... february something?
finished: 3/08/07
notes: so as i've previously mentioned, my mom's ankles are drastically two different sizes. so i made the socks two different sizes. the larger one on smaller needles over 80 stitches, the smaller one on larger needles over 64 stitches. the second one she was unable to try on as we went along what with my having moved, but what can you do? i hope it fits.

here's a shot of the eyelet pattern:

also? i love the eye of partridge heel!

the one in the smaller sock was created when i was drunk, evidently, because i wasn't able to keep track of where i was with the pattern, so it's not as pretty.

the end.

easy chair

easy chair, originally uploaded by swandive00.

ernie thinks that i am a perfect chair. he clearly has delusions about the size of his butt.

he gets that from me.

wowee! with no job you'd think i'd be posting like a maniac!

alas, i'm lazier than a... dang, the redneck expressions aren't coming to me right now. anyhow.

this is what's going on that's good lately:

• the pants. he's a good pants.
• the ernie is a good ernie, too.
• i finished a sock for my mom. i finished one the night before i moved to DC, i finished the other last night. however, i am currently charging my rechargeable batteries which may have been recharged one time too many and so i may still not have pictures until i get more batteries
• i got all my boxes, including my yarn box which is full of yarn which i insured for a grand, but mainly because it would be a major pain to re-enact my yarn stash including needles and notions.
• i still have all my stuff in denver like sofa and winter clothes which isn't the smartest need in the world.
• i love public transportation in DC. it's expensive, liike most things in DC, but still good.
• this is a boring blog post. i fear i've lost my blogging mojo.
• i've considered more than once making this a knitblog only, but don't knit enough for that lately.
• the end.
  

song i can't stop listening to (the video edition)

the jam's "town called malice"

back when i was jailbait

it wasn't until I finished this post that i realized i was using one of mightygirl's ideas from no one cares what you had for lunch (not safe for work). so, here is my attribution (via defective yeti).

so, the pants scanned some old pictures of me from 1994 - the end of my junior year of high school, beginning of my senior year.

i went with my high school boyfriend to his junior prom, and here's one of the pictures taken. i'm not crazy about my smile in it, but i was still freakin' skinny then... alas.

about 5 months later, i engaged in that rite of american passage: the sitting of the senior portraits. at our school we could choose any photographer, and submit our favorite shots. my only request was that there be zero pictures of me with my hands resting charmingly by my face. he complied. if you were lucky, you'd see the disneyland version of my senior portrait, but alas i cannot locate it. neither can i find my favorite. so here's the formal one.

look at those collarbones... in addition to being 13 years ago, it was evidently about 431 pounds ago.

stupid metabolism.

and not exercising.