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.