2 unrelated thingies (or, i am unmotivated to make a proper post)

search terms people have used to join us in this lovely abode:

• "knitting with drumsticks" my advice? don't try it, they have those little bulbs at the tips and it will be tricky to get the stitches off and over them.
  
• "caribou frother" the heck? that gives us interesting and gross visual images.
  
• "unusually placed tattoos" i don't have any, but thanks for checking.
  
• "colored stockings love making" go about your business people - this ain't that sort of site. x-rated knitting pictures indeed...
  
• "schneeglocken" it's a flower and an annoying song i sang in college for my voice juries.
  
• "julynn simmons" don't know her. sorry.
  

and there are a ton of people every day who come here by doing a google image search for "heather" and wind up clicking through on an entirely unflattering picture of me wearing the honeymoon cami which i am frogging someday to either remake or reinvent as another tank.

______________

when i started this post - and titled it - i had 2 things i wanted to post about: incoming search terms and.... i've totally forgotten the second. i'm a dingbat. there ya go.

there is something very wrong with me

how do i know?

i'm getting ready to apply for a job which has the following requirement:

• ability to work under pressure, on occasion in a highly stressful environment (e.g. civil strife, natural disasters and human misery).

and i'm excited about it.*


*not the human misery, but the job.

but you think that's okay while you're sleeping

we gots ants. they're all over a bookcase and my knitting spot.

i have no idea how they're getting in, and that's unnerving. when i was little, we moved into a new house, i got a brand new bed, and one night when i wouldn't sleep and i kept crying, my mom came in and found a colony of ants in our new house had decided to welcome me by crawling all over me in my bed and snacking on my 3 year old self.

ants aren't my favorite.

this sucks.

i use two hands, biznatches

it has begun. we've gotten to the root of my sock love-hate relationship.

you sees, i fell in love with some stockings. norwegian stockings from nancy bush's folk socks. i saw them on jess' blog, i saw them on eunny's blog, i done seen them on flickr. and i was secretly a little mad at jess for making them in the precise color scheme that i would have chosen if i had to pick from scratch. but whatever, i'm over it.

so, to get ready for my first REAL stranded knitting experience (although, i did a one-handed stranded - rhymes! - hat that wound up too small for adult heads) , i've been practicing my english knitting skillz. i can do it backwards, but i even screwed up a cable on the gull-stitch cardie trying to learn english. and i've got knitting down basically with that - it's the purling that's trickier. luckily, english purling doesn't occur much with fair isle.

the thing that will be tricky with these socks is tension, and winding up with floats that are of a good tension but that are loose enough to fit over my giant calves.

so yesterday, in a fit of frustration with the gull stitch cardie (with a sleeve and the tiny right front to go!), i set it aside, and started the norwegian stockings.

hey! accurate color?! what's up with that?

the tension's a little wonky, it doesn't fit over my calves. well, it does, but the first motif gets eaten by the grey yarn because of the undue tension on the floats. here's a closer shot of the first motif:

this is what i think - i need to loosen my floats more. i need to get rid of the purple, and sub white or pale, pale baby blue. either that, or change the background color from dark grey to white, keep the purple snowflake motif, and keep the green for the primary leg motif color.

thoughts?

on taking wool for granted

i've finished the back, left front, and one sleeve of the gull stitch cardigan from winter 2005 IK. and i decided to go ahead and block the back and the left front.

however, i set the washer (gentle cycle, in a lingerie bag) for a little too long. and it felted. not a ton, not disastrously, but it did felt. i've not lost too much - luckily. the back lost 3/4" width, 2" length, which is okay, because i chose the size with almost 5" of ease, and it would have been 27" from shoulder to bottom hem. but still...

the color isn't great - it's actually a much softer, warmer brown in person

i did, however, lose some of the definition in the cables... here's the gull stitch panel on the semi-felted back:

and the same motif on the unwashed, unblocked sleeve:

so now, the trick will be getting the right front and the sleeves to semi-felt the exact same amount.

i hate that i did this to my own knitting, because i feel like a giant dolt.

i knew i didn't have one

What American accent do you have?

Your Result: The Midland

"You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.

What American accent do you have?
Take More Quizzes

the two ways in which i am screwed

1. they're opening an anthropologie in victoria gardens.
2. they have thrifty ice cream (um, hello? chocolate malted crunch?) at the rite aid that's 2 blocks from here.

luckily the two negate each other - if i eat the ice cream, i won't be able to wear clothes from anthropologie. if i spend all my money at anthropologie, i won't be able to afford (ridiculously cheap) ice cream.

if you give a mouse a cookie...

my mom's car has been in and out of the shop for the past few months. it's gotten older, it's got a fair share of miles on it. but it shouldn't have been in as bad shape as it has been. so finally, we got a call that it'd need several hundred dollars of repair work.

because a mouse had been eating it.

before, a mouse had eaten the wiring to the left front turn signal lamp. now it at the heater hose, ignition wires, and something else that i can't think of anymore.

think about that for a second. a mouse. eating a car.

my mom came home from a trip to hawaii at 7 am a few weeks ago, and i was up. she was bleary-eyed and tired from a red-eye flight, but had heard the diagnosis on her car. half asleep, she wondered aloud, "why would a mouse want to eat a car? it seems like a daunting task for a mouse."

anyhow, that doesn't have anything really to do with the point of this post. the point of this post is for me to say, happy birthday mom!