Fire On The Telephone Wire

I should have known better than to think I would neglect my knitting habit obsession for school work. Here is the second cable knit hat that heretofore and forever shall be known as the "Cables From Green Gables" beanie (how's that for gettin' wacky with the English language; fo shizzle dizzle). My lovely model, tired though he is, is very excited that his new hat is almost finished. He has those crazy eyes though, you know, where you think if you frame them with green they will look green and if you frame them with blue they will look blue. Instead the exact opposite happens as this picture demonstrates. Crap! I will console myself with the knowledge that they are still pretty, whichever color they happen to be today.

Lily cat is happy with her new found pillow (AKA Q's new belly). It's been tough on him, getting older, growing in the middle, on the brink of another birthday.... I know he is going to kick my butt when he reads this. Oh well, he likes to tease me about my thinning hair. What is it about those we love most and hitting them where it hurts?

Ciao

Menti (Spanish for "I lied")

Okay, so I lied, I have one picture from Thanksgiving. It is of my friend Billy's dog Ace. He is 13 months old and the cutest pit bull EVER! When I got to Java City I saw the two of them there and poor Ace was freezing his little butt off. I happened to have a dog blanket in my car. I brought it out so Ace could lay on it. He was very happy after that.

Here is the Smith and Hawken Ornament Tree my Mom gave me to help decorate my house. Q and I decorated it with the miniature ornaments. I put the blinky lights inside the tree because they looked dopey on the outside. Q wanted a regular tree but this is good for our first tree, next year maybe. The bottom line is it's pretty isn't it?! It was a little tough to catch them on in their blink rotation, but being the master camera operator that I am....

Next topic:

I know this might seem hard to fathom, but I am not always the most easy going person. My personal opinion is that I'm easy to get along with until you make me mad. That being said, the man you see in the picture, is my roommate (Picture has been removed due to Q pointing out some garbage about right to privacy. I think that if you break the law you have no privacy). The current situation that has my hackles up is that my asshole for a roommate had the nerve to accuse Q of stealing his marijuana. Let me just say two three things: (1) He owes Q a huge apology because Q wouldn't steal, (2) he owes Q a debt of gratitude because the only reason I haven't turned his sorry as in to the authorities is because Q has asked me not to, and (3)neither Q or I smoke pot. I hate asshole roommates with their piggy, sloth-like girlfriends. Done.

Ciao

I'm Lame

Went to Sacramento for Turkey Day and have absolutely no pictures to show for it (the picture of me to the right is from about a month ago). I didn't even take a picture of the beautiful cable knit hat that I made for my friend Tamala. It was a pretty green color made from Lion Brand Jiffy yarn. I was going to name it Cables from Green Gables. I'm making another one for Quentin.

This is me signing off for about 2 1/2 weeks. I have huge papers and finals coming up so I doubt I'll have time for knitting and basically anything else fun. I doubt my birthday (December 13th) will be any fun either. My last final is the 15th of December at which point holiday knitting madness will commence. Until then,

Ciao

Hooray!

Here they are (at long last). The "Hooray For Me" gloves from Marnie MacLean's website. As some of you who have been keeping up know, I made these with the intention of keeping my wrists warm while I knit. Now that they are finished and all the ends are sewn in and I have taken them on a test run I have discovered something. The fingers of these "fingerless" gloves get in the way of my yarn creating more tension in my working yarn that I want or can deal with when I'm knitting. Janice from MLYS suggested cutting off all the fingers and binding off at the top of my knuckles. I said, "No freaking way! Are you joking, do you know how many times I re-knit some of the fingers because they were too small?" So, these are officially dog park gloves and when I'm ready to attack a project with size 2 needles again I will make another pair, this time with no fingers. I think I will actually bind off before I get to my knuckles to make sure the gloves don't interfere with my knitting. They were intended to be wrist warmers after all. Done.

Next topic: Another Beanie.

I'm calling this one "Green Acres". This one is for a good friend of mine in Salt Lake City, Utah. He says it's already way cold so I'm sure it'll come in handy.

It's a simple one by one rib that is moving along rather quickly now that I can knit continental. I think I may have mentioned back during the knitting of the first (and only) Wyvern sock that I was forcing myself to knit some of it continental style because it was supposedly faster. I here to tell any and all disbelievers that it is in fact faster when you have to switch back and forth between knit and perl.

In other news, I am moving out this weekend. Have the moving truck reserved and everything. I would also like to gloat and tell everyone that I have all of next week off for Turkey Day. That's right, you read it here first, the whole damn week!

Ciao

Car Screeching

Now, you might think, by the title of this post, that I had a near miss in my car sometime in recent history and that that is what this post is about. You'd be wrong. This morning, I was so infuriated with Q that when I took off in a huff in my car, I was so pissed off that I had to scream. Don't think I enjoyed it either. I did it under great duress due to the fact that on Friday night I was in Sacramento and Karaokied, talked to friends over the din of loud club music, and overall had way too much fun...the point being that I am still hoarse so I didn't want to get so angry that I had to screech my guts out.

Oh yeah, crying in the car is my freaking favorite. Anyways, as I'm driving I start thinking about how I can't possibly have to be around him this week. I'm totally behind in 2-3 of my 4 classes (nothing I can't recover from) and I just cannot deal with his drama. So, finally it dawns on me that I paid rent at this new shithole I plan on moving into and that I could go there. Sweet right? Now I wonder if I should take the dog and cats with me or just leave them until the weekend when I'll have time to move all my shit.

Sorry no pics, life is too nutty right now for anything of that nature. I keep on working on the fingerless gloves, I have about 16 more rows before I get to the fingers. Unfortunately I don't think there is any knitting in my future until at least the middle of December. I hate that.

I hope you have enjoyed this uplifting and inspirational post.

Ciao

Shopping Emergency

This morning I go out to my car and the window is frosted over. Shit. It is now so cold that the window is frozen. The only good thing is that my new scarf out of the Cirvinia Fiamma Yarn is finished. It is soooo cozy warm around my neck. Picture later.

Can hardly wait for my class to get out so I can (1) go vote down all those stupid Aah- nold (imagine Austrian accent) propositions, (2)take Lupine out to the park on the first sunny day since I can't remember when, and (3) go to MLYS to pick up the other skein of the Moda Dea that I need to finish the "Hooray For Me" gloves.

If you live in California, are reading this, and have yet to vote today...let me say something that could make your life easier. Vote NO on any proposition starting with the number 7. The one proposition to vote yes on is prop. 80, reregulating the utilities since California voters made an egregious error when they deregulated it a few years back. Here is your chance to right the wrongs. A fresh start, and not too long after Yom Kippur, how appropriate.

In other news there was recently a win for women in the California legislature. And, big surprise, it made it past the governator's veto pen. Check out the story.
Ciao.

Thursday is my short day at school. I only have classes until 10am. After that I usually go over to MLYS and knit. Here are some of the people who were there this past Thursday. In the pink is Maddy. She has been weaving beanies on a loom for X-mas presents for family members. In this other picture she is modeling a hat/muff (the muff is going to get felted) combo that Janice is making for her niece. What is so funny about this hat is that Janice CO and started it about three different times. The hat was HUGE. Anyways, this final version with a strand of eyelash and a strand of wool on size 15 with 45 st works for a child about 5-8 years of age.


Next we have Janice, not to be confused with Janice who is making the hat and muff. This is the Janice who is into scrapbooking. I realize now that I should have taken a picture of the holiday greeting cards she made. I'm always amazed how professional and pretty the handmade cards look.






Here I am working on the "Hooray For Me" gloves. The one on my hand is just for show. It now has a permanent home at the store. It will forever stay as a sample of that type of sock yarn. I cut the pattern down to 46 st and it fits mucho mejor (much better).



Here is Colleen working on a tube sock for one of her young family members (I forget who. I really should take notes when I talk to people, especially if I expect to write about it later).




Last night Q and I went to the local Indian casino for the buffet dinner (Friday is seafood night, my fave). The waitress comes by to get our drink order and we both order a beer and ice water. She repeats the order with one wrong beer. So I tell her again that I want Coor's Light. She comes back with the two beers, no ice water. I of course, am pissed. Q tells me to calm down and that he'll remind her yadda yadda yadda. So while I am up at the buffet, she stops by the table and according to Q, asks him if he wants anything else and all of a sudden realizes her mistake and says,"Oh, I forgot the water. (She then proceeds to pout and say) No tip for me tonight." Q said it was all he could do not to die with laughter. I guess she was a couple slices short of a loaf.

Finally, this picture is the funniest thing ever. Check out Lily's fat butt.

Progress (a teensy bit)

As I pointed out yesterday, I have put completing the second Wyvern sock on hold because I'm trying to make a pair of Marnie MacLean's "Hooray For Me" gloves (see previous post for link to Marnie's site). Here is the first Wyvern. Done.

I have to admit, I'm quite pleased with myself. I do have a couple of small holes on either side of my ankle but I'll just stitch them closed. Even though, as I said, I'm quite pleased, I feel obligated to say, that it wasn't until I was about 3/4 of the way through this sock that I was surfing online and began reading about right-handed and left-handed decreases. This uneasy feeling set in because Wyvern has lots of increases and decreases and I wasn't really paying attention to the pattern. I mean, I just saw a bunch of triangles, I didn't notice that they were in different directions so as to indicate either SSK or K2tog (shit).

No, I did not rip it out and start over. I figure it's just a variation on the pattern. And check out this rationalization: Since I did the first sock with all SSK, I'll do the second sock with all K2tog. Then I'll have a left sock and a right sock. Wanna know a little secret? I still don't know which is right-leaning and which decrease is left-leaning.

Alrighty then. About the "Hooray For Me" gloves.... The pattern calls for 58 stitches with some fancy sock yarn I have never heard of (I live in a small town with only a couple of yarn stores and I haven't been knitting long) and of course I didn't do a guage swatch. Guess what happens next. The cuff is too big. So, I decrease 8 st and continue on to finish the little glove (which is really cute if I do say so myself). Anyways, el punto es (the point is), I made a deal with Janice (owner of MLYS), where she gets to keep the too big glove as a sample of the sock yarn, and I get another skein of yarn to finish a pair of the gloves. The yarn is Moda Dea Sassy Stripes in case you care. I knitted the too big glove in classes yesterday and got lots of compliments on the gloves. Thanks Marnie!

I Love eBay (Mostly)

The yarn I ordered from eBay arrived yesterday and it is soooooo freakin' cool! It is Cervinia Fiamma! This is a thick and thin yarn. I have a scarf made out of t & t yarn that Q recently ruined in the dryer (hiss), so I went online and found this deal! Janice over at MLYS asked why I didn't get it in red or pink (she knows those colors are my fave). As some of you know, when you look for deals on eBay you can't be so picky about color. Anyways, I'm trying to branch out, colorwise.

Here is a picture of Lupine at the park the other day. She is so funny. She goes around sniffing until she is pretty far away. Then suddenly, she'll look back to where I am, and she comes running all excited. Dogs rock!

In other knitting news...I finished one of the Wyvern socks but have yet to start the other due to interest in a new project that requires the same size needles. I have a picture of my progress on Marnie MacLean's "Hooray For Me" gloves but blogger wouldn't upload it this morning. I'll try again tonight or tomorrow.

Ciao