Leonine Ponderances

Heartwarmer: Man helps out stranded newlywed (highly recommended read)

Some giggles: Political Anagrams

It’s been hard but there’s a good reason for the dry spell in finished objects lately. I’ve been plugging along on my Evangeline Tunic by Joan MM. I’d casted on in early August but only did 11 rows before setting it aside.

Doing the Ravelympics left me with the desire to finish up some of the bigger projects I had going. I didn’t realize how focused  & determined that desire was but I’ve been working steadily on Evangeline with one exception.

One of my Ravelympics projects that I had to give up on was the Sweater Bag and part of my frustration was that was that the ‘plain’ knitting part was all rev st st which meant 50 purl stitches every row (half the row).

But after working on the Evangeline for a while, I realized that every wrong side row was near 200+ purl stitches and I was doing just fine. I decided to set it down and do a little on the Sweater Bag to see if it was still a big frustration.

I ended up not being able to put it down til the body was finished. I even kept going and worked on the strap til the skein ran out.  However the strap left me with a new set of annoyances as it was only 18 stitches done in the round but it still felt like it took forever to make any progress.

I went back to the Evangeline at that point and with a minor exception, have dedicated all my knitting hours for the past couple of weeks to it. Knitted everyday too except the last couple which is why I feel weird right now because I haven’t had my “fix” in a few days.

I’m up to the armhole shaping area on the front now and the piece looks really big but seems to fit right when held against the body. I think it may come out longer than originally planned cause I think my row gauge was off but that’s ok with me. I like long shirts anyways.

There’s so many things I want to cast on that my head wants to explode just thinking about it. But I really do need to soon finish the Purple Cat Pillow for Rachel as I was told tonight that she’s near ready to pop! Ideally I’d devote myself to doing a matching baby blanket in the same yarn as I got enough for that purpose to start with.

And then perhaps I’ll break my beading cherry and make my “Deathly Odessa” which will be a hat made with skull beads that I’ve had for 4 years.

The minor exception to the Evangeline btw is starting a Hostile Bunni on Wednesday which was the day after the official month long Bunnis VillageAlong  for Village  Hopelessly Overcommitted on Ravelry ended.  I did the body up to the last couple rounds, embroidered a face on it, then did the ears. Still need to sew on the ears, stuff the body and then finish the last couple rounds, finish off and weave in the ends to be complete. Angela also had the cool idea to add eyebrows to make him look more hostile. She also said that he looked a little like Winnie The Pooh. In the dark light, the orange looked red from across the room.

I’ve been too lazy to try to take pictures of the current WIPs of the sweater bag or tunic but I did manage to snap a photo of the Bunni to be so here you go!

Hostile Bunni... not quite finished

It becomes a real battle to keep your car clean as everything in the vicinity quickly becomes layered in black exhaust dust.

I long ago gave up the fight and the car only got washed when I took it to Saturn for oil changes because they do it for free. But I haven’t done that in a while. Nor has it rained.

I’ve had some fun stuff appear before courtesy of my neighbor but the latest gave me a start when I found it after getting to work on Monday.

Vue - Homer says the obvious

And yea that’s the real deal. Can’t get more authentic then that.

I’m blessed in my neighbors and their friends

I know that there’s some serious trouble going on but I’d avoided reading much about it because for the most part I can’t do anything about any of it.

When A snarked about belonging to a better bank than Wamu earlier, that was my first clue that something was up. I’d seen the rumblings over the past couple months that Wamu was in trouble but didn’t worry much about it because I don’t have that much money and it is an FDIC insured bank.

I went to log in just now and between this morning and this afternoon, they changed everything over and I found out that I now bank with JP Morgan/Chase.

*shrug*

As long as my checking stays free and all.

I guess I have a kind of doomsday attitude about the safety of what money I do have.

If the bank fails and FDIC can’t come through to replace my money… it’s probably moot anyways cause the country has already gone to hell. Hello Great Depression of the new millieum.

And I’d talked earlier this year about moving over to ING for some stuff anyways.

And the world keeps turning.

I just feel bad for the WAMU employees because while I’m sure JP Morgan will convert some of the branches, I’m sure a lot of them will close. And that’s going to be another bad hit on the economy & job market.

Been meaning to do this for a while now.

Tonight I finally put together a website for selling the Jayne hats myself so that my knitting efforts go to support my favorite dog rescue.

Typically all sales of Jayne Hats wherever you might find them to buy go to a charity of some kind. The 60 hats I knitted earlier this year went towards CA Browncoats supported charities.

Hopefully I can get the site out there in time for people looking for Xmas gifts. I’ve got 5 ready to go already and even if they don’t sell, CA Browncoats will take ‘em in February for the con in SF area.

If you know anyone who’s been wanting a Jayne Hat, please point them at http://www.caynecobb.com

Bad emotional roller coaster of a mood I’ve had this morning.

How to get back on an even keel?

#1 Read about a very touching love story.

#2 Get and pass on a “chain letter” about women friends and appreciation of them. And end up chatting a little with three of them!

#3 Get an IM at work about what do I want for lunch? They’re buying it today. That was random and nice.

#4 Think about the progress I made last night on my merletto mitts (from the *june* FGF knit along/KAL)

I picked it up while watching the Bones premiere and first I wasted a good amount of time unnecessarily frogging down the first lace pattern section (first 5 stitch section) because I was confused about where I left off. I thought I was about to start row 7 of the 8 row chart but turns out I was supposed to do row 5.

Resolved to try to always end at the end of a chart, or at least WRITE on the printout what row I’m on.

Finished that lace repeat and did another whole repeat so now I’m 3 repeats into the recommended 5 before starting the thumb gusset.

I’m liking the  pooling of the colors on the plain side as well as the pattern side though admittedly the lace pattern is getting a little lost. Looking forward to finishing them. I think I got the lace pattern down finally as I didn’t really have to look at the chart anymore. Was getting a pretty good rhythm going so perhaps if the ADD monster doesn’t come crashing through and make me go to other things, I’ll be able to stick with this long enough to finish it.

But of course I’ve got a lot of other things on the needles that beg to be finished too. Really need to be sure to do the 2nd glove for Ibby’s test pattern asap.  I know some people put on their blog what they’re working on and the progress but holy shit would I have a bunch of widgets in the sidebar if I did that and that’s not counting things that are truly hibernating! I love that Ravelry has that as a status because those sink to the bottom and you can see what you’re truly working on.

I had to sit and think about it for a while, what did I feel like working on? And finally I decided to push myself to work on the Merlettos some because I was starting to kind of hate it and think that I would never get it done. I figured if I still hated it after working on it last night, then I’d frog and give it up as a lost cause. But I got across that line where I finally “got” the pattern which means not only do I not need to look at the chart anymore but I can also tell where I am by looking at it and also quickly see if I’ve gone off.

Oh, forgot to mention that after I frogged and reknitted the lace. I had to do it again because I actually did it wrong  on the reknit. After all that, I was moving along when I realized that stitch #1 or 2 had somehow gotten dropped way down to the top of the ribbing. I contemplated just letting it rip out through the ribbing but that would leave behind a ‘ladder’ that would look out of place. A light bulb hit that if I used my teeny crochet hook, I could easily pick the stitch back up to the top row because it’s like chaining in crochet only the YOs come from each row above. Was pleased with myself for staying calm and figuring out and executing the fix quickly and neatly.

And holy crap, lunch came and they put a whole cow in my sandwich!

On Ravelry, one of my favorite groups is the Fingerless Gloves Fanatics (aka FGF)  which is a good bunch of people. There’s a bunch of designers and budding designers who put out calls for pattern testing and Ibby put out one for a crochet one.

Crocheting is less popular so I was able to get in and volunteer and this time I was excited to because she posted a picture of the result and it looked to be a real “designed” pattern unlike the last very disappointing experience (the design was something so basic that I realized I’d already done it years ago when I experimented with gloves in fun fur).

Birthday plans kept me busy from when she emailed the pattern (I barely had enough sense to notice it didn’t arrive and fished it out of my spam folder before it got lost) but I started on it on Sunday night and last night forced myself to finish the first glove.

By forced, I mean that the crossed dc’s was a tough stitch to get used to but worth it in the end for the nice texture it lends. I’m really proud of Ibby for such a great design!

I was so inspired by the finished glove that I took the trouble to go paint my nails a pretty color for picture taking today.

Now, I need to do the second glove before I fall victim to “2nd sock syndrome”.

I think Ibby plans to call the pattern “Pretty In Pink”. It calls for a D hook in sportweight yarn. I used Lion Brand’s Microspun (yarn formerly known as the tangled mess!)  but could only find an F hook. It worked out ok cause my wrists are bigger anyways. In fact, I notice the dc’s becoming rather squat which indicates the fabric is pulling width wise anyways.

In addition to all the other design ideas I have, there’s a couple that are more stitch based that I ought to get a move on for since the colorwork based ones will definitely take more time

p.s. Yay for me for making a timely post on one of my yarn projects.

Earlier this summer, DBNY had a sale on lace yarns and among them was Possum Lace. Yarn that was made with 30% possum fur.

I didn’t think anything of it and got a skein of “Old Roses” colorway which was so pretty that I figured it’d be a pretty way to try my hand at lace knitting. Plus hey possum!

I suppose I should have thought about it more and realized that possums aren’t like sheep, hanging around to get sheared.

The possums are killed and then their fur is taken for the yarn!

However, in what is a 180° flip on what I expect to see in ‘conservationism’, by buying possum yarn, I am SUPPORTING the New Zealand environmental conservation efforts.

Because apparently the little bastards are eating New Zealand!

If locusts had fur, I’m sure we’d all be happy to buy locust yarn thanks to their crop destroying nature. Dustbowl anyone?

So yea, I’m a little taken aback about this. I’m used to the opposite message of not buying things made from animals because it’ll promote their extinction, i.e. ivory, furs of exotic cats, etc. Gonna have to percolate that in my brain for a bit.

of my birth…

I pretty much never really do anything for my birthday because usually there’s not very many people that I know well enough to want to invite to a party close enough by to try and arrange a party. But since I’ve come to live in Hollywood, that’s changed a lot… which is ironic to me but whatever.

However, then there’s the ugh trying to plan a party that people are available to come to and personally I’ve never really been a fan cause the more people in one place, the harder it is to follow what is going on.

So haven’t really done anything at all. But every year I think about it and it’s a downer. This time around, i was thinking back to how last year, what made my birthday for me was running into Angus the day before and he dragged me into his place and ordered pizza and we watched a movie and hung out for a little impromptu celebration.

The year before that, I’d sort of tried to have a pool party but I didn’t do much to remind people in part because I wasn’t really up for party prep (that was still in the twilight zone period) and it was clear that people had forgotten. But rather than remind anyone, A & I just took off for the Rainbow and that was fun. And on the actual night of my birthday, we went to Safari Sam’s to see Kill Hannah play on the night before they started a tour with The Rasmus!! I know now that TR had gotten stuck in Vegas so weren’t even in the same city but it was something to do and I liked what I heard. Giggled about how much Mat Devine looked like a certain British singer.

Well hello! Instead of trying to do a party, I’m just going to ask my friends for a “friend date” with them. More one on one or in some cases one on two time instead of trying to cram everyone together. That way it’s relaxed, stretched out and not all jammed into one day and hopefully everyone will enjoy themselves

Started to write the email to people in the area (cause some people like totally moved out of state! and others I haven’t heard from in a long time anyways) last week but it was still sitting in draft so a couple hours ago I forced myself to just finish and send the sucker.

I’ve already gotten two responses! And I have to admit I felt loved to get those responses so quickly…. one of them phrased his response as “yes I would like a Megan day”!!

I have my antisocial periods where even though I love my friends, I don’t even want to go over to another apt in the bldg to hang out with my best friend or best man friend. And I feel bad about it but not enough to do it.

But feels like the latest little hermit phase has turn the corner and I’m feeling motivated to get out and do things again. I even have taken steps over the past week to start a much needed “spring cleaning”. Did 85% of the bathroom and washed the dogs to boot (except the one who was at his buddy’s house). Cleared out the dining room area. So much more needs to be done but one step at a time!

Seeing more of my friends and family will help keep the momentum going so I’m looking forward to it!