Eat less cake

The time has come, my friends, to talk of healthy things — of working out and eating right, of trying not to get diabetes by age 30 cabbages and kings. Thanks to a promotion for the first 100 customers, I saved $100 today. I'm now an official Curves member, with the little swishy key thing and everything.

My first workout day is next Thursday at 8:30 a.m. (They were full up until then!) Anyone have a quick knitting pattern for a sweatband?

Lilac-adaisical

Despite the nice weather (except for waking up icy this morning), I feel a bit blah and uninspired. I managed to take some nice pictures of flowers and other springy stuff, though, so that's happy.

Living in a verysmallhouse with a very large dog with a penchant for gnawing on underwear who is prone to chewing up anything he can sink his teeth into is beginning to wear on me. He chewed the binding of my $5 Queen of Clean book the other day. I think it's still readable, but I'm afraid he might go for my Turkish pillows or Daniel, my Heart-to-Heart bear. (Don't worry — the yarn's already hidden in the closet which, unlike my bedroom, has an actual door.) I'm going to go to evil Wal-Mart soon (tonight?) and get a baby gate. They seem to deter him enough.

We had a cookout on Saturday. I managed to remember the sunblock in time to not get sunburned. I was so proud of myself. You can view a couple of photos of KT, Brie, her 'rents and their very large vehicle if you click our house.

Here's a clever way to use up bits of yarn, which I spotted this morning somewhere on Craftster. If you don't enjoy knitting i-cord or with beads, then this may not be the project for you. (Or maybe it will convert you.)

It seems we may be printing the paper elsewhere, so it looks like I have some actual work to do.

ETA: Was going to buy some yarns at WEBS but decided against it. Woohoo for restraint! Also, since the new Curves opened the other day, my mom and I have a tour thingy tomorrow. Hooray for fitness!

Charities

Do you step out on your front stoop or veranda just to watch the world return from its winter slumber? Are you airing out the house just because it feels so good outside? Is the spring weather making you feel lighter in step? Then go lighten your pocketbook a little and consider donating to these (or any) charities.

Butterflies in Bushwick: helping low-income children in the Brooklyn area learn about the world of butterflies. This activity will enrich students' knowledge and teach them to respect living things as well as enhance their language and writing skills. They're currently 32% funded and have $460 yet to raise. Get out your plastic and go be generous.

Creating Fyber Ducklings is Fyberduck's brainchild (of course). Help support the newest generation of fiber artists! Children from low-income areas want to knit, weave, and crochet; but, they lack the necessary materials. She's set the goal high ($1 000), but I think she'll make it.

In unrelated news, I may not have to work for Jesus much longer. But shh! Don't tell anyone.

Prepare to be astounded

Okay, probably not astounded. Entertained, yes. I just discovered wikiHow today. wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual. Here are some articles that I browsed:

• How to Survive a Freestyle Rap Battle: "Don't worry if you lose your first few real battles, the point is to constantly practice spitting. Continue practicing until you've got it down."
• How to Fold Paper into a Secret Note Square: "Some people have trouble opening this type of note, so it's perfect for passing secret notes to your friends."
• How to Exercise an Open Mind: "Join clubs based on things you have no knowledge of, such as a Scrabble Club, an Investment Club, etc."
• How to Draw a Frog: "Learn to draw a great-looking frog in 12 easy steps."
• How to Draw Bubble Letters: "Avoid the temptation to show off your newfound skills on someone else's property."


Finally, someone who spells it out!

• How to Meet a Homosexual: "If you use 'gay' or 'fag'/'dyke' as a derogatory slur, chances are that you are -- at least on some level -- homophobic. You should work on that."
• How to Know if You Are Gay, Lesbian or Bi: "Know that you are not alone. There are many, many gay people in each community, and many people are supportive."
• How to Admit That You Are Gay: "Don't worry about what people will think; what is important is that you are true to yourself."
• How to Learn to Accept a Gay Marriage: "Gay couples are probably judged enough, and the last person they want to hear it from is you."

Speaking of weddings, I was invited to one today! (The wedding was not today — it's in May.) Funny, the things that happen when you stop to buy apples at Fareway ...

To-whit, to-woo

I feel slightly crazy right now. I've got a bit of a headache and my mind is racing. Hello. My name is Naproxen Sodium. You hurt my head. Prepare to die.

I sent a package to Finland today, after realizing that the post office closes at 9:30 on Saturday mornings. I thought it was noon, but I mixed it up with my bank hours. I should know stuff like this, because I'm at the post office every Wednesday. Oy.

This next one's for Fyberduck: What Jane Austen character are you? Elizabeth Bennet.

As one of Austen's most beloved characters, Elizabeth Bennet represents what most women would like to become: strong, independent, and loyal. Of course, she has her faults including a stubborn will of iron and a clinging to first impressions. Overall, Lizzie is bright and lovable...something to admire and aspire to.

Elizabeth Bennet 81% Elinor Dashwood 75% Marianne Dashwood 69% Jane Bennet 69% Emma Woodhouse 59% Charlotte Lucas 50% Lady Catherine 9% Which Jane Austen Character are You? (For Females) Long Quiz!!! created with QuizFarm.com

That's all I've got. This naproxen better kick in soon. Aaah.

ETA: I'm sitting here smiling like a goon, because dayzi got her PB package. I posted a small picture of everything, details of which can be found hereabouts on my Flickr.

Fezzik has come home

I had a great post written, and then Blogger ate it, so I'll have to make this short and sweet.

Look what I got from my Princess Bride swap partner! It's Fezzik! He came with a holocaust cloak and wheelbarrow so that he can storm the castle as Dread Pirate Roberts. She also sent iocane powder (pixy stix), a treasure box with a map of Florin and Guilder pasted on the lid, a princess tiara, and a keychain that reads, "I refuse to have a battle of wits with someone who's unarmed!" I love it all. It's fabulous.

And here's what Timmy and Brie and I did after I got done working on Friday.

At peace

My dog is dozing (read: snoring) in a puddle of sunlight on the kitchen floor. More evidence that she is really a cat masquerading as a verysmalldog.

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The show last night was great. I love spending quality time with Dustro, especially when it involves music. Before hitting the Ritual Café for coffee and tunes, we had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the combination of chicken and avacado. Yum.

Right. The music. I really liked Erika Luckett (the 'r' in her name is flipped, as in Spanish), who opened for Ellis. It's sort of difficult to describer her sound, though I agree with the description of her latest album, which I found on her website. "Music that sounds like it was born from a weekend adventure with Sting, Annie Lennox, Carlos Santana and Bebel Gilberto." It's fitting. I think my favorite song of hers was "Evangelina".

Evangelina, Evangelina works at a parking garage from 6 until 3
At 3:01 she punches out, walks to the corner, takes the bus that
drives her home. Evangelina wears silk flowers in her hair,
reminds her of a time, reminds her of a place, reminds her of a love that
she left long ago ... Evangelina.

Evangelina, Evangelina has faded pictures of palm trees on her wall.
In the conversation between her heart and mind, she balances what
she found in California and what she left behind.
Evangelina wears silk flowers in her hair,
reminds her of a world
reminds her of shady trees
reminds her of the girl she was when she ran down dusty streets...
Evangelina

Sometimes at night when she looks into the mirror,
she thinks of friends and family, how they used to see her,
how they used to see her.
They’d see her dance in a dress embroidered pink
Now she’s living far away, where she’s got everything,
at least that’s what they think.
Evangelina...

As we were leaving downtown DSM, Dustro commented that when he attends shows like that one, he always feels rather "spiritual" afterward. I have to agree. Maybe not so spiritual as content, but definitely at one with the world. And it's always surprising how much family you can find in Des Mo'. I need to be spending more time at the Ritual. After all, there's a SnB that meets there once in a while ...

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I seem to have found my real-life, honest-to-goodness (what does that mean, exactly?) twin whilst reading the Yarn Harlot's latest post. Go there and do a search for "Jessica". She totally looks like I did senior year of high school, sans flowers on the shirt. Wacky.

I have more crafting to get done for the Earth Day swap, so I must get to it. Now if only grandpa would stay out of the hospital for more than a few days, life would be pretty darn good.

Ellis tonight!

I just finished photographing my Princess Bride swap items. I'd post them here, but I don't know if dayzi is somewhere lurking in the shadows (if so, hello!) — I want her to be surprised. I really enjoyed making the items, and think they turned out okay. I probably could have fancied up a couple of items a little more if I'd been struck with inspiration a little sooner.

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Dustro's coming to visit today for the Ellis and Erika Luckett show at the Ritual Café, 7 to 9 p.m. tonight, if you're in the area. I'm pretty excited. The Ritual Café is a great venue, and they have awesome (and appropriately named) Divine Chai. Mmm. Since he's planning to be in town by 3 or 4 this afternoon, I imagine Dustro and I will wander around Jordan Creek or something before the show. Who knows what we'll be up to? I'll bring the camera along, just in case.

I have to toot my own horn just a tiny bit this morning: I got my postal form finished before 10:30 this morning. That has to be some sort of record, as I usually get it done around noon. I probably messed something up (every week the form comes back with some minute correction worth 20¢ or something like that), because the check's not quite as big as usual, but it's only a couple of dollars under so maybe that's nothing.

P.S. Fyberduck, I think your blog's making my computer freak out. It keeps giving me the spinning beach ball of death ...

Knitty, eh?

After perusing the latest issue of Knitty, I have decided that I need a new hat. Topi will be just the thing to replace my Headline News (a la SnBN), which is a very winter-y color and not really suitable for spring. (I had been thinking about knitting up a cloche or something, but haven't actively looked for a pattern or anything.) I also printed out a couple (okay, four five) other patterns that I'm pondering.

• Hedera, a lovely pair of lacey socks that could get knit up with my new Sock Garden (which arrived on Friday!)
• Convertible, which I doubt I would wear but will be good to have on hand
• Anatolia, whose stitch pattern I love and will probably become a handbag or something crazy like that (I don't want to knit the suggested t-shirt because I think I'd go crazy knitting my first sweater-like garment in such a fine-gauge yarn, and cotton to boot.)
• Pedicure socks, which my mom or cousin would probably get a kick out of (er, "out of which my mom or cousin would probably get a kick" ?)
• Nautie, cute little stuffed nautiloids

As of right now, those are the only ones striking my fancy, though as I see other people knit them up on Craftster, I'm sure I'll be itching to give them a whirl. Hopefully I'll manage to do some stashbusting, too. Actually, I'm managing quite a bit of that for my recycling swap (send on the 15th!) by using up random balls of leftover yarns. I need to focus more on the Princess Bride swap, which sends on Wednesday. I'll have to watch the flick once more, probably tonight, so that I can get the rest of my crafting finished up.

Oh, and Dustro, maybe I was off with the chili. Who knows? KT just makes really good chili.

Off to lunch, then back to work and listening to my new Three5Human CD.

Stereotypical? Me?

Never. Well, not that's entirely not true — this weekend I was such a stereotypical lesbian that it was scary.

The basics:

• cropped hair
• flannel shirt for painting
• nasty short-shorts / flannel pants for painting
• going to Fareway in a Jeep
• large black lab in said Jeep
• eating chili

I love my life. Especially when it's ironic like that.

But I can't talk more now: the new Knitty is up!

Oh, and thanks for all the compliments on the new hair. I lurve it.

Take it off!

Take it all off!

So, y'all, what do you think? Sexylicious hair, right? Yeah, that's the old hair. Click it. Go ahead.

Does it meet your approval, O Twin of Mine? Me? I loves it. Sheila (my blessed goddess with scissors) had a lot of fun — she referred to it as "major surgery", which, as you can see, it was. It is so nice not to have my hair attacking my face anymore.

And Fyberduck, I promise I was not copying you and your lovely short haircut. I desperately needed one. (Desperately as in January or something. Yikes.)

Shoo, fly!

I made this funky little avatar here at abi-station. It took me a while to fiddle around with it, but it's a slow day here. I don't know why the background is black. That's dumb.

Oh. My. God. There is a fly flying around the office, and it is pissing me off. I'm glad no one's here to watch me have spasms trying to shoo it away.

And I'm finally fed up enough with my hair (swatting at that fly made it come loose from its four bobby pins and elastic) that I made an appointment to get it cut. Tomorrow morning.

As for me, I'm leaving. I'll take some pictures tonight of the hippie-style headband for the Lions Show.

Baby day, stash diet

Wow — that was fast. Laura (Poor Miss Finch) had her baby already. Yesterday evening, even. Congratulate her here. Happy baby day, Laura!

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After realizing how much yarn I own, thanks to Zib's FYS, I have decided that it is time.

Dear Stash,

You and I are going on a diet. I love most of you (except for the scratchy acrylics), but I would love even more if I could make things from you instead of just stare at you. Here are some things I will do to help you thin down.

• participate in use what you have month (Flickr group)
• make a square for the Craftster afghan (PM taloola for that)
• no more purchasing online, even for wonderful bargains
• no more coveting Turkish yarns and buying them because you went there

And so on. Buck up. You know you want the attention. After all, if I ignore you for much longer, you may get eaten by a m*th! (Not that I've seen any. Lately.)

We will make this work.

Love always,
Crimson

You may have noticed that I said "You and I". I've heard that there's a Curves opening soon here in town. We'll see what it costs. It's past time looking lumpy. (Though I'll always be zaftig.)

Monday afternoon blather

Those of us who read Poor Miss Finch are waiting with bated breath — it's almost baby time! We're so excited and wishing her a Spee-Dee Delivery. (Look at me. All twitter-pated about a baby. I'm falling apart.)

Oh, and Fyberduck, if you go all classical, I dare you to make an accurate aulos. (You could probably just glue two oboes together. I imagine it would sound the same.)

Breaking one nail leads, in rather quick succession, to biting off all the other nails that were surprisingly unbitten. Bah.

There's a classified going in the paper this week for The Other Job. If you'd like to work 12-15 hours per week, can use Word, Excel and the phone, let me know. I'll hook you up with Jesus.

Pink flamingo

Timmy and I went to HuHot on Friday night; it was so crowded inside that we went outside while we were waiting to get a table. We ran into Mr. High School Band Director, his wife, and their daughter, who is three or four years old. He and Timmy started shooting the breeze, talking about jazz band stuff and Timmy's upcoming recital mostly, when all of a sudden his daughter lunges toward me a little from Mr. High School Band Director's grip and says, "Do you wanna carry me?" We all laughed and I just kinda looked at her for a moment, and said, "Sure!" So there I was, holding this little girl and her stuffed pink flamingo, to whom she was singing, and she said, "Do you wanna sing with me?" She then started singing her own version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, but trailed off in the middle, only to pick up with her own version, using lyrics I never learned. Mr. High School Band Director looked at her and said, "Wow! She's improvising. Scatting already!" He is such a jazz band guy.

Let's see ... what else? I gave the ROUS a trim today, so now it doesn't look so much like a Bear Of Unusual Cuteness. It's still a bit fuzzy — textured, really — just not a ball of puff. Now I just have to figure out the teeth and find a needle small enough to go through the button eyes that I got — darning needles are just too big for a job like that. Wish I knew where I left my beading needle.

You should be here in Iowa now, Fyberduck. We've gotten some fantastic thunderstorms over the past week or so (and we desperately need the rain — our lake looks more like a mud hole). Of course, those come with the requisite tornadoes, but none here in our little ville yet, so we're still in one piece. But right now it's very windy and rainy. Nice way to spend a Sunday night, I think. Oh, and I liked the video, by the by.

As for the acrylics, I think I may end up making a Turkish string bag. Maybe I'll double some worsted on my US 15s so's I don't have to go buy another needle. Or maybe I'll just use the 15s and single strand it. Who knows? Maybe that would be a good project for my Earth Day / recycled stuff swap ... I could twist the acrylic with some plastic bag strips. I really need to get cracking on that swap. The send is just three days after the Princess Bride swap! (Why did I do that to myself?)

Oooh, and I saw this cute knitted rainbow dog collar in the April issue of MagKnits, and I may have to knit one up for Luka. He chewed through his collar the other day, and it's kind of difficult to take him outside without one. And I totally know B and KT would get a kick out of it.

Anyway, that's enough chattering from me tonight. I don't want the DST to kick my butt when I wake up, though I'm sure it will anyway.

Flamingo photo hijacked from here.

Flash Your Stash 2006

That's right, folks. It's time for you to see how much yarn I really have. View the stash ...

Exhibit A: Homespun. These eighteen skeins of Lion Brand Homespun were not purchased by myself. I inherited them from someone that moved from a house to a much smaller home. I don't think I'll ever use it, but my mom might.

Exhibit B: The rest of the stash that isn't Homespun. I put the full skeins all on our oft-ignored couch in the front room. I categorized the yarn into four separate categories: acrylic, fuzzy synthetic, plant fibers, and wool. The partial skeins were put elsewhere. They have their own categories, and can be seen in my Flash Your Stash photoset.

Exhibit C: Ackrylic. I don't know how I manage to amass such large amounts of acrylic. I have more of that than anything else, though most of it is in partial skeins right now. It kind of makes me crazy. And the thought of using all that Red Heart makes my hands dry up at once. Caron Simply Soft isn't so bad, though. I like knitting with that.

Exhibit D: Fuzzy Synthetics. I was sort of surprised how many skeins I had in this category. I knew about them, of course, but when they all group up on you like that, it's kind of scary. I feel like I could entertain a lot of small children with my fuzzy yarns. But the Turkish yarns are in there. They're going to become a funky scarf dedicated to the Gravy trip, per HoJo's suggestion.

Exhibit E: Plant Fibers. Okay, so I should have just called it Cotton Plus One Lonely Bamboo. I tried to make something with the bamboo yarn the other day, and it just made me really angry. (It split a lot and didn't want to behave.) Some of that cotton is destined to be baby booties, I think. Really cute ones. The Sugar N Cream (two skeins of green, white, and blue) will be washcloths to match the froggy bathroom at the new domicile. Something textured.

Exhibit F: Wool-Ease. Okay, so I forgot that I had subdivided the animal fiber section during the photoshoot. It's wool and acrylic, anyway. The Wool-Ease was mostly for Harry Potter-inspired hats. I made a small stuffed critter out of the grey, too. But really, I keep it around because it's worsted — the weight I most often use. It kind of just sits there and waits for me to come play with it. (But then I forget what colors I have and then buy more, only to come home to the same colors. C'est la vie.)

Exhibit F: Animal Fibers. This looks really measly. That's mostly because my wool is in partial skeins. Well, that and in the mail, as I mentioned yesterday. Eleven skeins of KP Wool of the Andes and six of KP Sock Garden will soon be joining the throng. Mmm ... wool.

If you're actually interested in the rest, clickr the Flickr.

I'm having some really nice salmon right now. Except for the bones. Eating around fishbones is irritating.