2005: a honky cat

I've done my civic duty for the year — I volunteered at a Goodwill for over four hours today. Now, after playing Bunco with my family over at Di-Hitler's house (long story), I'm back with the peeps to ring in the new year with some games and some gins and tonics (and other assorted beverages).

Get back, honky cat. ( Elton )

Wise words

I have some hats to take pictures of — I gifted a snowflake beanie to an aunt and a pair of fuzzy ones to my brothers, appropriately matched to their favorite colors, red and green, which (as we all know) makes a dandy egg nog. NyQuil comes in two colors: red and green; and it's the only thing that tastes like red and green. (a la Lewis Black)

And in the wise words of Queen, You say, "Coke," I say, "Caine". You say, "John," I say, "Wayne". ... Bicycle! Bicycle!

Boxing

Happy Boxing Day, all. I hope your Annual Consumerism Day went well, and that the haul was exciting. Now that the season of red and green is, for all gifting purposes, over, perhaps life can get back to normal (or some semblance thereof).

Oh, and I'm fairly enthralled with the Blistex that is medicated berry—Santa was thoughtful this year regarding the dry weather. It vaguely reminds me of something, but I don't know what.

I've become rather obsessed with Firefly and its motion picture counterpart, Serenity. It seems that there's an entire LiveJournal devoted to knitting a certain hat from the show. Craziness. (It's all my family's fault that I've become addicted—they're the ones who own the DVDs of the series and now of the movie.)

But really, that's all.

Lovely?

What with all the church music I've been absorbing lately due to my mother's utter begging, it's no surprise that it's slowly seeping into back my brain. There's something irritatingly catchy about certain sacred tunes that makes them get stuck in your head; particularly the Lutheran ones, as the melodies are always awkward. Right now I've got about three songs from the cantata we sang at church today blending with "This is the feast" from my choir days at Luther when we were stuck at church.

But honestly, some of the lyrics from the cantata are terribly cheesey. Take this line: You're altogether lovely, altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to me. Worth and wonderful I can understand, but lovely? Is there something about the meaning of lovely that I missed?

Okay, I looked it up just now to be sure, and the first definition is "full of love; loving", which fits just fine. I always think of lovely as its fourth definition, "enjoyable; delightful". But still. Lovely? I think the lyricist was just tring to find a two-syllable word ending in the [i] sound.

Also, I'm quite addicted to this game, Bloomin' Gardens. Almost as much as Stack the Cats, which is kind of like Tetris, but with cat heads.

Esther is done!

Here's a quick post to show off my finished work on the Esther Williams hat. If you'd like to see Esther sans edging, check out the Flickr. I discussed details in my previous post, if you care to read.

Woo hoo for my first KAL!


Now I'm working on another Panta, a Finnish headband, with a yarn whose dye is trying to turn my hands blue.

Saturday stuff

Being unable to make the trans-Iowa trek to the bulbous nose, I've been doing a little knitting [as per usual].

I just finished Esther about an hour ago. Even the edging. I'm no crocheter [hooker], so it looks a little dull and lifeless instead of its intended scallop-y nature. But that's fine with me — it fits wonderfully, and comes down to just about the right spot when I wear it. I will probably make another one, now that I've gotten the hang of it and done the decreases properly. I think I'll skip the edging next time and just work another half pattern repeat or so.

Honestly, when I was finishing it on my way up to Lutherland for Juletide, I must've been on crack. Of course, I was working on it in the car in a snowstorm [nearly] in the almost-dark, so that could have been part of the problem. Once I studied my shorthand of the pattern and realized that I'd done the decreases completely wrong, I ripped it out to the fourth-and-a-half repeat [just before any decreasing has begun] at the hotel, when we finall got there around 12 a.m. after the show. It sat around for about a week before I got up the guts to do the edging, partly because I didn't understand it but mostly because I didn't know how to do it. I'll be posting photos soon.

I've also been working on one of these guys, as well as a little entrelac action, which I'm greatly enjoying.

That's all, really. MJ's been griping for a hat, saying, "My head's too cold! Blah blah blah." So she might get one. But I've got to work on Dustro's hat, too. I'm too nice, really, knitting for all y'all.