More Cuteness

Gir's been here a week now and has completely taken over the house.
Spike started playing with him last night which is good, because it gives Gir something to chew on that isn't us. It's also a lot of fun to watch the two of them chase each other around the house.
Now for your viewing pleasure:


Gir after a rousing battle with tissue paper. I'm pretty sure he won. It is sticking out of his mouth after all.
Gir eating on the new kitchen floor.


We did manage to get it in before he arrived. There wasn't even a full board left over when we were done. This is good because it means we don't have left over flooring to store, but it gave me a heart attack when we were almost done and I looked at the tiny pile of remaining boards. Both of us were pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to buy another box.
The floor is engineered cork. It feels great on feet. It's warm and a little cushy. It doesn't seem to show dirt or get scratched from the pets running all over it.
Now there's just the counters, pulls, backsplash, and paint to do and it's all done!


This is some spinning to break up the, "all puppy, all the time" feel. It's 250g of millends from a mill in Ontario. I spun it as a heavyish laceweight and there's well over 1000m of it. No project in mind for it yet. I put the sock beside it for scale. It's a BIG skein. It pretty much filled my wild flyer and took almost eight hours to ply.
Whew!

Warning! Severe cuteness

Gir arrived this afternoon and has made himself right at home. He's chased the cats, peed on the new kitchen floor and been adorable every second.
Uzume doesn't seem to mind him, but Spike is a little out of joint. He's been giving Gir a wide berth and only gets in close when he's asleep. I figure it won't be too long before they're chasing each other around the house. Days maybe. Maybe tomorrow.
We have to give him a registered name and he's from a "D" litter. So far, it looks like he'll be Majekin's Diamond Dog Gir.
Hey, I had a cat named Aladin Sane. Old Bowie fans die hard.
I am willing to entertain other suggestions...
The severe cuteness follows. I will not be held responsible for elevated blood sugar or cavities that result from viewing the following pics.




PS: For scale: the frog is about the size of my hand.

Recovering from Madrona

Or, "how I spent my week off".
But first, Madrona loot and a quick recap.
I went down to Seattle on Thursday afternoon and met up with Holly who very kindly took me shopping. We bought a few things including a burner phone which has since been dubbed Lara's Crack phone. If you want to know why, you have to watch The Wire.
It's a cheap, anonymous cell that I can use in the states without racking up enormous bills. Very handy.
We went to Tacoma that evening and had dinner with some of the Blue Moon bunch.
Friday I spent with Janet in Seattle getting a colour not known to nature streaked through my hair. Then it was back to Tacoma for dinner with the Blue Moon bunch again.
Saturday was fibre shopping in the Madrona market, lunch with Jean, and dinner with friends.
Sunday I headed back home with Angela and Doug. We spent a good portion of the trip trying to come up with book titles. Lucky Golden Knitting Book was the best that came up (it was Doug's). So as you can tell, we didn't have a lot of luck. A lot of fun and goofing around, but no real book title. Gonna keep working on that one.
I had Kerry as a roomie this year which was a lot of fun, but we didn't get to see much of each other. We were both pretty busy. I think we need to arrange a visit that's just for visiting.
On to the fibre portion of the show:


There's some Crown mountain superwash, some Skacel, mixed batts and some alpaca that Jacqui processed for me. There's quite a bit more of that last one, but you get the idea. The skein is a laceweight I spun from some other batts that Jacqui gave me.
Now for some yarn and such:


Some of this I bought and some was gifted me from Kerry and Denise. The grey skein with the green tag is from Denise. She spun it and it's truly spectacular. The machine knit swatches are actually sock blanks. You knit socks from them by unraveling them as you go. I got some undyed to try as well.
And then there were some spindles:


Another glass one from Sheila, a Spindlewood and a Grafton.
I had to promise Sheila that I would spin with the Do Not Drop spindle. I'm afraid I'll break it, so I'm going to pad up an area before I use it.
I'm home now, but the fibre just keeps coming. In my defense, I bought these fleeces last year and only now am I getting them back from the mill. Lynne was nice enough to bring them by yesterday. She obviously hadn't touched the merino, or I never would have seen it again!


The black and smaller grey are romney x's and the large grey is merino. The merino is soft enough to make underwear out of. I'm pretty happy with it. I think it's destined to become a sport/dk weight 3 ply and then a soft, light cabley sweater. I really want to spin it right now.
But it has to wait because I still have tons of homework to do and I just started this:


Mystery beast millends from a mill in Ontario. I've got about 200g of it, so it's destined to be 2 ply laceweight.
I'm taking lots of breaks while I spin it because I managed to bugger up my knee when I spun the other stuff earlier in the week. Between all the spinning and the three times a week running, I have to take it a little easier.
Still hating the running. Next week we're up to 5k. yippee.

Off to Madrona

Only one more day till I'm back on the southside of the border.
Holly and I are going to spend the afternoon tooling around Seattle and then we're going down to Tacoma for the Madrona Fiber Festival. I'm not taking any classes this year and I've still managed to be pretty busy.
I made up some stitch markers for my friends. I needed something small because a lot of us are traveling light or have to fly. Not to mention how much more room small gifts leave for yarn and roving. I really like the coloured tiger tail. I'm going to have to find more of it as it makes the beads look even better.


I did some spinning for the first time in ages over the last couple of days. I spun a half pound of superwash merino from Crown Mountain in a 3 ply sport weight. I started sunday night and finished this morning. I haven't washed it yet.
This was a great roving to work with. It drafted easily and smoothly. The colour changes give a very tweedy effect with the 3 ply.
I also made a rather nich discovery about my new Wild Flyer. I can ply a half pound of fibre with it and have no knots!
Woohoo!
That is one very big skein.


Puppy Update:
Gir is still quite a bit smaller than the others but is wagging his tail alot. He's still taking milk from his mom, but is eating kibble as well. Five more weeks till he comes to live with us.

Baby pic

Gir's first baby photo.
So tiny. So cute.
He'll be living here in about 6 weeks.

Do your legs hurt?

These are a couple of things that arrived in the mail here this past week. I thought they were good contributions for Friday Freakfest.
The really hideous zombie doll is really knitting content. Trust me she really is. She's going to be involved in a strange knitting project that will be revealed in April. Hopefully, it will be worth the wait. The monkey has ordered the parts I need from Hong Kong. Be afraid.
As for the chocolate voodoo doll. Lorena sent that along with some other great stuff.
I already ate it's yummy legs, so if you're legs feel sore, be prepared for more pain. The voodoo doll still has it's torso, head and arms. Yum!

Friday Freakfest

Yeah, I know, it's not friday.
I'm off to Oregon tomorrow morning at the crack of it's still dark, so no friday blogging. So while I'm helping a certain someone get a bunch of sock yarn mailed out, you still get to enjoy the scary crap I manage to find on the interwebs.
This little gem was inspired by Holly who posted about how Google had tried to "help" her find Crisp spinning wheels by suggesting she was looking for crispy spider meat.
If you hadn't already guessed, I found a site that's very concerned with crispy spider meat. This guy went to Cambodia and found huge heaping plates of deep fried giant spiders. Not for the faint of heart.
Click Here

Friday Freakfest

Skinned muppets as coats, clear plastic shirts, and pants that start mid-thigh (no crotch/butt whatsoever). You know you wanna look.
Click Here

It's a Boy!

Don't freak out. I'm not pregnant. But our new doggie was born on January 7th. I don't have any pics of him yet, but I'll post them when I do. His name is Gir and he has a tail. The breeder was nice enough to ask us if we wanted his tail docked or not and of course we said "NOT!". He'll come out to his new home sometime in mid-March. We can't wait. It's been pretty quiet around here since we lost Loki and Spike has been pulling out his fur in clumps. Hopefully the new pup will perk Spike up again.
There's been the usual amount of knitting going on:


The Digitessa socks are done and ready to go to their new home. They're STR lightweight in Pond Scum, which I find ucky, but she loves.
The scarf is just a simple cable done in LL Butterflies and Bullfrogs periwinkle. It was quick, mindless and not knit on a 2mm needle. All things that felt pretty necessary after the holidays.



I got tired of my plain black techie toys, so I got some skins for them. They look kinda neat now. And I can tell at a glance which ones are mine.

*Soapbox Warning* feel free to skip this...
As I was cruising the breeder's message board for baby photos, I came across this. I've never been a big fan of Peta. Any group that thinks exploiting women is an acceptable way of getting their point across, doesn't rate well with me. Combine that with appalling and frequently abhorrent advertising campaigns and protests, and you've totally lost me. But the numbers on that post are very troubling. Peta says it's members won't wear animals or eat them, but apparently, it's quite alright with killing animals.
We are a very animal friendly household. We feed birds and squirrels (and yes, I like squirrels), the odd raccoon and have a couple of big furry cats. And we eat meat. Not a lot, but still we eat meat. And wear leather. But not fur. In case anyone out there cares.
I also give money to strangers when I go downtown. Especially if they look cold and hungry. I think that charity starts where you live. If you help the people around you, everyone is better for it.
We made the mistake (this is going to sound awful initially, but bear with me) of giving money to the Red Cross to help victims of the tsunami. The monkey's work and the Canadian government were matching donations, so the $100 we gave became $300. It seemed like a good thing to do.
Less than six weeks after we made the donation, I got a call from the Red Cross. This was troubling for two reasons: the donation was supposed to be anonymous; and they wanted more money. The woman who called was very aggressive, to the point of being insulting. She told me that people like me were part of the problem. Only giving in times of crisis, never any other time.
I let her have it with both guns. I've never heard from the Red Cross again. I never plan to give them money again. I know where that $300 went and it sure wasn't to people who needed it. It went to pay staff at their call centres and to pay for the tons of mailing they do to solicit more donations.
Better to give food to your local food bank. It's more likely to go directly where it's needed. Or volunteer.
Stepping down of the soapbox now. Carry on.

Can I breath now?

December is a crazy month around here. Birthdays, parties and, of course, Christmas. Most of it involves some traveling and if we're lucky, the weather cooperates.
It's always fun and exhausting.
We had fondue, went out to a very nice restaurant (I had duck for my birthday, it was delicious!), decided we were too full from munching stuff from our stockings on Christmas day, so had a ham on Boxing day.
There was a lot of food.
A lot of food.
I may never eat again.
We had fun with our presents and spent untold hours watching tv on dvd. Pretty much just holed ourselves up for 3 days after the big event. The monkey got me a PSP. I spent the morning on ebay finding some skins for it.
Life is quickly resuming normal programming.
Socks are being knit.



These are the Yarnissima Digitessa socks in STR lightweight Pond Scum. I know, I know, I'm just too lazy to add a link today. It's not that hard to find and her other patterns rock too.
And yeah, I'm aware that Pond Scum is very outside my colour preferences and the socks don't fit me. They're not for me. I sent a friend a pair of socks for Christmas and she liked them. Kind of a lot. So much so that she sent me a bunch of yarn in colours she liked. She's so subtle. Looks like she'll get a pair every so often this year. What the hell, I usually knit more socks than I know what to do with in a year anyway.

These socks were a present so I couldn't put them up before now. They're the Embossed Leaf (fer fuks sake google it!) in a rare gems colourway of STR. I love that colour. Love it. Almost regret gifting it.
I'm off to watch the final cut of Blade Runner now. Apparently if I can't figure out if Deckard is a replicant after watching this version, I am a moron.
I really want him to be a replicant.
I am fully aware of my geek status. You don't have to comment on it.
Really.
I totally know.

Time flies...

...when you're running out of it.
This has been a month of deadlines. Most of them knitting related.
And while corners in my living room and den look like Santa and his slave minions sicked up in them, no decorations are up. I just haven't got it in me.
Hopefully, the tree and house lights will go up this weekend. Holly is here for her class and we're gonna put her to work. *ahem* I mean, get her in holiday spirit with a little tree trimming.
Yeah, that's what I meant. Tree trimming is fun, not work.
Spirits, not the holiday ones (the liquid ones) may be involved.
Of course, there's still gift knitting to do and some test-knitting is apparently on it's way here too.
Hell, I didn't really enjoy sleeping anyway. It's entirely over-rated.
Twelve days is plenty of time to get the rest of this crap done.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
Oh yay, the manic laughter has set in. I feel more festive already!
Here.
Enjoy some Christmas knitting for the niece while I try to get the twitching to stop.


This is the Fireside Stocking from the Holiday Gift issue of IK. I decided to fully line it because (I'm crazy) it's all stranded on the inside and I didn't want the fat boy's gifts getting caught on the floats. It took me six days, which isn't bad.


This is a little hoodie made with some sort of kettle dyed wool. It was a project for the Nihon class, so I got a double with this project. Actually, it may be a triple as I might use it for the book too. It was pretty quick as it's only a two year old size, but it still uses all those pesky Japanese techniques.
I still have two projects to finish for the third year. One of them just needs neck trim and the other needs a front and sleeves. Not bad, but in two more classes we're done.
Again with the time running out thing.
I'm going to have to learn to work faster.
Or have some tiny slave labour. Do you think Santa rents them out during the down season?

I really should stop taking these things

I saw this on Lorena's blog and thought it looked fun. But I guess I should have learned my lesson after taking the Aspie test.
So here are my results. Part of me always wanted to control the universe.

Your Score: Spice Melange

You scored 100% intoxication, 75% hotness, 75% complexity, and 100% craziness!

You are Spice.

You're not from around here, are you? You're extremely valuable. While you resemble mundane cinnamon, you are much more interesting. People fight wars over you, but your giant worms protect you.

You enlighten people; make them aware, prescient, even clairvoyant. Your pure essence can reveal people's true selves, if they survive their encounter with the real you. You're addictive, dangerous, seductive, and above all else, necessary for space travel.

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

edited to add: The monkey took the test and he's "saffron". He does not control the universe.

2010 mascots. WTF?!

If this picture makes you wonder what the hell these things are, you're not alone.
I turned on the news this morning to discover that some marketing genius had decided that these things represent our province and country. I couldn't even tell what they were.
Then they showed a cartoon that had one of them flying, so I figured it must be some sort of bird. It's supposed to be a native spirit that embodies a bird. Makes me wonder which band. But okay,they at least tried to get something that is BCish happening.
But then there's the others.
I couldn't tell what the big one was. It had to be either a beer spokesman or a marmot. Maybe an ewok? A wookie?
The big one is apparently a sasquatch. So I was right about the beer spokesman. Great.
The last one was the most confusing. The only animal in BC that is black and white and has four legs (that I could think of) was a skunk. But it didn't look like a skunk. It looked like a rejected pokemon character. That one is some sort of, get this, sea bear. It has a killer whale fin on it's head.
Seems kinda like Vanoc is pulling stuff out of it's ass.
It pains me to know that tax dollars paid for these things.
I'd like a refund.

Sometimes, day to day...

...just kicks your ass.
Don't get me wrong, for the most part, things are going fairly smoothly. All the socks sold at the Christmas sale. Gifts we've ordered are starting to arrive. We reworked the den so that it's now a very functional space. It's now an office/library/guest room/music room/exercise area. Small, but with some new bookcases and a small sofabed, it seems to actually look nice and be hugely multipurpose.
If only Ikea would help us out. We want a wall mounted unit for above my new, much smaller computer desk. Seems like a simple and reasonable request right? They carry one that matches the bookcases and have it in stock. There's only one tiny problem. We've tried to put together three different ones and none of them have the holes drilled correctly. Ikea refuses to send us one that they've already made up. They have no problem sending us unit after unit (we've had three now remember)and picking up the defective ones, but they refuse to try and put one together for us.
Now. I think that it's a reasonable thing to ask after we've wasted a few hours trying to have one of these things work. And it would likely wind up costing them less too. As they've had to deliver the thing twice and now and will have to do it again. For a total of three trips out here (we took the first one back ourselves). And hey, after three defective units in a row, I suspect that they've got a bad shipment. Something got off at the factory and no one caught it. We could be putting these things together for weeks and not find a good one.
It's high time that they stepped up and helped us out here. They have our money. Time to make it right.
I was bummed about missing the Blue Moon barn sale last weekend too. Thought I had to be here for something and it turned out that I didn't. So a bunch of my friends were off having fun in Oregon and I was here. In a massive wind storm and power outage. We were lucky and had our power back on in about 12 hours, a lot of people were out for more than 48 hours. We also lost our phone and cable, even after the power came back on. Very sucky.
Okay. That's enough complaining.
It's not all bad around here.
Check this out:


That is the fibrey Christmas that happened here last night. I didn't go to the sale, but my friends made sure that stash enhancement occurred for me anyway.
And yes, some of that stuff is Ravens.
No, you can't have it.
MINE.
I love my friends.
Gives me a big warm fuzzy just looking at that pile of gorgeous Blue Moon.
Thanks guys. You're the best.
Unfortunately, a lot of the fibre stuff happening around here is unbloggable. But I can post these:


A variation on the Firestarter socks in BM lightweight, a rare gem colour. They're toe-up with a really interesting heel configuration. A great knit if you're wanting to make socks and are sick of the ole standby pattern. And the fit is very good. Nice depth through the instep.

Thanks Anne!

Here's my tea swap parcel all the way from Finland!
My swap partner was Anne and she sent some great stuff.
Chocolate, a mug from where she lives, a candle, stitch markers that she made, candy in a lovely little tin, Regia silk which is so nice to knit with and last but not least a bunch of teas that I can't wait to try!
Thanks Anne, I hope your parcel from me reaches you soon.

Generosity, cat wisdom and deadlines

Things have been a little hard around here without the doggie. It's getting better, but every once in a while it still sneaks up on me and slaps a crying jag on my ass.
And lately, the generosity of my friends has never been more obvious.
The pic above is what I received from Jacqui today. That blue skein is yarn she handspun! It's lovely! There's gorgeous roving, tea, soap, candies (mmm apple), a wind chime to make happy sounds outside and a row counter that she made.
And there's the Dog Heaven book.
I'll be giving the box of tissues to the monkey before I let him read it.
Jacqui is also the person who got me going on the PIF thing. She needs one more person, so people, please, go sign up on her blog. It's a really worthwhile thing to do and you'll likely meet some great new friends.
There may be a puppy in our new year. I've kept in touch with the breeder that we got Loki from and had been talking to her about a new schippe before we lost him. It looks like we may have a new pup sometime around March/April.
This is a very good thing. Spike is not nearly as enthused with playing with humans as he was with the dog. But he has taught me something very valuable over the last couple of weeks. Taking a few moments to lie in a patch of warm sun on the kitchen floor is very cathartic. I've watched him do it for years. He used to do it with Loki. They'd both lie on the rug in front of the sink in a patch of sunshine for hours. I never thought much of it, but the other day, I decided, "what the hell" and joined him. It felt great! Very relaxing.
Cats are smart.
Humans, less so.
And, as for how I'm making out with deadlines:


These are the socks I got done for a friend's craft sale. I'm a pair short, but nine's not bad. The stuff for the other big deadline is coming along nicely. The deadline was Oct 15th, but I'm almost done and I promise, it'll be worth the wait.
Now off to get the Christmas shopping done!
Nope. I'm not kidding.

Pay it Forward

Jacqui is doing this on her blog and I thought it was a great idea.
Here's the blurb:
I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.
Now.
I will get it to you before the end of the year, 'cause otherwise I'll forget. I may even ask for colour prefs from you. So leave me a comment and email me with your addy.
I'm on a sock and hat jag right now. So that's likely what will be going out. But I do have a couple of scarfs on the go too. You never know...

SNAFU

I really want to thank everyone for their nice thoughts about Loki. It's so quiet around here without him, I'm still not used to it. We got his ashes back yesterday and plan to take him for a last walk in the dog park. Seems like something he would like.
We are trying to remember just his happy little foibles. Like the funny "aroo" sound he always made when yawned and the way he would give the human nearest to him a dirty look when he farted and would make a big show of moving away from the stench.
We've also made a funny/gross discovery about our beloved little doggy and his cat. Uzume has been leaving large dingleberries around the house almost daily for the last little while. This is a seemingly new occurrence. We suspect it is NOT a new occurrence, but that Loki was getting a daily cat poop treat courtesy of Uzume. Funny, but kinda nasty too. Ummm, ick?
So. Like the header says, pretty normal around here, but a little effed up too.
I sum up my workpile like this right now: You know how when people are deep, deep, deep in debt and just keep spending like Rockefellers? Because hey, what's another couple hundred when you're in the hole by hundreds of thousands? That's what my deadlines are like right now. I am no longer panic stricken. I care, and things are getting done, but it's not really registering. I'm that deep in the hole.
There are only four more Nihon classes left in year three and I have two garments to complete. I still have a sweater and shawl pattern to write up for immediate publication. That deadline was last week. The crying over that one happened two weeks ago. I have moved on.
I've decided to shelve the master spinner program for the coming year as I want to try to have my book done and published by February 2009. The monkey keeps asking how he can help. I tell him to come up with the money and just smile and nod when I go completely batshit crazy trying to do this next year. No tiger poking.

In other news, my friend Kerry has published some great baby patterns. Go check out her site, Northern Palm Designs.
I had the pleasure of test-kniting this cutie for her:


And on friday, the charming parcel guy delivered a box full of happy from Lorena. The timing was perfect. The only way that it could have been better is if I could have gone to Rhinebeck with the lot of them. Maybe in a couple of years. I think I may be tied up this time next year...


Anyway, it's a great package. There's yarn. Hand-dyed, handpsun AND hand-dyed and a skein of Great Adirondack. It's all gorgeous and I am greatly honoured to have a skein of Lorena's handspun. She sent me her soap too. Which is good because now I don't have to send her a nasty email about how unfair it is that you can only get her handmade soap if you go to their soon-to-be-open shop in Gainsville called Hanks.
There were Disney cookies (the monkey and I ate them first), the now infamous grape jelly that should come in plastic jars, there's lime jelly too, but it's already in the fridge. And, of course, the Florida Gators cold mug. There's tea from Canada, which is amusing, the florida Bud coaster that I had to make sure Holly didn't take home with her, a Lorna's Laces pattern and a bunch of info from the magic kingdom which I assume is to try to lure me down to Epcot.
Like I need to be lured anywhere warm!
Oh! And the Lime Buds! You can try and pry those out of my cold dead hands. Just go ahead and try.

Loki

1996-2007
He was a wonderful, joyful friend.
We miss him more than we can express.
It wasn't long enough.

Sometimes, life gets in the way...

...of blogging.
It's been insanely busy and wildly emotional around here for the last few weeks.
I feel like a chipmunk on crack. Can't sleep, no appetite, and often, a complete blithering lack of focus.
But I'm still here. They haven't sent the nice young men with the clean white coats for me yet. So it's all good.
First there was the monkey's birthday. Which involved a fabulous meal at the Harbour House. The next day was our anniversary and the monkey's brother joined us for a nice visit and some sushi.
Then, on friday, blog-challenged Janet and Jill came up from Seattle for a kamekaze visit. We braved rush hour traffic and made it downtown in time for the first seating at Vij's.
After dinner it was on to shoe shopping and I got totally lucky. Found awesome little thinline wedge heels in black satin with cream dots and a peekaboo toe. Last pair. My size. Less than half price. The monkey said I should have bought a lottery ticket.
Then we went on to a cupcake shop. I had no idea these things existed. It was a little surreal. And there was A LOT of pink. But we bought some cupcakes (despite the fact that we all felt like we were going to explode from being so full) and went home.
Where we all crashed. And I learned that since joining Fat Losers and eating in a very healthy way, I have lost my talent for digesting lovely rich food.
It was an unpleasant discovery.
Saturday, we trekked into Richmond and hit the Daiso, the Japanese book store, a yarn store and the Japanese candy shop. Had cheap sushi for lunch and I was pretty much done in.
It was a great visit, but waaaay too short.
I did find myself an excellent new knitting bag:


It was only $20! It's lined, has a zipper and inside pockets!
Can't beat that with a stick.
That was last week. This week has been much more quiet as far as friends, but much more insanely busy because of some looming deadlines.
I can't say much about the deadline stuff yet. I really, really want to, 'cause it's sooooo exciting. But I have to keep mum for another month or so.
I can say that I should have some patterns in print very soon. Yay!
I didn't expect this to happen so fast, but it has and I'm just going with the flow. There's been a lot of stuff to learn, a lot of banging my head on my computer desk. A few Eukeka! moments and a lot ripping stuff out. Had to wrestle one pattern into submission. Damn thing just would not cooperate. If it weren't for the deadline, I would have set fire to it!
Because of all this, I've made a few decisions.
Master Spinner will have to wait a year. I don't see how I can do this and manage to take level 6 next year.
I want to have my book in print by early 2009. No more putting it off. Strike while the iron is hot and all that.
I need to go back to a gym. The fat's coming off, but I feel tired and blob-like. The only remedy for this (other than speed, and the monkey insists that's a bad idea) is exercise. Crap.
Our house is too small. I want to find out if we can put a master suite on top of the existing structure. 'Cause hey, writing a book with a house under construction is such a great idea.
So.
Somehow it's friday again. I thought it was thursday. I have no idea what happened to thursday. It may have been surgically removed from my week. Which would explain the large lump on my head.
There is some knitting fit to show others:


It's not exciting knitting, just the stuff that's been keeping me from going completely postal over the last little while. The gray is soon to be Boot socks for Angela. And yes! Those are the new Harmony needles! I really like them. They're warm, smooth and not bendy.
There's another pair of plain socks from some Lana Grossa that I had to have, a red alpaca hat and a little wool hat for my niece.

And because it is friday, and I missed last week I have another bizarre, yet fascinating link.
Ladies, meet Vincent Gallo.
What a charmer.
Almost makes those pork martinis seem like a good idea...