Blog #30-something.

I am tres lame. It's been over a month since the last blog entry. And James and Joe have come and gone. Joe is, adorable. But even more to the point, he found a hat in my apartment, that I knit, that fits him perfectly and that he loves! Ahha! Something to knit Joe for Christmas! Suh-weet! And James loves the yarn and slipper pattern for his man slippers. The boy has excellent taste, they are Malabrigo. God I frakking hate spell check! I know Malabrigo isn't a word, that's why it's capitalized, asshats!

So I just finished watching the first episode of Season 5 of Project Runway. They did the whole grocery store thing from season 1 again. Which, of course, has me thinking, WWBD? What would Bettie do? I know what she wouldn't do, and that would be going for the obvious choice of a tablecloth or napkins or paper towels or trash bags. Too predictable. I can't believe that anyone used those things. Duh. And they are, most of them, quite young this time around. Lots of 25-27 year olds. Whatever. I hope I am not bored like I was with last season. I didn't even watch the last 2-3 episodes. Once fashion week happened, I saw all of their shows on line and really didn't even care who won. I know who's clothes I liked and that's all I cared about apparently.

I haz a date tomorrow. Must. Find. Cute. Outfit.

Blog #33, or How I Got My First Sunburn Of The Season

Yesterday was WWKIP day. I wore sunscreen, but clearly SPF 15 was not enough. I wore sleeveless, because I knew I would get some color, and didn't want farmer tan. Believe me, I have seen hard-core farmer tan up close. It's not a look I wish to duplicate. I had one Grandfather who was a farmer. I don't think he ever went out with less coverage than a short-sleeved shirt. But I had seen him in a tank. We are talking skin as white as the new fallen snow, right next to skin that had spent every summer of it's 60 some odd years in short sleeves out on a tractor. With no canopy. I do not wish to duplicate this look. So yeah, I am a little bit crunchy in places this morning. I have been slathering myself with body butter.

But other than that, WWKIP day was lovely! That stands for World Wide Knit In Public day.

Blog #32 Gah! 17 Day Until My Gays Are Here!!!

Well, part of them anyways. James and Joe will be here June 27th through July 3rd. Just in time for ALL of Taste of Chicago! ( insert sarcasm here ) But, much more importantly, they will be here for PRIDE!!! And if you don't know what that means, then clearly you have no gay friends and should go make some. It sounds as though James has mapped out each and every meal, based on the restaurants he missed most. The thing that might throw that off is that there are literally bunches of new places littering Andersonville that he hasn't seen yet. I haven't been to any of the new places to have an opinion one way or the other. Either way, I doubt that we will want for places to eat.

My birthday was May 26th. See birthday greeting comments below with post # 31. I got all kinds of goodies and much fun was had. Mom and Dad got me a drum carder! I am busy carding the rainbow fleece Mom and I got at Crazy Girl Knits. I am thinking it will probably want to be a baby sweater. Don't ask me for who, I have no idea. I just think a little baby sized rainbow sweater would be adorable. It's got a lot of second cuts in it though. But I have always kind of liked the slightly "rustic" look in some yarns. Then I have 15 oz. of Lorna's Laces roving to spin. And 4 bumps of two different colors of roving from Crazy Girl Knits. Then. We start on the Finn Wool fleeces from Wee Croft Finn Sheep. That should give me all of the right kinds of practice before launching into the Alex shawl. I do need to do a lace sampler. And maybe another shawl or two knitwise, before doing Alex. Especially since I haven't really done much lace at all.

I have been doing a lot of alterations lately. And I still have to copy that jacket that I got the discoloration out of. Then at least I can get it put back together. I have a whole stack of easy summer tops cut out for myself. I should whip those up. I have been wearing the same boring assortment of summer clothes for the last 3 summers with no real changes. BORING. It's not for lack of fabric, that's for damn sure.

Alex went to the vet the other day. They drew blood, did a full work up. He is all good. Yay! He is said to be in very good shape for his age. Though I got a bit of a tsk-tsk 'cause he re-gained a half a pound. I was actually relieved that he gained a little bit back. I think under 18 lbs. looks a little scrawny on him. His is rather big boned you know.


Oh yeah. And I have someone to barter massages for sewing with. Life it good.

Blog #31, aka, A Few Random Thoughts

#1 I think I have reached some kind of critical mass level with the knitting. I got me a swell new Ravelry tote bag. Yes, I was totally stalking the store and clicking "refresh" all afternoon that Saturday....and I gots me a tote bag!!! It is the perfect size. The straps are the perfect length. It is huge. I could fit my whole life into this bag if I wanted to. And therein, lies the problem. I have turned it into my knitting bag, duh. But instead of carrying a purse also, I have started chucking all of the purse crap into my knitting(?) bag. This would seem to me, to indicate some kind of new found level of extreme-ness. Or maybe I just think about junk too much.

#2 Alex needs to retire to Scottsdale. He was doing beautifully when it had gotten warmer, but now that it is plummeting down into the 40's at night, he is all stiff and crunchy again. He was all tucked in under my bed all evening. I finally went and crawled halfway under the bed to give him a little kitty hip rub. That seemed to perk him up quite a bit. He came out for a pill and a snack. He is now napping peacefully on his chair in the mudroom/enclosed back porch. Poor booger. Perhaps I can find him a home for retired kitties......maybe a heating pad would help.

#3 I just finished a market bag. It was way fun to knit. Good beer knitting too. Huge, open weave, and if one screws up, who cares? It's a market bag!

Blog #30 In Which Bettie realizes that she has been blogging for a year.

I am sooo lame. I have been doing this blog for a year. Really? I mean, for reals? And I am on blog #30. That's not even 1 per week. But more than 1 per month. You know what would make this more fun? Comments. A purpose. Feeling like I was letting someone down if I didn't blog. I think the only people who read this regularly are my dad and James. Heh. Why does that make me giggle? I dunno

On to projectland!

My pink sweater, yeah. Got it all blocked. (!) Went to Kitchener the top to the bottom and found out why we should pull out our highlighter pens when we start knitting something. We need to mark, on the pattern, which size we are knitting so that all of the frakking pieces match up when we go to assemble said sweater. This blows. Or rocks, depending on how you look at it. Part of the cable on the bottom half of the sweater is a little wonky. I can't figure out what I did, but it just looks off. Now I can fix. 'cause I have to re-knit in anyways.

I am altering wedding gear for a lesbian couple. They are going to look fabulous! The dress-wearer got her gown at J.Crew. Simple design, gorgeous heavy silk crepe, I think it might be 4-ply, and it looks great on her too. And the jacket and pants for the suit wearer are just as lovely. She is wearing creamy satin trousers and a simple creamy colored jacket that is a cotton brocade. They both have super cute short hair. Made me want to cut mine off again. But alas, I have told myself I won't cut it until James and Joe have their official wedding. For which I will be wearing my hair down.

I am also undertaking a rather involved project involving a jacket that the dry cleaners effed up. It is a great jacket, 4-ply silk crepe, Dana Buchman. But there are these weird,very faint watermark looking marks on the back. To me, it looks like the dye from something else somehow got onto it. I don't know enough about dry cleaning to know if this is possible or not. But it sure as hell looks like very faint black dye to me. My task is to see if I can manage to get the stain out. I am very good at this. If it is, indeed dye, maybe not so much. But my other job is to copy the jacket. So that we can make her another. She loves the jacket and was quite sad to have it ruined.

I have also finally come up with a hat pattern for all of the recycled cashmere. I happen to think the hat is adorable. I am going to carry it around with me and make all kinds of random people try it on and pester them to tell me how much they would pay for this hat if they loved it to bits.

I really need to stop cutting junk out and actually sit down and sew some stuff.

Blog #29, or, Hey, We Had An Earthquake This Morning!

and that just doesn't really happen here. I would post a link to the Chicago Tribune article I read, but really have no clue how to go about that and don't even really want to try to figure it out right now. It happened aroudn 4:30ish. I tend to wake up early, even when I am off from work. Mr. Fluffieknickers, aka Alex the cat, woke me up at 12am because he wanted out of the bedroom. I was fairly certain that no kitties came back in. I drifted back to sleep. Woke up because my bed was moving. My first foggy thought was that Stinkiecat had come into the bedroom and was up on the bed giving himself a very enthusiastic grooming. But that seemed a little far-fetched. Then I realized that he wasn't on the bed. Or in the room even. My next thought is from "The Exorcist". You know, the bit where the bed is rattling with Linda Blair in it. So I turn on the light. Nope. Everything is fine. No cat in the room, no Satan under my bed. I decide maybe I be a little crazy. So since I am wide awake, I go to check Ravelry. Read some post in the forums, see that AZ is also up and posting, so I post back. Decide to check the weather. And I'll be damned. I check the weather online via the Chicago Tribune, and they have a little blurb about the earthquake. Then AZ calls. At 5:30am. Because we are both awake anyways. This whole morning has been very surreal so far. I think I need a breakfast burrito from the Heartland Cafe.

Now for something completely different.

Went to the warehouse sale at Lorna's Laces. Wow. So totally worth standing on a loading dock in the rain for. I got some most excellent yarn. That I would be posting pictures of except my 'puter is having issues and I can't get PDF files to open when I click on them. Maybe I can show off the yarny goodness next time. =)

Blog #28, or... Do We Ever Go To The Neutral Zone For Any Reason Not Related To The Romullons?

And, no, I really don't think I spelled Romullons correctly. Spellcheck agrees. Spellcheck also doesn't like the way I spell Spellcheck. I suppose it thinks it's entitled to two words. Whatever.

So if anyone reads this, and thinks of an answer to the question, please let me know. And no, I am not talking about spelling Romullon correctly.


And out of nowhere, I get the urge to put Spock ears on the cats. I think that would be highly appropriate attire for our Next Generation film fest. Perhaps I will knit some one day.......