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weekend roundup

hi there ~

my little sisters always tell me it’s takes 21 days for something to become a pattern. i’m hoping that’s not true – or at least it’s a pattern easily broken. september has largely sucked. bring on october already. </moan>

moving right along: some pics.. first off, a delicious mango cake that i, happily, still have one piece left of and plan to eat tomorrow night as a late night snack. this past thursday, my cousin, his mother, and a close friend of theirs, met me for dinner at a delicious nearby oaxacan restaurant and then dessert at my place, hence the delicious mango cake you see here.

it was such a nice time – a cousin i don’t see very often but when we do, we talk our heads off, at least since we’ve been adults (when we were kids we were both pretty shy around each other if i remember right..) very fun. and he reads my ramblings here. (hello!) how cool is that. i need more cousins like him. ;)

then, my new knitting project (i finished mon petit chou – not without some difficulties – both the bottom and top. i’ll post pics, just as soon as i figure out how much flesh i want to show on these here internets.) .. the cute cables-and-lace, how could i resist!, top from this summer’s vogue knitting.

i’m using an all acrylic yarn that i got for practically a song and let me just say, it’s the sproingiest softest acrylic i’ve ever felt. i’m almost done with the back, but the ribbing is a little hard on my hands, so this will probably take a few weeks.

these last pics are of my very sweet trouble cat. i tried this weekend to take some good pics of her – i wanted to put her on my home page for a while, since mama cat’s been there for at least a year.

i got a good one i’m happy with for now, but i had to share these others since trouble just cracks me up. in the first pic, she’s all shy and timid, since i had just bust out the camera. then she starts getting a little annoyed – see the ears? i love those ears, i could just eat them up. and then we move on to the direct phase where she just looks me right in the eye as in “what do you want.”

when i first got trouble, along with her sister mellow and mama cat, she was like the ‘normal’ cat and thus didn’t get much notice from me for a while. soon enough though, her weird ways shined through, and i love her so for them. i ‘cat talk’ with her all the time – it’s where i stare at her and then slowly blink my eyes, or just one and then the other, and then flick my head to one side, very meaningful-like, and, believe me, she gets it, totally does.

and in other news, well, in bad news: i got a parking ticket on saturday. normally there aren’t any parking restrictions on the weekend, but come saturday morning, of course, only then did i see the temporary “no parking” sign that i could almost swear was not up the day before. turns out there was a big street fair/festival a few blocks away. i was majorly pissed off at myself and at the city. why that street, and all parallel street for many blocks in either direction, had to be closed off was totally mysterious. during the whole festival, no one went on those blocked-off streets, no vendors, no dancers, no tourists, nobody. argghhh. very frustrating.

so, september is almost over – what’s coming up next? a cousin is to visit me – i’m holding a brand new 12” powerbook and blue mini ipod hostage so she has to come, school starts next week, i’m applying for a second job (only 10 hours a week, cross your fingers for me), and i’m determined to spend more time moving my body in the natural world, i.e. head to the newly-discovered-park-right-next-to-a-library during lunch on a regular basis and diligently do excercise three or four times a week in the morning.

that’s it for now ~ have a great monday.

p.s. mj linked the other day to an incredibly horrendous peta video condeming fur. i’m doing the same linking – animals are ever-loving sweet living gorgeous beings and we treat them largely, as a whole, like utter crap. i wish the whole video had focused more on animal cruelty being committed in the u.s. than in asia, as it did in the beginning of the video. “Sixty-four percent of fur farms are in Northern Europe, 11 percent are in North America”, right? so why focus so much on china?

comment [5]

posted 26 September 05 & filed under kittens, politics

hating m1

hi there. it’s been a busy bunch of days ~ finished my scarf (very thick and wooly and wonderful, though i felt a tad silly knitting such a scarf in los angeles. in july. during some of the hottest days so far this year. blink.), which i have yet to take pictures of (bad andrea), started ambitiously on a new project knit-wise, and worked furiously on getting the last web content up in time for the unveiling of the new web site for work (phew).

i took some very nice pictures this last week, including the cats in paradise and my new knitting thing. here’s two photos: what is that first one you ask? i want to make this very pretty felted bag, so last night i swatched (good little knitter that i am) and here in photo 2 you can see the result. yes, my hands are chafed, my knuckles and finger joints are sore, my vision is bleary (it took a long time) but it was all worth it because i can make felt. if you want to see more go here: felting experiment

even though i did about 4 or 5 rounds of the bottom of the bad last night, i took it all apart (frogged it ~ don’t ask if you don’t know cause it’s a weird knitters thing. knitters are weird. and proud of it.) twice this morning. i just don’t think i understand M1 quite right. it makes sense what i’m doing and it looks allright but not superfine, you know what i mean? and at the dag-on very beginning of a project, i accept no mistakes. sigh.

part of the problem stems from the fact that i’m a lefty. and, because i didn’t get how to knit at first, i knit with both hands, i.e. when i finish a row (with the left hand holding the yarn and the right doing all the heavy lifting and such) i don’t turn the stick around but just switch hands (with the right hand now holding the yarn and the left stitching away ~ i’m a tad faster this way). i think that’s weird but there must be lots of people out there doing the same as me, right? anyhow, i figure i get less sore in just one hand doing it this way ~ this way both hands get sore around the same time and at the same intensity. yay? anyway, all this helps explain why the M1 thing isn’t quite working for me yet, though i think i made some important inroads during lunch.

ok, now i really am off to sleep, thanks for listening about my perhaps mindlessly-self-involved ramblings (i blame it on lack of sleep) but i think this knitting stuff is crazily interesting. plus it’s practical ! i love art that’s like that.

g’night
~ andrea

speak [1]

posted 19 July 04 & filed under felted bag, kittens

vacation: all i ever wanted

hi there. hope your weekend was good. i can’t believe it’s already the middle of july.. i’m really loving this vacation thing and wondering how am i going to dredge up the energy/motivation to take a full class load in the fall.. urgh.

saturday afternoon, vacya and i took mama cat and trouble over to his place since just the week before, in order to go (safely) to the vet’s, i had gotten two cat carriers/cages, harnesses and even leashes. (i always thought it pretty silly to see a cat on a leash, but now that i’m a paranoid mama..) we wanted the cats to get used to seeing the cages and knowing that it wouldn’t necessarily mean evil was going to happen to them (i.e. the vet’s, however well-intentioned they might be).

vacya’s house has this great big courtyard filled with flowers and bushes, some trees, sprinklers, birds all chatting up above, and a major cat highway (via the roofs) ~ in other words, a lot of excitement for my sweet bored small-apartment-bound kittens.

they loved it! following the same patterns as othertimes, in a new place, mama cat was off running, exploring everything her twitching tail would take her to. trouble was slightly freaked out and just stayed put on vacya’s bed for a while, but within an hour tops, she was examining every inch of the courtyard and even found the fruit tree before mama cat did. we ended up staying the night there and i kept waking up at all hours of the night, just paranoid that the cats would run off or get hurt or be scared (vacya kept doing the same thing) but they were fine. it was amazing to watch them sniff around and explore a space i thought i knew really well but through their eyes i saw stuff i had totally just skipped over, and not only cause i’m taller than 12 inches.

i’m very proud of my girls ~ and last night got some well-deserved peace and quiet when they practically passed out sleeping once we got back to my place. ha! i love seeing mama cat in particular snoring away after an adrenalin and sensory overload. shoulda taken a picture of her like that. that’s trouble in the picture to the right, along with some beautiful morning glories growing in the courtyard.

sometime this week, i’m going to see the corporation, which i’ve been looking forward to for months now. check out this great preview. there’s so many good films/documentaries coming out this summer: elephant, horns and halos, bush’s brain, control room, as well as a series of unfortunate events (can’t resist it, the books were fun and the movie looks quite pretty and fun as well).

~ andrea

posted 12 July 04 & filed under kittens, lots of links

a four-day weekend

hi there.. hope the nice long weekend was relaxing and fun. i’m just now getting back to work since friday because monday was a holiday and tuesday my day off for class (which i did end up dropping, yippee) ~ so that was a four-day weekend, ay very nice indeed.

saturday was a pretty dramatic day for my cats ~ first time to the vet since i got them from the pound in august 2001 (i know, that’s very irresponsible of me, sigh). mama cat especially was freaked out, meowing like her heart was breaking. for those not in the know, i have two cats (now), mama cat and her kitten, trouble. mama cat is about 3 and a half years old and trouble is almost three (mama cat was a very young mama..) and they are both very sweet. after looking around online, i found this great (though expensive, as i found out later, yikes!) vet place, pet medical center in santa monica. highly recommend it, though i insisted to my sweet girls that they can only get sick once every year or two at the most becuase i can’t afford more than that. vacya came with me, which calmed me down a lot ~ and before going to the vet, we went and bought some hard cat carriers, cat harnesses and leashes (we weren’t taking the slightest chance). they gave us a courtesy nail trim for both cats, which is sweet, since i’ve never done that and their nails are incredibly long. vacya was saying later that it must feel really weird and good for the cats to be walking around without those nails sticking out and getting stuck everywhere. my girls are the world champions of projectile shedding when scared and, thankfully, are equally the world champions at recovering-from-the-vets, with happy purring and excessive (in a good way) snuggling once we got back.

my fourth of july was uneventful ~ and i loved it. and! i’m very excited to announce that i finally get purl! it just clicked ~ though i hate writing that because i remember in my non-purl-wise days (ah, so long ago) i would read others’ knitting accounts/struggles and they would type similarily vague semi-religious/philosophical things and i would grind my teeth in frustration, but now, oh yes, it just clicked. pictures soon to come.

in the newest issues of the new england journal of medicine there’s two articles on the war in/on iraq. in “acknowledging the psychiatric cost of war”, the authors write, “Indeed, there is reason for concern that the reported prevalence of PTSD of 15.6 to 17.1 percent among those returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom will increase in coming years, for two reasons. First, on the basis of the findings of the Fort Devens study, the prevalence of PTSD may increase considerably during the two years after veterans return from combat duty. Second, on the basis of studies of military personnel who served in Somalia, it is possible that psychiatric disorders will increase now that the conduct of war has shifted from a campaign for liberation to an ongoing armed conflict with dissident combatants.” (there is a lot more psychological and emotional support for returning military since the vietnam war, but, the study warns, “although the soldiers and Marines in the study … were able to acknowledge PTSD-related problems in an anonymous survey, they apparently were afraid to seek assistance for fear that a scarlet P could doom their careers.”) all the more reason to be pissed off at bush and cronies for this whole mess of a war.

the great folks at the path project are setting up really exciting july and august events, such as the permaculture credit union meeting (how incredible!) and this workshop and slideshow on permaculture given by robina mccurdy. the second event is kinda expensive but i’m so tempted. and then there’s the knit out on the 13th, which in that beautiful backyard, would be quite inspiring. yay, i’m so glad i found this great resource.

~ andrea

speak

posted 7 July 04 & filed under kittens, lots of links

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