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it feels like friday!

with my new schedule, where i have monday and wednesday’s off* it’s been a little jarring to my sense of weekdays/weekend. no complaining here, it’s a nice thing to feel like it’s friday all day only to realize friday is just a couple of days away. ;)

[* that is no work or school, but always plenty to do of course, including freelance work, yeehaw. and laundry. always laundry!]

anyhow, ta-daa! my finished norwegian knit along ‘flenten’ hat. isn’t it lovely? thanks to my big old noggin, it feels a bit too snug alas but no worries, i’ll find someone worthy-enough to give it to and i’ll definitely be making more of these. i highly recommend bea ellis knit kits for the beginner fair isle-r as the color choices are many, the pattern and chart easy to read, and the result tremendously satisfying. thanks to mj for organizing the kal! i might slip in another fair isle something or other before the kal ends, we shall see. as always, more detail on the hat, plus pics of what it looks like on the inside!, on the project page.

i’m joining lolly’s project spectrum – have you heard about it? it starts march 1st, so there’s plenty of time, especially for you crazy olympians, and the general idea is just to use more color, specifically certain color groups each month. excellent!

here in l.a., the south central farmer’s community garden is being threatened! look at this google map – that big patch of green is them, to the west all housing on teeny lots and to the east all factories and industrial area. the largest community garden in l.a., it’s about 14 acres large with over 350 farmers working on it for over ten years. now, the owner wants to demolish the garden and build a warehouse there instead – please send a letter to the politicians asking to save the garden. it’s ridiculous that instead of holding this garden up as a model, it’s being threatened with demolition! grrrr.

how to grow fresh air, featuring 50 plants that help purify the air in your home. cool. also, inverted indoor gardening – v. tempting. lastly, check out this crazy keyboard – i love it! in general, pics of nature taking over technology/ man-made-things make me giddily happy.

can you believe it’s almost the end of january already? wow.

comment [7]

posted 26 January 06 & filed under lenten hat, politics

to pom or not to pom

help me out here, what do you think? if i do attach the poms, they’ll be attached loosely, with some braided yarn between the top and the poms themselves. hm.

thank you for all your sweet comments about my iris demi-shawl, they make me verrry happy! i’ve worn it contstantly for the past few days and it’s just as warm as i thought it’d be, yay.

i’ve spent the last few days just organizing the busy stuff in my life – all my clothes, all my bills, old and new paperwork, the fridge, threw out the christmas tree. even handwashed the delicates! and, even better, i have a space for a wheel just big enough, hee. ah, i just like to write about a wheel, but really it’s still a bit off till when i get one. ;)

in all that frenzy though, last night i came back to my apartment, after a long day at ucla, and found i had left the door unlocked!! not only that, but the door wasn’t even pulled all the way shut!! thankfully, the cats were safe and nothing was taken. i am so lucky! and so very thoughtless sometimes. ay! can you believe it. i still can’t, still find myself scared with all the “what ifs”, still shaking my head muttering “can’t believe it!”

i finally used some gift certificates given to me by my friend lalitha, thank you! so i’m off to the post office to pick up two books, yee-haw. one is deborah madison’s humungous ‘vegetarian cooking for everybody’, which ever since miri told me about and liz baked with (btw, check out liz’s new digs!), i’ve been itching to get, and deb menz’s ‘color in spinning’ since i’m determined to learn color theory. a certain someone – coughjuliacough – mentioned something about dyeing on her new deck, so i’m patiently waiting and in the meantime, learning all i can. ;)

happy day to you all ~

comment [10]

posted 18 January 06 & filed under knitting, lenten hat

wips and memes

funny, both of these words are pretty new to me, about a year or so, all due to these internets. ;) here goes, wips first, most of which you've never seen before.

	project: flenten hat status: decreasing time; had to work on not-me knitting, so this is in limbo at the moment; next time i'll attach the lining using the method mj suggests since i'm not crazy about that horizontal line, though at least it doesn't show when the hat is actually worn
	project: booga bag status: just needs to be thrown in the washer and felted, dried, and then de-fuzzed; this gift my sister-in-law immediately asked for last year when she saw the booga bag i gave my sister - gotta love those who know what they want ;)
	project: besotted scarf status: unclear who exactly for, but loving the cables; definitely my older sister's color, but i don't know if she'll actually wear it, hmm
	project: syno turtleneck shrug status: i love the yarn but the ribbing is making my knitting look horribly uneven and so v. embarassing; this is my third attempt at knitting this shrug - the first was a total disaster, the second was greatgreat until blocking and growing about 7 inches ahem, so third time's a charm, right?
	project: harry potter scarf (a la "prisoner of azkaban") status: finally, the perfect gift for my dad, and a little over halfway done; using knitpicks' andean silk, and i gotta say i love this yarn

i recently got jess hutch's knitted creature book, so if there's time, i'll make one for a lucky nephew and there's enough leftover kureyon to make a mini-booga bag for my oldest niece.

and that's it. see, i do knit still! ;) and to also prove it, this weekend i'm going to a l.a. knit-bloggers get together i was invited to. eek, a bit intimidating, but i'm sure it'll be fun nonetheless. just in case, i'll be brining along some knitting mags to divert attention from my weirdness, if need be. hope it works.

and now, meme-time, via moni of black sheep: "List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to."

according to itunes, this is what i listened to most recently, some over and over again..

1. the night they drove old dixie down, by bob dylan & the band
2. lather by jefferson airplane
3. give me love (give me peace) by george harrison
4. feel good inc. by gorillaz
5. shake it off by mariah carey
6. 21st century schizoid man by king crimson
7. a plea for tenderness by the modern lovers

i tag the last seven-ish commenters: beth, lolly, the feminist mafia, julia, karen, liz & meow girl. as always, if you don't dig memes, no hard feelings ;)

i'd add "life on mars" by david bowie and "crying in the chapel" by elvis presley too, if i could have a #8 and #9. totally weird mix of old and new and rock and pop, i know, but it's been weeks now and it's usually either this mix or silence. note: i love singing along of course, so the sing-along-i-ness of each song is key. (yes, even and maybe especially king crimson. i can sing along with a guitar, yes i can.)

it's weird how this can't be forced, but i think these songs from here on out will always mean to me this time period, fall and early winter 2005. i like that, but probably that will mean that afterwards i won't listen to these songs very often in fear of diluting the memory. you know what i mean? there's some songs, for example most lesley gore songs (and i don't mean "you don't own me"), that i won't listen to except by accident on the radio every once in a while, so that when i do hear a song by her, i'm just immediately taken back to that time, that feeling i had, when i first really got into her songs. i loved that time period and i never want to forget those feelings i had when i was in it. with some songs, some memories, remembering feels like a bottle of rare perfume and i'm careful to keep the lid on tight.

have a beautiful weekend ~ it's the weekend before the craziness of christmas, enojy it!

comment [10]

posted 16 December 05 & filed under lenten hat, more me

argh!

fact #1: turtleneck shrug pattern calls for 23” sleeves
fact #2: swatch showed some lengthening when blocked
fact #3: as a result, i knit 21” sleeves
fact #4: i proceeded to block – and sent a joyful “i’m done!” email to cassie, my syno pal
fact #5: two days of blocking later, i had 27” long sleeves. (sorry for the horrible pic..)

so. gulp. silent shreak froggin’ away and re-knitting that sucker. i’m so sorry, cassie! but i have a feeling sleeves this long will do you no good!

thankfully, this weekend i’ll have plent of time to do it. last time, it took about 4 days of knitting to do the whole thing, and since i’m only frogging down 17 inches(!), it should take only two days to fix this. (so jinxing myself)

so, what’s the plan for this weekend?

~ the california library association’s annual conference in pasadena. on saturday (tomorrow! wow), i’ll be on a panel about blogs and rss – entitled ‘blah blah blog’ – and i’m nervous but excited about that. plenty of kntting time at the conference.

~ sunday, i’ll be ducking out a bit early in order to go to the southern calif. handweavers’ guild annual festival. definitely plenty of knitting time there. and, yes, the wallet will accompany me, oh my. it’s open to the public – so if you’re in the l.a. area, join me!

i joined mj’s new kal, norwegian knits-along! i ordered a bea ellis hat kit and am hoping the colors i chose work as well as they do in my mind.

happy weekend ~ and make sure to take in lots of water and vitamin c, there’s nasty colds going around. i was so sick last week i lost my voice for two days and was coughing up things no one wants to think about. yikes.

comment [5]

posted 4 November 05 & filed under knitting, lenten hat

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