P.U.

The weather was beautiful here and the air felt so nice today, then I went to three places in Lakeport that all smelled horrible. First it was the animal shelter to renew Ace's licence. The dog piss was foul and heavy and a couple of times I thought I was going to hurl. Then it was K-Mart. I think it was the Little Ceasar's Pizza that stunk up the place. Then Bruno's (supermarket) deli department. This one was special because it had the visuals to go along with it. Imagine the only thing even remotely close to the olives you're looking for, with some kind of icky fruity salad-y thing with bright pink dressing spilled in it. Funny thing is, after all this, I realized that I'm not congested anymore! This is what it must be like when heavy cigarette smokers quit. I smoked for many years, and do still occasionally, but never just halted. I think that if there is a hell it will smell like old dog urine, old frying grease, an ashtray, and cheap perfume. Might as well throw some Mennen Speed Stick into the mix too.

I hope I haven't lost those of you who are reading this blog for the knitting content. Here are some nice fuzzy felted bowls. They are ideal for collecting change, keys, jewelry, marbles, cuff links, stitch markers, and other small objects. Also perfect if you like collecting junk on a surface of, say, an antique dresser with a finish that you don't want to mar. And you can use up all your zillions of little scraps.

I joined a knit along a little while back, it's a mystery shawl type thing called Sring Shawl Surprise. We just got our first swatch today. I'm almost done with it. It sounds like it's going to require extra attention -apparently there will be some pattern stitch work on the purl rows. We'll see.

Happy birthday, Mary Albanese!

Most of sweater

So I've reached the point with sweater where I'm now waiting to get a hold of a 47" needle. But here's most of it. You can't tell by this picture that it's much darker (like black and almost black grey heather).

In the meantime it's a mindless linen dishcloth. I love these Colonial rosewood needles, but I think metal is more suitable for this fiber.

Some funnies from Trailer Park Boys season 1 episode 4:

-"Hey Lahey, knock knock!"
-"Who's there?"
-"Mr. Stupidyhead fuckin pissin me off right now, thinks he's the captain of the shitliner and by the way, your fishsticks suck so fuck off!"
-"Oh that's real smart, Ricky!"

-"What're you, from the department of 'know what I'm sayin'?"
J-Roc to Tyrone T

WTF?:A news item about a fly resting on Joe Biden's hair for eight minutes during a televised presidential debate? Come on.

I had a frustrating day with my sweater but am back on track now. I'm working on the top part of it and was forgetting to do the neck shaping (a V to pick up and knit a shawl collar around) because, I'm ashamed to admit, I didn't read the pattern all the way through beforehand. So I felt like an idiot for a minute. People, don't make that mistake! Some may not have the patience I was able to muster today. Pictures will have to wait another day.

We just watched a movie called The Lineup on TCM. It has murders and heroin smuggling and stars Eli Wallach. I wouldn't say it was a terrific movie (maybe because I never use the word terrific). But I loved watching it because it featured one of favorite movie stars - San Francisco. We got a great tour of the city in 1958. Also caught a funny glitch in the dialogue: a guy giving the address 9020 Jackson Street and we decided that it doesn't exist. Then later they say 2090 Jackson Street which does. It's at Laguna, and the drive past Lafayette Park when they leave.

Distractions

Check out this video my friend Arlene sent me a link to today. I was speechless. I guess the song is called Apache.

And if you look at Cute Overload you've probably seen this. It's worth seeing more than once.

Before anything else I must say that I am so upset about the 58,000 gallon oil spill in San Francisco Bay that I am both preoccupied by it and unable to speak about it at the same time.

Happy birthday:

George Crawford
Mike Cornwall
Genifer Yoshimoto
Erica Stolz
wherever you are!

It is also the birthdays of Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Winters, Stanley Tucci, Leonardo DiCaprio, and queer eye guy Carson Kressley. And it's Independence Day in Poland.

The body and sleeves of the sweater are one piece now! I'll post a photo when I can actually try it on. Soon, I hope. Like probably tomorrow or Tuesday.

Can you guess

what this is? A hint: it is pictured larger than actual size. It's about the size of a US quarter.

Um...

I don't have much to blog about at the moment (there's not a hell of a lot going on around here), but since I've committed to posting every day I'll at least give you this. It's a very incomplete list of incredibly heinous cover songs. Plenty more have been recorded since I compiled it, but they're not here. I just dug it out of my basement, ok?

Love Machine Wham
Taxman Rockwell - yeah that same guy who did "Somebody's Watching Me"
1984 Tina Turner
Dancin In The Streets Mick Jagger & David Bowie - watching this video is painful, especially if you really like both of these artists
Tell It Like It Is Don Johnson - dude, why?
I Only Have Eyes For You Art Garfunkel
And Then [She] Kissed Me Kiss
Tossin & Turnin Peter Criss
Can't Explain The Scorpions
In The Air Tonight Henry Mancini & The Boston Pops
Let's Spend The Night Together Charo
Be My Baby Shaun Cassidy
Baby I Love Your Way & Freebird Will To Power - the video for this one is really foul.
I Saw [Him] Standing There Tiffany
I Believe When I Fall In Love With You (It Will Be Forever) Frampton's Camel
Ticket To Ride The Carpenters
Do You Wanna Dance The Mamas & The Papas - I think they must've been wasted on demerol or morphine or something when they recorded this one
Rock & Roll (the Velvet Underground song, not the Led Zeppelin song) The Runaways
Stayin' Alive Ozzy Osbourne & Dweezil Zappa
American Pie Madonna
Bringin' On The Heartbreak Mariah Carey & Dave Navarro - WTF? Dude, you used to be in Jane's Addiction.

Thank you very much! Goodnight!

Sorry no pictures today

I'm making great progress on that sweater. I cast on the waistband yesterday and it is now 6" high. You won't see it again until I can photograph it in the daytime. I tried to get a shot of it tonight but it just doesn't even show up. Instead I will give you a selection of "fun facts" I heard on a rerun of David Letterman last night. They made me laugh. I hope they do the same for you.

- In China, Campbell's alphabet soup contains over 3,000 characters.
- Hardware stores in Utah have to keep male and female pipe couplings in separate aisles.
- A broken digital clock is right zero times per day.
- Despite his escape skills, Harry Houdini spent 12 years trapped in a bad marriage.

Happy birthday Anat!

Sleeve #2 done!

Today I cast on the waistband. I am very stoked about this sweater. I will make myself not stall at the point where I need to pick up a zillion stitches for the shawl collar. My only excuse will be if don't have a 47" needle to do the job. And since I work at a yarn store, that would be some lame excuse.

WTF?: This evening a girl in my French class told us that women use birth control so much that there is estrogen in our rain because it comes out in our urine.

Sleeve #1 done!

I've already started the second sleeve of that sweater I cast on yesterday. I'd join that NaKniSweMo thing but I haven't calculated whether this pattern has 50,000 stitches in it.

New things

Yesterday I made this hat. The pattern is Utopia from Smariek Knits. I was inspired by reading Deborah's blog.

The new Magknits came out yesterday and I got so excited about the Fibonacci Sweater that I cast it on today. This is the sweater design I've been looking for!

Yeah I know it's a lame picture, but it's the best I could do at night time.

Ack

Get this. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I started a group on Ravelry called Stripe Makers. There hasn't been a great deal of activity in the forums, maybe because I haven't started any interesting threads, and I'm not "perky". Whatever. Anyway, a strange thing happened there today. Someone started a new topic on the board with this post (keep in mind the theme of this group is stripe making):

"So I wanna know...what are your top ten, stand-by all-time slumber party movies? On my top ten: Breakfast Club (Duh), Princess Bride (double duh), Can't Buy Me Love (one of the all time best 80's movies!), Pretty in Pink (don't you just loooooove Ducky?), 10 Things I Hate About You, Anything Eddie Izzard, Hedwig and the Angey Inch, Mean Girls (LOOOOVE Tina Fey), Breakfast at Tiffany's, How to Marry a Millionaire (or anything Marilyn for that matter), and a guilty pleasure filck (which you are so totally allowed) is Xanadu. Anyone ever head of it? Double slumber party pionts if you have!"

Are you fucking kidding me? Where am I? This is disturbing to me for a number of reasons. I won't even start on my hatred for most things 80's (metal being an exeption). I feel like someone left a steaming turd in my mailbox. And the lame thing is I'm just going to let it go because people are loving it. I will keep my nasty sarcasm to myself. I wouldn't care if I weren't the group moderator. I guess it also wouldn't bug me nearly as much if the poster in question were a member of the group, but she is a guest! I have no idea what posessed her, but if I were a different kind of person (paranoid) I'd think she did it specifically to fuck with me. Fortunately I am not.

NaBloPoMo

Some more words and phrases I hate:

"at the end of the day" People on TV say it all the time. It really bugs the shit out of me, unless someone is actually talking about the end of the day. For some reason ball players, politicians, and police officers say it a lot.

"trifecta" This one is also totally over-used on TV. Is this word new or something? Recently discovered? For some reason I associate it with ads for Axe body spray. I also have a suspicion that it is being misused.

"copacetic" My friend Seth Maxwell Malice loves this word for some reason. I hate it.

"thrice" This one is just silly. I think there is a band with that name. If that were my band I'd be totally annoyed with myself all the time. It is, however, perfectly ridiculous in its use in this sketch:

I've decided to participate in NaBloPoMo. Yes I know it sounds creepy, but it stands for National Blog Posting Month. I missed November 1, but hopefully made up for it with my hearty November 2 entry, where I wrote about SF, Kelseyville, and knitting (a trifecta, if you will. heh heh.) I made my decision late because I didn't think I'd have the motivation to do it all, then I realized it was the perfect time to unleash all the silly shit I have stored in my head and scribbled on old bits of paper.

This is a passage I really like from a book I'm reading, Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre:

"Parlabane found the word 'pro-active' enormously useful, as it immediately exposed the speaker as an irredeemable arsehole, whatever previous impression might have been given. Once upon a time, he remembered, people and companies just did things. But that ceased to be impressive enough, and for a while they 'actively' did things. Now they 'pro-actively' did things, but it was still the same bloody things that they were doing when they just plain old did things. Meaningless wank-language."

Ahh. A man after my own heart.

I made this hat yesterday:

Happy birthday Mark Laramee! The hat is not for you.

San Francisco, etc.

This is something I wrote to myself during a recent visit to the city, September 26, 2007:

I stopped by my storage unit briefly, thinking I could maybe find my camera. It was depressing so I left before it ruined my day. There's so much crap in there I don't even know where to start. I walked back to Mission street, past the junkies crinkling in the harsh noon sun, and got on the 22 Fillmore. Saw a t-shirt that made me miss San Francisco. It was on a middle-aged bearded guy and it said "Dip me in honey and throw me to the bears!". Hee hee. Bears. We don't have those where I live now. That brightened a moment of my otherwise sucky busride. I was squished against the window on the hot side of the coach by a large Muni driver in his woolen uniform, and there was a drunken freak making a ruckus up front - whining loudly about getting a seat before literally falling into one. It's strange. I really can't tell if it's my city anymore, or if I even want it to be.

Funny things happen that make me realize that I will always be connected to San Francisco. Yes I weep everytime I hear "I Left my Heart...". It's really embarassing. And that thing they show on Channel 9 that's Tony Bennett crooning over all the footage of the city and [my old friend Pamela] hula dancing? Forget it - I'm a blubbering mess. But that's not even what I'm talking about. Sometimes it's as simple as picking up the newspaper. Like a couple weeks ago seeing my friend Bucky's face beaming from the cover of the pink section (10/21/07). Or this crazy thing here, a picture of a band I've never heard of (Wooden Shjips) with the very bass cabinet that I hauled around countless times while roadieing for the bands Bomb, Hickey, and Towel. You can read more of it's story on my friend Michael's blog stinkfight.

Halloween in the country is very cute. Sunday the 28th my mom and I went to an event on a farm where people and their horses were in costume. As I said in an earlier post, there is a parade in Kelseyville of little kids in costumes that comes down Main Street at 9am on the 31st. It was worth dragging myself out of bed for. The high school band led it off playing overtures from Star Wars. There were tons of those "Scream" masks, some with fake blood whooshing around on the surface. Total cop-out costume, like the multitudes of identical store bought fairy-princesses. I know that sounds harsh cause they're just little kids, but I was just as snobby and judgemental about the costumes when I was little. So there. My favorite costumes in Kelseyville were Angus Young, complete with real Gibson SG (sans strings and pickups though), and the cardboard box robot from Flight of the Conchords.

Then at 12:30 we have the same parade in Lakeport, but of only 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. And the marching band is from Clearlake High School. They were playing the Addams Family theme song followed by an old marching band favorite, "Sir Duke", the Stevie Wonder hit. Some of their trombones were way off, but they did have the accompaniment of the escorting police car's chirping, which I thought was funny. Unfortunately I did not have the camera for the Kelseyville parade, but I did bring it to Lakeport and got a shot of the popcorn,

a tiny Elvis,

and a spectator who happened to be a teacup pomeranian puppy! I thought it was a kitten until I saw its face. Totally redonk. Yes, it was drinking water out of that bottlecap in the foreground. (No, those are not my fingernails!) I asked the person who had it if I could take a picture and she said "yeah, of couse, I just got it yesterday and that's all I've been doing!"

My favorite project update: I am at a standstill in the middle of segment #5 until I get some more yarn. I completed segment #4 and sewed it on, but I'm not going to show the whole thing again until it's done. In the meantime here are some previews:

Thanks, Sarah, for tracking me down and making my week!

color (mental) blocks pt. 2 and lots of pictures

I got to a temporary sputtering stop midway through segment #4 of the Noro afghan because of some color issues. I am not sure what to do next. This is what I've got so far:

I have these beautiful ones that I was going to save for segment #5:

These are just barfy:

And these are so muted or neutral I might save them for a different project:

In the mean time I decided to do some baby stuff. This green stripey deal is for the store where I work. We had some scraps that look nice together. My plan was a hat and mittens set. It was going great until I got to the thumb and remembered why I haven't made gloves in a long time - the separations for the small digits are a pain in the ass. I doesn't help that I'm not using a pattern. I think the little dude's gonna have to get frogged. Oh well.

I love this one though, I just need another skein of the yarn and it'll be done in a day. I have an adult sized version of this that's been hibernating in my closet for about a year, but I try not to think about it.

These small hurdles have steered me back to my Shetland Triangle, which is looking great.

I really should be outside. We have had such incredible weather here - perfectly warm and still with the beautiful October light and the changing colors of autumn. This what it looks like right outside my bedroom door. Along with this view I get the sound of the creek rushing again from the rain we finally got last week. Too bad I can't post that.

And I love standing on this little path right under the apricot tree. All the yellow feels like it's beaming up at my face..

Perfect light to get a long overdue decent picture of the Clapotis.

Hey captain! Here's another picture of Roxie!

Segment #3 done!

2 more to go. I am in love with this project and I hope y'all are too because this is what I'm photographing til it's done.

I went to an unofficial 20 year (McAteer) high school reunion in San Francisco on Friday. The actual one for my graduating class sounded lame and expensive so a bunch of us friends got together and invited some others and went out to dinner and to the Uptown. A couple of people remarked that as a group we appeared unscathed by time. I said they just got us at the right moment. Like, I know 5 years ago I didn't look so hot. I also am theorizing that most people's self destructive behavior (if any) probably has leveled off by the time we're 37 or 38, if it's going to at all. But, yeah, most of us look pretty much the same. I think it's interesting that out of 14 people only three have children and only two are married. Here we are standing on Valencia Street.

At the request of one of my new friends on Ravelry, here are some pics of the dogs. Sorry they're not in knitwear, it's hard to get them to sit still. And speaking of Ravelry, I started a stripe makers' group there, if you're interested.

Ace

Roxie

Trixie

Say hello to my little friend

I dug up some of my early projects today to photograph them on the most beautiful model at my house. Meet Horatio. His origins are a bit of a mystery. I only know he was acquired in Czeckoslovaklia in the late 50's.

I'd forgotten how much I like this red stripe scarf. It's really thick and cozy because it is a giant tube. I used Elsebeth Lavold Angora and Crystal Palace Merino Frappe. Don't ask me why Rudy Giuliani is on the TV in the background. There are no republicans in my house.

This is one of my favorite scarves. It is kind of dorky in its rainbowy-ness but I will always love it because it helped through a very rough time. I did most of the knitting during a long stay at a hospital where my boyfriend was in I.C.U. I got the idea from the Cascade 220 pattern book. It is all scraps of Cascade.

This scarf is very similar in design to the red one and is the same Elsebeth Lavold yarn. It has been sitting in a shoebox, unfinished, for at least a year. It's only about a foot long.

The other end of this one is on display where I work. It is the "Beads of Earth" design from Scarf Style. It is Cascade Pima Silk and size 6/0 seed beads.

Another project from Scarf Style, "Stripes and Bobbles" also unfinished. These strips need to be sewn together side by side. I don't think I'll do that using bobbles. I didn't use the Takhi Donegal Tweed that the pattern calls for. I like that stuff but it is hell of scratchy. I instead used Khroma WW from The Fibre Company.

Since I got Horatio all decked out today I got him to show off a few peyote stitch and right-angle weave bracelets I made.

I feel like I haven't been here in ages. It's true what they say about Ravelry. I've been home sick all week so I got to spend a bunch of time there. What a wonderland it is. It's kind of funny that with the 17,000 or so users one would run into the same people multiple times while bouncing around. My name there is taniask

When self-striping yarn isn't enough

In case you hadn't noticed, I like stripes. My old friend Michael Dean used to joke about how I should open a store that sells nothing but striped clothing and call it Totally Tania.

This is how my Noro Kureyon afghan version #2 is coming along.

I liked the old one okay, but it got boring. Then I realized how much more exciting it could be if I striped the [already-self-striping] yarns together! .. And I could have more control. And more to fuss over with the color combining. I actually haven't interrupted the yarns' own color sequences as much as I normally do. I'm trying my best to just trust them. This is some real progress for me.

I've got about one foot left to go on the second segment. I realized this afghan is starting to look just like the color palettes I used to make for the Hypnogenic Screen Saver.

Last week I went to the TKGA and CGOA show/conference at the Mariott in Oakland. I took a teachers' workshop there and it was ok. Not really worth going on about. Let's just say that the most important thing I learned in that class was that I already know a whole bunch. I had more fun in the vendors' hall. A guy (named Maat, I think) from Carolina Homespun showed me how to use a drop spindle. I liked it. So I bought this one.

I got to mess around with a knitting machine at the booth of the Machine Knitters Guild of the San Francisco Bay Area. It was fun. Oh, and I won a door prize! Many of the vendors were in a jovial mood and smelled like alcohol (champagne?). I also bought some fingering weight 100% cashmere and some addi turbo US #6 lace needles for my Shetland Triangle that I started today.

The cashmere came from Argosy. It is the Zen 2-ply.

The whole transaction was very pleasant and surprisingly affordable. I would definitely buy from them again. The woman also told me about a software program called Knitware that I'd like to check out some day.

The nice thing about living in the country

Holy shit I got my Ravelry invite! I'd kind of forgotten about it because last time I checked I was number 7,000 something. My user name there is taniask. I logged in and stuff but I haven't really gotten started with it yet, nor have I explored it at all. These things (as well as loading up a flickr account) are very time consuming to do using only a dial-up connection. Yes, like I said, I'm living in the middle of nowhere.

Speaking of which, we had our Pear Festival here in Kelseyville (the bartlett pear capital) on Saturday. It is the biggest street event of the year, and it starts off with a parade! It is actually the first of three parades we have every year that come right down Main Street. Number two is at like 9 in the morning on Halloween, and it is all of the children from the local elementary schools all dressed up in their costumes. Needless to say that is hell of cute. Number three is at night time right in the beginning of December, when it is nice and freezy outside, and it is a parade of (Christmas) lights. Even the miniature horses have lights all over them. And some dogs, too. I get totally verklempt during parades. It is the marching band (in our case the Kelseyville High School Band) that does it every time. I have no idea why this is. It doesn't matter what they're playing. I am a huge dork. Here is a shot of them looking cool and bored in their black t-shirts and jeans, with beautiful Mt. Konocti in the background. I believe they were playing "25 or 6 to 4" when I took this.

WTF?!? #9: Tonight I was watching some of that "War" series on PBS. The Ken Burns documentary. Anyway at one point the narrator was talking about how the acronyms SNAFU and FUBAR had worked their way into our vocabulary. When he said what those stood for, the word "fucked" was bleeped out. I think its a little ironic that the part that people thought was offensive enough to be censored was the profanity and not the carnage. I figured maybe PBS would let that one pass, especially in its historical context.

Happy birthday Aesop! I hope you found the cream tequila you were looking for...