Archives for December 2007

Another sweater done. And damn it, it’s too big.

Which is fine if you’re having a Good Day, you know, when you’re confident and your jeans look and feel good and your hair is working and you’re wearing this cute throw-over sweater.

However, there are those days when the jeans DON’T fit right and you’re trying to take pictures of yourself in your new sweater at night without the flash because OHMYGOD the flash makes you look like someone you don’t recognize, someone with way more chins that you had yesterday. Not a confidence booster. And a big ole wide sweater on top of that.

Meanwhile, what I should have done was just wait for daylight to take the pictures. I eventually figured that out, after a frustrating hour, and now I like the sweater just fine. For the Good Days, anyway. I won’t wear this while I’m PMS’d, I know that for sure.

Anyway:

Hi, can you see where I carry my cell phone? Speaking of new jeans, I need some…..

Specs:
Pattern: Simple Knitted Bodice, by Stephanie Japel
Size: L (40-42) aka too big
Yarn: Brown Sheep Serendipity, color Chocolate Lily, 5 skeins used
Needle: US 5

I love this new yarn. It’s 60% cotton, 40% wool, and it’s soft and heathered and gorgeous. Also, I got dyelot #001 of this color, and I swear I felt like I was buying a first edition.

So in recap, I like the sweater. I like it for Good Days. I will NOT reknit (you know me, not a ripper), and I won’t even reseam it with the machine, although I was thinking about it. Might someday, but for now I’ll just enjoy the swinginess of it.

We at the Hehu household took our lives into our own hands last night. We did it for you, our loyal readers. We know that it is more important to amuse you with the Tiny Tiny Venetian Gondola Hat than it is to avoid bloodshed. Would that our world leaders understood the same.

In this game, which we’ve played before, all members must participate. This is sometimes harder than it looks. I’m sure you’re surprised by this information. Some participants, however, are not only willing, but look good doing it.

Lala, looking rakish while attending the stir-fry.

There are days when Harriet, at approximately 112 people-years old, thinks that she would be better off living in Australia. Yesterday might have been one of them.

Miss Idaho, however, carries it off with elan. A dash of panache. It was, after, made just for her (and sold off the Venetian tchochke carts by the handfuls for 4 euros each — why, oh, why didn’t we get two?)

And it is just so impossible to take a picture of a black cat with a cell-phone camera that after three thousand attempts with Waylon, we never even attempted it with Willie. This is as good as it got:

He was quite disappointed in us, I think. He likes fun, and while he got into the spirit of it at first, since WE were having so much fun, wearing a hat didn’t amuse him as much as it did us. Again, weird.

Adah of the Arctic, living on top of the fridge, though, she didn’t seem to mind that much. Equanimity, that’s what she’s after:

She’s a California girl, though, all the way, and prefers the sombrero style, thank you very much.

Who are we missing? Oh, yes! Me!

And my girl, Clara, who didn’t get it, even though she’s a border collie:

Whiskey tango foxtrot.

However, and I can say this with no reservation, Digit had the most fun. That’s not what we thought might happen when we started. It didn’t go so well at first:

This is when a sensible person gets out the bandages they are sure to need within seconds. Moves the phone closer, in case a call to 911 for an ambulance is necessary. We threw caution to the cold California winds, though.

He is yelling at me. Of course.

But that’s where he surprised us. Big time. HE DIDN’T MIND THE HAT.

Let me say that again. He didn’t mind the hat. Was it perhaps because the chin elastic just felt like a collar, or because he wore that cone for 5 weeks earlier this year? That whole experience of getting lost for four months changed him. He is a new man (although still nice and jerk-ish, just like we like him). He just didn’t trip on the hat, which made it even funnier. Seriously, we were dying.

Here he was keeping an eye on the kittens playing below him, under the table. Can you imagine what they thought? Looking up at our grumpy gondolier?

And then he just felt good. Sexy. He knew he looked sexy, and he worked it:

Look at that smooth fellow. My little Venetian polpetta. Gads, we love him, don’t we?

Hat game! Hat game! You should play a hat game!

(Lala, enroute to work (sucka!) says that I should remind you that she’s playing this Friday night, and I believe it’s at the Starry Plough. Details HERE.)

Today I am off work and I will dye my hair in preparation for La’s Christmas work party tonight. When your wife is the web developer for Good Vibrations, you don’t really dread the work party, I find. Good times.

Goldang it. I’ve been using something called Don’t Break the Chain. It’s just a blank calendar, and you click on a day to make it red. (You can put it on your iGoogle home page so you see it every time you’re online.) If you’re trying to do something (or not do something, I suppose), you get to make the day red when you succeed — the equivalent of putting a big ole X through the day with a marker.

I use it to track my writing days. In September, about half the days are red. In October, month of travel and extreme flu, only one day is red. Shameful. Every single day in November is red, and then I continued the trend until yesterday. For thirty-six days in a row, I wrote. I was following my Latin mantra, Nulla die sine linea, no day without a line. (No one really knows to whom to attribute the saying (perhaps Horace, Apelles or Pliny), but when I was a kid I read that George MacDonald went by it, so I took it then. Loved me some George MacDonald. I’d like a tattoo of it someday. The saying, not George.)

Yesterday I didn’t write. I remembered on my way home, and meant to, just so I could keep that string red, with no gaps, but I forgot. Now, on my little calendar it says, "You’ve been dropping the ball for one day straight," instead of "You’ve been getting things done for thirty-seven days straight."

So now I have to beat 36 days in a row. That’s going to be hard. Dang it.

I’m going to count this as today’s writing, though. I don’t always count blog-writing, and I didn’t count it at all in November, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, you know?

Also, this morning, at 4:15am, on my way to getting up for work, I smashed my pinky finger in the bedroom door. I have NO idea how I did that, pure talent, I suppose, because our door hardly shuts on a good day, but it hurt like a sumbitch. I slammed it right on the nail, and then stood at the foot of the bed, whimpering-crying until I woke Lala up. Because, really, all that wakes her up is whimpering. A brass band won’t wake her, but a dog whining will shoot her right out of bed. It’s really a miracle. Usually it’s Harriet, begging to go outside, but today it was me. It was nice to have her say "Poor baby."

I think that’s one of the best things about being with someone you love. Someone to say that. And she was still in bed, so there were no flying peas, another nice thing. Usually when I hit the deck, slipping on the tiled floor, or tripping over a cat, she rushes to the freezer to grab the peas. Lala has always kept peas in the freezer for bumps and bruises, but she hates them as a food item. She rushes up to me with the bag, holding it out, flinging it my direction in her haste to help, and is astonished when peas fly out in a green spray all around me. Nowhere in her imagination do people (like me) actually open the peas-bag to eat them. This has happened more than once in our house. I fall, bump myself, and then duck, dodging well-intentioned frozen flying peas. No, none of that this morning. Just me whinging, holding my throbbing finger, dreading the alarm clock, Lala mumbling nice things to me through a sleep-haze.

So no more writing. For today, anyway. For your viewing pleasure, I present the Kits. My brother- and sister-in-law are in Korea, so we are watching his Siamese kitten, Viking. When she came to our house, she was smaller than our kits, Willie and Waylon. I think we have been feeding her a bit too much.

Good morning. I’m at work and my eyes are tearing from yawning so much and I made my coffee just a touch too strong, and I’m having some kind of allergic reaction to something. My lower lip is itchy, but I don’t think it’s blowing up in my normal MSG reaction. I have been so careful lately with food — it seems that some additives in cheap chocolate are now settting off my face/lip/eye swelling thing. Whoppers did it one day at work, and then Reeses PB cups another day. No, we can’t talk about it. It is too sad. I refuse to be allergic to Reeses. Will not think about it.

But in the meantime, I’m trying to be good about cooking well and eating good stuff. I got the new book Veganomicon, not because I’m trying in ANY way to be vegan (no cheese? Please!) nor even a vegetarian, but because I want some new ways to cook veggies. My new favorite thing: Brussel sprouts cut in half, chopped up potatoes, and cubed butternut squash, thrown in the oven with olive oil, salt and chopped garlic, roasted at 400 for 40 minutes, pine nuts thrown in during the last ten minutes. WHY DOES THAT TASTE SO GOOD? I’ve never liked brussel sprouts before, but now I’m dying for them. And beets. Never been a beet fan before this year, but now, oh, give me some beets with some spinach, poppyseed dressing, yum. I don’t recognize my cravings anymore. Weird.

Last night I made a marinated portabello avocado spicy mustard salad from the book. Took like forty minutes, including cooking the mushroom, which was a lot for me on a work night, but it was so damn good. Also, the book itself is hysterical. I read most of it yesterday at work, and kept reading bits of it out loud to the annoyance of my coworkers. I mean, really, anyone reading a vegan cookbook out loud is the HEIGHT of pompous arrogance and deserves a good pinch. But the authors, they’re irreverant and casual, traits that I value in anyone, but in cookbook writers I find particularly charming.

Now I’m going to stop writing and go back to knitting. I’m working on a scarf for a coworker that I drew in the work Secret Santa exchange — normally I would never knit for a coworker, but I lurve her, and she deserves a nice scarf even though I am SO bored of knitting k1p1 rib. Looks pretty, though, in blue merino Arucania.

https://rachaelherron.com/good-morning-im/

This is my new favorite thing. Really. I LOVE THIS IDEA, both in concept and in execution. Actually, I don’t have this exa yet, but I did just order it. I think it is the most clever dealie-bob EVER.

It’s a knitter’s abacus. Throw out your red dangling stitch counter, this bracelet is prettier. Let me explain real quick-like: those little green beads? They count for one row, and there are nine of them. The larger beads count for ten rows. You slip the beads through that little elastic ring of beads as you go. If you have three large beads and two small beads on the Big Bead side, you’re on row 32. They’re trapped close to the big bead, so your count is safe, even when you take the bracelet off (which you won’t want to do). You can count up to one hundred rows, the same amount as those ugly plastic counters. On your wrist! Pretty! (Plus, there’s a hook for holding stitch markers! I’m dying here.)

And these are UNDER TEN DOLLARS. Seriously. There are other people selling similar items, for more, but I think Hide and Sheep’s are the prettiest. I ordered one, light green, earlier this week and got it in three days flat.

I’ve been using it and I love the way it looks and feels. And I just ordered that one above, so sadly, you can’t have it, but her site says if you want one duplicated, she’ll do that fer ya, and I believe it. Here’s another one available right now:

Shoot. I love that one. I shoulda bought that one.

Site is HERE. Go. Buy. Be happy. I swear I don’t know this gal, but I wish I did.

* Since I posted this, she’s run out of all but Xmas bracelets, but look at the SOLD bracelets — she can custom make any to match prior bracelets, at no extra charge. She rules.

 

Went to the Nanowrimo Thank God It’s Over party last night, and it was FUN.

There were crowns:

    My sister Bethany and me.

And more crowns:


    Me’n’Becky, hooray!

My sister Christy read to a group of fascinated listeners, and I was SO PROUD of her. She was the only one of our group who had the cojones to do it.

   
    Jodi, hooray! You may remember her from such hits like officiating my U.S. marriage.

WOW! Chris Baty! The Nano inventor himself! I walked up to him and asked if I could take our picture together. I asked if I could blog it. He said no one had ever asked him that! Weird, we thought. Then I opened my mouth and something very close to this came out, "I just have the biggest crush on you. Probably everyone in this room does, we’re all just watching you walk by and saying, ‘there goes Chris Baty.’ So anyway. Thanks! You’re cute! I’ll send you the link for the photo!"

So I’ll send him the link. Hi, Chris Baty! You rule! Thanks for being nice to me and dude, your speech rocked. You practically have me talked into ScriptFrenzy.

Then we left, and went and saw the Union Square tree.

Yay for sisters! Christy, me and tree.

And I apologize for plastering my image all over this post, but I have to mention this: I paired Meet the Fleet with the new Rowan Arianne sweater, something I never thought I’d do. And it worked. Very strangely, it worked. I never wear that tank, but it was something cool under such a fuzzy warm sweater that I might just do it again sometime.

Now. I have three days OFF, and I don’t have to do anything. (Because of that, my brain is full of things I want to do, like drive and get ollalieberry pie in Pescadero, or see Enchanted, or watch the hang-gliders at Fort Funston. Or I may just sit on the couch and knit and watch the Raiders. Dunno. But it will be nice. (PS – Bethany just texted back — we’re off for pie! And maybe I’ll come across some yarn on the way! O joy!)