Rachael

I am knitting. Did you know that? You probably didn’t. It sometimes strikes me that I’m not a knitblogger, but a blogger who knits. I just don’t very much like blogging the little knitted pieces.

Right now I’m making socks (new Knit Picks superwash merino in Hydrangea, SO soft) for a friend’s birthday, a homespun hat for Ryan’s Scam, and I just finished last night a wee little baby sweater for a preggers friend at work. I did that five-hour sweater, and while I found its instructions a little odd, I ignored the funny bits and it turned out so ooey-gooey sweet. Of course, I didn’t take a picture of it. But I did make it out of this lovely angora pink stuff, I think it was old Classic Elite Lush from the stash pile, and I also just finished the new Vogue flame cardie in the same yarn, so at least you’ll see the color. Yeah. Soon. When I get around to attaching a zipper (no buttons for me, thanks). Whenever that is. I have a brand new TV and I haven’t watched a single program yet. This weekend also promises to be busy as heck, but that’s fun stuff.

Hey! The Whoreshoes are playing Smiley’s Saloon in Bolinas on Saturday night. If you’ve ever been to Bolinas, you know this is the perfect venue for ’em. It’s a run-down honkey-tonk where the bar stools grab your ass and the pianer leans a little more at closing time. You should go. I’ll be the groupie with the lighter.

Night out with Amy:

A wonderfully grinning Amy (I love this shot) and her best friend Christie:

Me’n’La, just being goofy:

Okay, so we were nothin’ BUT goofy:

Thank goodness we weren’t driving that night. Day-um, we had some fun.

And while we’re on photo-sharing, lemme show you somethin’ else. The other night my TV blew up. Ka-snap kachewey ka-POW! There was a white flare on the screen and then little dying panicked flickers that signaled great television distress.

I didn’t panic. This was, after all, a second-hand TV. And in my bedroom, behind the cat toys and a chair was another old second-hand TV that had been destined for the thrift store, but hadn’t yet made it. I asked Lala if she wouldn’t mind hooking up that one and disposing of the old one, since she had mad Contender needs last night. She said sure.

I got home at 5 this morning to find this:

A brand damn-spanking new TV. You ever seen something like that? I’ve never had anything like it! It’s clear! The sound is great! You can actually read WORDS on it! And it matches the white and silver of the chairs, and is generally about a mill-yun times better than the old one.

I am spoiled. Really, really rottenly spoilt. Of course, I’ve got the TiVo and all the channels, so I’m just glad she’ll be over here even MORE often. Oh, yeah.

Meantime, I’ve got yet another 14 hour shift at work and no time to watch or spin. Someday….

I am a remiss blogger. I don’t usually post on weekends, and not usually on Mondays, either. But Tuesdays I usually hit the blog at least a little earlier. I’ve almost lost the whole day already. And I had things to tell you, but they’ve dropped out of my mind.

I was going to tell you how much fun we had with Amy and her girl Sandra and Christie and Jason and others whose names have also slipped away. I have photos to prove that we may have had a leetle too much to drink. Okay, *I* might have had a leetle too much, since I started thinking it was a good idea to snap photos down Lala’s shirt. (No! I will NOT post those, thank you very much.) I only just found said camera this morning, as a matter of fact, so I have no photos to show. But trust that we had a ball, even though I was in charge of hooking up the lesbian dance club, and instead we ended up at a reggae night. Er….

Amy leaves this week for a massive trip, which’ll be chronicled at How To Get Lost. Should be good reading, yo.

Also, I was going to tell about what I have seen on my way to work recently on High Street. They include:

• A man with a shopping cart with nothing in it but an empty forty and a teddy bear.
• A naked lady.
• Her peeing boyfriend.
• A taco truck on a trailer.
• A kid on a bike that had a big ole spinner for handlebar (that was COOL).

And then last night, I saw the neatest thing while I was driving to Lala’s, although I fully know I shouldn’t have thought it was neat. But it was. I was getting on Highway 13, and I was behind two hot little cars on the onramp. They irritated the heck out of me by slowing down almost to a stop on the ramp. I figured it was some kind of road rage deal, and wanted to steer clear, literally. When we got on the freeway, they both stayed in the slow lane, never speeding up past forty miles per hour. I considered shooting past them, but I was too a’sceered. I’m a timid driver as it is. So I hung back and followed them some more. There were no other cars around.

We came around a curve, and the back car pulled forward and then flush with the other car, both of them still driving super-slowly, now neck and neck. I thought I’d see the flare of a pistol shot any moment, but instead, they both took off at such a high rate speed that I felt like my car was suddenly going backwards.

It was RAD. They were gone in an instant. That must have been fun. Totally unsafe, yep. No one should do it. Nope. But it was still awesome.

This is crazy. When I woke up fifteen minutes ago, I thought about going running. It looked like a nice day. Instead, I made coffee and toast with honey and sat down to look at email.

Suddenly, it’s POURING outside. The sky just broke. I looked up from the computer to see Adah sitting at the window. She swiveled her head around to look at me, and I’ve never seen a more expressive, wide-eyed WTF look on a cat, ever. I went out the sliding glass door in the bedroom that overlooks the freeway and watched the cars slow in confusion. That smell! It’s totally a spring rain smell, very different from the winter kind. Winter rain smells cold and bittersweet. Spring rain smells electric and unexpected.

I’ve left the front and back doors open with the screens on, and that cool wet pavement smell is blowing through the tiny space. I love it.

Not much time off today, just enough to bathe and maybe fifteen minutes for spinning. But know what? I’ve been writing lately, and it’s amazing how much better I handle a busy schedule when I’m doing what I love, what I want to do.

I absolutely love having a camera in my cell phone. I don’t carry a purse unless I know I’m going to have knitting time, in which case my little black bag can hold a pair of in-progress socks, but I usually just have a wallet in my back pocket, keys in my front right, and my cell phone in the front left. And I have a camera! Right there, when I need it.

Sure, it’s not great quality, but it’ll do when you need to document George. Remember George? Sweet old George that I loved looking at through my old window, George who’s now outside Lala’s window (handy, that), George who is apparently and very suddenly signaling the Mother Ship.

        Mom! Here I am!

I mean, really. What the HELL is going on with this plant? It happened overnight, I swear.

For scale:

Asparagus gone wild. Anyone know what it’s doing? Will it flower? Will it stretch out and grab the BART train off its tracks? Any ideas?

So the cell phone camera thingie is good for that. But we still have the inside camera for catching the important fiber photos.

Look! I Navajo-plied! Sylvia had shown me how, but I hadn’t really GOT it. I did it once and screwed up. This last time (the brown alpaca (from Ann in MN) on the left), I messed about with the wheel and got the hang of it, figured out the motion and how to pedal. Oh, the satisfaction of getting something physically like that. The middle stuff is also an alpaca single from Ann, and the stuff on the right is good ole Blue Faced Leicester, which is turning into my main love.

Have I mentioned I aDORE spinning? Hmmm?

Texas sucks.* Or at least, their House does. 135 to SIX!  Unbelievable.

You know who hurt children? Bad people hurt children. Mean people hurt children.  Sexual orientation has nothing to do with it. A fucked-up person hurts a child, and the vast majority of child molesters are straight white men. Perhaps they shouldn’t be allowed to foster children.

Ooooh. The anger. There are no words.

* To my Dear Readers from Texas (Lisa! Susan! for example), this obviously doesn’t mean you. I love y’all. And the music is good out there. But you can take your House and shove their ignorant, bigoted selves right out a very high, very pink, very feathery boa’d window. That’s what I think.