Run on Sentences...

checking in

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I had a great time in Seattle.  It was my first visit and I like the city and the ferries.  It seems like a very cool place.   I enjoyed the weather, seeing leaves changing and hearing them crunching under my feet.  I especially enjoyed visiting with my my aunt, uncle & cousins.   I am now getting into full Christmas mode with half of my Christmas cards complete.  Yes, I'm making my own Christmas cards again this year.   Last night I walked over to the library went a different way so I could walk by a Christmas tree lot.  I was let down. correction:  This should have read I wasn't let down.  They had Christmas music playing and were putting lights on the city trees near the street and the smell was wonderful.  I almost bought a small tree right then and there but I my arms were full of books.  I always think that if I take a small backpack to the library that it will limit the number of books that I check out.  Nope.  It just means that I'll end up carrying some of the books home. 

Overpackers Anonymous

Or  Sweaters Anonymous.  i need to found/join one of those groups.  Classic symptom:  I'm leaving wed, returning sat and I packed 5 sweaters.  Additional indications:  I had left the house was driving away in my car and I was tempted to return for that oh-so-versatile cream cardigan* I had forgotten about. The  conversation in my head went something like this:

-you don't need another sweater

-but that one is new.  I want to wear the new one.**

-realistically, you won't wear it.  you have enough sweaters

-i know but I don't have any other cardigans.

The cardigan argument was persuasive.  Plus I forgot pajamas and had to go back for those anyway so I grabbed the cardigan too. 

*do you ever buy something that fits so intrinsically into your wardrobe that you feel that you've always had it?  That's they way this cardigan is to me. 

**i do this all the time.  buy something new and wear it at every opportunity for the first two weeks.  it's especially bad with sweater which are worn over other things and therefore I can rationalize wearing them often b/c they are really dirty.

Amazing Racers, Team Procraftinators

what a great weekend... of course I didn't some important things that I should have... I didn't get my tire checked, I didn't copy the old pics that i promised my cousin I'd bring to Thanksgiving.  Actually I promised I'd send them weeks ago but told myself bringing them to Thanksgiving would be acceptable.  I know that I still don't have to have them by Thanksgiving, but it would be nice.  and if I don't, I leave myself open to get teased more.  They have enough ammunition on me as it is. 

Saturday I ran all over the city on an Amazing Race style birthday celebration.  It was soooo much fun.  I would be in great shape if I did that every weekend.  Why can't exercise be like that all the time?  My partner, Yvonne, and I finished a respectable fifth out of 13 teams.  She may have place higher if I could have run more or eaten marsh mellows faster.   I was eating as fast as I could!  I swear! Even though we lost some time waiting for the bus to Coit Tower (there was no way I was running up that hill) we made up for it with our (read Yvonne's) mad dollar bill origami skills.  The challenges were:

- Starting near Fisherman's Wharf - a brain teaser matching worksheet requiring a shot to be consumed for each guess. 

-finding 4 specific souvenir pennies on Fisherman's Wharf.  We had all but one and ran a certain block at least four times

-Coit Tower - assembling a 2 foot tower that could stand for at least 10 seconds out of a small tub of play-doh, toothpicks and scotch tape

-At a bar in North Beach - drinking a pint of beer (no problem after all that running) and getting 20 people to sign a birthday card for the birthday boy

-Union Square - completing a worksheet that required us to run to various stores around the square, Apple, Border, Virgin, Levi's and answer questions.  ex:  How many steps in the main staircase in the Apple store?

-Sony Metreon 1st floor - fold 4 different paper bill origami projects (instructions provided).  in case you're curious they were, the picture frame, the ring, the bow tie and the shirt (my favorite)

-Sony Metreon 2nd floor - pass the first level or play two games of  Dance Dance Revolution

-Sony Metreon 3rd floor - Eat a bag of Christmas Marsh mellows as fast as you can.  they were very professional on this one and even check our mouths to make sure we were done. *

-Sony Metreon 4th floor - Record a 30 second birthday greeting to Scott

-Lit (a bar 2 blocks from the Metreon) - Finish Line!  drink, cool off, stretch, collapse.

Sunday I spend knitting with Yvonne & Stacy.  I knit, ripped and re-knit a wristlette.  The only problem is that I don't know if I have enough to do the second one.  This may end up being another project that I'll knit about three times before it's done.

But it's ok because I finally finished the never-ending / ugly sweater!**

I used a vintage pattern out of this book

This is what the book model looked like.  I used a close, but different enough gauge yarn which threw me off.   And what a difference blocking makes!  My sweater had slight longer, but still 3/4 length sleeves until I blocked and they magically grew!  Good thing I didn't make them to what I though would be wrist length!   Would I make this pattern again?  Yes, but in a solid color yarn.

*Notice the shirts?  I had seen someone wearing one like this a while ago but could never find it to purchase.  so I made one with the leftover fuzzy letters from another project. Aren't we all Procraftinators?

** Don't pay attention to my expression.  It looks better than I thought. I was just tired of trying to take a pic of the sweater.   Or maybe that's just my too cool to smile model expression.

Geek of the Week

Not my brightest moments.  Stupid things that I've done in the recent past that I'm not particularly proud of.  But I'll tell you anyway:

-Picking a book for my bookclub that was out of print and not realizing it until someone pointed it out to me & it was too late to change it

-I got all the way to the gym yesterday and realized that my gym I.D. was still in the pants I wore on Monday in the dirty clothes hamper at home.  I might have been able to convince the front desk to let me in anyway but after tearing my car and gym bags apart looking for it, I wasn't in the mood to fight for a treadmill.

-  My friends brought to my attention that the home phone number I've been giving out (for 8 months!) is incorrect.   The one I had programmed into my cell phone was wrong, wrong, wrong.   Maybe it was my old apt number?  I don't know.  If it's not my old number then I don't know how it got in there.  Can I remind you all that I'm horrible at remembering phone numbers?

A friend is having an amazing race birthday party this saturday around SF.  As a part of my non-rigorous training I watched the show for the first time the other night.  It was good, but I was anxious the whole time I was watching the show and after wards it took forever for me to relax enough to go to sleep.  But now I'm really excited for Saturday's party.   

Last night I watched something with a totally different pace, Regency House Party.   I finished the seaming and just have a bit of finishing left on the never ending sweater.   The pattern I used is courtesy of my Great Aunt and from the 1960's.  I don't know if it's the pattern writer or the time but the finishing instructions are scant and not very helpful.  I had to make several things up as I went along trying to figure what they meant for me to do and I don't know how much is b/c of my yarn being a different gauge or just a badly written pattern.  Pics of the sweater next week after weave in the ends and block it.  Now I'm so excited to start some smaller projects and my new orange sweater with the yarn I bought off of Elann. 

oops I made a hat

Stacey was right in her comment on the purse. It is quite small. But cute! And the smaller something is, the quicker it is to knit. I'm trying to finish my Never Ending Sweater / The Ugliest Sweater in the World. It's now in the seaming stage and it is requiring a lot of attention. I'm really liking the small quick projects which are keeping my motivation up. Perhaps I'm loving them too much. I have several small balls and one huge skein of the Ugly Sweater Yarn leftover and I was wondering to do with it so it would actually look OK. I opened up a knitting book, the first hat pattern that I saw was amazingly the same gauge, it was knitted flat so I didn't have the lack of double pointed needles standing in my way and three hours later... oops. I made a hat.

Note: The top of the hat isn't pointy, that's the pumpkin stem.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.   I don't really wear hats very often.  And it doesn't get so cold here that I'm forced to wear one.  Maybe I'll spring it on some poor, unsuspecting, Christmas present recipient.   Now I feel like I'm on the verge of an addiction to making hats.  They are quick, easy and don't require a lot of yarn.  Maybe I can use up all that extra yarn in my stash with hats.   After I finish my never ending sweater that is...

fall purse

this is the purse I made this weekend. Can you tell I'm into the fall colors?

catch up

work has been busy.... not really more than usual, but more away from the desk and physical than usual.  We're cleaning up & clearing out years worth of old documents   I'm now recovering from some sort of random cold.  I don't know if it's a real cold that has hit at an inconvenient time or a weird dust induced respiratory thing that I can blame on cleaning out dusty places at work.   or it could be the mold thing.   To ease Rachel's worry, yes I've informed my landlord.  It's  a large rental company and I know the name & extension of who is handling the issue, but we've yet to speak.  We're exchanging elaborate voice mails and I sent her and email with pictures of the mold.  One of the things she asked me to do is 'mark where the mold was' so she and an inspector could come look at the apt.  um. yeah. mark the mold?  ok.  I got crazy with bright colored paper and a sharpee and masking tape.   Now I'm leaving the signs up because they make me laugh.   I have purple & yellow paper on my walls that say Mold.  Mold.  Mold. Mold.  Mold.    and one rogue sign that says  'More Mold in closet' and a arrow.   

Because I didn't feel well I spend most of my weekend knitting on my futon with lots of covers and drinking more tea than I have in a long time.  Consequence: I'm now sick of tea.  Not all tea but the flavors I usually drink, English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Chai.  I had some fruity tea on Saturday night and I'm now craving more of that. Do you think I can leave work in the middle of the morning to get more tea?  One can only drink so much Lipton's.

I did manage to leave the house to go to a pocket purse workshop on Saturday afternoon.  I'll post a picture of the finished object tomorrow.  It's not a design I would've chosen but it was a good quick knit project to spur me on to finish my ugly sweater.   And now I want to make more purses.   It was also helpful to have someone show my how to do i-cord in person.  And I dug out a crochet hook and did some sort of crochet edging to seam it together.  The smallness and randomness of the project gave me almost immediate results and because I didn't care that much I was able to try new techniques and not worry too much about the results.

I also went to Fray Day on Saturday night.  very good. too bad it's only once a year.

good bye to an old phone-friend

After nearly 4 years of swearing at it, dropping it, shoving it into dark purses and sitting on it, my cell phone finally quit.   It was a faithful companion, putting up with my lack of technological skills.   We braved this new fangeled world of cellular technology together.  (new to me at least - I know I was way behind the times, but I was a college student.  i couldn't have afforded it even if I was on the cutting edge)  I was never particularly attached to it, until the time came to let it go.  Then I was a little sad for the old girl.  She was good to me...

My newer, younger, prettier phone is doing it's best to make me forget my old friend.  I have to admit that I like it's shiny-ness.  I may have to follow Stacy's example and decorate it.   Splurge - I got the camera phone.  Now you'll be subject to my on the fly photography.   If I can figure out how to send the pictures that is.

Yarn postponed

Well, my Elann order came yesterday.  sort of.   There was a slip in my mailbox that I have a package to pick up at the post office so I have to wait until Saturday to get it.   Oh well, I maybe it'll help me to focus on the project at hand for now.  I'm working on the neverending sweater.   I don't know if I'll like it, but I've been working on it so long that now I just want it to be done.   The recipe I was talking about yesterday isn't online so I can't post it.  :(    If you're really interested, I can email it to you.

I forgot to tell you that at Sunday's crafty day I had another knit blogger in the house, Stacey .  Go over and check out her very nice account of Sunday's craftiness.  I'm sure we'll get together and knit some more.  If only to get my CD back.  :)    Get crafting... there are only 46 more days left until Christmas.