I wanted to tell you what’s going up with my wacky sidebar since I’ve been moving stuff around and cleaning stuff up. When I say sidebar, I generally mean what’s going on over there.                     ————->>>>>>>>>>>>>>

First off, I’m now a Woot! affiliate. That means: if you click the little thing that says shirt.woot! over there, I get half a penny or something. Now, if you go to shirt.woot! from my link and actually buy something, then I might be able to buy a knitting needle.

So, click that ^ and check it out. I might not have even hooked up all the tubes properly. I made sure to put a link in here in case you’re reading in your reader and not on my website. Which- good for you. I had a reader once and once it did that [[you have 1,000+ unread items]] thing I just sort of abandoned it.

Speaking of reading, I need some books to read. I’m almost done with:

It’s pretty funny. If I liked/watched The Office I’m sure it would be a lot funnier.

So let me know if you’ve read anything really good lately! Preferably fluffy or thrillingly intellectual books (is that a genre?) I’m not ready to tackle anything over say, 300 pages. George R.R. Martin did that to me.

Another thing on the sidebar, is Double Jump Spirit! Sparkles! Glitter!

It’s a podcast that you should be listening to. This whole thing was born in the super feisty head of Jared. Someone asked me to describe it to them and I was kind of at a loss. But I’ll try to describe it to you right now.

Jared talks about adult things. Like power lines and overcoming illnesses. I spin around in John’s office chair and talk about Titanic and Breaking Dawn. Every so often he’s successful in reigning me in so we can move forward and talk about what you, the concerned listener has come to hear about: folding sheets and optometrists offices. BUT IT’S A LOT BETTER THAN ANY OF THAT.

Seriously. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did. Or you’ll absolutely hate it. If that’s the case- call in and tell us what assholes we are!

Okay, I’m almost done boring you. But another project I’ve been working on is another Project365. Hopefully to be better than the first Project365 I did before. Because it’s all pictures of our cat Schmoo.

Last night, I was tired and about to go to bed and I realized I hadn’t taken a picture of Schmoo for the day. So I bent down and was like “Hey. Schmoo. Do something cool really quick so I can go to bed.” She then stuck out her tongue just a little.

Sometimes she does that kind of thing and I think “holy shit, this cat is the smartest cat ever.” Then she poops on the floor or runs into a wall and I’m like, hmmmm.

[This post was written to get the excessive amount of exclamation points out of my system. I'm sorry if it has offended your good sense of writing or eyesight.]

[[P.S. I also got rid of a bunch of links to blogs that were inactive. If  you would like me to link your blog/website in my "Cool Links" section, post a comment letting me know. I'm not trying to snub anyone, I probably just missed you.]]

When I started knitting, all I knit were scarves and not very good ones either. I didn’t know how to purl or do anything cool, so they were just long ass garter stitch scarves. After I learned how to purl, there was no going back for me. That was BP (before purling) and I was in the new age, the AP.

Then my (other) Granma asked me to make her a scarf. Like blunt force, to my face said “scarf.” It was my fault for asking her and she’s seen me knit so many other things that I figured scarf wasn’t even on the radar anymore. The predator had left, it was free to leave the den or whatever.

Nope. Scarf or nothing.

I made the mistake of asking my mom for advice. We even went to a yarn store together looking for the right color ‘dark green’ and struck out. (Most people, okay, probably all people, think saying dark green is descriptive enough but it’s not. Especially when you’re making something for the type of person who usually has something specific in their mind but won’t actually describe it for you. They just tell you when it’s not what they wanted.) Then once I’d ordered the yarn from knitpicks my mom still had constant feedback.

Mostly, don’t make it long! She’s not a giantess like you.

I’m 5’5! Gah!

The hardest part about posting in the winter is not just the fact that I’m talking about a scarf. (Really? Who cares, right?) It’s taking pictures. I hate taking pictures in the winter of myself. I don’t even know how to begin to take pictures of a scarf. But I really liked knitting this scarf. I’ll deny that later.

Maybe I liked it because it was short. (Thanks mom, I guess.) Or because it wasn’t just straight knitknitknit. To create the ruffles it was all short row shaping.

If you’re in the market for a scarf, definitely check it out. If you think this is an open invitation to ask me to knit a scarf for you: gtfo.

The Seaside Shawlette [rav link] which I happen to find anything with ‘lette’ at the end adorable. I’m proposing (via this blog) that more things add ‘lette’ to their name, especially horrible things, so the world will be a cuter place. Let me know if this proposal gains any sort of political clout.

Actually this was a super quick knit for me,  you know, at my pace anyways. I started it Thanksgiving weekend with this crazy plan that I would finish it in time to see the Nutcracker on December 15th (so less than a month). Now this is where the crazy part of that plan happens: I did. I finished the knitting two days before the Nutcracker expedition aaaand didn’t wear it. Because I didn’t block the thing. In fact, I didn’t block this sucker at all: Alison did.

Such a sweetie, that girl.

It’s kind of par for the course for me at this point. I sort of met my goal but then did something stupid to not really fulfill the goal.

Does this yarn look familiar? If you haven’t been following the Apocaknits saga since the beginning, I’ll tell you a goofy story. I got this yarn to do a mystery shawl with my Granma. Then I messed up and fell behind on it and decided to just wait until the shawl was done and fully released. Once it was, I discovered it was a weird fertility shawl that had like a stick mother (earth) giving birth on it.

Yikes.

But I still had a ton of this yarn. So I knit one lace thing but it looked all airy and weird and you could definitely see every mistake I made. (Bad mistakes, I’ve made a few.)

So I decided to hold two strands together and knit this guy, thinking I’d burn through my yarn. Of course, I still have two skeins left. At least it looks like butterflies!

I missed you- did you miss me? You don’t have to answer that.

Maybe, if you’re like me you’re wondering “hmmm… well if her New Years Resolution is to blog more, she’s getting kind of a late start on it, isn’t she?” Because you secretly judge people and resolutions in this scenario. Also, if you’ve been here before then you’ve seen my resolutions in (in)action.

Like last year- remember last years resolution? *cough, me neither*

BUT! That’s not my resolution this year. My resolution this year is to just keep up being awesome.

Well, also, are you ready for my lame excuses? We did kind of buy a house. I mean, I was right on schedule to knit socks every month and use up all my stash and everything. Then people were all like “Lindsey, why aren’t you helping us drywall? Lindsey, if you aren’t going to paint this closet then who will?”

I took this picture at 2am of John laying the floor in that very closet that I painted. Although it kind of looks like he passed out in the small corner.

So yeah, the house hijacked all my plans but gave me better plans instead. Because now we have a wonderful person living with us and she thinks Schmoo is adorable and not a weirdo.

So yeah, we’ve celebrated a few holidays already in this house. Including, Halloween:

We also just celebrated Christmas. (Well maybe not ‘just’ but you know, something similar to that.) Here are my Christmas highlights for you:

We had another holiday party, which meant another photobooth! [There are some pretty fun photos attached to those links.]

I made my dude pal Jared a Super Meat Boy ornament because he likes that ridiculously hard game. [that link is potentially NSFW since I feel like the creators of the game are always posting pictures of wangs.]

I put these lights up because I saw them on Pinterest. [feel free to add me on there ] I was tired of seeing cool stuff on Pinterest and not actually doing the cool stuff that was on there… then I was like, what’s holding me back? DONE.

Anyways, I hope you had a good holiday season. Part of my resolution means that I’m going to try and do stuff that I enjoy (including posting here) and we’ll see what sticks. You never know what life is going to throw at you, so it’s hard to make promises. Just promise to be the best you that you can be, right?

John works for a company and they want him to expand his knowledge. So they said, we’ll send you to this Adobe conference in LA. You know Adobe, right? If it’s on the internet they’re trying to talk about it. So John was like, sure thing! Then, because he’s a sweet guy, he was like, hey, do you want to come with me?

Hell yeah I do.

For some reason I wasn’t attracted to all of the attractions in LA and instead focused on shopping and seeing what was different about it from other places. These animal print leggings? Choice.

This was one of the many places in Santee Alley. Which, LA definitely does things differently because our alleys don’t have their own websites.

I thought this place looked cool. It was in a mall that we went to eat in. After, we tried to find this other place called Q Pop Shop. Meaning: we got terribly lost.

It was a neat little store… but I like Wholly Craft better.

We also visited a Fry’s while out there because there aren’t too many close to us here. I loved all of the random displays they had in that sci-fi themed version. (Julie told me she’s been to an Aztec themed one before. I feel compelled, like I should catch them all.)

Then I headed out for a day to visit the Winchester Mystery House and San Francisco, so I could visit/meet my internet friend TeeKay[rav link]. She told me that I had taken the less scenic route, which I found hilarious because ^that^ is way more scenic than 70.

On the way, I unwittingly stopped at Casa de Fruta. A place that had both a peacock and a two-storied carousel. Way crazy, I know. So far I feel like I’ve posted some pointless photos and words because I know what you really came here for. It’s to find out if this internet stranger murdered me.

Maybe you think you’re being really clever and are like, well obviously they didn’t murder you because you’re sitting at your computer, probably naked, typing this whole thing to us right now. But you don’t know! I could be a brain in a glass jar sending out electron waves that the internet/you are receiving right now.

AVENGE ME INTERNET! AVENGE ME!

This is her sweet group that meets every Tuesday. It’s called Purl Jam, if you’re in the area and interested. Which you should be. It made me all nostalgic for my old group, because these ladies are a fun time!

This is me and teekay! Aren’t we the cutest? (Even if I look a little crazy.) She even tried to show me some of her beautiful city while I was visiting her.

Although, I feel like I disappointed her because I was only there a tiny amount of time so she really only got to show me a small area of her city. But it was her neighborhood and I was excited to learn more about her, since we’ve been exchanging ravelry messages for a while now but that doesn’t tell you everything about someones’ personality, you know?

This is the kiln at her ceramics studio where she’s like the SUPER LEADER IN CHARGE. Once, she sent me the coolest mugs, out of the blue, just being nice.

Now here she is showing you a Porta-Pagoda.

I’ve always heard them called Porta john’s or Porta potty but she called it a blue room.

Not to keep you in suspense much longer, it was a fun, successful trip and she did not murder me. I didn’t murder her. Nobody got murdered that I know of. Yay! In fact, on my way back to LA, I saw three rainbows while leaving SF. The last one was super brilliant and was a double rainbow. All the way.

If you’re interested, here are the rest of my photos from my trip. So far we’ve had a pretty exciting year. I’m hoping to buckle down and knit some holiday presents now.

That’s how I roped loved ones into a scavenger hunt. I said 1) It’s a fucking scavenger hunt and 2) what a deal, right guys?!

I think everyone had fun. It turned out to be a beautiful day for it despite predictions of rain. We ended up running around downtown for two hours trying to solve some (wacktastically hard in some instances) clues. Plus I saw and learned some things about the city that I had never seen or known before. That’s always a plus in my book!

For instance:

Did you know that Columbus is home to the World’s Largest Gavel…? Yeah, that’s one up on Dubai.

It was sweet and I’d definitely do another one. If you’re interested in seeing all the pictures and even reading the clues that we got, I posted them on my flickr. The clues are under the photos. Although one of the photos (of us solving a clue) got accidentally deleted… probably at the point that I lost my phone. That was scary.

In knitting news, I did go to a Wool Gathering again this year with my friend Molly.

Earlier this year I actually started working on a shawl with yarn that I had gotten from a previous Wool Gathering… only to find out that I didn’t have enough yarn. I ended up getting more yarn to complete that project at this years’ but to be honest, I’m worried about it. Maybe I just need a ten man hype crew to tell me it’s going to be okay and not clash and be hideous and then everyone will be mad at me and I’ll start crying in front of the whole school. Or something.

Plus, yeah, it totally doesn’t count as buying yarn when I need it to complete a project and get rid of yarn from before right? Please maybe?

Oh! Buttons!

Not to sound like a total punkass or anything but I am seriously loving life right now guys. I hope things are going well for you out there in Cyberland.

This was my favorite picture from the whole thing. She hadn’t met my little step-niece before, my Dad always calls her Little Girl. I also didn’t realize until this picture that my father is a fan of tiny children.

Before she even got here though, Granma had a game plan. She sent a box ahead full of projects that she was stalled on and that she wanted finished. Plus she started a project on the plane that she was quickly making progress on. Well, until I hijacked that train of thought.

In that box there was:

A bag that was missing the handles. Although she had even gone ahead and threaded the buttons. She also told me that all of that yarn was the same dye lot. Color me confused. (ba dum tsh)

This shrug that needed some ends woven in and buttons attached to it. She didn’t plan on it but it really fits her perfectly. She has lost so much weight and seemed to be in really good spirits, which was comforting. Now she’s got a new shrug to go out on the town in.

This blanket! I’ve been constantly harassing her about this blanket because I love it so much. The yarn is super soft and I like the colors. It’s one of those Mary Maxim kits that she’s fond of. But the stitches were starting to fall off the needles so I showed her that two circular needles at one time technique. It’s not every day I get to teach her something, so I felt pretty special.

This was my favorite of the bunch. A crocheted Victorian bride doll. I put the hair on her while watching Downton Abbey. When I was done with her, I’ll admit I had gotten kind of attached. (Even if I am a grown ass woman and it’s a doll.) Luckily, when Granma came she told me that she had made the doll for me and was glad I had liberated her from her box. I figure, hey, I live in a Victorian, she’s a Victorian doll- kismet.

Then Granma went through my shame pile and got all of my projects sorted out.

She poked, prodded and cajoled. She said, “Oh Lindsey, finish these mittens. They’ll be quick and easy and everyone loves a good mitten.” Okay.

I’m so glad she visited and got me back on track with some things. Not only did we knock out some projects and get things organized but we also made a hot dish every night of the week.

So yeah, that’s partly what I’ve been up to. I also just did a quick stash killing project the other day for my cousin.

A mitered Kindle cover. You know why I chose it right? Because there was a button involved. Plus it helped me get rid of some stash and I’m all about that this year. Finishing projects and getting rid of yarn. Actually, I have a good idea for getting rid of some yarn and I really need to follow through on these ideas lately. Stop getting so sidetracked.

Plus our brief encounter with colder weather is making me so excited for knitting! Well for project doing in general. The other day I actually completed two sewing projects– and I’m not a fan of sewing. So something is in the air.

And on the home front? We had a window special built for an odd shaped window in our bedroom. This had always been a random dream/fantasy I had growing up and I never expected it to come true but maybe this is the house where dreams happen. (barf? But kind of cute, right?)

Luckily for me though, I got to help her, which meant I went on a day trip to Pittsburgh- a place I’d never been to before.

She laughed at me because I was taking all of these stupid pictures of bridges on the way there. I think they look super cool. She was like, they are but it’s nothing compared to Pittsburgh. Since it’s the steel city, they have a ton of bridges.

I liked this one the most of the ones that I got to see:

There were like horses and a globe up there. Pretty fancy.

It was so funny because I went there to help her move some stuff but she’s such a nice person that she didn’t want to ask me to do anything. It was both really sweet and frustrating. The sooner we put together this bookshelf- the sooner we can party and hang things on the wall, you know?

Their place was super cute. Plus Pittsburgh, from my limited day trip assessment, seems like a cool place to live. I definitely want to go back and check it out. We went to this fun place while we were there called the Franktuary:

A hot dog place that’s actually located in a Cathedral. Everything about that description made me excited.

Since we were road trippin’, that meant we got to go to Denny’s. (Columbus doesn’t have one.) Where else can I get a milkshake to go with my 10 pound omelette?

So yeah, Pittsburgh seems pretty cool. I told her that I wanted to visit her- does anyone have suggestions for fun things to do in Pittsburgh? Let me know!

The one that has really caught my attention so far is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. For some reason I got super caught up in it. Even though I don’t share the same obsessions as Cline, I still got wound up in thinking about obsessions. I wrote about his book on my goodreads if you’re interested. But! What’s more interesting is that thanks to judahthor’s quick recommendation, I was able to see Ernest Cline here in Columbus doing a book signing. Eeeee!

He answered questions and got very animated with the hand gestures. He definitely struck me as the type of guy who would get really excited about finding some lost episode of an 80′s cartoon.

At one point he said that when he was describing the evil corporate headquarters that are in the middle of Columbus (in his book) he was totally thinking about Nationwide. I found this even more funny since I was sitting in a ‘dudes who work at Nationwide’ sandwich at the time. Mostly because I think they’d agree- giant buildings that dominate downtown and they sell insurance? I’ll bet they have a department that’s completely just guys with mustaches tying ladies to train tracks.

But yeah, I’m recommending this book to everyone and their mother. Because even though I didn’t really care about some of the main 80′s things he focused on (I want to stress this- I really don’t give two shits about Rush), I still loved the book.

Plus…

Ernest Cline also collects 80′s memorabilia, which he is taking with him on his book tour and he totally lets people play with it. There was even a proton pack from the Ghostbusters just chilling in his passenger seat. The passenger seat of what else–

But a ghostbusting knight riding back to the future DeLorean.

Which I totally sat in but man, that thing is low to the ground and small. I didn’t want to sit all the way in it for two reasons. One- I might never get out of the thing, it’s like a pit. Two- he left it on and playing Huey Lewis and the News and I thought… if I really sit in this I’d definitely feel the need to look at John and say “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.” Then you’d all see me on the evening news being pulled over in what would seriously be the most stupid car heist in history. Because it’s not a Honda Civic, stealing a DeLorean means the police are actually obligated to throw your ass in jail.

That’s the laundry hole. I looked at that area and was like… ugh. This does not inspire me to do laundry. But I didn’t have a plan so I didn’t say anything about it.

Luckily, my dad took one look at all the miscellaneous boards and props the old owner had used for her washer and dryer and was like, “Oh Linds, we can do so much better.”

Yay Team Dad! His initial idea was to just make a frame and put some plywood on top of it. But then when we went to the hardware store John was like, let’s make a deck so that it’ll look nicer than some plywood on the top there. Not one to argue with nicer I said, sure thing.

Dad brought over the chop saw and we got to work. Which I couldn’t take any pictures of myself helping but imagine me getting in the way as much as possible. Also, picture me getting a metal splinter from the screws because I’m terrible at using a drill.

We framed it out. Then laid two boards on the top to know what depth to put the braces. We secured the back of the frame to the wall with tapcons but they were too short on the ends since the wall isn’t perfectly flat. In fact, the wall is wonky and the floor had a huge bump running along the back wall. So a deck was pretty necessary.

Once we had the braces all in place, we took the boards off and relaid them, screwed them into place and were good to go.

Well, Dad did put a bunch of little legs on the braces to make super sure everything was secure. Then he nailed the wires that were hanging low up so I wouldn’t get decapitated by them. Such a sweet gesture.

When we went to get the longer tapcons we also looked at getting a new light since the bulb was basically in both of our faces the whole time we were making the laundry deck. I ended up getting a halogen light fixture that can hang up between the rafters. It’s great since now both of the corners are illuminated and less spooky looking.

We took all of the legs down on the washer and dryer and put them up on the deck. They were both level right away, we didn’t have to do any sort of adjusting to get them to sit flat. Which I was super impressed by. I’ve never had that, even in our old apartment in Dublin.

This was where we finished on Saturday. It already looks different but I just wanted to show you what we got done in a day. Yesterday my dad brought over a light cap and we took the light bulb out, so it’s no longer hanging there getting in peoples faces. Plus it turned the bulb into an outlet, giving us one more outlet in the basement which is always nice. I vacuumed up all the crap that was on the ground and put my clothes rack in the corner to hang stuff up on. But yeah, you get the general idea. We saw a few boards and miscellaneous debris hanging out on the ground and made it into a super fly laundry deck area that I’m actually happy about doing laundry at.

Here are a few Dad stories: he said that I needed to place an ad for a midget DJ for my laundry disco. He also called every support board that he had to toenail into place a piece of shit. So it’s pretty safe to say that I love doing projects with him.

Feedback is appreciated!