The way the world ends…

We just watched Southland Tales.

Personally I feel compelled to watch anything related to Cheri Oteri. (Yeah… Cheri Oteri- it definitely has nothing to do with me listening to Futuresex/Lovesounds right now and my love for JT’s sweet sweet ‘fro. You can’t make me forget the ‘fro JT!) Okay, you caught me, I’m also weak for The Rock.

Dang it Dwayne! You are a pimp.

Also, I really don’t recommend this movie for sane people. Or people who laugh at appropriate things. Because I’ll tell you, I was rolling with laughter and John just sat there deadpan. Stoic. I’m telling you, mountains move more than he did during the whole movie. In the end, I really can’t tell you anything funny about the movie.

Something that is funny though…

*beep beep Ritchie!*

I took some pictures of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade that we’re apparently really proud of around here. Toots there actually goes to John’s church.

What have I been up to knitting-wise?

Oh Baldy.

I pulled Baldy out the other day and finished him up… except for the eyes. I have big googly eyes but they just don’t look right! I can’t figure out what I’m going to do with him. So right now he’s sitting on the computer that John (and I) built trying to stare me down to finish him. Man, I’m glad I only gave that turtle so much power over me.

I threw these on the needles the other day:

Oh, how did the cupcake get there? Guess I better eat it.

They’ll probably get set aside for my new project though… more about that in the next post!

The Duality of Man

I just watched Full Metal Jacket for the first time the other day. Surprisingly, I’ve seen all of those Vietnam war movies… Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, Platoon. So John was pretty horrified when I told him I hadn’t seen Full Metal Jacket since it’s THE Vietnam movie OMGWTFBBQ.

We’re having people over to our place now that we’re respectable, with places to sit, things to set things on… and honestly I just want to show people my washer and dryer because I am ridiculously giddy about them still. Picture it like a game show… only you don’t win anything, you just get to look at the stuff. (So basically a pretty lame game show. A lame show.)

Cath’s cat Poo is the sechsie model for this picture. I freakin LOVE this cat!

This is the new project I started on, a pair of socks for Granma. Cookie A.’s Hedera… While I know that everyone is crazy about her Monkeys, I thought Granma would appreciate some lace in her life, since that’s our theme lately. BTW, I’m excited for the spring shawl suprise to start up. Although I’m a little worried about the lack of written instructions. Hmmm.

Oh yeah and I’m knitting those in some delicious Lorna’s Laces:

40% off baby!

I got the yarn and sent Granma some in ‘grapevine’ and forgot to take some pictures! So hopefully I’ll get to see the socks she makes out of it and can get a picture sometime. Apparently she has some sort of pattern that curves or something, so you do it differently for left and right feet. Leave it to her to find the crazy patterns.

Have you guys noticed that I have a problem? There haven’t been any FO’s in the past month and every other post I’m casting on for some new project or another. I’m getting too distracted by everything. I hope I can calm down and focus on stuff soon. In the meantime, I set up a thing in my closet for my yarn because I’m tired of it getting tangled in that bucket.

Which brings me to my next question/thing I wonder about… do most people who knit have a desire to collect things?

PS: He loved the blanket

He also loved the game my mom got him for Christmas. In the video he’s playing it with Jimmy. (Which I need to add that I think it’s adorable that Cath and Jimmy are married and both have blogs. TechnoMarrieds.)

Man, these blog entries just keep getting less and less cohesive and more and more wait- what?

Wouldn’t you vote for him?

I wish it were June 2008 already! (That’s when Dark Knight comes out.)

Well guys, I didn’t even know I was on the wagon until I fell off of it:

Now you know what I was doing the day after Thanksgiving. Temptations is having some sort of a yarn sale… I don’t know, it’s all a little blurry. I just remember thinking: “don’t I have some sort of rule about not buying yarn without knowing specifically what I’m going to use it for” and then telling myself to shut up, stop being a goody goody and I think I grabbed some yarn and rubbed it all over my face. Yeah, I was a mad woman.

Anyways, I hope this Karabella stuff is nice because I got some of it. I also got a yarn that’s called Snuggly. Just because how adorable is that? Snuggly.

I mean, I’m all for not judging books by their covers and whatever but would you buy a yarn called “prickly” or “hives”? Lets not kid ourselves here.

My SWF sweater is coming along nicely:

(Sorry about the dorky picture.)

Only I’m having some doubting issues… See, I went down a needle size after the collar and then it was also looking pretty big, so I went down to the size small instead of the medium. Now I’m thinking I might’ve made a mistake, which is why I tried it on in the first place. However, it fits really well. It’s just, what happens when I wash it and it shrinks to the size of a walnut? That wouldn’t be cool. Although I’ll have a very fashionable walnut.

Opinions? Advice? I’ve never worked with cotton before and my garment knowledge is limited. However, it is 50% acrylic, which makes me think I shouldn’t worry too much.

Also, remember Thanksgiving? Because I’m still recovering from going to so many this year. Plus, it seems like all the stores wanted us to forget about Thanksgiving before it had even happened.

Mom not doing our signature pose.
the signature pose.

Angel setting up dinner.

Granma’s homemade noodles.
Dad and demon Shadow hound.

It was pretty crazy this year. By the last one I was so worn out I didn’t even take my camera to get pictures, which is funny as it was the most eventful of the Thanksgivings we went to. It was at my PILs (parents-in-law, hahaha) and after dinner we all went out and raked their neighbors yard because he has some sort of condition with one of this feet that requires him to wear a special boot or something. (We also got roped into raking his neighbors yard who has a broken arm or something- I’m telling ya, don’t move to this neighborhood!) Then the menfolk went to some house to get some measurements to build a wheelchair ramp for somebody. Then my husband and his brother: R1 and R4, got all burly and manlike and chopped some wood.

No joke.

It seems like I make up stories about his family but they’re Methodists, which I feel explains a lot of it.

Why have I been such a lazy biatch lately….?

Oh yeah, that’s right, because of:

Super Mario Galaxy!!!

Plus there’s other life stuff going on. Silly life. Which I’m sure everyone knows about since I’m terrible about email. People ask me a simple question, like “what’s up” and get back a ten page diary about everything. Isn’t that terrible? It’s like, er, thanks.

Anyways, I don’t know about y’all but my attention span has been shot. If something doesn’t have at least one picture now I start to get antsy. Here’s a picture of my shithead cat:

That’s how she lures you. She lets you take a really nice picture of her, acts all nice and cuddly then BAM, cat puke in the middle of the hall at night. Yick.

Also, it was R4′s birthday the other day (a while ago), so I took some pictures of that. Although, I’ve got to be honest, it’s ridiculously hard to get a picture of R4 where he doesn’t look stoned.

I like this one best because he’s in the family stance: smiling and laughing while also subtly threatening you with a fork. He mentally turned 9, however he’s technically 16 now. Geez. That’s scary. Both him and my stepsister are now 16, they were born on the same day. Friggin creepy to me. What happens when they turn 21? Will I just poof out of existence in a cloud of dust?

Also, I promised you knitting. I’m glad I didn’t promise any specific quality of knitting. Whew!

This is the glove I’m knitting for my MIL. It’s still weird to me that I have a MIL but that’s a different story for another time. These gloves… well, they’re a labor of love. Mostly because of the ridiculous amount of stitch holders I needed for… well everything. I still need to knit the cap and put on the button and blah blah blah before this one is every done. They’re pretty easy to make (once you understand what the hell the pattern wants, don’t think just do) it’s just tedious. I mean. Joyful. Hopefully she’ll put them on and experience all the joy I have had making them. Or to paraphrase Garth: I just hope she doesn’t think they suck.

This is my newest project… Okay guys, it’s story time. Hopefully you already know what my stories are like, so brace yourself. I’m calling this my SWF Sweater. Why? Because I totally got all Single White Female on some poor lady without even realizing I was doing it! That’s how freaking creepy I am. I was on ravelry, checking out what my friends were working on and I love everything this one girl does. LOVE. I saw that she was making this really cool sweater, so I was like, alright! a sweater. Because I’ve been in a serious sweater mood since it got cold. I mean, it’s snowing outside people. Or at least it was an hour ago.

Well, if you’ve talked to me lately you might be wondering why I’m not doing the Simple Knitted Bodice and that’s because of a very ‘me’ excuse, which is that the yarn for that will be hella expensive. Even if I sub out what they call for and get Knit Picks instead. However, this sweater, you can sub out and use some Cotton Ease. Hells yeah! So, I’m going through Ravelry, looking at everyone’s tree jacket. Seeing if Cotton Ease really is a good yarn to use, since my last sweater had yarn substitution “issues“. Well, I saw that even the designers are making one out of it and if it’s good enough for the designers of the pattern, it’s sure good enough for me.

So, we run down to JoAnn’s and yes! they have the yarn I want. However, they have some really wonky colors. They also only have random stray balls of the wonky colors. Except for this one color that my husband seemed to like as he was loading it up and walking away with it before I could even check if it was the right dye lot. (Did he like it or just want to get out of the store ASAP? You be the judge on that one.)

I get home and start knitting. Feeling pretty awesome. I swatch (which I’m going to admit, to everyone’s horror- I usually don’t do) and find out that my needles are too small, so I move up a size and it’s right but the fabric looks really weird. So I’m like, cool, I’ll use the big needles, then switch to the smaller ones for the body. (Okay, this is a really boring story so far and kind of knitting slang heavy but I swear we’re almost there.)

Something clicks in my brain. Wait a second, this all sounds familiar. So I go back and check the person who originally inspired me to do this sweater and I freak out. Not only am I knitting this sweater in the same yarn, it’s the same color. Not only is it the same color, but she also swatched, got gauge on the same size I did but liked the smaller size better so is switching them out at the body.

Oh geez, I’m subconsciously creepy, which is probably worse than being ‘just creepy.’