11.29.06
Testing Things Out
This is a photo test (bear with me folks).
So I can still post photos from my Flickr account, hmmm . . .
11.28.06
Knit or Go Home
Weird - I was able to receive comments from spam. I tried to test the comments section and it didn’t work. This makes no sense.
But back to the important stuff - Knit-a-thon on Gilmore Girls tonight! Wish I had known about that because I would have flown out to Cali to try and get the chance to be an extra on this episode. I could have sat on a bale of hay, knitting away, although it looked like everyone was knitting English style and I knit Continental. Everyone was wearing cute hand-knitted sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves or mittens, covering their laps with knitted throws, carrying cute hand-knitted bags. Who knitted all those items?!?!
I just checked out the message board on the CWTV site and everyone wants to buy Lorelei’s t-shirt (skull and knitting needles with the quote “Knit or Go Home”). Did a quick search and didn’t find it but here are lots of t-shirts with knitted designs.
11.25.06
Some Good Things
- Medical procedure - the preparation for it was horrible (if you know what HalfLytely is, you know what happened!) but now it’s over and done with. Results to follow . . .
- Thanksgiving - my honey and I cooked a successful turkey dinner with all the trimmings for his mom and stepdad. Considering we woke up late and the turkey was done sooner than I expected, I’m really proud of how well we did. I highly recommend this turkey recipe if you’re looking for something different next year.
- Roof - it has been repaired! The ceiling still needs to be addressed but at least I don’t have to worry about water dripping in my apartment.
- The Blog - still needs to be worked on, sigh!
- Knitting - still need to buy more yarn for the cropped cardi (thank you KB@W for all your work on finding the web links for me!) but
- Spinning - picked up my spindle during the Thanksgiving weekend to continue spinning my cashmere fiber.
Slowly but surely getting back on track - phew!
11.16.06
A Steady Rain
Still raining, still no repairs to my roof and ceiling. Also still looking into fixing my blog. Tried deleting some e-mails from my ftp files to see if it would free up space on my server for comments and photos - no luck. Need to figure out how to delete photos - hoping that will help. My apartment is a mess AND I have this medical procedure (it’s what is considered “standard” but that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it) I have to get ready for at the beginning of next week. Then after that, Thanksgiving! I feel like I’m running down a steep hill chasing after a ball of yarn that’s unraveling.
11.12.06
It Has Not Been a Good Week
It all started early Wednesday morning, around 6:30 a.m. It was raining. The cat and I heard a strange sound that woke us up, a sort of crackling sound. It turns out it was the sound of water dripping out of my ceiling onto a plastic wrapped item in my kitchen.
If you remember, we received 3.6 inches of rain that day. I think my kitchen received at least 6 inces of rain inside! The one good thing about this disaster is I was home for it. I moved everything off my hutch / counter and as the day wore on, I covered furniture with plastic and had old towels on hand. I started with one bucket but by the end of the night I had four buckets placed in my kitchen to catch drips.
The rain did stop by Thursday morning, but the water falling out of ceiling did not. I figured I could go to work for about five hours before the buckets over flowed. It was funny how the excess water came down. Silence, then all of a sudden pouring water, silence, then more water again. I had this theory that the water came down when the subway (it’s about a block away) went by - the vibrations of the train sent the water pouring out of my kitchen ceiling.
My kitchen is in shambles, not because anything is damaged but because things are moved and piled up throughout the apartment. I hate it when my house is out of order. It really puts me in a bad mood. My microwave is on the floor next to the couch, of all things! What a frustrating situation.
Today, it’s raining again. The landlord must have done some type of temporary patch up there because my ceiling is not dripping, thankfully. Roof repairs are supposed to happen this Tuesday and my ceiling is supposed to be looked at.
The next annoyance: upgrading Wordpress has affected other things on my blog - no comments, can’t access my other pages, and I just tried to upload a picture of my damaged kitchen on this blog, and I CAN’T! Sorry folks, I’ll have to look into this and get it resolved.
And to top if off, I RAN OUT OF YARN!!!! on my cropped cardi!!!! GRRR!!! (First, in my defense, I calculated the yardage and everything and I thought I had more than enough.) I was in denial as I knitted the body. I knew I was not going to have enough yarn but I kept going anyway. I was careful to use every last millimetre of yarn, no wasting, but to no avail. As I finished the body last night, I very quietly put it away in its the bag and walked away from it. I think I had this fantasy that some type of magical procreation would happen in the night ,and I would wake up to miraculously find two balls for the sleeves in the bag. Didn’t happen. Now I am on a search for Zara by Filatura di Crosa, color 1706, dye lot 90.
But for now, what to do? I need to do something with my hands. A time honored solution is available - eat, eat chocolate.
11.09.06
A Whole New Look
I’ve been upgraded (TY Becky) . . . it’s like moving from bacon to proscuitto . . . from pre-wrapped sliced cheese to imported Spanish manchego . . . . . . from button mushrooms to porcini mushrooms . . . how about this one: from bargain basket acrylic to an alpaca & silk blend yarn!
11.08.06
L.A. Weekend ~ L.A. Baby Cardi
Besides knitting on my cropped cardi, I delivered in person the L.A. Baby Cardi.
This is Mathilda, the very special recipient.
Isn’t she beautiful? I can’t wait to see how the cardi will look on her.
Specs:
- Seamless Yoked Sweater by Carole Barenys. The free pattern can be found at http://knitting.about.com/library/nbabyswe9.htm
- Yarn is a silk/cotton blend (no label) from School Products
- #5 Addi Turbos needles for the body and #5 Brittany double-pointed for the sleeves
- Buttons from City Quilter
- Changes/Observations: The decorative stitch around the yoke, cardi edging and sleeve edging is different from the pattern. I accidentally did it backwards, slipping as if to knit than to purl, but I liked it so it stayed. I made the cardi short-sleeved because she does live in southern Cali. Finally, although I used needles the same size, you can see the change in gauge from the body to the sleeve. Not sure why that happened; I thought I was knitting the sleeve loosely.
I also went on a date! This is very exciting for me to actually go out with my honey considering our busy, crazy lives. He took me to see Jodi Long in Surfing DNA at the East West Players and for dinner we discovered a fantastic noodle shop in Little Tokyo.
This is like upgraded ramen. The broth was savory, the pork tender - a very satisfying meal! The restaurant is set up like a diner and it had these retro post-war advertisements on the walls.
And look who to got meet a rock and roll legend! It’s all soooo very L.A.!