you're it!

This morning Saun tagged me with this Song Meme:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

Care to play along? Consider yourself tagged (Kristy!).

Here are my songs:

1. "Tyrone," by Erykah Badu. I think this song will eternally be on my list.
2. "Everything is Everything," by Phoenix. Esotic the personal music faerie sent it over yesterday and I've been thoroughly enjoying it.
3. "Hot Topic," by LeTigre, which I randomly pulled out for fun the other night while knitting and had a little stroll down girlpunk memory lane.
4. "Peter Gun" (Max Sedgley Mix) by Sarah Vaughan on the Verve Remix Vol. 3.
5. "Extraordinary Machine," by Fiona Apple - the title track from her new-ish album.
   
6. "She Bop," (new acoustic version) by Cyndi Lauper.
   
7. "State Trooper," by Bruce Springsteen, or really anything on the Nebraska album.
   

So what are you listening to?

exciting discoveries

It has been an historic week. Archaeologists in Guatemala have uncovered the final section of a Mayan mural that dates to 100 BC. The mural describes the Mayan creation story and the divine right of kings. And a new study by a pair of American archaeologists reveals that two distinct groups of humans first settled the Americas more than 10,000 years ago, including Mongol peoples, as is commonly known, as well as people bearing strong genetic resemblance to Australian and sub-Saharan African peoples.

Add to these markers of human development two new milestones: I have made some discoveries of my own in the last week or so.

Discovery #1: Knitting in bed. I discovered this rare pleasure while enjoying another secret indulgence that many of you probably have been doing for ages: watching movies in bed. Ever since HWWLLB got a new laptop with a DVD-player in it and we joined the beloved Netflix, our lives have been transformed. We watch movies together! This never used to happen, because we'd go to the video store and endlessly hand each other suggested movies that the other person wouldn't watch for $100, let alone pay $3.99 to rent. Not anymore! Now we just punch in our choices and let the postal service handle the rest. And we get to watch them in bed, where it's warm and we can snuggle and the cat is happy and quiet! Don't like the movie? Eh, just roll over and go to sleep. There's another one in the mail.

So one night I just wasn't that into the movie, and naturally, I picked up my knitting, and SHAZAM! A new passion struck. Knitting in my PJs, propped up with a big pillow, in my own warm and comfy bed. Oh, bliss! Oh, heaven! I'm not going to mention how much this has cut into my reading-in-bed time... did I mention the yarn? Warm fuzzy yarn in bed? Is this getting too Freudian? Okay, moving on to...

Discovery #2! Shower spray! I swear Target didn't pay me to write this, though maybe they should, but I was over there last week perusing the aisles on behalf of a cute shivering kid in Sampson county, and discovered this wonder product. Okay, it's scented with ylang-ylang, which has never been my favorite smell, but do you know what this stuff does??? Apparently it cleans your shower for you while you sleep!

If you have ever been to my house, you surely have noticed that I hate cleaning the bathroom. HATE! And as for HWWLLB, well, he's just philosophically opposed to wasting his time with a scrub-brush (and who can blame him?). So my bathroom is pretty scuzzy, but no part so scuzzy as the shower, which has mold in it that grew during the Clinton administration (sigh!). Anyhow, what you do with this stuff is you finish your shower, scrape off the water droplets with a squeegee (probably optional but I'm not taking chances here) and then you mist on the ylang-ylang, all over the shower walls. And you don't ever have to clean the shower again, because there are little tiny nano-elves in the ylang-ylang who will clean it for you! Holy crap! Where has this product been all my life???

The bottle says that if your shower is dirty (hoo, boy!), it may take 3 or 4 weeks to see results. Well, I'll tell you, it's taken months and months to see the results of our neglect, so I think I can handle the wait. I was thinking of taking a "before" picture, you know, so that in 4 weeks I can pair it next to a gleaming shower in the "after" picture, but I was just too ashamed. My mom could be reading this. I can't wait to see what happens... this might be even better than the magic eraser.

Okay, there are some readers out there who, like me, are extremely suspicious of all wonder-products and the better-living-through-cancer that they peddle. One of the reasons I hate hate HATE cleaning is that I hate the burning throat, itchy skin and tight wheezy chest that most cleaners induce in me. So I dutifully mix up my own cleansers with baking soda, vinegar and soap but I'm not just anti-chemicals, I'm also damned lazy, at least about cleaning. But here's the beauty part about the magic-nano-ylang-ylang-showerspray: it's non-toxic! Well, at least on the label it claims to be. Who can know for sure, since they don't list out the ingredients really, they just hint at them? But so far, no itchy wheezy burny, just the annoying scent of ylang-ylang, and maybe ylang-ylang is becoming my new favorite scent. It's certainly my new favorite word.

Someone who doesn't work for Target please write in and tell me that the showerspray and the magic eraser are totally non-toxic and guaranteed not to cause birth defects and brain cancer, thank you.

from our intrepid knitter on the street

Dateline: my house. The subject: Er, you know, what I'm knitting and related hard-hitting news.

Over the weekend I made a beret, an Xmas gift for my friend's adorable little curly-headed daughter. Excuse, me, I meant to say, a Tam. (Tam? Who, outside of Ireland and knitting books, would call a beret a "tam," I ask you? Maybe it's one of those anti-French terms, like Freedom Fries. PatrioTams. I like it). Anyhow, if you've never made a beret, er, PatrioTam, I suggest you try it. They are fun and easy, and stylish, in a French/Celtic fusion sort of way. This one's made from Bingo Chiné and is going to look ridiculously cute on this kid, if my predictions hold.


looks cute on my keyboard.

Friday night I stayed up waaaay past bedtime finishing my last contribution for the Stitch & Bitch charity fashion show/auction thing. I had finished up all my contributions weeks ago, like the little overachiever that I am, but last week I got an attack of fashion show anxiety (shared by Saun), based on my fear that a big mess of rich southern ladies would show up, checkbooks in hand, and find the whole evening utterly lacking in high-end items to purchase. So I ran out to the LYS and picked up a bunch of Lamb's Pride bulky to make my high-end item, which I call the not-a-mink stole, a.k.a. capelet, a.k.a. wrap thing. It has mostly assuaged my fears of rich ladies not giving us their money, but whoever shells out for this thing is going to go home covered in shedded mohair. But hey, it will say 15% mohair right on the tag, so I can hardly be blamed for their misfortunes. Right?


the capelet in progress, around midnight friday.

It felt so good to finish that puppy, though I am still looking for the perfect vintage rhinestone brooch to use as its closure. It's going to be hard to give up when I do, even if it does shed like prom dress after a bottle of Boone's Farm. But enough about prom dresses and my knitting, because there were many exciting developments in other people's knitting at SnB last week that I am just now getting around to telling you about. Last week we were graced with a new knitter, who has recently completed the World's Longest Scarf. Well, maybe not longest EVER, but certainly the longest I've seen in a while. See, she learned how to knit a long time ago, like years maybe, and she's been knitting and knitting this scarf ever since, but nobody every taught her to cast off! And so the scarf grew... But Wednesday night we put a stop to her labor pains, and Sarah's scarf is now completely birthed.


the proud mama of a freakishly long, yet lovely, scarf.

I am so proud to have been connected to Sarah's accomplishment, if only because I was sitting across the table from her when it happened. I am also tremendously proud to have been connected with Mindy's baby cardigan, which she finished up at SnB last week (by connected, I mean that I pulled my cat out of her yarn bag once while she was knitting it). It's her first non-scarf project. Way to go Mindy!


daisies and giant teacups make me happy!

I'm thinking that maybe the fashion show needs a couple more down-market contributions. What about a red white & blue his n' hers set of PatrioTams? Just in time for holiday gift-giving?

sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

Dang, it's been a while. Sorry, y'all! I got busy.

Mostly I've been busy shopping for a little boy I've never met, because my mom is on a mission to feed and clothe all the first-graders of Sampson county, North Carolina. Well, one classroom of them, anyhow. She has a friend who has a friend who teaches first grade, and every single kid in her class qualifies for free lunch (meaning their families are of extremely, ahem, reduced circumstances).

So my mom called me the other day and asked me to adopt one of her kids. He's got these skinny little stick arms, she says, and he needs EVERYTHING. Everything? I asked. Yes, she said, they come to school in the winter with no socks on, no warm clothes, no underwear. So I agreed, and sis agreed, and we set out to brave the crowds at Target. Buying this kid a wardrobe of warm clothes felt pretty good, I have to say. I really enjoyed trying to pick out stuff that a first-grader would think was cool. The best thing I got him was a big fleecy sweatshirt with this subtle but awesome flaming basketball shooting down one of the sleeves. It rocked - I kind of wished they had one in my size. Sis bought out the art supplies department so that each of the kids in the class could get something fun in their gift bag.

So Saturday my mom shows up in town to do some Xmas shopping and she's all fired up because her little project got a $100 donation. Wow, she thought, 100 clams! She could buy some shoes or toys or something for those kids. So she calls the teacher, who says, you know, none of these kids has a winter coat, and she's required to send them all outside for recess every day. They come back inside turning blue. What they really need are coats. Coats it is!

At that point my mom underwent a transformation into a single-minded fundraiser of ambitions that would put Jerry Lewis to shame. How much can we get 18 coats for? She settles on 25 bucks a coat and starts the fundraiser's equivalent of drunk-dialing everyone in her cell phone. She wrangles another $100 out of her sister, $30 out of HWWLLB and $20 out of one of my sister's friends. During this charitable frenzy, we're dining at a local salad bar (power lunch) and some friends of mine walk in. "You know them?" my mom asks. "Uh, yes." "Well, go ask them for some money!" So I do, and they empty their pockets. Another $20. My mom is still maniacally dialing as we drag her out the door and head off to a local shopping emporium.


mom and sis doing inventory. i know you noticed the little knit flower on her lapel. i'm not going to tell you who knit it (cough - me - cough).

In the end we spent 3 hours and a few hundred dollars, and scored a new coat for every kid in the class. Piled like pack animals with enormous bundles of nylon and polar fleece, we trudged through lines of hungry-looking shoppers waiting to purchase tokens for all the deserving and undeserving kids on their own lists.


the booty.

This story has several possible happy endings, but the one that I'm most excited about was my parents saying to sis and me, let's not buy each other presents anymore. Let's just do what we can for people who really need it. We can each make each other something small if we want to. YES!!!!!!!!!! Now if we could just convince the grandparents, aunts and uncles, in-laws and cousins to go along with our plan, we'd be in business. And I'd only have to shop for deserving first-graders from now on.

greetings from japan!

Apparently some of you are lurking out there, never leaving comments. Never leaving a trace, like the careless wind. What I want to know is, are you for real?

But hey, I'd rather get a real postcard in the mail than a virtual comment on a blog ANY DAY. So, thanks Jay-sun! It was lovely to receive a postcard from far away, and funny that it contained about a week's worth of blog comments, written in a spiral so that you had to turn the card 17 times to read it.


a postcard for me!

Jay-sun writes that perhaps I have been knitting my wrists off. As a matter of fact, I've been a little worried about that. My little spandex wrist-support doohickey is looking the worse for wear. Ick!

That's because I've been wearing it ALL THE TIME, because I can't stop knitting except to poop, shower and go to work. Yesterday my co-worker BK lent me her car to race home and get my knitting, when I realized that we were about to get on a 2-hour conference call and I didn't have it with me. I can't face conference calls anymore without knitting. BK was smart - she had remembered hers. She is making a pair of amazing brioche stitch fingerless gloves. They are hot stuff! Anyhow, I made it back just in time for the conference call, capelet-in-progress in tow. And thank goodness, because it was fairly boring, as conference calls go.

All the marathon knitting is taking its toll, though. My wrist problems really began about 8 months ago when the keyboard on my laptop died and instead of getting it fixed, I plugged in a cheapie peripheral keyboard, which was bad and evil and after a few months the wrist pain began. So I got the doohickey. And it helped. And I got my keyboard fixed, and shazam! all better. Then I went to this conference in Buffalo, where I knitted NON-STOP through 4 days of marathon meetings, and by the time I got home... ouch. Ouch! It hurts! But you can't stop me from knitting, Christmas is just 19 days away for crying out loud! So don't try. Thank you.

And now a plea... does anyone miraculously have a bit of this self-striping sock yarn hanging out in their stash?



It's Strapaz Norweger Ringel, made by Steinbach Wolle. Ach, ich bin so dumm! Two weeks ago we happened to be passing through Greensboro NC, where one of HWWLLB's favorite quilting stores is located, and they just happen to sell yarn there, and they just happened to be having a 50% off all yarn sale, and I just happened to throw ONE SINGLE BALL of this sock yarn in my bag, and I just happened to knit a sock and a half with it before running out. And I love it! Look at the beeyooteeful fair isle fake stripes! So sweet and so easy, and so not available in Raleigh. Ugh. How I hate to buy a full-price ($10!) ball of this stuff and pay $5 shipping just to finish a couple inches of toe. And yet... that appears to be my fate. I violated the inviolable rule of buying enough damn yarn to finish the project. It's almost as bad as not gauge swatching.

high anxiety

Poor Simon his losing his marbles over having Jackie in the house. Now that she's all healed and getting stronger, he is SO worried that she's going to usurp his place as our #1 noodge and snuggle-buddy. On the one hand, he seems downright happy to have a new friend. They actually touched noses in the kitchen the other day. We went away for the weekend, as we are wont to do, and upon our return he was much calmer and much less clingy than he usually is after we've been away. My sister, our dedicated and long-suffering cat sitter, reports that he acted much less nutty than usual while she was visiting, and we all feel like we ought to give the credit to Jackie.


look! just 18 inches apart!

On the other hand... he's going batty. Last night Simon broke his second food dish in a week. As you surely know, food dishes are sacred objects. But Simon has been so worried about protecting his dish from Jackie the Night Food Marauder - and rightly so - that in his fervor to scrape every item on my desk over the food to hide it (receipts, bicycle headlight, jar of mod podge, knitting magazine, small ganesha statue), he goes a bit overboard, and whoops! His darling dish falls the floor and smashes into many pieces. His food is up on my desk in the first place because Jackie will eat anything she can get near, and her hind legs aren't strong enough to jump up there (see previous post on grievous injuries). Though I think that last night she actually pushed my desk chair out enough to jump from there to the desk. That cat still thinks she could go back to living on the streets at any moment, and she's not taking any chances on missing a meal.

But WHY Simon, why break your own food dish, fool? The first one he broke was no real loss, just a vintage thrift store crystal candy dish that made him look stylish while eating. HWWLLB warned me against this (repeatedly), but as the replacement I used Simon's treat dish, which was a gift from Miss Bugheart, a very funky and wonderful and not-highly-replaceable item from Kri Kri pottery, and, well.... I found it smashed on the floor in many pieces this morning. Unglueable. (I hope Miss Bugheart isn't reading this). You will notice that Simon is now eating from a plastic take-out container, which isn't terribly stylish, and that's the way it's going to have to be, because he's too messed up to handle having nice things. Look at the dazed look in his eyes. He's not even enjoying his food, he's just mechanically chewing and swallowing and worrying himself sick over Jackie's next plan of attack.


the depressing evidence.

As further evidence of Simon's nervous breakdown, I could cite how on Friday night while Mindy and I were having a little mini Stitch & Bitch in the living room, he managed to tangle himself desperately in her yarn while attacking my arm, and nearly pulled out all the stitches she had just picked up (for the first time EVER!) on the neck of the baby sweater she's knitting, or how he keeps shadow boxing with himself, or how he gets up three or four times a night to check on his food dish, but then I'd feel like I was just telling stories on him, and that would be rude.

(In case you were wondering how I managed to spell 'grievous' correctly with apparently no effort at all, I'll tell you my secret: the Biggest Viewable Dictionary on the 'Net)

And by the way, for those of you who commented that Jackie looks like she's getting a little, well, rotund, you're right! That cat is eating every crumb she can steal, and her tummy is round and hard and it bounces when she runs! Maybe we could get some sort of alarm installed on Simon's dish (that would make him less nervous, right?)

beyond the scarf

At stitch & bitch last night the excitement was all about Robyn's floppy hat. She's going to felt it, and it's going to be SO COOL. This was exciting because, 1. we all lead fairly boring lives, and 2. this is Robyn's first non-scarf project!

Look! It's Robyn! And she's not knitting a scarf!

Oh, sigh, I remember those days so fondly! My first hat... it was one of those Ann Norling fruit hats, which I now find rather trite but at the time I thought it was genius. A hat that makes the baby look like a pumpkin - astounding! I knitted it as a baby gift for my college roommate, who has the cutest little girl on earth (besides my other college friend and HER cute little girl, who is tied for first place cuteness with my roommate's daughter. Hi Violet!), and she grew into it just in time for her first Halloween. SO F*ing CUTE! Anyhow I thought that was quite an accomplishment because not only did I learn to knit in the round AND learn to decrease in the same project, but I also had to use two colors of yarn (shudder).

Well, along comes Robyn and her floppy hat! Girlfriend is knitting in the round, increasing, decreasing, using two yarns at once and felting, all for the first time, all in one project - you GO Robyn! I am impressed. Of course we are all outdone by esotic who is knitting a hat as his first project EVER and it's coming out perfect, but whatever. We have ovaries and he doesn't. So there.