Cathay... DONE! :D

I finally finished my Cathay top! woo hoo! Here is a really awful pic of it all blocked up...

Here is what the color actually looks like (mostly)


The gals at knitting last night got a preview of it actually on me & can testify that it fits! Whee!

So, what's next you may ask. Well, evidently I have gone insane. Here's why...
Isn't that gorgeous?! (not the model, the sweater!) Its Stornoway from Fisherman's Sweaters by Alice Starmore. I saw this & fell in love! I must make this for my daddy! Must Must Must. So what's the problem you may ask, well I'll tell ya.. its knit on Size 2 needles.. that's US not UK.. Size 2! Ya know, what ya make socks with! eek! Well, since I am insane, I am going to do it and I am very optimistically planning to finish it in time for xmas.

But ya know, insanity runs in my family...

That's me, my sis & my mom circa 1976. Me & sis are in matching ponchos & matching pink dresses (i'm the one with the blinding white hair). Somewhere lurking out there is a pic of us in matching red, white, & blue ponchos for the bicentenial (shudder). Yep, mom's a loonie! :) Love her!

And just because there hasn't been any pussy on this blog in awhile...

behold Bailey & her amazing bald belly

Not much. You?

Finally finished The Historian. Fun read, though probably not for everyone. It tends to read somewhat like a travel log, so it drags in bits & there are some plot things that bug me, but overall I enjoyed it. Now I need to hit the book store, Something Rotten is out in paperback & it is next on my list!

I decided to put sleeves on the Cathay top formerly known as the shapely tank. I have finished the first & am a few rows into the second. I am hoping to get it done tonight, but I don't really expect to. I am going to redo the edging around the neck as well. I initially did a sc around, but am not feeling it. But I tried it on & IT FITS! SQUEE! :p

a bit of silliness

You're Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen!
Which Classic Female Literary Character Are you?

brought to you by Quizilla

In knitting news, I have almost finished my Cathay Tank. I just have to finish 10 rows on the back, block & seam it. It looks like I am going to have over a skein left & will probably be modifying it into a Tee. The big question is, will it fit? This is actually the first top I have made for myself & I am very anxious about it.

I will of course post pics as soon as it is finished. :)

I'll Take Ann Arbor

In which I sing the praises of a town I have heretofore disliked...

Um, yeah, so... Ann Arbor is actually really cool. This is a big step for me. For as long as I can remember (and I'm talking since about 6 or 7 yrs old here) I have hated Michigan with a passion. My greatest ambition has been simply to leave the state! (and I haven't even managed that... sad really) But since moving into Ann Arbor 6 months ago, & especially since returning from NYC, I have found a love for this city (not the state though) I never knew I had in me.

I have always pictured myself as a big city kinda gal, but I don't think I am now. After a few days in New York I was more than ready to come home to my small city. I missed the relatively fresh air, the relative quite, & the TREES!

Ann Arbor really does have a lot going for it. It has culture, art, & music. It has some fantastic restaurants & indy movie houses. Where else do you have an entire town waiting for the next Faerie Door to pop up? (The new one has shown up at the Ark btw) It has a kick ass farmers market, zingerman's, a trader joe's And today... today I have discovered the glory that is Big 10 Market.

Now Big 10 was not an alien store to me. For years I have known it as the place to go for liquor & import beer. Not being a native townie I was completely unaware of the deli. For weeks I have read Kate's descriptions of the wonderful things she has gotten from them. Well today I went there. Oh. my. god. The fresh mozzarella.. the prosciutto.. the scharffenberger chocolates.. and the kicker? Coca-Cola in glass bottles! I ain't talkin no sissy mini bottles either. 12oz glass bottles of the Real Thing! They also had 7-up, Sprite, & Squirt in glass. Sure, they were all imported from Mexico & yeah, Coke is a crappy company politically speaking.. but DUDE! Do you remember what Coke tastes like from a glass bottle? It is so different! Sooo much better!

It takes me back to my childhood when my biggest worry was whether I had enough money for the slurpee & the space invaders machine!

So, Ann Arbor? Sorry about all those nasty things I said. I really do love you & I will try to treat you better in the future. I promise. Really. Trust me. ;)

(but I still want to move to Seattle)

Meme-athon

Feeling stressed & out of sorts from this SP issue. Needing to know I'm not a complete ass & brute. This certainly makes me feel better...


Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!
and this...


discover what candy you are @ quiz me

I'm a good person, I'm a good person, I'm a good person....

Thanks for the Help!

Thank you all for your great input on my SP situation. I have removed my previous post for the time being.. until the situation is resolved.

Knit Fest

Finally registered for classes & reserved a room for Knit Fest 2005! Denise & I are going to split a room on Friday & come home on Saturday. I registered for slip stitch knitting, cast-on, and color tips & tricks. That should give me plenty of time to drool in the marketplace. :) I can't wait!

Haven't done any knitting in like a week! I need to get them needles picked up!

In other news, pillaged this from Denise! I like this much better than the other sorting hat quiz I took, that one said I was a Squib! (hrmpf)

I'm a Gryffindor!

Damn Spammers!

Due to the aggressive spamming that has been going on lately I have been forced to disable anonymous posts. :(

In other news, Secret Pal 5 is almost over (thanks so much SP!) and Secret Pal 6 sign up has begun. The deadline is Sept. 3rd for all who are interested.

New York New York's A Wonderful Town (mostly)

Had a wonderful time in NYC this weekend. I will not bore you with a complete discription, but I will give a brief synoposis. :)

Friday we checked into our centrally located crap hotel. If you ever go to Manhattan, do yourself a favor & don't stay at the Park Central Hotel. Crap service, crap rooms w/outlets that didn't work! But it was only a block off Broadway & across the street from Carniege Hall.

Anywho, after checking into the craptel, we subwayed down to the fashion district so that I may indulge my yarn fetish at Habu. What a strange little shop, but oh what wonders lurk there! I ordered their sample packet, which should arrive in a few weeks. Since I was already buying something & was going to leave empty handed I simply had to find something else to tack onto the bill. :)


silk/steel blend

The yarn is actually much more brown in person, but this pic does show off the shimmer. Its 69% silk, 31% stainless steel. Very fine, laceweight yarn. Comes in 1/2oz. skeins (307 yds) for $9.10. I got 2 skeins, which I figured would be enough to make a lace shawl or shrug.. or at the very least a scarf! Now I just need to find or design the perfect pattern.

After yarn shopping we had a fabulous dinner & then went to see an excellent show.

The Pillowman is a limited run show at the Booth Theater, which is a very intimate theater. It stars Billy Crudup & Jeff Goldblum. My husband & I were blown away. Excellent script, fantastic acting! Its a very Kafka-esqe black comedy. I wish I could have got a better shot of the sign, but you can see the coolness here.

Saturday was spent wandering Midtown & Greenwich Village.

Sunday, my honey's b-day, we saw the movie The Aristocrats (very sick, but funny) and then saw a matinee of Spamalot!

Honey & I being silly

The show was a blast. Tim Curry played an excellent Tim Curry (as usual), David Hyde Pierce was wonderful, and Alan Tudyk (of Firefly fame) was fantabulous! Although the Lady of the Lake really stole the show. What an amazing voice! If you are a Monty Python fan you will love this play!

After that we had a phenomenal meal in Little Italy (prosciutto & melon, mmmm) & did some more wandering.

Sunday we wandered through Central Park.



That's about it. Had a great time, but certainly wouldn't want to live there. Too expensive, crowded, comercial, & polluted!

I will leave you with these two iconic images...

never got to the real things,
so here they are in legos :)

Knitting Buddy

Hey! I'm back. I will share everything about NYC later. What I really want to share right now is that my bestest friend in the whole world has just started knitting!! Yippie! And on top of that, she has started a knitting blog. Check her out at Tiny Knits & give her some love y'all!

Like I said, she is just starting out so she needs the encouragement! :)

For Your Amusement

No Knits to show you.. the humidity here has caused flare-ups in my left hand. :(

To keep you amused I offer these two items instead.

1. This is what happens when D & D gamers go too far! A thousand years of power, indeed.

2. Here you will find an open letter to the Kansas School Board in regards to teaching creationism. I think its bloody brilliant, especially the bit about pirates!

That's all for now. I leave tomorrow morning for a long weekend in NYC, where there will be much theater, eating, & drooling over yarn. I will be back on Tuesday, hopefully with some pics if my friggin camera cooperates! :)

I leave you with this...

here there be faeries

Its here! The silliest b-day present for my honey!

if you build it, they will come

This wonderful little door was created by the good people at House of Masque. Excellent customer service & great product. Go to them for all your faerie needs! ;) Oh, & btw- hubby loves it! He is busy trying to find the perfect spot for it right now!

In other news the new Knit Picks catalog just arrived. Totally thinking of getting a couple sample cards for those new fall yarns. I really want to fondle the "Ambrosia"!!

Crap I've got lots of reading to do... (reading meme)

Bold if you've read it.
Italicize if you've read part of it.
Underline if you want to read it.
Add a book, if you like


#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh T.S. Eliot.
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
#111 The Odyssey by Homer
#112 Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
#113 The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
#114 Sphere by Michael Crichton
#115 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
#116 Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn
#117 The Bacchae by Eurpides
#118 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
#119 Starseeker by Tim Bowler
#120 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
#121 Sabriel by Garth Nix
#122 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
#123 The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#124 The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
#125 Macbeth by William Shakespeare
#126 Othello by William Shakespeare
#127 Why I Am Not a Christian : And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell
#128 The Metamorphoses of Ovid
#129 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
#130 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
#131 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
#132 Empire Falls by Richard Russo
#133 Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
#134 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
#135 Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
#136Emma by Jane Austen
#137 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

OW! My Friggin EYES!

Um, yeah, ok. So lately I have been reading the You Knit What?? blog for general amusement. Their latest post about Herr Strickolino is simply frightening & caused me to google this guy. Scary dude, really scary. I have included one of his photos as an example.

WARNING: Not for the Squemish
or Faint of Heart!



Along the same lines, the knitty surprises are up for the man issue. The mathematical bag is kinda cool, but the hat! Yikes! Dude, seriously.. put down the needles!

In other news.. just did a meme for the first time in awhile & thought I'd post it.. cause, ya know, Harry Potter...

Harry Potter Quiz

Don't know if I really agree with this, but there ya go! :)

I Finally Finished Something!

Well, sorta...


behold the finished front of the shapely tank

I seem to be using less yarn than the pattern calls for, but am still on gauge (yippie!) If I keep this up I may have enough left to do short sleeves on this puppy!

Sceret Pal-y Goodness, Part Deux

Got my second goodie box from my SP yesterday! (squee)

Firstly, there is the items to keep me fat, but smooth ;)


The chewy candy cars are most yummy!

Secondly, there is the stuff to make my house smell less like kitty.

mmm, lemonlime

Thirdly, we have tea & tea acoutrement.

loven the basket, will get lots of use!

Now at this point you may be thinking "wasn't this a knitter's SP? Where is the knitty goodness?" I got your knitty goodness right here baby!

sweet little shawlette, with beaded trim!

She made me a shawlette/scarf! (sorry, I'm a little verklempt.. discuss amongst yourselves) Very pretty & definitely my colors! Don't know the fiber content.. but I'm guessing acrylic?
Very lovely... and help soothe my pain from the bad haircut I received just moments before.

EDIT: I have been informed that this was made with lovely, "Socks that Rock" yarn from Blue Moon Fibers. It is superwash merino! I hand in my spinners card & will keep my mouth shut now. (sorry for the misunderstand!)

Bad haircut? So here is what happened.. the scissor happy stylist decided to take a good 3-4 inches off my layers, making my already thin hair appear even thinner.. thanks psycho! She left the length on the bottom, so it doesn't look like I got a whole lot taken off, but I feel all mullety! Plus, um, natural curl! So the layers are all super curly & fluffy & ending a good 4 inches from the bottom! grrrrr.. And I paid almost $50 for this monstrosity! I miss my old stylist.. damn salon had to go & close! grrrr

Look at that beautiful bean footage

No, those are not worms! They are my current bounty of purple beans! mmmm. I just had to share! :p

So, I know y'all are just dieing to find out how my anniversary weekend went! Well, I'll tell ya.. it sucked! Oh sure, it started out good enough. Get out of work early, nice leisurely drive to Chicago listening to the lastest HP audio book (gotta love Jim Dale), check into the hotel & crawl into the downtown area for dinner.

Dinner was absolutely fabulous by the way. If you ever are in Chicago you must go there. Soooo yummy! We had Vareniky(potato dumplings) for an appetizer, I had Sergey's Chicken Kebob Shashlik for my entree & my honey had Georgian Chicken Tapaka. Not to mention a ton of Russian Tea(blend of Ceylon, Darjeeling and Black Currant Teas)& black bread. And to top it off we had "Black Russky" for desert. What is that? Well, here is their description "Decadent dark chocolate mousse on chocolate sponge glazed with ganache" I know what you're thinking... OMG!, and you're right! Plus the service was wonderful! I swear that everytime I took a sip of my tea someone was there to refill it.. I musta had at least a half dozen cups! LOL I was going to take pictures of this magnificent feast (ala Kate), but alas my camera sucks in any light that isn't, well, high noon natural light, so you will not be tortured with the photos.

So, everything sounds good right? Where did it all go wrong? Well, I have changed my diet pretty drastically in the last 6 weeks. This is great for my health, but unfortunately not for my digestive tract. Things I used to be able to eat with gusto have been having ill effects on me & I am afraid that is what happened on Friday. About a half hour after we left the restaurant I started getting very nauseated. I thought at first it was just because I was riding around in a manual transmission car after a heavy meal.. but it didn't take long for me to figure out that it was in fact the meal that done me in. Damn those spices! So good & yet sooo evil! I will spare y'all the nasty details on that. Anyways, I ended up in the hotel & my honey had to go to the concert alone. He was not pleased! Plus my tummy was still very sensitive well into Sunday, so I missed my nice dinner out on Saturday too! :(

The upshot is that I got a lot of reading done this weekend. I am currently halfway through the Historian byElizabeth Kostova. I am loving this book! Very engrossing & suspensful. I think I read almost 200 pages yesterday alone! I will warn you, if you get creeped out easily I would probably avoid it. It is not an overt horror novel. There is very little talk of blood & has been minimal violence so far.. I cant really describe it other than to say that I am a big huge horror geek & I can't remember being so effected before. I actually felt very anxious reading it while home alone in the dark. (spook-ie) :p

Ok.. done ramblin for now, will probably have some knitting content up on Wednesday. I am up to the short rows for the breasts on my shapely tank & hope to have the front finished soon! :)