Yeah, as I mentioned before, got me a bladder infection. A whopper of a bladder infection. I will spare you the (intensely) gory details, but this is the second day I have not been to work because of the pain. The only thing that has really taken the pain away is Ambien, not because it is a painkiller but because it lets me sleep through the pain.
David brought me my meds last night, to be taken with food. I had already taken my Ambien and gone to bed. He woke me to take my pills and also gave me a piece of bread with peanut butter and def strawberry jam. I kept falling asleep and getting jam on my hand.
On the bright side I started and finished the Float Away for myself and started the Chanson en Crochet probably also for me, but I don’t know yet. Today I will try to take pictures and get things posted.
I also made a prototype corset style coffee cup holder. I gave it to Mary on the condition that she try it out, give me notes on what needs to be changed and also see how much interest there is in it. I am also going to come up with some patterned coffee cup holders, most likely some with pirates (people love pirates) or swear words or something.
I need to go take my pills and lay down.
PS the doctor warned me that one of the meds would make my pee orange. Okay, cool. OH SHIT! I did not even comprehend the definition of ORANGE until today. It’s like my bladder houses the cosmic orange color factory and is distributing the orange color to the world via my standard household plumbing! Every single thing in the universe, past-present-future, is getting its orange color from the cosmic orange color factory in my bladder. How does it color the past? Quantum physics!
Category Archives: Craftin
my head asplode!
I’m still working on my shawl/wrap pattern. I’d say I’m 85% figured out at this point. It’s a little tedious. Get idea, crochet swatch, see what doesn’t what’s in your head, figure out why, get idea to fix that, crochet swatch, see what doesn’t match what’s in your head, figure out way.
Rather, rinse, repeat.
You get started on something and you think it’s going to be so easy, “oh, yeah, I just have to do this!” then you realize you hadn’t thought about the relationship of one kind of stitch to another. Then you realize that direction is way more important that you would have expected. Oh, and drape! You get going along and it feels more like a heavy scarf than a light wrap. Frog, pick a new hook, take notes. Start over. Pick a new yarn, frog, start over.
Julie has volunteered to be a tester. This means that I need to write directions in a straightforward and coherent manner. It also means that the directions can’t just be a series of notes that only make sense to me. The awesome thing about having a tester work your pattern is that you get real feedback about the instructions. The thing that sucks is that I can’t just throw out some unknown technique that I made up on the fly to make smooth edges or to hide an inherent flaw in the design. I have to actually come up with answers for the bumpy edges (mmmmbeaded eadging) and I have to fix that flaw.
This whole process has made me really appreciate designers even more. This is why I have to pay for the good designs! You get so used to finding free designs online that you are prone to act the brat when you see something you like and discover you have to pay for it. A lot of work goes into designing a pattern!
All of this work on this pattern has meant that my other projects are taking a back seat. It also means I’ve not updated ravelry lately or taken photos. Oh well. It will get there!
no good dumbo nothing
- I have owned 3 dogs in my adult life. All three were adopted from rescue organizations. In all three cases I signed contracts that held various stipulations like that I would get the pet neutered, that this animal would be a pet that lived indoors and not an animal used for work and so on. When I adopted Maddie I had to promise not to eat her (no lie!). Different groups have different contracts but in essence, they all ask you to follow the same rules. The big rule is that if you cannot keep the pet, it must go back to the same rescue agency. It’s standard. Now, here’s the deal, you own the dog for say 5 years and suddenly you have to go to the moon and you can’t take the dog, you could probably give the dog to a trusted friend without raising too much ire. if you own the dog for like 2 weeks and it’s too much to deal with, you have to bring it back to the rescue agency. Seriously, it’s a standard rule.
Rescue shelters have the dog’s best interest in mind. Certainly you can go to the pound and get a cheaper dog, no questions asked. It’s easy enough. A rescue shelter sees a dog from a bad situation and wants to make sure that the dog ends up in the best possible situation for him. That’s their job. They’re not a retail store, they are a shelter. With each of my dog adoptions I was interviewed and asked any number of questions, did I have a fenced yard? How much excersise would my dog get? how much did I spend on dog food? what was my housebreaking method? where would the dog sleep at night? They aren’t trying to be monsters, they just want to make sure that the dog will be healthy and happy, they want to be sure that this dog is not a whim. Something purchased to satisfy a passing fancy and then seen as a burden once something new comes along.
I feel bad for what happened in the whole Ellen thing, but she messed up. - blueberries are natures caviar!
- Designing new lace patterns is a pain in the ass. I spent the weekend making swatches, filling in graph paper, furrowing my brow and eating blueberry pie. I may have found a solution. If so, I will keep careful notes and publish the pattern!
- The “under the bed” area is the private domain of the little dogs. First Ghengis had it. It was his place to hide, to chew his special treats and to play goofy games with me. Chester took over immediately upon move in. 2 years of dog lair has turned into 2 years of dog hair. Last night David move the (giant king sized) bed out of the way and vacuumed the hell out of it. That’s pretty damned awesome.
- Cheney wants to eat your baby
- I need more yarn
Stitch Stirrer
LO! I’ve missed the last few “Stitch Stirrer” prompts. Sigh, been busy and out of sorts and what not. In my head I designed a Halloween themed cap for that prompt but never had time to draw it let alone make it. I came up with the plans for a stuffed Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon, but did not have time to work all of it out. “10 things learned” and “why do i do it” should be coming up soon.
The current prompt is “how would they know” as in, how would someone know I was a crocheter when they walked into my house. Would they notice or would they have to dig around for it?
Walk into my house. So it, I dare you! Upon entering the house you will be accosted by two overly ambitious dogs barking, jumping, yelling, wriggling, dogs. Once you get past the dogs (and this may take a few minutes, be patient) make a visual sweep of the room from right to left.
Here, let me walk you through what you will see. You can just assume that more often than you would prefer, the dogs will get in your way so I would include them on the tour, you can just imagine them. The love seat has one of my small project bags on it, but it is currently empty. End table sports a stack f crochet hooks that I don’t like, some stitch markers I forgot to pick up and two sets of colored pencils that I use to plot out designs. Sweeping further, on the floor is a large bag of polyester fiberfill, a 12 inch high stack of crochet magazines and books, another larger set of color pencils (as well as water colors and oil pastels) for trying to get the stuff in my head onto paper.
Keep moving. The coffee table. My pink beaded lace scarf waiting to be worked on, a jumble of yarn waiting to be untangled or trashed, my crochet notebook that desperately needs to be updated, the beginning of a hat that twisted when connecting the round, a stuffed crochet monkey tail to go on a monkey that I forgot on my desk at work, a large metal mixing bowl (why? i don’t know) containing stuffed dinosaurs, my diagonal scarf, two skeins of baby yarn and my spiderweb cardigan that needs the arm reworked so I can wear it. A bag from Borealis yarns containing 2 skeins of Plymouth Yarn baby alpaca grande in blue/green. This yarn was payment from a coworker for a project I did for her. My ball winder is attached to the edge of the table ready to be used.
Also on the table, my Lariat Scarf, the fingerless gloves I just finished, various ‘odd balls’ of yarn (single balls left over from a dye lot that yarn stores sell on clearance because there’s not much you can do with a single ball of yarn. But I like them for little projects or edging or adding to things), graph paper for my designs and scribbles and math work (crochet takes some math!).
Under the table you will find another crochet book, my 3 ring binder where I put page protected printed patterns and a 1934 edition of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1 in which I draw a lot. The book itself has actually never ever been ready by anyone, many of the pages were miscut and still attached together. My fascination with this compelled me to draw pictures in the book. Mostly of naked fat ladies, go figure.
Moving on, a 5 bin stackable plastic storage unit crammed full to overflowing with yarn. A basket full of yarn and a scarf I am working on, bags of cheap yarn for dolls, and another half finished scarf. Coming around you get to the sofa. I am on one end, next to me are 2 balls of yarn (black and white), the beginnings of another pirate hat, my box of crochet tools and sundries, two more crochet books (one to be sent to Washington State very soon), a bag with my kerchief project and the pattern for the pirate hat. On the back of the sofa is my pink and green Fair Isle purse.
Finally you would end at the CD rack with no actual CDs in it (loooong story) but it does have one of my crochet bunnies on it.
This is JUST the view of my living room. the dining room and bedroom have their own thing going on and most of it is covered in yarn as well.
Standing at my front door and surveying the room you would be led to 2 conclusions. The first is that a crocheter lives here. The second is that said crocheter is a really shitty house keeper.
My Life: A Ken Burns Documentary
I have this screensaver on my computer that randomly displays photos from my iPhoto library. Sure, fine, lots of people have this.
But here’s the thing, I also clicked the ‘cross fade’ and ‘zoom’ options. Now the photos fade in and out and then we slowly pan the photos while zooming in. It’s exactly like a fucking Ken Burns documentary. When I’m sitting and crocheting I like to listen to NPR podcasts (because I’m a nerd). I flip on the screensaver and there it is, photo documentary the seems to go with whatever I am listening to (most of the time…).
Sometimes, the screensaver is itself the most fascinating thing to look at. Sure, I can go into my iPhoto library any time, but the randomness of it all that gets me. A photo from Key West, then one of the bathroom remodel, the 10th anniversary trip with Jen to Savannah, then David and I celebrating Christmas. The pan and zoom over the photo invokes a reaction, like the computer is leading you to focus on something specific. It makes you feel like there is a story with every photo. Apparently I have 6500 stories on my computer.
I don’t know if there is some metric programmed in that figures out where to focus the zoom, but 9 times out of 10, it focuses on the subject of the photo with alarming clarity. Watching it focus on Ghengis is not exactly the easiest thing to watch, but I quietly tell myself the story of every one of his pictures and remember him. Perhaps I will commission a Ghengis documentary and hire Ken Burns! Or maybe I’ll stick to my screen saver.