Mittens!

I finished my Noro mittens this past weekend. ZMrK was kind enough to model them for me:



I think that is one of the coolest FO shots, ever.

I had a dream on Sunday night that I changed my Facebook status to read that "I probably shouldn't sit on my butt all weekend. I'm turning into a human jello shot." I need to get on a good exercise schedule again, and keep it up over the weekends. I weighed myself at the gym tonight: 160 lbs. That's A LOT for a 5'3" gal, big boobs or no big boobs. The good news is that my gym workout tonight was the 2nd bit of cardio so far this week (the first was a 30-min walk from the train station to my dentist's office yesterday -- I got off the train a few stops early). I also did 30 minutes of Pilates/Bellydance yesterday.

I know that I feel much better when I exercise. I'm not just talking mentally, but physically I have less ailments. It's just sometimes easier to sit on my butt, drink tea, and knit while watching a DVD on a cold winter day.

I don't have any solid weight goals, or a time line. I just want to be healthy, and not gain anymore weight.

Have you noticed that I haven't even mentioned last year's New Year's resolutions and goals, and whether I met them? *whistles* I haven't even looked at the post!

Knittin' Mittens

I had one skein of Noro Kureyon -- what to do with it?

I also have several skeins (or balls, really, they were frogged from a WIP) of a mystery yarn -- some sort of Lamb's Pride type single spun yarn that is somewhere between a worsted and bulky weight, and does not felt that I decided to use in conjunction with it, since the color of this yarn matches the purple in the Kureyon.

I'm making mittens!



Big fat cuff, super warm mittens for a winter that is only half over. I think every winter I end up making so many winter accessories. Some day I'll need to designate an entire dresser to these accessories.

But for now, I dance!



It's mah butt, lookit mah butt, here's mah butt!

I also gave ZMrK a nice skeptical look, which translated well to the "cartoon" special effect on my Kodak software:



Someone I went to high school with told me I looked like a cartoon character, on multiple occasions. I guess this is what she means?

I want to thank everyone for their kind comments on my last post. I'm staying away from all the political groups now; the ugliness that was around post-election day has only dissipated a little bit. Why does everyone have to have such an "us against them" mentality? I don't hate people who voted for the guy who ran against the guy I voted for. I don't even hate the guy who ran against the guy I voted for. Screw politics. Let's dance!

Spinning!

I forgot to show off the yarn I spun:









It's the corriedale/merino/silk that I purchased at the Connecticut Sheep and Wool last spring, spun rather fine and plied with some gold embroidery thread from A.C. Moore. It was an experiment, and so far, it's been a successful one. It remains to be seen how it knits up.

I'm thinking of trying to do some sort of nice cowl with this. There's about 280-300 yards (I think), and like it said, it's rather fine. Not quite lace weight, of course, but maybe around fingering weight. It's hard to tell with the fluffiness of it; I usually associate fingering weight with tightly plied sock yarn. I may have to just play around with it and some needles, just to see what it wants to be.

I need to go to a more serious topic now: racism. I've been pretty active on a certain site lately, and I have seen stuff that I disagree(1) with. I have, however, never seen anything that prompted me to report a post. I know I could be bringing the wrath of the racists on me by posting about this, but I am going to go ahead and do it anyways without naming any names.

This is what the post said: >>On a funny note: I saw a new thread du jour in the "patterns" forum, called "Inaugural Scarves". Yeah. Right. Over here we have another
name for those: Nooses.<<

Seriously. I was HORRIFIED. The post was reported (and not just by me), and the post was later edited. I didn't bother to send the poster a PM, nor did I attempt to post in the same thread questioning her choice of words. I just reported it to TPTB.

So, tell me, did I overreact?

There's no excuse

No, really there is no excuse for the three week or so (no, I'm not counting) absence from blogging. I may have bored the shit out of you if I had blogged though, 'cuz there's nothing going on.

I did finish the Here There Be Pirates hat though:



I've worn it, quite a bit in the past few weeks.

I lost a bit of my mojo lately. I have been attempting to make Frankensocks since the first of the year, but the pattern is just not working out for me. I moved to crochet to try the Chronium Star Baby Blanket, but I don't think my crochet skills are there yet.

So I made some amigurumi food instead:







Thinking that I warmed myself up on crochet, I attempted the star blanket again, but no go. Then I tried the square hole crocheted hat from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders with some Noro Kureyon that I purchased on eBay about 4 years ago. Mind you, this is the third time I've attempted this pattern. I had to stop the first time because I found out there was errata, but the errata had been taken down from the publisher's website while they've revamped. I did attempt, with the errata, to crochet this but it just looked like a big fugly head doily, so I decided that this pattern isn't a good match for me.

Instead I knit a different pattern from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders:





The hat came out great, and it fits both of us. I made it yesterday while sitting on the couch watching Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD.

This was my first time knitting with Noro Kureyon. My thoughts while knitting with it ranged from "wow, this stuff is cool" to "*I* could spin yarn like this". The thick/thin can be really apparent when there are spots in the knitting that are "gappy" due to it being thinner. The bulges from it being thicker don't bother me though. I have one more ball of this colorway, so I'm making some mittens, using some label-less deep purple Lamb's Pride-like stuff* for the cuffs.

*It's like Lamb's Pride in the sense that it is a single and feels like it has mohair in it, but I don't think it's Lamb's Pride because it is a bit thicker and doesn't seem to felt (I tried).

In other news, it's snowed about 5 times since I last posted. Twice this weekend alone! We also had a week of weather that was between 1 and 15 degrees (I hope that is over). I'm ready to kick winter in the taint and move on.

Also, Ellie had her annual appointment and has been put on a diet. I wonder why:



She's on Hills R/D, which we can only buy at the vet's office, and is really expensive. It's okay for Ken to eat it as well.

Speaking of Ken, he's doing pretty well. He bit the shit out of ZMrK's hand this morning, and tried to eat some of my yarn. He also enjoys lunging on Ellie and biting her, and had an obsession with the walls of my closet one day:



I wonder if we have mice.

I discovered that that fucking orange cat that I call Curtis has been pissing on our front porch. I don't know whose cat he is; I think he belongs to the people next door. He's out all the time, and the lady behind me feeds him. He's not neutered, so he travels all over the neighborhood, pissing off all the other cats. He likes our yard because we feed the birds. I've seen no evidence of him killing any of the birds, yet, but it could happen one day. We've had up to two dozen birds in our yard at one time. ZMrK came home to find a hawk in one of the trees, so the large number of birds is attracting predators.

I just hope that the landlord doesn't think the cat pee smell is from us, you know? They've been showing the upstairs apartment (which has been vacant since Sept. 1; know anyone looking for a 3-BR?), and I don't know if people are picking up on the cat pee smell. I can just assume that others don't have the awesomely fine-tuned nose that I do. Fucking orange cat.

I won't promise that I'll post more often, but I'll try.