Stash Reorganization?!?

It's not Flash Your Stash day -- yet -- but I really felt the need to take all of my stash out of the hutch and do a nice reorg on it.

Here's the before:







And here's the after:



What do you think? Does it look good? Organized?

What is troubling is that I was finding stuff and saying, "HUH? I had THIS? When did I buy THIS?" and would look at the receipt in the bag and find that I had purchased it within the past year. *sigh*

I went to WEBS on Saturday for an LSG 1 Year Anniversary meetup and spent about $100 there. I also got a good "group grope" photo (well, ZMrK took that one):



Check it out! I've got, like, three different people going for my boobs! Awesome!

Oh, and I have more old photos of me to post. I'm sure you'll enjoy those. I'm glad that y'all enjoyed the other ones. I'd love to post them regularly, as I kinda self-centered that way. :)

No Way Around It, Kids!

It's my birfday!!!

Today is the day -- I am FORTY YEARS OLD. FORTY. Can you believe that? If you had told me, when I was 18, that I'd be doing a blog post at age forty I would have said, "1. What the fuck is a blog post? and 2. I ain't gonna be alive at forty!" But, here I am, alive and somewhat well (I think I'm coming down with something, but I'll be okay).

To celebrate 40 years of ZantiMissKnit, I thought I would do a nice little photo recap of my life. Of course, I can't find one of my photo albums of my family pictures, so I can't show you what I looked like as an infant. I dug up the earliest photo I have of me:



No clue how old I was, except that I was under 4. I was blonde, too! With brown eyes! That's not terribly common, you know. Most of us go dark as we get older (like I did).



That's my cousin SueAnn and I, one Easter. It was between, say 1980 and 1982, I would say. I have a hard time telling ages, and you can't tell by looking at my boobs, because I've been wearing a bra since 3rd grade and was a 36C by 7th grade.



The back of this photo said it was developed in January 1983, and it looks like it was taken around Xmas, probably 1982. I had a really ugly and awkward stage, and even though I offered this photo as proof, ZMrK still doesn't buy it.



This was taken the day of my 15th birthday party, in 1984. Can you believe I thought I was fat? Can you believe I did that to my hair? The other girl was my bff at the time, Elisa, whom I long ago lost touch with.



Here I am, in 1986, 16/17 years old, rockin' that John Hughes character look. That, of course, has to follow with:



Not my actual senior picture, but one of the ones that didn't quite make it. This was my Facebook profile pic for a while. It cracks up my nieces.

You know what comes next, right?



FUCKIN' A, PROM!!!!! My date and I recently reconnected on Facebook, so I had to post the pic for his wife and kids to see. Here's another of us; I think it was his 18th birthday, the year before:



Y'all have seen me make that same face, several times, haven't you?

Here's my so-called life as a so-called suburban punk kid (in my late teens):







and a pensive moment of me at age 20, in my jammies:



It wasn't long before debauchery set in:



Then I moved to New Orleans, and really had some fun:





(You know when you do something bad on Rubberneckers or LSG, and the mods come in and get all bold text and sexy with you? I always imagine then in this post, with a spiked heel and riding crop on someone, smoking a cigarette through a telescopic cigarette holder. See, I've always had a love for lots of props. I was going to join drama club in high school, but decided to get an after school job instead. I still have a love for the dramatic, especially when it comes to photos, and I'm glad that I usually have friends willing to go along with it.)

I was blonde again, for a couple of years:



This was taken on the Pacific Coast Highway, somewhere between LA and SF.



This was in Orlando, seeing the Woggles. Yes, it was hot as all get out.

Wow, I've got a few years missing here. . . like, 2002 up through this past November:



Fuck you! I'm dyeing my hair!

But I figured you have been seeing photos of me since 2005 or so, so you know what I look like.

But I will leave you with a photo taken 2 months ago, of Ken and me in front of the portrait ZMrK commissioned 2 years ago.



Happy Birthday to me!

Stitch Markers!

I decided to make some stitch markers yesterday. I have shitloads of beads, here and at my parents’ house, and just needed the split rings and head pins (which I purchased at the good ol' A.C. Moore). Here are the results:



These are beads I bought several years ago. I had put seed beads on the one on the left (zebra striped), but managed to break them with my pliers. I have five more of the beads on the right, so I could do a matched set. I did have five more of the zebra striped ones, but I had made a bracelet out of those, and I'm not sure if I still have it.



I had two little plastic cubes I had purchased pretty cheaply years ago; one was shades of green and the other black and silver. Each cube has 20-30 beads of different sizes in it.



Both of these stars came from broken earrings. This gives me something new to look for at yard sales this year; bags of junk jewelry!



I went through a big polymer clay bead binge about 15 years ago, and still have at least one coffee can full at my parents’ house. It may be high time to do something with these.

I also still have tons of polymer clay. I should make some more beads, these ones knitting-themed. Plus, ZMrK has never seen beads be made via the roll-up method, and I think he'd be fascinated by it.



I think these are my favorites. I love the little black hearts; too bad I only had two black heart beads.

I do have one problem with these – the end of the head pin is still a little ragged, and I’m afraid I could snag my yarn on it. ZMrK says I should be able to file it down with a metal file. Has anyone ever done that?

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point of selling these, but I may give some as gifts (if I can get them to not snag the yarn!). There are a few RAK opportunities going around out there, and I'm sure I could find them happy homes.

There's no big knitting news here. I made another pair of fuzzy feet but am still weaving in ends on them. The yarn I used is yarn from ZMrK's ex-co-worker, and I hadn't realized that each "ball" was made up of several long bits of the yarn, so I have to keep starting with a fresh bit. Snooze. I'm going to hold off on felting them until I can knit up a few toy catnip mice, too.

I have started the Swallowtail Shawl -- twice! I'm about 18 rows or so into it, so far, and have a long way to go. It doesn't seem like a very difficult pattern, and hopefully I'll have a pretty picture of my progress for next week. I'm using some laceweight cashmere by Just Our Yarn that I purchased at the Mass. Sheep and Wool Festival in 2007, in a violet/black/lilac colorway. I'm already wondering where the hell I'm going to block it!