I CAN has house!

Look! I has a house!

And, uh, yeah, expect posting to be sporadic for a while, because I have a lot of work to do. All you lovely ladies who volunteered to help, expect me to be calling in those favors soon.

tomorrow

I can haz howse?

the theme for this week: creation!

I woke up Wednesday morning (the first day of my "weekend") with a wicked pancake craving, so, armed only with my wits, a vegan cookbook and a spatula, I made these little beauties.

Mmmmm, vegan pancakes. Topped with vanilla soy yogurt and berries (frozen, hence the vivid purple color) and accompanied by fake bacon, since I wanted some salt to go with my sugar. Intense amounts of numminess, and a rather odd and alarming continuation of a recent trend. All recent evidence to the contrary, I am severely cooking-skills-deprived. It was only recently that I figured out if I don't make food, no food will appear. Don't ask me how I survived until now. I think it was sheer dumb luck.


Crusoe socks, finished! I didn't even need to be sat on.

The larval beginnings of a pair of socks for the Best Roommate Ever.

My mom's socks have two toes and a heel! Yay for progress and speedy mindless stockinette!

I finished one sleeve of the Branching Fern shrug. (I made the pattern up out of my head, with a little help from Barbara Walker, and for the time being, it's going well.) Modeled with a recent purchase, one of my very favorite shirts, which I then tried to take a picture of in the bathroom mirror . . .

forgetting that if you take a picture of words in a mirror, they will be backwards. D'oh! Attempt #2:

Much better. And so very true. Need one of your own? Here. (I especially like the bumper sticker.)

So close! And yet . . .

I am SO CLOSE to finishing the Crusoe socks it's not even funny.


I've been almost finished with them for about a week now, and every night I say, "Tonight I'm going to finish those socks!" So far, not so much. Last night I was distracted from sock knitting by the need to make little wee tiny lemony minicupcakes


and ice them while watching Brick for like the eighth time. This level of domestic goddess-ery is weird, unprecedented and unsettling. But the cupcakes are quite tasty.


(My excuse for not watching the Olympics is as follows: all they were showing was boxing, and in the words of Lymon Zerga, "Hand-to-hand combat does not interest me", and the marathon, which is spectacularly boring to watch. "Yep. They're still running.")
Fortunately, I am having dinner with some knitting friends tomorrow, and they will sit on me and force me to finish the socks. You ladies know who you are. I'm counting on you and your evil ways.

Warning: too much lolcats can be detrimental to your spelling

Toze!


I has dem.

sometimes it's hard to get anything done around here

I was cleaning the other day, and tossed the rug from our wee tiny entryway area into the living room in order to mop. The Best Roommate Ever came by a few minutes later when the floor was dry to put the rug back, and saw this.

Don't see it? How about now?

And here's a view of what was peeking out the other end.

It's awfully hard to get things done around here sometimes.

Yay for knitting pics!

Now that I have a camera again, I can finally post some progress pictures. The knitting has been continuing apace. Both heels are done on the Crusoe socks

and I just have to finish the cuffs. Note the hairy legs in this picture. Tres chic, ne c'est pas?

This little beauty is something I'm sort of making up out of my head (with a little help from Barbara Walker). It's going to be a shrug in the Branching Fern lace pattern (from The Second Treasury, I think), and it's made from Brookside Yarns Pico Alto, which is so very sadly discontinued. I started with a provisional cast-on at the center back and I'm going to knit the sleeve until I run out of yarn, then pick up the stitches and knit the other direction for the other side. I must use every last bit of this nummy nummy yarn.

And THIS is something special I'm making for that lovely patient woman who gave me life . . .

MOM, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU BETTER NOT LOOK

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A sock, of course. What else. It's make with Claudia Handpainted Fingering weight, and the colorway is Teal Party.

This picture is a little more accurate representation of the color.

The Best Roommate Ever and I watched the Opening Ceremonies last night and I knit a ton on this sock. I'm almost ready for the heel. I just have to blindfold my mother and check the length.

New camera!

Newcameranewcameranewcameranewcamera!

My parents are shopping geniuses. It never fails. All you have to do is off-handedly mention that you might be thinking about looking into the possibility of checking out prices of (insert random thing), and within two weeks, they have found exactly what you were looking for, only better, for a crazy insane price. Touring their new house is stupefying. "I love that picture." "Oh, yeah, three dollars at an estate sale." "That's a really nice couch." "We found that at an outlet for 75 bucks." It is their superpower.

I was going to take pictures of my new supercoolamazing camera, and then I realized that would be silly. So here are some pictures taken WITH my new camera. (Demonstrating the function, see, instead of the form. I am a quick one.)

Alex says: Pet my belly, human slave! Until I get tired of it, whereupon I will signal that I am finished with you by biting your hand!


Oh my god, don't take a picture! Now you're going to post it on the internet, aren't you? Bad human slave! Bad! (stomps off, muttering "grumblegrumblestupidhumans")

Handy tip for keeping cool

I learn so many things at Knit Night. Just in case you were wondering, a handful of ice cubes dumped in your lap can do wonders toward restoring your will to live when sitting in patio seating in August. In fact, the ice cube dumping might not have been entirely accidental. I'm just saying.

(image stolen from Google, because I have no camera and for god's sake, I need some pictures around here.)

hotter . . .

. . . than the hammered-down hinges of Hell, as Jill Conner Browne would say. It's not as hot as it could be (so I keep telling myself, as it hasn't broken the 100's yet), but August is shaping up to be pretty stifling and sweaty. I was doing OK with this summer thing. I like summer, I prefer being too warm to too cold, and for most of my life, I have had an outdoor job during Atlanta and Tallahassee summers. I like wearing skirts and describing the weather as "sultry". But August is trying to kill me. Enough with the heat already. Enough. I'm ready for fall.
Although at this point I must confess that the Best Roommate Ever and I have yet to turn on our A/C. Why?, I can hear you asking, aghast. Because we are A) cheap, B) poor, C) completely hardcore, and D) totally insane. I'm telling you, I'm going to have to marry this girl. Because really, what other human being would be so enthusiastic about not turning on the air conditioning during an Atlanta summer? No one, I tell you. Because that is insane. Unfortunately, neither of us seems likely to become a lesbian at this point, so that ruins my plans. Send popsicles. Rainbow ones. :-)

prayer request

I would just like to ask everyone to offer up a prayer to the deity of your choice for my mother, who, this morning, showing no regard for her personal safety (either physical or mental), bravely set off to suffer through the first day of school. (She teaches first grade.)