spaazlicious

of the Knitting Olympics. I participated, looked adorable *cough* but there's no way in hell I'm gonna medal.

Edited: Call me a Bode Miller. Vera (who not only medaled in the knitting but in the crocheting Olympics!) pointed out Maryse's very appropriate button:



I know the media's pissed at him, but I kind of like him. Don't know him, but still, he's cute enough to have been on the Canadian curling team. Of course, you wouldn't catch Gushue cutting a gate.

• I'm digging Michelle's sock-in-progress/step by step pattern with pics blogging.
  
  
• I'm annoyed that the men's curling final won't be broadcast until a full day after it actually happens.
  Yes, time differences, whatever.
  
  
• I'm grossed out by how strongly this couch reeks of pee. I think Nick's right, I think we'll have to burn it. Probably TMI. No one else should know what our couch smells like. Please know there is a "No Snowball in the Store Room Rule" (unless Mary-Kay or May Lim is present) and really, he probably only did it to show Jasper who owned the couch. It smells like he can keep it it. Outside.
  
  
• Around the World in 80 Days is a wonderful piece of crap. Anything with our governor involved with it is. Hooray California!
  
  
• Nancy is overdue for a Saturday/Sunday, Monday, Tuesday/Wednesday blogging spate and I'm jonesing.
  
  
• Deb has an excellent and very appropriate Olympic button. Yeah, it's the process, baby, yeah. I haven't felt like knitting much today so I haven't. Some knitlete I am.
  
  
• Minou rocks out hella cutely in a music video. Only click if you have Quicktime, high speed internet, and the joy of two small dogs on a sunny day in your heart.
  
  
• Mamacate's "random" reccie of Pandora radio sounds like a fun experiment in aural enjoyment.
  
  
• Over seventy pounds of fiber and yarn appeared in our garage; bless the UPS, Ashland Bay, and Visa færies' little hearts.
  
  Frankly, I'm a little afraid to unbind the superwash merino wool bump, it's bound so tight.
  
  
• Tahoe is the best dog. Ever. Happy birthday and a day, baby bunny.
  

Yes, I bought a laptop, and I bought a wireless router, and now...I can blog from our couch, which smells as if someone has lifted their leg on it. Hooray for spending!
Boo for marking.

No, really, I bought it for several good rationalisations:

• school, portability
  
• business, portability
  
• I want to be one of those geeks at the coffeeshop
  

Knitting Olympics Update

I cast on Sunday morning for the body and am now on row 43 of the chart. That only means something to one of you out there.

I got a fair bit of knitting done in my Entrepreneur Business class.

While the professor read to us from a 13 year old handout and later, and we watched a program so old Robert Mitchum looked sexy presenting it, I knit.

This class is an embarrassment to the education system.

I'll take the easy A though, thanks. (Good lord I'd better get an A now having said that, eh? [We watched curling today (YAY!) Go Canada!]).

Uncles & Bugs

My uncle's pretty involved with the Desert Botanical Garden (my aunt and he went on a trip to Oaxaca with them for Día de Los Muertos and saw some natural dyeing methods used with the rug weaving in Teotitlán del Valle Nick and I were green over missing) and he brought me a magazine that had HOW TO MAKE AND USE NATURAL DYES emblazoned on the cover.

Unfortunately, the "how" was "research local natural sources used for dyeing. Make note of the dye source's toxicity to ensure the plant is not poisonous."

Seriously. Not too informative, nativeplants Winter 2005. But they did have a picture of the leaf of a cactus, and the cochineal insect. And _pow_ a lightbulb went off.

Heidi, remember this?



When we visited The Lavender Fields and walked around the property, we noticed that the cacti were infested with these nasty looking white pustules. We wondered what the heck they were.

Well, now we know! It's funny because if I'd ever googled cochineal in an images search I would have seen examples of it, but I thought I knew what cochineal looked like, right? 'Nuff said. But, I also wondered why I've never seen these guys on any of the bajillion prickly pear cactus plants aound San Diego, and now it turns out that I have. I wonder if The Lavender Fields would let me collect some?

I'm sorry it had to come to that.


Cadged from Jessica's blog:
(just to clarify, all of the stuff in bold is from Jessica's blog, my comments are only included because if you read them and are playing the Knitting Olympics Drinking Game at home with Jagermeister shots then by the the time you've read to the end of this post, you will be a sticky, licorice-y smelling thoroughly ill mess who will never drink Jager again, college/high school nostalgiabe damned. That goes for Goldshlager as well. Shudder.)

The Knitting Olympics Drinking Game

created with help from Rebekkah and Natalie

Take a drink whenever someone:

1. adjusts their definition of "finishing" in order to get a gold medal.

As soon as I cast off on the sleeves I'm callin' it done. Here's a newsflash: Over 40 inches of sportweight stockinette is BOOoooooooooOOOOOOring.


2. whines about someone else being farther along on an identical project.

Cindy's not only looks better, but I think she'll probably get farther before this horrible ordeal is over.

3. drops out after realizing there is no way to knit a fingering weight fair isle adult sweater in 16 days without losing their job.

Okay, not fair isle, but this Opal, look at this:

The teal Opal, laid across a dyeing skein of the Pearl (which is supposed to be fingering weight. Really, it's on the upper end of that weight class):



After dyeing, the Pearl puffs up pretty much to the weight of the Opal--that blue green skein is an unusual example of the Pearl pufftasticness, a bit of an extreme example. The flame colorway is normal and really looks the same thickness as the Opal. I think the Pearl I get for dyeing maybe isn't plied as tightly as the dyed Opal. For one thing I don't get the twisting on itself with the Pearl I've dyed that I am getting with the Opal.


4. joins a team for something other than a country/joins a team because they like a vegetable. (Team Wales, I'm looking at you)

I have been looking for a Jamaican Bobsled team button...

5. takes a knitting short cut they really shouldn't have taken. (swatch, pfft! I'm only knitting a fair isle cabled lace shrug. Who needs a swatch!)

I did swatch. The numbers almost matched up. Good enough for me.

6. has to frog because they lost count when Michelle Kwan fell on her ass. (We all know it's going to happen.)

A-ha! Gotcha there, didn't count on her groin, didja!?!

7. buys a TiVo/DVR, so they can watch the Olympics later. It's cutting into their knitting time right now.

No, not yet...but if I miss curling one more freakin' time! Who wants to watch figure skating when there are 42 pound stones being slid across the ice, with people sweeping in front of it?
42!
Sweeping!

8. posts pictures of a dirty house or starving children, blaming either on the Knitting Olympics.

Ahem. My starving skinny pathetic dog, cringing by the Big Rock Laundry Mountain.



Look at him all hollow-eyed with hunger.

9. calls in sick to work in order to finish on time.

Um, I don't have a "real" job, so we'll go back to the messy house as proof of my perfidious slackin'.

10. encourages another knitter to "work through the pain," when that knitter's hands have gone numb.

Hey, go give ...and knitting some misguided encouragement to keep playing through the pain.


11. posts to a general knitlist/livejournal knitting community to ask how everyone else is doing on their projects. (blogs/communities/knitlists set up specifically for the KO exempted)

Oh crud. I guess I should join some just to make a nuisance of myself. Look out Livejournal!

12. doesn't fix a huge mistake on their project because it will keep them from finishing in time.

I am the huge mistake.

13. whines about said huge mistake after the Olympics are over.

I am hoping I'll still exist to whine about after this.

14. frogs entire project after the Knitting Olympics, due to aforementioned huge mistake. (finish the bottle for this one)


Oh hell no.




Disclaimer: The Knitting Olympics Drinking Game is for entertainment purposes only. Do not operate heavy machinery after playing. The amount of "a drink" is fluid - anything from a shot, to a glass of wine, to a sip of beer - please play responsibly.

Drink up, leddies!

Nick had the 13th and the 14th off, so I got to wake up next to the handsomest man in the world.

Jasper was picked up by his Mommy early on the thirteenth, so we only had three dogs to trip over while making coffee.


Sigh. I'd grown accustomed to his face.

We lounged around, bathed, went to the gym and ran and swam (ugh, the chlorinated stench that is that pool!), got lunch at Jamba Juice, came home, bathed, exercised, and I wandered off to do an assignment for my Entrepeneur Business class.

One of those assignments that make you feel kind of awkward and cheesy, "Excuse me, I'm in a business class and have an assignment to interview a local business owner...could you, possibly?" But Jane of Two Sisters and Ewe immediately said, sure, and we went back to their little office and it was great, she was very open even though I was asking questions about budget and business plan, stuff which to a sole proprieter type business is very personal (at least in the eyes of the taxman).

So, what I'm saying is, she's cool, yo.

Came home typed it up and e-mailed it off. Then...the UPS man came, hooray! Cookies from Nick's mom and drumroll...the first half of my order from earthues!



There's

• 3# natural indigo ground into fine powder,
  
• 2# fine sifted moroccan henna powder in 2 oz. packets,
  
• scour (I have a ton of soap, but Kathy of earthues convinced me to try theirs, specially formulated for the industry and all that),
  
• thiourea dioxide (for reducing the oxygen in the indigo vat),
  
• 2# iron--you can use iron different ways, in the mordant or in the dyebath, and you can paint it on afterwards. The latter two methods make it sort of a color saddener, the first method can deepen the value of the color ("e.g. osage turns from a medium lemon yellow to an olive green"). It also makes naturally dyed colors more lightfast.
  
• Alum acetate--a mordant for veg fibers,
  
• and (vegetarians look away) hide glue for the dye vat for use with protein fibers as the alkalinity can damage them (okay vegetarians you can look back now),
  
• and 10 of their very cool mehndi body paint kits,
  
• and three of the COLORS kits.
  

Thankfully, one of the colors kits got kind of smushed during shipping so I felt barely guilty about popping it right open. The kits come with everything you need to make a rainbow on 60 pounds of fiber, and an instruction booklet and gloves. The volume of the kit isn't much more than that of a box of men's running shoes, but because their natural dye concentrates are so er, concentrated, it all fits into the box. I'm really stoked/chuffed/thrilled by all the possibilities, but I think I'll stop before I sound like an ad. It's probably too late.

Anyway, though this is the first half--I have a bunch of weld, cochineal and madder dyestuffs coming soon, along with a couple of indigo kits.

I'll end up having to change the Lanas de Libélula site around quite a lot maybe, because the dyestuffs will need a lot of information attached to them so people wanting to try natural dyeing can have a better sense of what proportions to buy and what to get to achieve the desired effects.

I was thinking about mordanting stuff tonight, but I think I'll wait 'til tomorrow night as Nick will be brewing tonight. He's made two batches of porter, and while he doesn't like the first batch (I do) the second batch we can both agree on as fan-friggin-tastic. So while we're running a fair amount and increasing our cardiovascular fitness, we may need sports bras for our beer bellies soon. It is a rich yummy beer, nearly chewy.


Anyway, after I rolled around excited in the package, Nick and I went to Coronado and had dinner with my Mom at the Coronado Brewery. It was kid central; the little buggers were running everywhere. The balloon man was there, and that guy, that guy, well he's frickin' cool. He really seems to enjoy making balloon animals and talking with the parents and kids, so even though we had to shout at each other to be heard above the infernal din echoing off the brick walls it was fun, because everybody was happy.

Really good onion rings and chili does that, I've noticed.

I knit maybe four or so rows on my sleeves. Yay stockinette.

Obviously though, I need to finish them today if I'm to have a hope in hell of getting this thing done, because the sleeves are a paragraph within something like five pages of pattern instuctions (half of that space is ads, but still).

Back to laundry, back to dishes, back to life...
(we're going to see Into the Woods on the 24th!)

Not much to report here. School. Dogs. Fun at Mary-Kay's. Existential angst. Laundry. Dishes. Crushing self-doubt. Running. Watching the WTFfest that was the Opening Olympics (Nick kept shouting out, "It symbolises PASSION!!!" very enthusiastically every time another odd Oompa Loompa-infused element was introduced).



The measly bit of knitting I had after the Opening Ceremonies.



At the end of yesterday's knitting spurt.



Snowball asleep in the spot I like to sit and knit.

I smashed a gigantic mosquito in our bathroom, and I don't know if the mosquito was incredibly dusty, but it left an imprint on my palm like a stamp.

I've gone ahead and put a big update on the shop, especially in the handpainted section.

I've also installed a blog for the RSS feed fans of updates, and now I'm off to spread the news to the four people who signed up to subscribe to e-mail updates. Actually, three I think, because my hotmail acct is still on there to test the system.

These are some of my favorites:






I blame Stephanie for the presence of purple in so many colorways. I used to really dislike it, but her passion for it made me take another look at it and now, I really like mixing it in. I'm going to try an "octarine" colorway someday soon. We're big Terry Pratchett fans and octarine is the color of magic, defined in the first book as a yellow, green and purple color. Sounds like an old bruise though doesn't it? We'll see, sometimes I'm surprised at what works...and what is a hideous abomination unto Nuggin which must be overdyed. ;)

...any knitting meetups I should go to, must see new things?

I'm nearly 95% certain it's a go, driving up Tuesday, (tomorrow) driving down Saturday. The 5% maybe not factor comes from the fact that what we're going up for could cancel and render our trip moot at any moment.
I'm not sure how much internet access we'll have, so if you want to get a hold of me to get together, please call the Lanas de Libélula phone number (found here down at the bottom.)


I guess I should have reversed the percentages. There's a definite maybe for next week. This is what happens when the state and the courts get together to make something happen.


And for those confused about the flabgina, here's the original pic that was cropped and lightened, so no actual hoo-haws were harmed in the overshare.

With my thumbs I was attempting to recreate the shape of the c1itoris on top of all that labia-like flab, but I forgot that maybe mine looks different from all y'alls.

After all, the current trend in mainstream p'nography seems to be to pretend they don't exist. I was flipping through a Pthouse and became convinced they'd airbrushed all the c1itorii out, because there was page after page of unnaturally smooth genita1ia, but maybe other women's c1its don't take their job as a vestigal pen!s as seriously as mine does. Or maybe it's to make some of those two-minute Romeos feel a little less guilty. Out of sight out of mind so to speak.

(and yes, I know it isn't really a vestigal pen!s but I love that phrase. Love it. Did you know marsupials have two v@ginas?)

Also, sorry about the letter-character substitutions, I hate the way it looks, but some of the searches hitting this page have kind of stopped being funny and started being creepy. I don't want them looking at my knitting, let alone my dogs.

You wanted to see pics of my tubbiness, but I can't really do that.

You'd have to install the Jigglevision plug-ins on your pc and...well, I present you with my abgina. My navel is buried somewhere underneath all that.

See, I'll bet you're sorry now.

Apologies for my pasty fuzzy belly.

I'd like to apply for a trademark on Cute™:



And while I'm at it, Pissed and Concerned™:

I did a wordcloud, as seen on Nancy's blog, and it was more on topic than I would have expected. And Nancy and Heidi both pop up in it, which is proof that I lurve them.



And the new Magknits is up, so that's nice too.

You know which blog just blows me away? See Eunny Knit!. If you are reading this, you probably already read hers, but just in case...she rocks on tutorials, I tellya.

I like the self-striping yarn one in particular, most likely because the day before I ran across it, I was looking at a book on the subject in Barnes & Noble and thinking, "Huh, way to make something fun appear needlessly complicated in the guise of making it Simple & Fun!®," burying relevant info needlessly, when Eunny's tutorial posts the salient points of the process, adds nicely lit pics and bam. Good info. Free.

I should think of something bad to say so I don't sound like an ad, but I can't.

So...look, a dog!





Anybody up for the Whistlestop this weekend?

And how about the third Saturday this month for the Santa Monica roadtrip (LUSH, wildfibers, lunch)? Since Heidi's got something this Saturday, and Hilari's mom won't let her play with us next weekend.