how i spent my evening

decorating my christmas trees.

this is what christmas is like in florida. all the trees still have leaves and the weather is a brisk 60 degrees...but damnit we still have christmas trees.

Self Portrait Tuesday

spt 5

yang 'n me

Thanksgiving with The Gwinns

beth & jess thanksgiving 2005

i had a nice and relaxing time at jess & cory's over my wee break and even returned home in jolly spirits - even though it was cold as ballz. our thanksgiving usually feels like a holiday for the misfits who don't really have anywhere else to go... that means that we usually avoid family drama - and i'm all for that.

we put up some xmas decorations and hung out with like a thousand dogs (jasmine, heath, gretta, & harley - my favorite dogs to hang out with. if cricket would have been there the circle of aussies would have been complete!)

sometimes i can trick harley & gretta into posing for some pictures - they are smart though and i usually have to pretend like i'm taking a picture of something else. check out how prissy lil gretta can be!

i decided to fuck around with the different settings on my camera and see if i could get any cool shots of the tree -- not that i can remember what i did in any of these pics...but none of them are cool anyway, so no loss!

so thanks for putting me up and feeding me ya'll! i put on a solid 5 lbs. during my stay and i may not get sick from the crazy weather after all! jess, can't thank you enough for getting up at 530 and taking me to airport - i'm pretty sure that sucked more for you than me...

Happy Birthday Mandee!

mandee & me (10th grade?)

so mandee is one of my oldest friends. she moved to hurricane and right into my best friends neighborhood in (5th?) grade. in a few short years the other girl had moved away and happily mandee and i remained close. mandee and i both lived on the poor side of town when we were growing up - the snow often trapped us over there together. our moms work for the same company. we both lived with jen in college. we taught each other how to smoke. and in high school we dated best friends 3 different times. well actually i dated the same guy 2 different times and she dated his two best friends -- (not at the same time! geez!) only mandee understands: pink sexy trees, the rock, a bonfire on the basketball court, why i don't have many pics of her prior to 9th grade, and the importance of spiral mac 'n cheese.

So Happy 27th Mandee! Don't you dare think of it as getting old. Your just one year closer to what we like to call 30 - "The Age of Enlightenment" where all of our fucked up lives will start to level out and make sense - and if that doesn't happen, I QUIT!... okay?

i love ya and i'll see you around xmas time,
b

Self Portrait Tuesday

spt 4

a self portrait flashback to me in 1993, i was fourteen.

give me some color baby!

so when someone asks for something colorful, i get real excited. knitting colorful things is so much funner (yeah, funner) than plain things like, say a ginormous stockinette monochrome sweater...

convertable mittens progress shots

broad street mittens from knitty. worsted weight wool from my stash. size 3 dpns.

i used these mittens as an excuse to buy some more yarn today because i realized that maybe i needed some more 'manly' colors. i decided that i should prolly just leave the magenta out all together, even though i think he would probably wear them no matter what color they are. these will be a xmas present for the roamer, he's cool like that.

two more days and i'm off to north carolina for some rest and jess's sweet home cookin'

thurds-day

girls night out avec beaucoup de free champagne.

xmas gift 2

a great big long scarf for someone male in my life. i'm not sure who this will go to yet...

6" wide and over 6' long. damn.

trendsetter magnolia: 4 skeins. basketweave stitch: six sets of 3 stitch/3 rows of stst & rev stst. size 8 bamboo circs.

this yarn is pretty fuckin' cool. i found it at a discount store and couldn't quite resist italian yarn at 50ff. it has a strand of charcoal cotton with another strand of lighter grey plasticy stuff that reminds me of recycled tire mulch. no stretch at all. my hands were literally aching by the time i finished this motherfucker.

this scarf has been on my mind for a long time. that's why i went ahead and knat it up even though i have all kinds of xmas gifts on the needles with actual recipients in mind. when i was a wee 'ittle one my dad taught me to crochet. i did that off & on for years and then became tired of the 'homemade' look of the stitch. rummaging through the coat closet at my dad's house one winter i came across a scarf that he had made for me when i was young. it was meticulous and i was amazed that he had taken that much time to sit & think of me and knit this up. anyway, it was done the same stitch as this scarf and inspired me to learn to knit with the thought that i would one day make a scarf of the same stitch. dad didn't teach me to knit. that goes to my mama but he did teach me to crochet and that's pretty effin' cool. i would give this scarf to him but i don't think he would enjoy the novelty of this (not-at-all-warm) yarn.

the roamer

socks for the roamer, to keep his feet warm as he roams farther from me than ever before...

best foot forward from knit socks!. lion brand wool ease worsted in wheat. size 3 bamboo dpns. these socks are ginormous.

Self Portrait Tuesday

spt 3

xmas gift 1

my first finished xmas gift for this year. this scarf is for miss karen - my dad's lady friend...

branching out scarf from knitty. karabella mirage - kid mohair: 1 skein. size 8 wooden needles.

i wish the blocking would have done a better job of bringing out the leaf pattern, but then again my patience for blocking is somewhat lacking.

i seem to be progressing swimmingly on most of the gifts i planned for this year. maybe i will actually get everything finished, that would be a first. anyway i'm on the verge of finishing about 6 more things so i will be posting a bunch of boring posts like this in the coming days. fair warning.

fbf = football beer fun

spent last night with the wvu landscape architecture crew. west virginia vs. cincinatti. it's always nice to watch the game with the guys as long as we are dominating. it's been a while since i had seen everybody. nothing really changes though.

my view of the game : the ghost of my cig floats in front of the damn three amigos

aaron & keith get all serious : i'm always sittin' behind eric and his pale-ass arm : jana & eric play west virginia lawn games in the mulch pit. yeehaw.

someone invited a poor cincinatti fan : jana & i. the july 24th girls.

cables

How to write cable charts from knitted samples from See Eunny Knit.

Self Portrait Tuesday

spt 2

wafadatoosies

today: triumph! found and purchased 6 skeins of hard-to-find discontinued wool for a promised xmas gift.

some weekend pics

what do we have here:

spray paint on some fountain equipment. sunlight on my window. finished xmas gift with this much yarn left. only catcti survive. modern construction methods are ridiculously poor. terra cotta stucco: orlando's staple. my knitting on a bench w/o me. bird love/shit on a lamppost. ten months of depression will do that to your house plants.

anybody else out there old school who learned to type on a typwriter and still persists to put two spaces after every sentence? just wondering.

...remember when you were young, you shone like the sun. shine on you crazy diamond. now there's a look in your eyes like black holes in the sky...come on you target for faraway laughter come you stranger, you legend, you martyr and shine. you reached for the secret too soon you cried at the moon. shine on you crazy diamond...come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner and shine...

1.2.3.4.

ahem...

You scored as Drunk Cat. Put down the bottle, Cheech. Sign up for some AA classes and drink a glass of water. Bars are ok once in a while, but you shouldn't be sleeping at them.

Which Absurd Cat are you?
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socks.

broadripple socks from knitty. size 3 dpns. cascade fixation: 2 balls. cast on 48 sts rather than 56.

finished up some socks to send mama for her birthday. they are way too funky for her and she probably won't wear them much, but there you go. socks for the birthday.

my life is so routine right now that if i skip a step i might fall off. i hit the snooze 2 times every morning and get up at exactly 6:51. what would happen if tomorrow i only hit it once and got up at 6:42, my guess is that i would just stand in the shower in a daze for a little longer and actually not leave any earlier for work. i think that leaving for work at exactly 7:36 is part of my biorythm now. how depressing. i woke up at 6am last saturday. all of this rythmic alone time i've been having lately has forced me to think of things that i usually try to avoid. like where the fuck is my life going. i don't really need/want for it to go anywhere in particular, i just want to make sure that i don't end up somewhere (anywhere) without noticing it was happening. so this is it. this is my reality now.

Self Portrait Tuesday

spt 1