This week...

It's cold this week.

It's one of those weeks where I and everyone around me keep asking the question, "Why do I live here?" Outside this morning, it actually hurt to breathe. I decided to quit whining about it though when I received this photo from my Aunt Amy in Maine of her thermometer this morning:

That's 32 degrees below zero. That makes my -5°F seem downright balmy.


This week brought evidence that my fear of flocks of birds is not unfounded.

A flock of birds brought down a plane. I'm glad no one died (I don't think there were any injuries even). And I truly believe the pilot is a superhero. (Apparently, the odds of surviving a water landing are pretty slim. Does that mean I should pay attention to the safety instructions next time I fly or just continue to ignore them?).

For those of you who don't know, I'm not so fond of flocks of birds (or schools of fish). It's not an incapacitating phobia - they just make me feel nauseous and a little afraid. It's a group think thing - it's like they have one mind - and it freaks me out. (Birthday girl) Jaz and Bill discussed my little phobia on the air this morning (the January 16th show starting at about 13:40). Bill tries to reassure me about the odds of this happening at about 15:55. Sorry Bill, the words "The air is lousy with birds" didn't help. Not. At. All.



This week Traci made me cry.

Traci's recession-busting post is beautiful. She made me think about my own life and what really matters in it. I have a fabulous loving family. My parents and siblings do things that inspire me daily. I have my next-door family that means so much to me I'll never find the right words. I have my just-the-right-shade-of-geeky friends. We're a little tribe that formed out of nowhere and now I can't imagine life without them. I have a gaggle of knitters (including one famous one) around to inspire and enable me. I have old friends (those friendships that have been through so much and lasted so long they will never break) in faraway places doing all sorts of inspiring things. I work in a beautiful place, for a good and unique publishing firm, with intelligent people whose company I enjoy. I'm surrounded by amazing, clever, creative, smart and funny people on all sides. The economy counts for nothing in the face of all that.



This week I was surprised by a politician.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi played a prank. On YouTube. This is the person who is third in line for the presidency. She, or some smart person on her staff, under the guise of launching a new YouTube House of Representatives station, RickRolled us. I love this in the same way that I love Obama refusing to give up his Blackberry. Is it strange that their tech additions and pop-culture savvy make them seem more human to me?

My Self-indulgent weekend

Our Super Supreme Uber-Geeky Game Night was canceled due to a lack of an instructor, so Pete and Traci decided to have a Regular Run-of-the-mill Game Night Friday night. I don't know what was in the air or if we all just really really needed to let off some steam, but, man, we were funny. Everytime someone opened their mouth hysterical things came out. I haven't laughed that hard, for so long, in years. None of it is all that funny in retrospect of course - you couldn't explain to anyone who wasn't there why these things were funny. Jaz did her best to document it (Looking at those photos I may have to reconsider the wearing of berets. Why was I wearing that all night?). What Jaz failed to mention was who won that marathon game of Apples to Apples. Not that it's at all important.... I don't care about these things... It was really all about the group spirit.... But just incase YOU care... I won.

On Saturday I slept later than I've slept in the past 12 months and then got up, made a pot of coffee and sat in my Flannel PJs reading a book until well past noon. Possibly the most decadant morning I can remember. Ok, maybe not, but still it was pretty good.

Over the holidays, I found myself jonesing to make a new scarf. Scarves are a knitter's bread and butter. The comfort food of fiberholics. And it's been a while since I made one. Saturday afternoon, I became obsessed with a scarf design I'd had in my head for several days. It's inspired by a conversation I had recently with an old friend. I could see in my head the cable pattern I wanted and was sure I'd seen it in a book somewhere. I pulled book after book off the shelves of my (unreasonably large) knitting library and scoured the internet with no luck. I even made a trip to Webs for a book that was missing from my collection (after IMing Tina to make sure it was in stock, of course). The pattern in my head wasn't there either, but there was one that would do as a starting point.

I scribbled and sketched and swatched and ripped. Somewhere in the middle I cooked a yummy dinner. All through Towelhead (Does Aaron Eckhart purposely seek out the skeeziest possible characters to play?) I swatched and ripped and ended the evening with a ball of yarn. I was convinced that this cable needed to be reversible and couldn't make it work.

Sunday I discovered the limits of my charting software, switched to Excel and drew what I thought was the final chart. I made a pot of chai and took it next door to swatch the new chart with Traci's moral support. We put on An Affair to Remember and by the time Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr's boat was landing in New York, I'd already started to suspect that it wasn't working (the knitting, I mean, not their affair, that was clearly working very well). I'd frogged the whole thing before the movie ended and we started arguing about whether Deborah Kerr was being stupid for not telling Cary Grant about the car accident or if she was just trying to be a strong, independent woman.

Meet me in 6 months at the top of the Empire State Building.
Just remember to look both ways before you cross the street.

I gave up on the reversible cable then. This thing is not going to be able to be looked at from all sides. It's one sided - my side. The original vision of it in my head. I charted it and started knitting. By the time I went to bed the scarf was 1/4 done.

A full weekend of obsessive knitting resulted in about 15" of scarf. Completely self-indulgent. I did exactly what I wanted to do and I have very little to show for it.

In other news, I am planning a new batch of the reusable (no-more-plastic) produce bags I sewed (Me! Sewing! It's crazy!) for friends and family for Christmas. I have not actually used mine yet having been away basically since I finished them, but apparently they're all the talk at the Winter CSA. I've ordered the fabric and should have more made in the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping to sell them on Etsy, but I've got no idea what to charge. Any thoughts?

(Picture stolen from Jaz because I've been too lazy to take one of my own....)

The Right Thing to Say on Every Dubious Occasion

Thanks, Eleanor, for pointing this book out to me and providing a very unneeded distraction from my work on a Friday afternoon. Not only did I read the whole thing, I then had to go on every book site I can think of and search (fruitlessly it seems) for a copy. If you need me, I'll be scouring the shelves of every used bookstore in a 300 mile radius.

What works on a Wii and what doesn't

I teach beginning knitting classes. I will swear up and down that anyone can learn to knit (except my mother). But this is going too far. Wii knitting? I will have to see it before I completely discount it, but I can't imagine how it will work. Will you knit a virtual sweater? Where is the sense of achievement in that? New knitters need to feel proud that they've actually produced something. I know I'm a bit beyond the video game generation, but I've never seen the sense in spending hours solving or cracking (or whatever the kids call it) a game. Is this the same idea? You learn to knit on the Wii and complete a project that you'll never get to squeeze or wear? Maybe the skills will translate to actual needles and yarn, but will you ever do it after being bored to death making a virtual hat?

Wii Pole Dancing is a completely different story. If someone (Traci? Eleanor?) could sort that out, I think it would create totally useful skills in the real world and keep you fit at the same time.

Never satisfied.

I'm currently staying in a big high-rise downtown hotel in San Francisco. My room is mostly adequate - exactly what I expect from a bland, but expensive, chain. The only real problem is the sink. It is really really small. Not a problem in general, but it has a normal sized, and very high powered, tap attached to it. The tap extends most of the way accross the sink making it hard to reach into the basin. If you turn on the tap all the way it hits the far side of the basin and sprays upward like a fountain. If you try to wash your face in the sink you have to lean severely to one side and contort your arms around the tap and you still end up drenched from chest to crotch. Teeth brushing is an adventure in water spray. I understand that it's not the largest bathroom and they were trying to maximize the space, but please, powers that be in the Hilton chain, choose tap in sizes that work with the sink. Don't make me curse you every time I turn on the water For a couple of days before checking in here, I was staying at a crazy funky B&B in Haight-Ashbury. I didn't have a private bath, but there was a sink in the room. Even there, in a place run by a decrepit (but adorable) old hippie woman, in a room that contained artwork made from severed mannequin heads, the sink did not soak me every time I used it.

Nothing attracts the ladies like the smell of fast food

If the McDonald's "I don't know where Paraguay is" ads haven't completely melted your brain have a look at this.

I'm not keen on mass-produced Lattes

The huge ice storm that debilitated most of Massachusetts on Thursday night missed the Pioneer Valley. We got mostly slush and rain and the worst that happened was the little stream that runs behind the house overflowed into the yard. There are apparently people all over the state who still are without power 4 days later, but it was a non-event here.
I took Thursday, Friday and today off work to attempt to get Christmas stuff done. With Traci and Audrey's help I finished almost all of my shopping on Thursday. The majority of my gifts are (or will soon be) handmade and Friday was set aside as 100% knitting day, but I got distracted by other crafty ideas. I found a big bag of buttons cheap and bought some jewel toned pins and a styrofoam tree form at Michael's to make this button tree:

Then I saw this project on Just Like Martha and had to try it. Apparently the idea was first published in Readers Digest many years ago as an idea for old issues. I chose an extra fat womens magazine, so the folding took an hour and a half. I'm pleased with it though. The original instructions call for spray paint and glitter, but I like the look of it bare.

I did get lots of knitting done in the last 3 days, but I can't show you most of it until after the gifts are given. There is one large thing blocking on my living room floor now (the cats in their excitement that I am home for the 4th day in a row keep running across it, so I'm having to smooth it out every 5 minutes).

There's a new original katywhumpus design that will be given to (and named in honor of) my sister. I started off taking careful notes, but started tweaking and changing and forgot to write everything down, so I'm going to have to make a second one after the holidays in order to write up the pattern.

I've got a few other projects done and in the works, but I put them aside on Saturday to make this year's Christmas hat. I made the first of these hats in 2005 on a whim. They're dorky long hats that make people giggle. The original is seen below in one of my favorite photos of my folks.
That Christmas the hat was worn by everyone in the family. When someone was grumpy and anti-holiday spirity, they were made to wear the hat. It popped up in lots of family photos from that winter. The 2006 hat was similiar but had thin green stripes like a candy cane. I have no photos of last year's hat as it was done last minute and I don't have it here because I forgot it at Mom and Dad's house and it got packed up with the decorations last year. It was red and green with simple embroidered snowflakes and a tassel instead of a pom pom. Since the hats seem to be getting more complex every year, I somehow decided it would be a good idea to do fair-isle snow flakes around the edge this year. I don't do fair-isle as a general rule, but I thought it would only be a few rows (and it would be good for me to reach outside my comfort zone). But then, once I started, I couldn't stop....I'm finishing a small kitting project this morning and then getting out the sewing machine to make some eco-gifts. I'm not much of a sewer, but I've had this idea in my head for months. I'll post photos after the big day if it all works out ok.

I've been watching a lot of movies and TV while doing all of this knitting. Because my hands are busy I don't always fast forward through the commercials (I almost never watch live TV...). I'm loving the new Ozzy Ozbourne adverts for Sprint. I've always admired that Ozzy is quite happy to make fun of himself.

On the other hand I'm increasingly offended by the new McDonald's campaign. Apparently McDonald's is now serving coffee drinks and are marketing them by poking fun at traditional coffee shops. The underlying message of this campaign seems to line up with the republican attacks during the presidential campaign on so called Latte Drinking Liberals. The first advert shows two guys in a coffee shop, one guy tells the other that McDonalds now has cappuccinos. They are both psyched because now they can shave their goatees, talk about football and get rid of their fake glasses.



But last night I saw the female version of the ad. I couldn't breathe for a few minutes after seeing it. It's so disgusting I don't even have words....