I made a puppet.

He's the best puppet I've ever made so far.

There's not really a good shot amoung them, and these are all several months old. I've since begun the Mark Wood Mark Two, this time with more felting, so that his face won't be so damn floppy.

In my defense, I swear I was neither drunk nor stoned when I decided to make a puppet of Electric Violinist Mark Wood, nor am I creepily enamored with him. Those of you who know me well know that I don't handle boredom well. Perhaps you just hadn't realized how poorly I handle it.

My apartment smells

Wool is one of those wonderful luxury fibers. I love to knit with it; it feels wonderful if you spend the cash to get the good stuff, it's got the right amount of stretch and give, and it looks damn fine when everything is said and done.

The one downside is blocking it. Blocking it means you dip the whole thing in warm water, press the excess water out, and then spread it out to dry. It sets the stitches, makes laces and cables stand out better, and gives everything an extra touch of zing.

The downside is that in the meantime, it smells. Wet wool is not a sexy smell at all.

Also, I'm going to Germany in a week. Squee!

It's all about Search

I have a dirty-love for the BBC radio, because it's really the Fox News of NPR.

They keep referring to Yahoo as "The Mighty Yahoo."

Heh.

Huh?

I had a dream last night, about Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'm not sure why, or even how, because I've never actually seen Rocky Horror.

Mostly it was just Tim Curry dancing around in dominatrix gear.

It was a very confusing way to wake up.

This is why I usually ignore those ads

This bank of ads accompanied a conversation I was having with my mom about my birthday present. Do I now need to mark google ads as being not safe for work?

Not for the easily engrossed

I'm starting to think more memes should involve reading wikipedia articles.
I do feel a bit bad about this, though. I got five books for Christmas, and I've still only read half of one of them.

Instructions:

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days will be your album cover.
4. Use the graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

Good news! That Varied Tit is just looking for lunch, not being all dead.

Band Name | Album Title | Photo Credit

Happy Birthday so far

Being as I'm just crawling into bed now, I'm positive I will be a useless husk come Monday morning. But boy, this has been one of those cockle-warming birthdays, so far.

Highlights from today's BBC World Broadcast

"Militant Fruitarian"

Stupendousness

I managed to insult my neighbor's religion inadvertantly after 11 at night. This may be a new record for my ability to gnaw on my toes.

They had their music playing loudly enough to wake me from a light doze. While irritating, this is the first time this has happened since I moved in, and compared to every neighbor I've ever had since I started college, this is a new record. So I figure that I'd be polite and knock on the door, rather then try the floor-stomping routine.

I put on a shirt and pants, and go downstairs. Knock knock.

No response. I can hear talking inside.

Hmph. This isn't how I'd planned this to go. Once again, knock knock.

The stereo shuts off completely. I hear something about religion, door, and this time of night. I make a poor judgement at this point, but one that made a certain degree of sense at the time; when I'd gotten home from teaching, I could see through the front window that there were two girls at my door. I figured one of them was my roommate's new convenient distraction, and frowned a bit, since I knew he was out of the apartment eating dinner somewhere else. By the time I'd gotten my bass out of the car, and checked the mailbox, they were on their way down the stairs, and it turned out it was two high schoolers shoving religious tracts into people's doors.

No one appears to be coming to the door, but the stereo is off. I figure they've gotten the hint, and start walking back up the stair. As I reach the landing, the door opens, and there's my neighbor. She looks irritable.

"Oh," I say. "I'm sorry to be a bother, but I have to work in the morning, so I was just hoping you wouldn't mind turning your stereo down."

She nods, and apologizes. I smile and say, "Not to worry, I'm not some late-night Jehovah's Witness or something."

From the look on her face after that comes out of her mouth, I know that was the wrong thing to say. "I am a Jehovah's Witness, actually."

I'm not sure how to react. I'm half-asleep, which makes me muddy as is. Something tells me I should apologize, but I'm not feeling terribly apologetic, and I don't like lying to people when I know I'm not coherent enough to carry it off ever at all. So instead I get all lame and just say, "Hmm, okay."

"Right," she says.

"I, um."

We look at each other awkwardly for a moment. She goes back into her apartment. I walk up the stairs.

Now I can't get back to sleep.

Goddamnit.

You know you've hit rock bottom when...

One Missed Call, a movie only noteworthy for it's creepy mouth-eye poster, currently has a rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 00%.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Movie, currently has a rating on Rotten Tomatoes
of 06%.

You know you've failed in life when a Uwe Boll movie has a higher rating than yours does.

OH GOD I CAN'T SHUT UP

There's a couple of things in movies and horror literature that still don't fail to creep me out. The first is people getting stabbed or sliced in their Achilles Tendon, and the other is serious eye deformities.

But these pictures of mouths in place of eyes I find both deeply unsettling and strangely hypnotic. It's hard to just stop looking.

And it's FREAKING ME OUT.

I'm feeling blabbity

I went to the craft store last night to buy a new set of size 8 double points, because I keep losing them. As I was walking to the register, I was fancying something that would mess up my blood sugar levels, and there were silly boxes of Pop Rocks with locks on them that were alleged to be full of Pop Rocks.

I forgot that I had them until about ten minutes ago, and I unwrapped them, pulled off the key, unlocked the box, and opened it up.

Then I laughed for some minutes.

Unlike the normal pop rock packages you would expect to see when opening a pop rock packaged-shaped box, I pulled out tiny little square packages that looked very curiously, like, well.



I have had various silly candies in the past. Most memorable prior to this was the chocolate vagina I had bought for a friend my freshman year of college. But now, I'm the proud owner of a box of explosive candy condoms.

Okay, they're just normal pop rocks, but they're in a lockable container and shaped like candy condom packages.

Now I'm just feeling super blabbity

I had plans for Christmas. Silly plans. I would make some sort of handcrafted gift for everyone in my family.

It turns out that when you work 40 hours and teach twice a week, this is what most people would consider to be a really dumb Idea. Fortunately I had some lead time (I decided this back in October) and a couple of projects half complete, so it seemed fairly doable.

The first of them was for my mom; I would finish a cross-stitch I had been working on for her over the past four years (So maybe I'd started before October, even?). I'd started it when I had access to TV, and soon after I lost access to TV, I learned that cross-stitching is really, really boring. Most of the work on it has been done at my folks' house, on their couch, in front of the boob-tube. To compensate for my lack of cable, I began renting movies like a madman the past two weeks. I've seen some good stuff, and some stuff I could've lived without, but it got the job done, you know?

For my dad, I made a tie. This turned out to also be a stupid idea, because it was supposed to have been a birthday present. For his Birthday. In August.

Oops.

It turns out that using #1 size needles makes everything take 17 times longer than you'd expected it to. Also, it turns out my hand-sewing skills are shit, which is why I'm leaving the lining of the tie up to my mom, who has hand-sewing skills that are more like the roses that grow out of the shit-skills I currently have if you give them enough time. Maybe one day I'll be able to handle it, but with my rate of learning sewing techniques, there's a chance I'll be doddering and incontinent, and I'd probably end up wrapping a tie around my dad's gravestone.

Still, so long as you don't flip it over or look too closely at the carrying side, it looks pretty decent.

The next gift was intended for my elder niece. (By elder, I mean she'll be four the day after Christmas, which still makes her older than her little sister.) I've been designated "Strange Aunt Sasha," or "Silly Aunt Sasha," so I felt compelled to live up to my name and make her some mittens.

Shaped like LOBSTER CLAWS.

In spite of a couple of experiments with gauge swatches, they turned out goddamn huge. However, it turned out that the wrist-holes were too small, so while they would have been too big if she'd gotten them on, she couldn't actually get them on. Grah.

This may be a lesson about not trying to size things for people if they can't volunteer body parts for them.

At the same time, I started work on a project for the younger niece. Let's just leave it at failure due to terrible instructions and forget it ever happened.

The next project almost became a failure as well. It was my first attempt with felting, which is kind of like when you ruin a new sweater by putting it in the washer, but with purpose. Wool will turn to felt, and can be shaped and formed if you're careful about it. It's not really complicated, but you only get one shot at it, and if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work.

I wanted to make my older brother a stuffed hedgehog. He'd collected them when he was a kid, and this seemed like a simple enough gift for him that would end up in the hands of his own children. Or it would have, if the first one hadn't failed. You see, all of the paws felted zip-zip-zip-zip, but the rest of the body had only felted in clumps here and there. Also, the fur turned from this pleasing, lush texture to an unpleasant, clumpy feel.

So, I went to the yarn store and whined to the woman working there, and she advised me to a better choice of fur-yarn. I went through the pattern again, and then delayed actually felting it, worried that it would fail again. I had another talk with the lady at the knitting store, and she told me where I could find a proper washer that would be hot enough to do things properly, a big change from the less functional machines in my apartment building.

So a weekend before Christmas, I felted that sucker up, and it worked all properly like it ought to have the first time.

On top of that, I made one set of gauntlets for Seth, which I neglected to take any pictures of. It was a quick adventure in cabling. The first one was from a pattern, but I didn't like the way it worked out and decided to try a different pattern for the second. I couldn't find anything I particularly like, so I made up something new, derived from patterns that I had liked. They worked pleasantly, and I liked the way they turned out; the same cabling technique, but on different scales.

Blah, blah, blah.

I may make many more of those hedgehogs, now that I know how. They're adorable and quick to make. The lady at the knitting shop had mentioned using smaller needles and a lighter gauge yarn. If there's one thing I've learned from Japanese people, it's that making things smaller makes them more intensely adorable.

For my little brother, I made some hats. Yay for hats!

On living with your ex-boyfriend who hasn't gotten over you

NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

I love the pet store.

My boyfriend and I went out to have pizza last night. While we were waiting, he suggested we walk around, and I said we go to the pet store.

On the one hand, it was kind of sad. Both of us are working all the time, so it's not really feasible for us to have a pet that requires more attention than a fish tank, or maybe a lizard requires. I'm down with that; I'd love to have a pet snake, but that would be a dealbreaker for living with my boyfriend, who would be super, super uncomfortable with that notion. My suggestion that I get a burrowing snake that he would never see did not go over well (which is fine, because realistically if I had a snake it wouldn't spend that much time in its cage and much time pretending to be a necklace.)

On the other hand, watching chinchillas is a great way to kill time while you're waiting for dinner to finish baking.

Wonder wonder wonderful

I had an amazing dream last night.

I was floating in my usual way last night. Anytime I fly in dreams, I'm just leaning forward with my knees bent slightly, like I'm riding an invisible Segway with a kneeling chair on it. Compared to most people and their soaring across the city, I just putter a few inches from the ground. I realize this makes most of my flying dreams kind of lame.

Still! "Boy," I thought, "This is totally some sort of extra-sensory power. I should call the James Randi Foundation and win a million dollars!"

It was kind of a downer to wake up and realize that I could neither fly, nor win a million dollars.

Good things come in pairs?

I'm trying to stay productive, since lately I've been sinking into a serious, full-on funk. Some things are going well; the boyfriend and I found an apartment in Saline, which is close enough to Ann Arbor to make me feel comfortable and connected, but far enough from the hustle to make his ultra anti-social self happy. It's a top-floor, corner apartment, with a view of the woods behind the building. It's quiet and peaceful, and should be a nice change from living across the street from the oh so noisy police station.

Other things could be going better. I had an absurd, 13 hour job interview on the 8th— the interview itself was only half an hour long, but there were 12 and a half hours of associated nonsense. It was fun, and informative, and I went bowling for the first time since I was... hmm... 16? They sent me a sample contract on Wednesday, and asked how interested I would be in it, emphasizing that it was not an offer of employment. I wrote back full of pep and enthusiasm.

And I haven't heard from them one way or another since then.

My current job is driving me crazy. I mean, I'm still a temp, doing data-entry at a research firm in Ann Arbor. I still hate it, and hate that it's going nowhere, and hate that getting to it every morning is a royal pain in the ass, and hate that I'm getting tendonitis pains in alternating wrists. What's more, they're running out of work for me to do, so they've had me error-checking other people's work, which is even more mind-numbing and tedious. And what's worse is that it'll end at the end of the month, and in spite of my distaste for it, that means I'll be unemployed, which is worse.

So I've been trying to distract myself over the past week, and I do that by knitting.

I've already made more gauntlets than I've cared to, but they're really quick to knit and they make great presents. Up until last halloween, I only made them in mismatched pairs. Anytime I made them for someone else, my only request was that they buy the yarn, since I have terrible taste in things other people like, and I've found people are happier when they hand a wad of yarn to me and say, "I like this. Make something out of it." Then, I try to make them about the same length, but in different textures. It makes them happy, it keeps me amused. The only non-gauntlet presents I have made were a scarf that took me over a year to make, and two fair-isled hats which were both too small for my head. One of them was the Jamiroquai influenced hat in an earlier post, but without the earflaps or the pom-pom on top; it was a little too short to cover my ears. The other was my very first fair-isle hat, a skull-and-crossbones mess which I never took pictures of. I tried very, very hard to make it fit, but the all-acrylic yarn would not stretch for shit. [EDIT: I am so full of shit. After dinking around on my brother's weblog, I remembered that I'd made a devil hat for my niece Sophia (there are a couple pictures of her looking miserable wearing it), and when I was learning to knit, I made a pair of baby blankets for Heather. Well, for her baby.]


Halloween was the first matched pair that I made, though I have since lost one of them (See above photo, currently discussing the right glove. If you have a copy of the vogue stictionary in front of you, that particular pattern is called 'leaf lace'). I was playing in a concert, and the section was going as insects. I chose to be a praying mantis. Along with the gloves, I made my very first, all-original pattern for the antenna. I adore how they came out, though I'm still trying to figure out how to secure them better, since they're fairly floppy. I also sewed a thorax, which was just silly looking. Altogether though, it was an outfit I was pretty proud of.

The second set (shown above on the other hand; it's a very basic cabling. I'm sure it has a name, but damned if I know what it is) is half-done, and by request. I'm really doing it for two reasons; first because I was asked too, and second because they're not quite a matched set. The cabling on one is done to the back, and the cabling on the other is done to the front. This means that the one glove will have swirlies going to the right, and the other will have swirlies going to the right. It's a small distinction, but important. In fact, one one of the cables I pulled the the front instead of the back, and it stands out from the other swirls, looking misplaced and a little uncomfortable. I told the recipient about it, and he waved it off as a little bit of charming diversity.

I still think it looks silly, but not so silly that I'm willing to remake it.

I'm also trying to knit a tie. At this point it's about an inch and a half long, and I'm learning that fingering-weight yarn is a pain in the ass to work with. When there's more substance I'll probably take pictures.

Anyway, I'm mostly rambling and playing with my camera. I really ought to be in bed.

Blah, blah blah.

Chances are, I miss you.

One step closer to carcinogen

It was such a nice day that we felt compelled to go out. My boyfriend and I packed a huge ol' bottle of water and a bunch of super-expensive frisbees, and we went out for my first round of disc-golf.

I figured, since the game was taking place mostly in a forest, that I'd be okay to wear a halter top. Sure, it's outside, but it's cool and shady and wonderful, right?

Wrong. My shoulders, my upper back, and my cleavage are now a wonderful lobster-red, as is my nose and the skin on the tops of my elbows. There is a six inch wide stripe running down my back where my hair was. Also, I suck at disc-golf.

It was still grand fun, though. Less fun was learning that my boyfriend neither tans nor burns. There is, perhaps, a gentle hint of extra rosiness on his cheeks, but he is otherwise untarnished.

That rat-bastard.

Something totally unrelated

I'm trying to get back into blogging (though I'm not sure why, since I'm failing to do anything worth blogging about), so these are just the birthing pains.

There's a cafe near my job that I go to more than I ought to. There's two things about it that amaze me; the first being that, unlike every other cafe I've ever been to (with the exception of the little place around the corner from Jake's apartment; if it were within walking distance from my job, I'd probably go there more often), everyone who works there acts like they really, really want me to give them my money. If they could throw on some sexual favors to convince me to buy their italian sodas more often, they probably would.

Also, their cups for cold drinks are made entirely out of corn.

Actually, that kind of freaks me out.

Totally useless trivia

I've been working for a month doing data entry. It pays very well, but I feel like it's turning into a deeply uninteresting person.

So, I feel I should share this:
I have a very hard time telling James Woods and Willem DeFoe apart. I have no idea why this is. Sometimes, I also get Christopher Walken confused with them, and that's just plain embarassing.

Thank you, this is all.