Mossy Cottage Knits

Wherein I Finally Succumb to Using an LOLCats Reference

Apparently the impish god whose job it is to make sure I'm never burdened by too many pieces of green paper in my wallet has discovered my Achilles heel:

What can I say except, perhaps:

For specs, see my last entry, only Cloud Jungle Deep Seaflower colorway.

While dinking around with my camera tonight, I came across a picture I took while down in San Diego. Behold, the magic of blocking on a teeny-weeny scale. One or two zaps of the steam from an iron and the sweater unclenched with only a tiny, almost inaudible scream. I couldn’t quite hear but I think it, too, said, “Oh, noes!”

Of Light In Its Various Forms

Naturally, without much struggle and without really noticing it, over the last couple of years, I’ve greatly reduced the amount of yarn I buy to about, say, one skein every four months or so. But not to fret. You can’t put a hand down in this house without touching something that has yarn in it. I have yarn in the loft, bedroom, den, living room, coat closet, garage... (I'm tempted to put skeins in the bathroom and kitchen so there isn't a room untouched by the demon fiber.) So, in short, I’m set for a good long while. However, I love:

Yarn (duh)

Sock yarn in particular

Variegated yarn

Subtle and unique shades of brown and gray (a new development, this; still trying to wrap my head around it. Brown and gray used to give me fits.)

Sparkle.

So what was I to do when confronted with this? I mean, really, what was I to do? I swear ta' God, a sunbeam appeared out of nowhere and shone directly on this skein and I heard a bar or two of "Ode to Joy."

The yarn has about four times more sparkle than the photo shows but it's late, and I'm too lazy to haul out my make-shift light box (besides, Benny decided to showcase his artsy side by chewing holes in the tissue).

The vital statistics:

Bought at Village Yarn & Tea

Dream in Color brand

"Starry" sock-weight yarn

Cloud Jungle colorway

Merino superwash and silver (kewl!)

450 yards of pure heaven

The number of times it has already been stolen by Joon: 1

I’m sure word has gotten around by now that, over the course of a few years and culminating on Saturday, knitters around the world have succeeded in donating over a million dollars to Doctors Without Borders through Stephanie’s campaign. I am gobsmacked. That being said, ratio-wise, given that we had approximately two hours and 15 knitters to accomplish our fund-raising this weekend, I dare say we pulled off the equivalent. How does:

$1,606

grab ya’? To put this in perspective, Elaine was hoping to raise $200. The poor thing. I don’t think she knew whether to laugh, cry, crumple up or bounce around the room as if she were on a pogo stick.

It wasn’t my event, it was strictly Elaine’s, but I still feel compelled to send a big thank you to the newbies (hi, Cathy! I hope you survived your first knit-in!), long-time pals that I don’t see nearly often enough (you know who you are), and the regulars who have been friends o’ my heart for years now. You pulled off a small, generous miracle. (You’d think after Dulaan, I wouldn’t be so surprised but I still am.)

Reminder!

It's All In How You Look at It

Courtesy of Big Sister, my furry demons received a lovely handful of new toys at Christmas, in particular a grab bag of soft toys and balls. They particularly like the soft toys but the aggression with which they pounce on them (involving teeth, nails, rapid-fire rabbit kicks, sideways skittering and explosive caroming off the walls) is in complete disproportion to the cuteness of the toys. So, to square the pouncing and tearing and disemboweling with the actual look of the toys, we now have:

The Ladybug of Doooooooooooom

The Purple Flower of Death

The Butterfly of Global Annihilation

New Uses for Technology (Plus Knit-In News!)

I recently moved my laptop from the cramped confines of my drop-front secretary desk to the relative expanse of the dining room table. Benny and Joon immediately discovered that there was now hunkering and/or sprawling room behind the laptop and that—score!—the back of the laptop generated a modicum of kitty-acceptable warmth. So now I’m treated to a lot of this…

...and this:

She has squashed herself as close the laptop as she can and is resting the entire weight of her head on the screen. Not because she finds me fascinating, but because she fully intends to fall asleep this way.

In a remarkably short amount of time, friend Elaine has put together a knit-in/spin-in to raise funds for the quickly expanding Haiti efforts. The event will be held on Saturday, January 23rd, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the meeting room at Third Place Commons (Lake Forest Park Towne Center; directions here). All money raised will be split evenly between the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. Elaine says, "Donations will be at will (no charge to attend) and there will be a small raffle (emphasis on small)."

If you have questions, please let me know and I'll be happy to give you Elaine's contact info.

What's in a Name?

Long-time readers may remember a time when I got all jiggy wid' online name generators. My two favorites at the time were Loopy Banana Brains (my Professor Poopypants name) and Mad Cow Crack Robba (my gangsta name).

It being five+ years later, I thought I’d swing on through the online name generators again and see if there was anything new and fun out there. Truthfully, there’s not much that's noteworthy except perhaps my Significant Other Pet Name, which put me on the floor:

Infertile Nubs

That’s Ms. Nubs to you.

(Big Sister, if you're reading this, I'm afraid you are Hopeless Jiggles.)

The Photo You Can Use to Blackmail Me

What you wear when you live in the Northwest, it's mid-winter, you're cold, and you live alone:

You're seeing fuzzy purple and pink pj bottoms and a huge men's fleece-lined, blue, green and beige flannel jacket. Oh, and the shirt paired with all of this haute couture? Humongous, with sleeves that hang way past my fingertips. Fire-engine red. Oh, and the piece de resistance—it's inside out.

Hubba, hubba.

Churned out another miniature sweater, this time with some cables thrown in for grins. Again, sock yarn, 14 stitches per side, size 1 needles, slightly wonky sleeves. If nothing else, I'm consistent.

Fun with Werds Words

I am and will forever be one of those dreaded Grammar Nazis who gets a slight tic in her eye when she sees misspellings. Despite not wanting to be like my mother, who was the Exalted Empress of Grammar Nazis, I can’t help it; it’s in my jeans genes. (It doesn't help that as a technical writer and editor, I'm paid to be a Grammar Nazi.) Sometimes, however, I stumble across a misspelling which, rather than roll my judgmental eyes at it, I happily appropriate into my written and spoken vocabulary. Take, for example, this recent one from Ravelry: Animousity. It brings to mind a tiny and futilely furious rodent, waving a little mouse fist at the vast world. It makes me think of those small flashes of anger that could turn into something if you let them, but really aren’t worth the trouble, like how you feel when the person behind you in the checkout line keeps bumping you with her cart. You know it will soon be over, so soon that by the time you leave the store you won’t even remember it. You even know the person probably isn’t even aware she’s doing it; but still, you feel that small surge of anger. I declare that feeling to be, dear friends, animousity.

What else causes animousity? Comment at will. (Alternatively, do I have the definition all wrong? Feel free to chime in.)