Great timing Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:48:18 AM

Sigh. What a great way to spend the day: elbow-deep in emails from lawyers about appraisals and cars and dividing up my Dad's property.



Happy fucking Thanksgiving.

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	Christmas in November (or, Look,Ma! I Organized!) Posted at 21 Nov 2009 10:34:19 PM

This evening the internet kept dropping. We decided to take that as a sign, and went out for dinner. With no place in particular in mind, we explored the Central West End and ended up at Duff's restaurant. It turned out to be a fantastic choice; they had some really great food in the smaller portions that we're trying to look for, and a hole-in-the-wall atmosphere which I happen to love. Later we took a walk down to my new favorite coffee shop - Coffee Cartel - and walked by the St Louis Chess Club.

Once home, we got impatient, and decided to open Christmas presents tonight! Most of them, anyway... there's one each that we're holding back until actual Christmas.

We each got some pretty awesome stuff, if I say so myself. He received a bunch of parts for his car, some shirts & a hat he's been wanting, which seemed to make him pretty happy :-) He got me an awesome loose tea infuser, amazing polarized sunglasses (no more crappy $10 sunglasses!) and A SWIFT. A real swift! No more draping the yarn around my knees and trying to keep it tensioned while winding!

And to keep my promise of moving the desk out of the main living/dining room once my dress was finished (which it has been for at least a month now...), I cleaned out the drawers and organized all of my fabric, bias tape, elastic and what not into my various bins. Once it was empty, we moved it temporarily into the spare bedroom, where I continued the organization to the yarn stash. My very overstuffed underbed container now has room again, and there's actually a method to my madness now!

Evidence:

Tagged as: knitting, life the universe and everything, slavish consumerism, tea

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	Silly hamster Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:47:37 AM

Completely blanked on the Classic 99 trivia contest on the way in. Any other day would've been fine, but today I couldn't have come up with "Prokofiev" as the composer of Peter and the Wolf if my life depended on it. (Stupid, too - I probably have the CD in the car.) Guess the hamster wheel in my brain just isn't spinning fast enough this morning!

In other news, this is guaranteed to make anyone feel better:

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	Catching up Posted at 10 Nov 2009 01:31:22 PM

The gang's all here - we got my brother moved into an apartment a couple of hours south of St Louis last week. I use "we" loosely -- our part consisted mostly of spare furniture transport.

While Mom was here the four of us took a trip down to Lambert's Cafe in Sikeston (yes, home of the throwed rolls). The rolls were as airborne as advertised, and absolutely delicious. I don't know why they bother having you order sides with your meal; waiters come around every couple of minutes with pots filled with various other sides that the chefs apparently just felt like making, so we got a taste of everything!
Final review: A+, would definitely go again.

I was taking a vague look at Penguicon this coming year; it both looks like something I'd be interested in and something that may not be worth the trip. Halp D:

The project that the Ravelry Heirloom Knitting group has been working on - have I mentioned this before? - is nearing completion. "Nearing" is a sort of relative word, as large parts of it remain to be done, but it's at least at a point where those not spending all their time trying to chart the border corner can cast on for the middle section.

So I have. 271 stitch provisional cast on in laceweight and gossamer: hear me roar!

This officially means that I have two giant lace shawls in the works, and one thankfully not at all complicated sweater. It's amazing; the gossamer that I'm using for Queen Susan is so fine that when I switch back to the laceweight cashwool for Snowflakes in Cedarwoods it feels like I'm knitting sock yarn... >_> Trouble with these shawls is that both are of the type which require concentration and long spans of time in which to work on them, or I get something like half a row done which doesn't feel at all productive.

And what with Dragon Age Origins*, and Torchlight**, and Real Life***, I don't really HAVE long spans of time to work on anything. Aaagh.

Contemplating a trip to the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival next year. I could probably stay with some family in the area, and there are highly tentative plans from said HK group to have a mini meet up at the festival. I think it would be fun :D

And maybe next year I could actually go to Rhinebeck!

* Excellent game.
** VERY Excellent game. Nowhere near as srs bzns as DAO, and quite a bit more addictive.
*** Always excellent :-)

Tagged as: games, i do a lot of dumb shit just for the geek cred, knitting, rants, restaurants, tqs, travel,

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	Quick one Posted at 21 Oct 2009 06:41:38 AM

Just a quick update: Mystic Light done. Not Monday night at 1am like I'd hoped, but last night at 9:30 works as well. Pictures later once I get it unpinned, etc.

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	Hi, Blog! Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:48:03 AM

(Note: This was written on Friday 10/16. I am posting it on Wednesday, 10/21.)

Hi, blog!

I've missed you, blog!

This is mostly because usually I would think of things to post while at work. However, I don't actually know my blog password - it's just saved in Firefox at home - so I'm a bit up a creek as far as posting those thoughts goes.

We've been in a flurry of activity at home; I was sick all week a couple of weeks ago, and Dan came down with it last week.

Brother Dan was in town last weekend and we had an amazing time at the Great Big Sea concert at the Pageant! That Friday I went to some jewelery party at a friends, and to my surprise actually found a few pieces that I quite liked. We unexpectedly were able to get tickets to the first Cardinals NLCS playoff game on the 10th, so that supplanted my renfaire plans.

As it turned out, it was the first and last playoff game, as the Dodgers walked all over us as though we hadn't showed up. Still, how often do you get to go to something like that? (I feel sort of badly for whoever had rented part of the parking lot in back of the stadium, complete with band stand, dozens of port-a-potties and a beer truck: it was 42* when the wind wasn't blowing, and we got trounced. I sort of doubt that anyone stayed around to party.)

No WoW, still, although my account is still active and occasionally used for chatting with people who are hard to get in touch with any other way. Consequently I've been spending most of my computer time on Facebook playing Farmville and Fish World. (How the mighty are fallen.)

Confidential memo to Blizzard, Inc: DIABLO 3. NOW.

We're heading to Iowa this weekend so I was trying to finish knitting a Misti Alpaca Ishbel and sewing two little aprons for a couple of birthdays. They were finished AND wrapped by Wednesday; I think this is a new record for me.

My Mystic Light is still on the needles and will be until the end of time. Note to self: no more beads!

I picked up a sweater's worth of the new Berroco Lustra - I would link, if their website wasn't down - a few weeks ago and started in on another Snow White, but a few inches in it decided that it wanted to be a Margot instead. So far, I agree with it.

A postal mishap was resolved, and my yarn for the GoddessKnits KAL finally arrived. It's absolutely gorgeous, and will be interesting to knit with. 2880 yards of gossamer weight silk/ramie, of all interesting things, and it sort of clings to itself. As Georgia said, it's going to be all drape and no memory. And speaking of Georgia, she was an angel and let me wind it on the swift at Hearthstone and even spelled me for awhile. We got the whole skein wound before the end of knit night, and I'll never forget it.

Also have I mentioned the WHOLE ENTIRE 2400 YARD SKEIN of 52/2 gossamer lambswool/silk/cashmere that Delia sent me to make up for the postal mishap!? Although it was dyed in the same dye as my silk/ramie, the wool content means it's an amazing gold/brown color and I have NO idea what it will become. Something large and gorgeous and probably Shetland, for it'd be a shame to not use all of it.

Because I have all of this spare time on my hands, I've cast on a Snowflakes in Cedarwoods in Lane Borgosesia Cashwool.

And if you think that all of this activity has resulted in my neglecting the housework... you're right. I haven't vaccuumed in weeks. (Don't tell my mom. Hi, Mom!) I comfort myself with the fact that I did the ironing a couple of days ago and have produced some pretty fantastic dinners over the past two weeks. I'm in love with the meyer lemon-infused olive oil from Di Olivas in the West County mall.

In that vein, last night I made a double batch of the most amazing pumpkin oatmeal cookies. Some came in to work with me this morning and were quite a hit, and most of the rest are coming to Iowa with us. Again I left out the pumpkin seeds (because I still don't quite understand what they're doing sitting around getting mushy in cookies, and not roasted with seasoned salt on a baking tray) and substituted the currants (hard to find) with cherry-flavored Craisins (easy to find).

In conclusion: Twitter.

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	This is what my spare bed looks like right now Posted at 29 Sep 2009 10:00:02 PM

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	Strange Folk Fest Swag Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:47:22 AM

Here's some of the swag from the excursion to Strange Folk Fest in O'Fallon IL today!


( Click for the rest )

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	Oh sweet gods Posted at 26 Jun 2010 10:47:49 AM

What have I gotten myself into?


Regardless, here's the official "Before" picture. Tune in about this time next year, I hope*, for the "After".



*And depending rather heavily on an early 2010 pattern release date, which is still no more than my wishful thinking. It could be December 2010 for all I know.

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	One problem solved Posted at 25 Sep 2009 08:32:43 AM

I found the yarn for the goddessknits Fall 09 Mystery Shawl KAL, at long last.

I was really hoping to find something in a real gold, similar to how this mithril silk laceweight that I've been using is a real silver color. But Fyberspates was out of stock on their gold yarn, and I had to go searching.

It's not as over-the-top vibrant, but all things considered I think that this from The Fiber Denn will do just fine. :-)

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