comic: Bell of the Ball

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blog vomit

Does anyone else find it funny that Abe, Mr. Computer, “can’t” post pictures? And calls me multimedia lady? What a weirdo. The first few times I posted pictures, I wrote the post and made him add in the pictures. I think he is just too lazy to find pictures to post. He doesn’t really write about anything visual, though, I guess.

So I was reading, you guessed it, The AntiCraft, and they posted about this great site: Retropolis Transit Authority. I love, love, love this site! The t-shirts are awesome and I will be getting one. It might be this one, or this one. Maybe this one for my mom.

Yesterday’s link that Abe posted for me was a post about the Semicolon Apperciation Society. You have got to read through all the comments. It is the best in dorkly comedy.

So I have continued work, slowly but surley, on the Firebird socks from the Flock Sock Club. The look awesome. I am done with the lace of the tail on the first one and am ready to start the bodies. Super exciting. The lace chart was long enough that it was hard to follow while I was watching TV so I started really just listening to the TV and concentrating on the chart. It was much easier and look much better once I started doing that. The second sock will be even better. I actually can’t wait to make this sock in other colors. Someone posted in the Flock Sock Club on Ravelry that it would make a good peacock, if you can find the right color yarn. Which seems to be pretty hard since I have read on two occasions about people searching for the perfect “peacock” color. The Imbas socks are still sitting on my sewing table getting knocked off for the dogs (mostly Ernie) to drool on every few days by the darned cat. I might try to get to them soon. They are so close!

So I will try to have a comic to post this week. Hopefully by Friday, but I am feeling so uninspired lately.

I finally called a different oral surgeon and have a consultation appointment in a couple weeks. They said I should be able to get my teeth out the following week or the week after. That seems awfully quick. I hope to get it done on the 22nd of May because I have that next Monday off work. But that is the weekend of the NW Folk Life Festival and I really wanted to do some reconnaisance to see if I should go next year to sell my needles. If I am feeling well, I will try to go on that Monday which is the last day. Otherwise, I might send Abe to check it out for an hour or something to see if he thinks that would be a good place to try. I haven’t told him this yet.

And that very random post is my blog vomit for the day. I will try to add pics of the Firebird sock tonight.

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Stuff and things

I am only rarely able to come up with a snappy title for my posts. “Stuff and things” is something that a guy I worked with at Dick’s used to say to people when they were being vague in their descriptions of something. He’d look at ‘em and be like “Oh and stuff and things?” and his tone of voice was high test liquid dismissal. It was awesome.

Angela asked me to post a link to this for her. I’m not going to explain it to you before you clink on the link though. It’s best experienced first hand as it were.

In the World of Warcraft front (I know you were all dying for an update on this topic) Kobifora is coming along nicely. Thanks to my brother and our awesome guild mates I went from level 62 to level 64 and a half this weekend. I also got my +healing bonus from around 260 to 544 from gear upgrades.

School is going well too. My piano teacher tells me that she can tell that I’ve been practicing and she gives me pointers on how to do things better but hasn’t had to correct me for doing anything wrong yet. I’m really starting to get a feel for the instrument too. It doesn’t feel as alien as it did even three weeks ago.

After we saw I am legend we went to the book store and bought a copy of the book. I just finished it this afternoon on my bus ride to work. And I’ve got to tell you that this book really confused the hell out of me.

We have the promotional version with Will Smith on the cover. I didn’t realize until I got to the end of the entire book that “I am legend” is only one of many short stories in the book. Nowhere on the book do the words “short story” appear yet the book is in fact a collection of them and “I am legend” is merely the first and longest of them. Here on the Amazon listing for the version we own you can see that it isn’t mentioned that the book is a collection of short stories either. Thought I was losing my mind there!

As is usual with these things, the story is better in written form than in movie form. In fact the movie barely resembles the story in the book at all. Sure the general outline is there but nearly all of the details have been changed, most for the sake of “Hollywoodizing” the story. The dog is a minor character in the book that appears for only a few pages. The woman is, well, you should read it for yourself.

No pictures from me. Angela’s the multimedia lady.

Abe

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Big blue rip

What a great weekend. Yesterday we did nothing. Well, I sold a pair of needles to my cousin Jenny and some other arachknits stuff, but other than that, we both had a great relaxing weekend. Abe played WoW all weekend. On Saturday, I started some fingerless mittens. I watched Memiors of a Geisha and the first two disks of Firefly (of four disks) which got me through one and a half of the gloves. They are garter stitch, mostly, so I was getting bored at that point. So I stopped knitting and read Watership Down for about 3 hours. Good book. I got to cuddle with Nisa while I read for an hour. Perfect way to read the book.

Today, we bought the dogs some toys. They love the Petsmart dog toys. I think we got them the 24 inch. They love it! Nisa carried it all over the apartment giving it the occasional death whip. Then Ernie got ahold of one end and they started the pulling and ripping. Ernie pulls with his full body and Nisa just doesn’t have the power to keep up. But when Ernie got bored, Nisa took it back and started rippng its guts right out.

She would stick her nose in to rip the stuffing out when it wasn’t just falling out anymore.

Unil finally, the poor thing had been debrained.

Then we put them in their kennels and went to Baby Mama. Pretty funny. Abe said it has too much story. Some very funny moments. And of course those girls are hilarious. During the previews though, they showed a whole bunch of funny (and fitting) previews for upcoming comedies. Then after one particularly hilarious one, they played the scariest preview for some movie with Liv Tyler. The preview was so scary that I couldn’t even watch. It might have seemed scarier than it actually was because it was right after such a funny preview. Then they went right back in to really funny previews.

We came home and returned the dogs to their beloved blue dog toy. They instantly ripped the beaten toy in half.

There is Nisa pulling out even more stuffing. Fortunately neither Ernie nor Nisa eat stuffing. Now that it is ripped in half, they each get a piece!

We also got them some lo-cal spearmint dog chews for tartar (Ernie has horrible teeth). Here is Nisa chewing on hers.

I finished my gloves today before we went to Baby Mama. Abe coulnd’t take the picture, so I had to take these on my own.

That is “gold” beading on them. I used Noro Kureoyn Sock yarn. I like it (the colors are magnificent), but the yarn really sticks to itself. The pair actually used pretty much exactly one repeat of the color pattern.

And now, I am going to see if these is anything to watch on TV. I am currently watching a Canadian channel (which I didn’t even know we got). But it is on Antique Road Show, so I better find something else to watch.

P.S. I found a wrinkle on my forehead. Less than a month before my 26th birthday. I feel old.

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What have I been doing?

This weekend we will change the ‘theme’ of the site again because this one sucks. The white on black is okay to read for me, but the dark blue links suck. I can’t even really tell they are there, except I know they are there. So this weekend, we will look for something better.

I would post a ‘comic,’ but I can’t think of anything. Blerg. (Oh, yes. 30 Rock is hilarious.)

I feel like I haven’t done anything this week. I usually have something to say. But I have been working steadily on arachknits again. Okay. So not steadily. But I have about 12 pairs of needles ready to post, including some new ones. I need to update the arachknits site with the new needle designs and make some real sock pockets to start selling so I can post those, too.

In other arachknits news, my cousin Jenny has purchased some lady bug knitting needles for a gift. And I am making some more for other things I will discuss later. And replacements for the goldfish needles and mushrooms and cherries on black needles that I sold a while ago. Busy, busy.

Which reminds me of something I can finally post about. A while ago I knit a 9×9 inch square for the headmistress of the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap 4 and sent it off to be made into a blanket. She loved the blanket. I bet it is so soft. You can see pictures of it here. Mine is the Ravenclaw Cable Square. If you can’t tell, they are owls (4 of them). I did bronze yarn for the Ravenclaw colors. The pattern is from this washcloth. I have also seen the cable used on a hat. Very cute. I think it was in Knit Picks Andean Silk yarn. This stuff was amazingly soft. Abe can tell you, he coped a feel. I might have to make myself one of these blankets. Or something similar. A Hogwarts house blanket. Sounds like fun to me.

Ah. I have a plan. BTB (that would be: by the by). The weekend after my birthday, I am doing Destination Yarn! Isaac can’t go and since he is the only other knitter I know, it will just be me, Abe, and the dogs. Four days to tour 24 yarn shops in the Puget Sound area. We have a plan and I will save my money so I can buy a skein of yarn at each shop. You get a free single skein pattern at each shop, so I will buy the skein for the pattern if I like it (it will be 10% off!). Otherwise, I will just buy something awesome. I am even taking a half day on Friday so we have more time and I don’t have to rush as much. I think we will do 8 on Saturday and Sunday each and the remaining 4 and 4 on Thursday (if we can) and Friday.

I am super-duper looking forward to this, so mock me all you want, but you won’t get my spirits down. The more you mock, the more I think I will look forward to it because it is such a special gift just for me. Abe’s gift to me is going to be driving me around for four days to a ton of yarn shops without complaining. He might even buy me a skein. I hope I get something on my birthday, though… (hint, hint).

I will post pictures of this after it is done. Or maybe each night and a grand finale on Sunday night. Be prepared for yarn madness.

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Feeling poopy

Angela seems to be feeling better but I’m still pretty miserable. I went to school today because I’ve got a test in my piano class. I’m going to go home and sleep after the test.

I had a blast this weekend even though I was the only one not knitting.

My wow character is 62 now. Over the weekend I got my pvp mount (+100 percent movement speed!). I also respec’ed from enhancement (melee dps) to resto (full healer). I did that because I was getting destroyed by the lvl 70s. After a few rounds in Alterac Valley where I spent more time waiting to rez than playing, I threw on my healing gear and not only did I only die a few times but I was in the top five for healing out of all 80 people in the battle ground! After that I respec’ed to full resto and I did even better! I’ll post a screen shot later.

Anyway, time to play “when the saints go marching in” on the piano for the next hour in preparation for my test.

Abe

edit: Here are a few shots of some of my better rounds. Keep in mind that I was lvl 61 and 62 when these shots were taken. Kobifora is my name, its in yellow.

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Lord of the Stitch

This weekend was really fun. On Friday, I left work early to get Abe and we met Isaac and the rest of the family, including my Uncle Bruce on my dad’s side (there is one on each side just to make things confusing), for dinner at Mambo Italiano’s in Bellingham. I was an idiot and got spaghetti, which I never like. Abe got some delicious creamy pasta with smoked salmon. I liked his a lot better. Mom and Jim got pizza, which looked good, and Isaac got some mussels on pasta which was pretty good too. It was really loud though and we are not the loudest talkers so we only got to talk to the people next to us.

I gave Isaac his awesome gifts there. I hand knit him some socks, but he has “sticky” feet and had a hard time getting them on. Once they were on he loved them. He waited until we were in the car to put them on, not in the restaurant. I also gave him a whole start up knitting kit: a bag with a squirrel on it and three acorns painted inside,

US8 knitting needles with acorns on them,

a ball of cotton yarn to make a wash cloth with, some US7 dpns because it turns out I had five sets and one was unopened, some scissors, and the book Knitting with Balls: a hands-on guide to knitting for the modern man. There are some good patterns in there and some history of men and knitting and of course, some basic instructions on how to knit.

We brought him home to sleep on our couch. Here he is in the back seat on the drive home with Ernie.

First we went to The Ram with our cousin Tony and his wife Rachel.

Isaac had chocolate cake and Abe had carrot cake.

I had the Rocky Mountain Potato. Much better (I imagine) than a Rocky Mountain oyster.

Then we all went right to sleep.

The next morning, we went to Patty’s Eggnest across the street for breakfast. It is a real crap shoot there. Sometimes it is delicious, sometimes not so much. That morning we were lucky. The only thing that we didn’t like was my over-easy eggs were bland. I would think that a place called Eggnest would spend the extra money to buy cage-free organic eggs because the difference is so huge and the eggs are just to die for. While we were waiting to get our food, I should Isaac the long tail cast on because it is so much easier to knit the first row after that than the simple cast on. Then our food got there and Isaac ate his entire giant plate of food and some of mine before Abe even finished his own plate.

When we were done and paid, they needed some good coffee so Abe bought some fresh beans from Starbucks next door. Then we went back and started up the first Director’s cut of Lord of the Rings. Whee! I showed Isaac the knit st somewhere in there and told him to keep working until he had 10 rows or so. Turned out we had cast on too many stitches and Isaac didn’t want to rip back, so he figured out k2tog on his own. Which is pretty impressive for someone who has only learned the long tail cast on and the knit st less than an hour previous.

When the first movie was over, we took Isaac to Dick’s for lunch (so delicious) and he lusted over the hot goth girl that works there. And he didn’t believe us when we told him how small the burgers were so he only ordered one hamburger and a fry and had to go back for a deluxe (2 patties) and a shake (which he sounded disappointed with). Then I got to take him to Acorn Street Shop to buy yarn. He has good taste. The first skein he almost got was Baby Alpaca Grande and was so soft you almost couldn’t tell you were touching it. Then he picked some sock yarn and some US1dpns. I think the sock yarn was Crystal Palace which is bamboo, merino wool, and silk. Very nice. Green and white variegated. I got some Lorna’s Lace Shepherd socks in Baltic Sea and some US0 needles to start the Firebird sock pattern by the Tsarina of Tsocks from the Sock Club I joined. Looks like a really cool pattern.

Speaking of Tsarina of Tsocks and vanCalcar Acres, I also finished the base of both Imbas socks. The only thing left is the cuff and i-cord quartefoil at the ankle. I did the cuff on one, but now the sock won’t go over my heel. So I have to take it out. I might leave it off. or modify the pattern so it is a detached cuff at the bottom. It should have been big enough, but the cable makes it not stretchy enough, so I am not sure what to do. I was thinking of making it like a shirt cuff where there is an opening the is closed by buttons. And a moss st border at the bottom and teh vertical edges of the opening. First I will make the 2 icords to make sure I will have enough yarn to make that cuff on both socks. Without that cuff, they are really comfy. And cute! The cable up the front and back is so intricate but simple to memorize.

Oh…back to Isaac’s weekend. He knit through all three movies basically. Pretty impressive for a first time knitter. He seems to really like it, but it really seems like something he would like. The the next morning we sat on the couch and knit while Abe played WoW with Nate. And we met mom and Jim and my aunt Carol at Bob’s Burger and Brew in Burlington for dinner. Their food isn’t bad. Their onion rings are great. No Coke, so Carol was disappointed. Then Mom and Jim took him back home.

When Abe and I got home, we did our thing: he played WoW and I knit and watched Grey’s Anatomy (season 3 on dvd) for the second time. Then after eating so poorly for three days, Abe and I both got sick and missed work on Monday. I slept for another few hours (until about 9) and then watched the rest of Grey’s Anatomy and knit a whole scarf. One skein of Lionbrand Homespun in garter st on size 13 needles. That makes a great simple scarf. That is the same pattern for the first thing I ever knit (first three, really, since I had to pull it out twice because I messed up so much). This time I did Black instead of Regency (teal/blue/green). The other good one with this yarn is 1×1 rib on US11 needles. Tighter, so smaller width, but nice and long and thick. That Homespun yarn is so soft. All 98% acrylic, but I really like the colors it comes in.

I will add pictures when I can.

Here is Isaac playing with the dogs on Saturday morning.

Here he is with Nisa playing with Isaac chewing on a head.

I forgot to mention the snow storm on the way up to dinner on Friday!

Some snow. The start.

More snow! By the time we were going home, there was about 3 inches of snow on the ground. In the end of March! Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was in the area around then and was baffled at the snow.

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Happy Birthday, Isaac

To my brother who turns 24 this year. Happy birthday to a wonderful guy. This is a picture I drew of him back in probably November of ‘97. He hates this picture, but I love it. It is definitely a caricature. This was way back before he got his extra tooth pulled and it was growing over the top of one of his other teeth. Oddly enough, I had an extra tooth too, but it just pushed my other teeth around and didn’t become a visible tooth until after I had another one pulled to make room.

He is smart, though too independent to successfully play the game of school well. He is (for the most part) kind, which you can tell by his generous teddy bear collection. He is a self-proclaimed Luddite, and so having no internet, I have no worries about him finding this picture that I will post of him (which he hates). I don’t have much nice to say about him from when we were teens, but I am glad to say that before and after that I always thought he was a great guy.

I have many favorite memories from when we were little. Before we moved out to the county (when I was 5, he was 3), we lived in an adorable house with gigantic, tree-sized rhododendron out front. We climbed it and played in it all the time, most often pretending we were monkeys. So the tree ended up being named Monkey. We were very sad to leave it behind, but the new place was so full of wonderful trees to play in and around that we couldn’t be sad for long.

When we were in grade school, we looked quite a bit alike: pale skin, freckles (he more than me), brunette hair, round face. We pretended to be twins and we would dress as similar as we could. Same type of shoes, white socks, same color jeans or overalls, same looking shirt. Then we would run around the farm.

We had a play house (made of giant wooden crates), a tree house (made of pallets), hiding spots and a hammock. On the hammock, we would wrap one of us up really tight like a cacoon and the other would push it like a swing until it went upside down over and over.

We played with my My Little Ponies and his GI Joes and construction trucks. At one point, there was a “construction accident.” The GI Joes were digging a hole with one of the tractor things and the My Little Ponies stampeded into the hole. THe GI Joes didn’t notice and the poor ponies were buried. Then we got called in to lunch and I forgot about them. Then I couldn’t find them. Years later, we are still finding various my little ponies strewn about the property where I assume a dog dropped them.

And the very best thing about him: …shhh…. he wants to learn to knit…

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School and Stuff

So I had my first quiz in music theory yesterday. I knew that I did well in it but I was a bit surprised this morning when I found out that I got every single question on the test correct including the one that the professor took off the test because everyone else got it wrong! Go me.

Then I went to piano class. I’m still struggling with the whole two-hands-doing-different-things routine and the music we’re supposed to be learning has us switching chords and the melody back and forth between both hands! After about twenty minutes of total confusion I discovered that the less I think about the mechanics of moving my fingers the better I am able to play.

I remember times when I was playing bass that I would look down at my hands and it would seem like they were two independent living things that were doing incomprehensible things. It was usually right about that time that I would trip or lose my place in the song.

So I guess the moral of the story is don;t look at your damn hands when you are playing an instrument! And, whatever you do, be sure not to think about what you’re doing while you’re doing it!

The guys in my classes are funny. Most of them do not play instruments. I can’t imagine trying to learn music theory without knowing the concrete aspects of playing an instrument first. But, it’s a brave new world. They all talk enthusiastically about their “beats” and endlesly compare and contrast various software recording, mixing, mastering and sequencing programs. They also all swear by apple products. Which is just funny as hell to me.

On a totally unrelated note, I moved my laptop to the latest release of Mandriva linux. It’s pretty damn sweet. It installed without a hitch, failing only to setup my wireless card. But it was a snap for me to configure the card after the fact. The package management tool is fast and easy to use. The default applications are well thought out and I like the control panel a lot.

Speaking of computers, I’m moving my opteron workstation to windows xp and am going to set it up for audio work. I’ve been struggling with trying to configure linux for this task on the machine but it hasn;t been going well. At this point I need to start actually making music more than I need to figure out the ins and outs of seting up a realtime linux kernel. So, windows xp it is. I’ll continue to do the research though and hopefully during my next break from school I’ll be able to conver the machine back to linux. There certainly is an amazing wealth of gpl software available for making music in linux.

I got a good laugh out of today’s Diesel Sweeties, being a bassist and all. So here it is for you.

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

Abe

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Mineola

Last Friday, one of the other doc people brought a clementine to each of the doc people. It was delicious. And very juicy. Turned my hands white as the juice dried on them. It was so good, though, that when we went grocery shopping, I wanted more tiny oranges to eat before I left work.

So we got mineolas on Abe’s suggestion. Organic because organic fruit is almost always better tasting.

I ate one on Monday before I left work. This was one of those cute ones with the outie belly button (the part where the stem used to be). Since I have no fingernails, I had used a spoon to stab through the celmentine to get started peeling it. This mineola’s belly button worked great as a tab to open the orange though. I pressed it to the side with my thumb and when it popped open, there was a hiss of air. I would guess in and not out, but that made me laugh. It was like opening a bottle of juice.

The peel came off really easy. I peeled it right over the garbage can. The last part was basically the butt of the orange (the nub opposite where the stem was). It didn’t want to peel off, so I had to carefully pick it out without squashing the orange. I can’t even describe how disgusting that felt since I pulled out an inch and a half of the nasty white center with the orange’s butthole.

Then I had to pick off all the little white strings. The meaty white stuff doesn’t bother me like it used to, but the white strings that run down the back of each segment make me want to gag. I probably spent 5 minutes picking all that stuff off.

When I finally got to eat the mineola, it was completely unsatisfying. It wasn’t sweet and juice and tart like the clementine. It tasted more like the sour juicy of a grapefruit. It was still pretty good though. And it was also juicy enough that I had to go wash my hands afterwards. But this one stained my hands orange instead of turning them white.

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