Short outage, all my fault

So I didn’t renew our domain when it needed to be because I never got the email that it was up for renewal. I did however receive the email that it had expired. Very strange.

I have a short story that’s basically done that I’m going to submit to Wordstock. Our old friend Celina told Angela about it and she told me. The deadline for submission is this Friday but, as I said, I have a story that’s almost done. I worked on it a bit last night. The word count limit is 4000 and my draft was 4400 so I went to town trimming and pruning. It’s down to 3694 now. Which is good because I want to add one more scene and I think 300 words is just about enough.

While Angela devoted her weekend to The Sims 2 I played EverQuest 2. I know. You are speechless with surprise. I made an Assassin alt because I wanted to try out a melee dps class. All I can say is wow. The assassin feels so much more badass than any of the caster dps classes. She regularly one shots mobs that are even con to her. And to top it off she’s cute as heck.

In other news, I’ve started baking bread for us. The bread we used to get at the store has gone from 3.29 a loaf to 5.39 a loaf in the last eight weeks or so. It was over priced before but is just ridiculous now. So I decided to try my hand at baking. I spent an afternoon reading The Joy of Cooking and then I made a few loaves. One white, one wheat. They tasted good but were very dense and didn’t rise very much at all. Sunday I made my first loaves that really turned out well though. Take a look!

And here’s a lolcats for ya.

more cat pictures

Abe

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Priate’sl life for me

I found this quiz on a forum on Ravelry for the Priate Knitter’s group I joined. So funny!

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Amelia Earhart…

…would be 111 today if she is still around somewhere…hiding, laying in wait. Lovely.

Anyways, the Sims 2. I love it. I hadn’t played in so long because I couldn’t knit and do it. I was always having to come to someone’s rescue. Now that my brain won’t knit any more (which isn’t entirely true), I have more time to play the Sims and I love it, love it, love it!!! I started with a new family and they are doing very well. One of the daughters and the younger son are both doing well in school and the faimly is doing great because they haven’t been burgled (which would be weird since the mother is a criminal herself) and no one has caught the kitchen on fire. I have only had one death due to fire. Well, two, but the Grim Reaper brought one back to life. Not the one I wanted, but who’s counting.

Since my brainin won’t knit, I am going back to basics. I sent Allison the written instructions on how to knit, which is much longer than I thought it would be. I need to get pictures this weekend to send to her if Abe is feeling better. I can’t really get the pictures without help. And I carry a little crochet project with me that is so simple I could almost do it in my sleep except I suck at crochet so I have to look at every stitch. I also started a little headband using Cascade Fixations yarn. I did not like the yarn in the ball (which was covered in plastic), but once I got it out, I loved it. less then 2% elastic and it is amazingly stretchy. And it knits up beautifully. It is a loverly texture like pebbles. I am doing the granite stitch (so simple and looks nice). I have another ball for a baby hat. I am wondeirng if I can get more than one hat out of that ball because I know I will have a ton left over from this headband. (alice band, not like the 80s.)

Last night I posted the radish knitting needles. Those are some of the funniest needles I think I have. Though if I ever get around to slices of pie and clouds on a light blue background, those might take the cake, shall we say. (Those would be pie in the sky….)

Actually, I got so excited just thinking of that alice band (I got the pattern from Wild Fibers during the LYS Tour), that I forgot everything else I was going to say. And I think I thought of something really cool.

Also, I will try to get a pic done. My brain has felt dead and uninspired for a while now, which I think is why I can’t finish a knitting project or draw.

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Nothing Special

Hey,

I installed The Sims 2 on Angelas machine yesterday afternoon and we stayed up way too late last night playing video games. This morning we both felt weird and now we both feel liek we’re getting sick

I can’t even find a funny lolcat right now.

Head hurts. Going back to nap.

abe

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Uh, I forgot I had something to say.

So from this issue of The AntiCraft, Melange issue, there are a few things I want to make in particular. (Speaking of making things from The AntiCraft, the bacon bracelet I made has been chewed on by one of the dogs to the point of destroyed. I guess I did a good enough job making it look like bacon. Haha.)

My little friend which I would totally hang in my cubicle at work. I don’t know what my fascination with hanging voodoo and other dark items in my cubicle is. I have Bad Juju Up in my cubicle and I have an axe from my Halloween costume when I went as a dwarf hunter.

Parlor Round is great, though it involves sewing the pillow your self and I have never done cording before. Might be a good place to start, though, I suppose. Abe would kill me if I put up yet another pillow.

But Run Away! I think is my abolsute favorite and I can’t wait to make it and stick it on top of the cupboard in my cubicle.

In other news, Abe has made some more excellent bread. He found the bread flour, but then looked at teh expiration date of the un-opened package and it was in Feb 2006, so we had to throw the whole unused thing out because neither of us knows what spoiled flour will do. But he did make a round loaf of wheat (and then dropped the ramekin and broke it) and a lovely normal loaf of white, which I love.

In other knitting news, I can’t finisha project. I ripped out the jaywalker socks and started the Rainbow socks (one of the patterns I was considering using on this striped yarn that happened to also be sent in the little book of sock patterns I got from HSKS5 swap). I had to rip it out twice. I have messed up enough that I should have ripped out the last one too, but I can’t bring myself to do it. At that point, I think I will have ripped back this cursed yarn 10 times! and It took 4 tries to use the ball winder to spin it into a ball. First I did it too slow and then I did it so fast that is flew off the top when I as just over half done. Then I did it to slow and loose again and finally, finally!, I did it just right. If Abe weren’t freaking out that I have not used any of the yarn he got me for my birthday, I would probably have set it aside, but I want him to continue to buy me yarn, so it is still on needles.  The bamboo crocheted towel I am making is so boring. Lovely, but boring. It does not look at all like I remember their sample looking at Weaving Works. I guess it is because I thought it was knit, but it is crochet.

In TV news, we have started watching Buffy. It is a lot like Charmed, but better. I can see why it was so popular. We are only 4 episodes in, but I am really enjoying it and I can’t get the opening song out of my head. Abe has never seen any of it so I can’t talk much about it here, but I can say that I did not realize that all the characters start so early in.

Oh, and in other other knitting news, I am working on a little chap book on how to knit. I hope to have a very first draft finished tonight to send to my cousin Allison, who is off in Florida where I can’t show her things, so she can remember how to do it all. It will not be formatted or anything. It will be the very basic instructions with very rough pictures of me knitting. Later, once I have a final draft of the instructions, I will add tips and hints and humor. I will probably draw some pictures (simple line drawings) but I am thinking of demon hands instead of people hands because demon hands are just so much cooler.

I added Alia to Ravelry, and 16 people have already hearted it and I think 3 people have already queued it. Awesome. I put added it just before 7:30 today!

And finally, my mom started this Etsy site for Egress Studio. She only has one card up, but it is a great horned owl print and it is gorgeous.

I was looking around for something on Amazon and somehow stumbled across this book - Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. A Latin translation of the first Harry Potter book. The second one is also available, so I would imagine eventually they will all be available. But Abe and I just bought a little thing to learn French (like a month ago and we haven’t even started) so that he could read some of his favorite authors, such as Celine, in their native language. Which sounds awesome to me. But Harry Potter is also available in French, Harry Potter a L’ecole Des Sorciers, but the whole series is already available. Go figure. But to help, there is a Harry Potter French/English Dictionary! So now I am curious to do that. I will have to see if my Harry Potter movies come in French and then I can use those, too. If not, oh well. I can check eBay for French versions of the movies. Though I am not a big fan of eBay anymore. I got ripped off really bad once and haven’t gone back since. Not monetarily, just annoyingly and since it was less than $10 no one would do anything about it. Anyways, I look forward to reading those. Then I will make my way to Celine. I would imagine once I can get through the entire Harry Potter series in French I am well on my way to reading Celine in French.

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Tada! - New knitting pattern

Well, well, well. Here is my first published knitting pattern (not paid or anything). I present Alia!

I am so happy. I emailed everyone and every has said it is cute. Spats. I thought there was a word for those, but I coulnd’t remember. My mom told me they were nice spats. I will get a link up to them from arachknits.net soon. I can’t wait to see when they get entered on Ravelry. I am not sure if I have to do that or what. So the original name was PAW - Pinstripe Ankle Wrap, but that is dumb because that is exactly what it is. They came up with Anklebiter, which I like a lot, though I might come up with a different pattern for that name. I came up with Alia (the character from Children of Dune). She is one of my all time favorite characters. I am not sure why.

Those are my feet in the pic. Those are my Qtee Fluevog shoes. Love them. So comfy. I also got pics in my blue Fluevogs, but they didn’t put that one up.

Well, there is other stuff to talk about, but I am too busy basking in that. I have an idea for something to submit for their next issue (Day of the Dead theme), but I am still trying to work it out. There have been a lot of tries, but no hits so far. Getting closer though.

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Famous last words

“Lets just train our way through (Runnyeye) to the instance entrance.”

Yeah, that ended well.

I knew it would, but the rest of the group took off like a shot after the scout and I followed out of a sort of morbid curiosity. “How far will they make it?” I wondered to myself. The tank almost went down in the first room thats full of goblins. He was stunned and had about 20 debuffs on him but I threw my instant cast heal on him and the stun broke at the same moment. A few gobbies started beating on me but Dennika wears plate so it isn’t that big a deal. Then the group agro’d every single golem in the clay golem room on their way through and got the three boars in the hallway afterwords. Things were looking pretty ugly at this point but miraculously the mobs all rest before we got to the hallway with the evileyes in it. Anyway, we made it a few more rooms and then the stupid scout took a wrong turn and led us into a dead end with a crowd of about 50 gobbies on our asses. Ouch! Goblin food.

We watched Angel-A last night. It’s a wonderfully French film. I highly recommend it. It’s written and directed by Luc Besson who is one of my favorite movie makers.

I baked bread this week! I made a loaf of wheat bread using a recipe in the joy of cooking. It turned out tasty but it didn’t rise as far as I’d hoped it would. I guess wheat bread is like that and I also used normal flour instead of bread flour because I didn’t know we had bread flour until a few days after I made the bread.

I’m gonna make a few loaves every week because the bread we like is 5 dollars a loaf now! And it costs about 90 cents for a home made loaf of bread.

Abe

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wonderful weekend

I had such a good time Friday night and Saturday, that I was ready to go to work on Sunday morning. No joke. Saturday night I was in shock how refreshed and happy I was. Then Sunday night came around I a pricked my foot on something and it kept getting caught on the covers and woke me up every few hours and I woke up in an abysmal mood on Monday morning.

Anyways. I did have a great weekend. Friday night while Abe was at work, I watched Gilbert Grape for the second time. I really like that movie. I won’t bore you with more.

Then I watched a disc of ER. I am alreayd on the third season apparently. I don’t remember the second season ending, but that is what happens when you are watching an entire show back to back on DVD. It is a lot better already. The first few looked like really bad 80s show. It was early 90s. Too close for comfort.

And of course, I knit the whole time. I don’t really remember what I worked on, though. Probably the Dream Swatch Head Wrap for the Hufflepuff KAL. I was cutting the yarn after every color change, but there were too many ends to weave in, so now I am carying it down the back. We will see how that works, but I think it will be fine. Looking pretty nice, which is good because the color switching is a royal pain in the ass.

So anyways, on Saturday, we spent almost the entire day (except when Abe was at work) playing EQ2. I played Cruenta who is just the coolest looking Arasai Warden. Her appearance-only pants look like sweats, but it was the best I could find so far. For cheap. When Abe left for work, I got to meet my friend Wei-Ning, who lives in California, for dinner. I met her in the dorms. We just went to the Mexican restaurant next door. The food there is pretty darn good. I got the Sopes. So delicious. I want more. I think that was the first time I got to eat a whole plate of them to myself. They got better with every bite. But before we got our food, there was some dude working on the exit door with a drill or something. Every time we would start to say something, dude would start the drill and I would nearly pee my pants and fall out of the booth. Scared me every time, in other words. It stopped just a little after our delicious food arrived and we chatted away as we ate catching up. One of the other girls that was supposed to come couldn’t because she apparently moved to Ohio or something and didn’t tell anyone. And the other girl, who’s sister was in town, is apparently pregnant. Too bad we couldn’t see her. That would have been interesting. 5 months, so I guess she is showing. Sad, but most of the knowledge I have about pregnant women is probably from sitcoms. After we were done with dinner, we split a delicious Mexican Chocolate Burnt Creme. Wow. I have never had creme brulee and I love it. LOVE IT. Wow. So creamy and delicious. I hope to go again in a while, after Abe has gotten his first full paycheck.

When Abe got home from work (and I noticed one of our tail lights was out  - but it is just the brake light when the headlights are not on), Wei-Ning came up for a bit and got mauled by our dogs. Ernie freaked her out by licking her toes and Nisa freaked her out by rolling around like an idiot on the floor. We chatted for a bit and then she had to go. So Abe and I started playing EQ2 again.

Then on Sunday, we played more EQ2!! We did stop eventually though and walked the dogs around a park near our place. It was really fun. There were some dorky people running around the park with big fake swords. It was pretty funny. When we got home, we watched Conan! It was okay. I enjoyed it, anyways. It was dumb enough to be fun. Though I couldn’t stop laughing at all the man bangs.  Heheh.

So tonight for dinner, we had some delicious peach cobbler. Oh, yum. Oh. Yum. Joy of Cooking is my hero. Good job Abe.

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Amazing Package

Oh, stop thinking dirty, you…

I got my HSKS5 swap package, yesterday. I blogged about it here, and I really recommend you check it out because it is so awesome.

I ate all the jelly slugs and gave myself a stomach ache. I kind of want to start a pair of socks right now, but I also want to finish at least one project before starting another. Perhaps I could rip back the Jaywalker I am not enjoying and start one of these socks. Ah. A plan. Hmm. Actually, I have some tatting I need to do. Tatting first, then knitting. 2 of the secret items and maybe a doily, then the socks. Sounds like a fun Friday night to you?

I get to go to dinner with some friends from college tomorrow night, so it isn’t a total loss.

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Muppet test

Damnit! I’m Scooter?!?!?

You Are Scooter

Brainy and knowledgable, you are the perfect sidekick. You’re always willing to lend a helping hand. In any big event or party, you’re the one who keeps things going. “15 seconds to showtime!”

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