Kiss My Knits!

Overnight two Brazilian reporters are kidnapped and killed in Iraq. The president’s advisors decide not to wake him, but rather tell him over breakfast, as part of his daily briefing.

However the president did not take the news well. He sat stock still for about 10 minutes, then curled up under the table and started shaking, crying, and murmuring to himself.

This alarmed the advisors. The president had taken news of US soldier deaths, Madrid, London, Katrina, and countless other briefings in his stride. Panicked, they asked if he was all right.

The president looked up and asked: “Exactly how many is a brazillion?”

Our mail server has gone down. Since it’s more than seven years old and we got it used from a friend, this is no great surprise. Fortunately, the data on it is mirrored. Unfortunately, the mirror is also very old, so things are running slow as molasses, and I can’t access my mail anyway. I can still get to wearwithstyle at gmail period com of course, but not to the booboomonkey mail.

I really, really hope no clients are trying to contact me through the links on wearwithstyle.com.

We’ve ordered a new computer to replace the dead server. I hope it gets here soon.

Apparently my courage in battling the monstera has inspired illiane to present me with some “yummy” “goodness” from Malaysia. illiane said that she thought the rambutan was “rude-looking,” which just shows you what a gutter mind she has. I’ll tell you this – no matter how sweet and delicious they are purported to be, I will not be opening the can of alien balls without full hazmat gear. Take “alien balls” how you will. I think we all know how illiane will be taking it.

I’ll report back when I sample these. Until then, they’ll be safely stored in a lead-lined bunker in the back yard.


Whipped up another little something, which I cannot show you in its finished form because it is a gift. These are the bits of it, though. I just need to put a finishing touch on it, then it’s off to its destination.

There are actually a fair number of non-Jayne items in the queue right now, which is always fun. I ran a reproduction of a felted purse past the client who asked for it, and she was very pleased, although it needs to be a hair wider. I need to knock another one or two of those out for her – she’s gifting her sisters with them for Christmas. There are a couple of Jayne hats that need to be ready by Flanvention II, but aside from that, most stuff is for Christmas. At this point, it’s too late to order a finished hat and have it guaranteed by the holidays. Kits are no problem, but if you’re not already in line for a knitted item, it may be January.


For Halloween, Emily said all season that she did NOT want a pumpkin. Next year, she’d want a pumpkin but definitely not this year. No sir, no pumpkin for her. Until 3pm on Halloween day. Great.

So we went to two grocery stores with no luck, then I thought I’d try a pumpkin stand I knew, and they had a few left. A few small, lumpy pumpkins. Emily quickly pointed to what we shall not call the worst, but instead “the one with the most character.” If there was a Halloween equivalent to the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, this was it. It was two dollars, but the guy took pity on us and only charged us a buck. We were very grateful.

We took it back home, and because I am one of Those Moms who sucks the fun out of everything, I had Emily draw me a picture of how she wanted the pumpkin to look so that she could work those fine motor skills. Actually, it was still fun, since it was part of the process of carving. “Triangle eyes, circle nose, squiggle mouth.” I’d never done squiggle before, but I gave it a shot. It may not be art, but it is, as my father would say, “good enough for newspaper work.”

Behold! The tiniest pumpkin! If ever the Great Pumpkin were going to visit a house instead of a pumpkin patch, he would surely choose ours, as our pumpkin was the most sincere in the neighborhood. The opening was barely big enough to fit a little tea candle inside.

I leave you with this belated image of Halloween. May your candy last exactly as long as you want it to.

I saw “The Gay Divorcee” last night and there were a couple of images that I think would be perfect as animated icons. As in, about a second of footage looped over and over. The problem is that I cannot find a tutorial on how to do this, what format to use, etc. I really did search LJ communities and use Google.

Has one of you created a moving icon from a movie source? Or is your Google-fu stronger than mine, and perhaps you see something I did not? Little help?

ETA: Never mind. My computer froze like winter in Alaska when I put the DVD in. Le sigh.

Is it true? Do I have access to tvini.com and booboomonkey.com again? Yay! I can upload pics! Beautiful, wonderful pics!
Below the cut? PICS!

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/dynaweb/adaccess/beauty/

An interesting archive of health and beauty ads from 1920’s-50’s, ganked from ‘s blog.

ETA: Actually, the entire archive is pretty fascinating!

At the grocery store this morning, I was wearing a little silk garden roll-brim beanie I threw together in Jan 2005, and saw a young mom in a cabled green hat with a garter stitch base. Hers was handmade, very well done. Now, I’ve found that when I make things too well or too polished, I don’t get compliments, possibly because people assume they’re manufactured. Shedir? Not a word. Booga bag? People are all over it. I figured it was probably the same with her.

I walked past her in the aisle and said, “nice hat!” She beamed so hard I think the sun actually burst forth from behind the clouds. There may have been angels singing. She said enthusiastically, “thank you! I like yours too!” I grinned back and said, “thank you!” She said, “it’s a great day for hats, isn’t it?” I was smiling too at this point, and my whole day went better. I’ll bet hers did too.

Someone commented in that when they’re knitting, people come up and talk to them. The conversation can take varying levels of depth, but she says that sometimes people will comment that it must be much cheaper to knit your own things than to buy them. In fact, though, the opposite is true. This leads people to ask, “but why do you do it, then?”

No one’s ever asked me that, which means I must be hanging out with the right crowd. However, I do have some answers that come up when strangers comment:

“Knitting just let me meet you, a total stranger. Pretty neat, eh?”

“I can sit here and do nothing or I can sit here and do something.”

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

“I have a handy skill in case society collapses and we all wind up herding goats.”

“I can make something while drinking coffee that I can hand down to my grandchildren.”

“Knowledge is power.”

“It’s like yoga without the sweating.”

“Because it’s there.”

I do get people saying they don’t have the patience to knit, or maybe they just mean they don’t have the patience to learn. It’s not that hard, really. And as for not having the patience to knit, my response is generally that I don’t have the patience NOT to knit. I can stand in line at the post office and crank out a few rows on a hat, or I can stare into space. I know what I pick.

I can knit and read, or otherwise look at places other than my hands, and that seems to be what gets people commenting the most. I say, “it’s like driving a car. When you first learn, you’re very tense and nervous, but after a while you get to the point where you realize you’ve gone five miles you don’t even remember driving.” I’m very fond of analogy, you may have noticed.

My daughter’s occupational therapist just found out that the things I make in her waiting room go all over the world, and now she’s fascinated. For instance, yesterday: “Where’s that one going?” “Oxford.” “Wow!” Which pretty much sums up how I feel about it, too. Of course, the down side of knitting the Jayne hat over and over is that people who see you ever day think you’re just really slow at knitting a single hat. It takes a while for them to realize what’s going on.

Firefly DVDs are on loan to a woman from Charlotte Yarn, and another woman there wants to borrow them after. Then they go to prostiturtle. There’s some kind of strong crafty/Firefly link that’s not been explored enough. Maybe the show would have made it if there had been flyers at your local fabric store.

Hats up for: VA, CA, CA.

Internet was down all day until about 6pm. Now my computer chair has finally broken. It’s like my Mac is surrounded by some kind of Luddite vortex.