gone, baby, gone

I've moved my blog. Update your stuff accordingly.

http://connoisseurofhumanfolly.wordpress.com/

things I always forget about Austen

She wrote some of the best bodice-ripping, chest-heaving books of all time.

the soundtrack to every crush I've had in the last 15 years

If you feel left out, you probably weren't important as you thought you were.

The thing I like about memes is the feeling that I don't have to really think about what to right about. Just fill in a form, "plop, plop, plop", and *BAM* blog post. Perfect for someone who can't bring herself to write a full paragraph these days.

Today's meme comes to us from "Running with a Vagina", written by a fellow Jezzie. It is called "What's in your purse?". Do you remember when Seventeen would go to real high schools and photograph people and their purses? I always daydreamed about what my purse would have in it if the magazine came to my school. It would probably have: books, a binder, hair ties, a CD player, the original cast recording of RENT, some pens and all the poor self esteem I had from spending 5 years trying to get a gaggle of immature bitches with daddy issues and eating disorders to be my friends.

Today my purse contains:

1. 1 cellphone
2. 1 information packet about long term care insurance
3. 1 UCSC Nalgene bottle
4. 1 cloth tag from a jacket I bought yesterday
5. 1 pair Oliver Goldsmith perscription sunglasses
6. 1 Moleskine notebook
7. 1 Battlestar Galactica season 2.5 
8. 1 iPod Touch
9. 1 cellphone charger
10. 1 wallet
11. 1 Chapstick
12. 3 receipts
13. 1 sheet of notes on various learning principals
14. 2 bottles of lotion from the hotel Jack & stayed at in SF
15. 1 disposble camera
16. 1 organic cotton tampon
17. 2 mini Reese's peanut butter cups
18. 3 Reese's mini peanut butter eggs
19. 2 bandages
20. 1 bottle of EO Organic Lavender Hand Sanitizing Spray

What a lot of crap. No wonder I have a bad back. 

confession

I have one more little thing to do to graduate officially in May. I cannot get my act together. I sit in front of my computer and cry or scream quietly so as not to frighten the cat or sometimes I just close my eyes as tight as possible and wish the task away.

None of it is working.

I think about how great it's going to be to have my Master's and become a librarian. I think about how much I want to move on from where my life is, to be respected for the 21 years of schooling I have gone through. And . . . nothing.


Nothing.

where has this been all my life?

plotting & planning

Lately work has been, well, bad. I wish I could tell you all about it but I try to keep my work life out of this blog. I haven't always in the past and I feel like now is a good time to start. If you want to know what kind of terrible, horrible, no good very bad days I've been having you can send me a message on FB or call me or IM me or something.

To keep my mind off how unhappy I feel in my office, I tend to just take breaks at my desk and window shop online (really, is it window shopping? Did you know the French call window shopping "window licking"? At least they did ten years ago . . . ). Sometimes I run across the street to Subway, bring my food back and pretend that I suddenly need sweaters or wedding dresses or vintage tea cups. It is very, very thearuaputic.

Around New Years I finished a shawl (the Kiri shawl this opens into a PDF) after months of knitting, frogging whole skeins of work and then knitting some more. I hated, hated, HATED working on this shawl so much that by the time it was done, I threw it in a bag and the bag in my closet. I prayed that whatever spirit had taken the mate to my librarian themed sock would secret the shawl away too.

A few weeks ago I found the bag and realized that, holy crap, I finished an entire shawl. I blocked it out on my bed and was actually really happy with the way the blocking transformed this weird, bumpy scrap of bile-filled fabric into a lovely lace shawl that I never wanted to take off. Since then, I've been wanting to make more shawls and over last weekend I started the Seascape Stole. I just happened to have 3 balls of tan/gold Rowan Kidsilk Haze in my stash (how on Earth did I afford that?!) and decided that since Kidsilk isn't the easiest yarn to frog, a simple pattern like the stole would be a perfect use for my bounty.

I spent a lot of time working on it over the weekend. Truly, the best thing about Jack (ok, one of the best things) is that if I just want to stay inside, watch Battlestar Galactica and knit all day, he's OK with it. I was about 1/5 of the way through the pattern when something very upsetting happened.

I have to stop right now and say that Remy has always had an odd fascination and/or love/hate relationship with my craft and knitting supplies. He attacks my knitting needles and even yard sticks with such a passion that I'm sure they were all Sharks and Jets in a past life. He has figured out a way to pry the lids off the plastic bins that hold my yarn so that he can pick up the balls, skeins and hanks and carry them around my apartment before mauling them.

This being said, I admit I should have known better. One night, I went to bed without carefully tucking my stole back into the bag I normally kept it in when I wasn't working on it. The next morning I went into my living room to find a cat mouth-sized hole right in the middle of the lace. Nearly an entire ball of Kidsilk gone. Wasted. Attacked like a common field mouse. I have given up on the stole for now. I'll probably get back to it but right now it just makes me angry to think of reknitting the whole thing.

I am now thinking off knitting the Shipwreck Shawl; it's one of those patterns where, when I first looked at it, I thought "Oh, snap! I will never be able to knit that mess!!" but now (after an entire lunch time of planning) I think I could handle it. It also incorrperates a somethings I've never done before- dying yarn and knitting with beads- but I'm kind of excited about that. I don't know how I'll block it though (and OH MAN how I hate blocking!!) but again, EXCITED!!!

I think I am going to knit it using the suggested yarn (Knit Picks Bare Merino/Silk) and dye my own using Kool-Aid rather than an acid dye the pattern calls for. The price to do this is nearly identical to buying a pre-dyed yarn and I'm not so hot on the colors the pre-dyed yarns come in. I really like the blues and greens of these beads but the roses and gold in this set are nice too. Decisions, decisions!!

I didn't realize this post would be so link heavy. Sorry! It's 2am and I really don't feel like uploading a bunch of pix for this.