LLlllet’s get Ready to Rummmbllllllllle!!! May 20, 2009

It’s time again for the Summer Ravelry Competition! Last year was the Summer Ravelympics- alongside the Summer Olympics, y’understand- and this year, in training for next year’s Winter Olympics, it’s the Work-In-Progress Wrestlemania!

I am co-captaining Team Team, the official team of the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group Group. We are going to rock this thing. With cake.

Basically, the idea behind this event is to finish as many WIPs as you choose to tackle, within the month of July. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do, but I’m going to try to get the baby bathrobe done before the madness starts, so it won’t be one of my WIPs. I’ll probably tackle at least one pair of socks, and maybe my aeolian shawl.

But! I am in need of your assistance, my dear blog readers. I have to pick a Wrestling Name, and since I’m a co-captain of the CPaAGG team, it needs to be both awesome, and very CPaA. I have used many name generators, and here are the options. Comment to leave your vote. I’ll choose before blogging tomorrow, so choose quickly!

1. Beeca Devastation
2. Bea Troublesome (or Bee Troublesome, haha)
3. Molly Coconuts
4. El Huracán Verde
5. La Fantasía Magico
6. Beeca Apocalypse

It is time. May 19, 2009

Remember how I was going to knit a baby bathrobe for Cory’s best friend’s baby, due in late June?

Remember how it was all seed stitch, and since I hate seed stitch I was going to work on it slowly because I had plenty of time?

Remember how I actually then completely stopped working on it for about a month and a half or so?

Yeah. It’s May 19th. The baby is due in just over 1 month, and we’re going out to Colorado in about 3.5 months. It is more than time to get working on this thing. Assuming we DO go to Colorado, I don’t have to knit super-fast but I do have to focus; assuming something horrible happens and we CAN’T go to Colorado… well. In that case, I have a month to knit a full-length toddler robe with hood, pockets, belt, and embroidery.

And this is all I have done.

Gulp.

for those that listen, podcast episode 6 is up! It’s another long one!

An Ancient Source of Power May 18, 2009

So.

I seem to have mysteriously acquired, for the low low price of $1.85 (Janelle paid for it, too), an ancient artifact of unbelievable power.

It began simply enough, appearing as a totally innocuous bag containing one scant ounce of camel down.

No more, no less. Just one ounce; that’s ~28.3 grams.

I started spinning it up, to see how it would spin. It tends toward a rather fine single, I discovered, but still I assumed I wouldn’t get much yarn from it. It is only one ounce, after all.

So I spun, and I spun, and I spun some more.

I spun at least 100 yards of fine laceweight singles, probably more like 150. Not drastically fine, but fine nonetheless.

But then, I started to notice something… The level of fiber in the bag did not appear to be going down. Maybe a little, but nothing like the half I thought I was nearing. So I pulled out my scale, subtracted the weight of the spindle, and weighed my singles.

0.2 oz. That’s 6 grams.

I weighed the remaining fiber, only to find…

0.8 ounces.

I’ve not even spun a quarter of this stuff. Somehow, and I don’t know if it’s the spindle or the fiber itself that’s magic, but somehow I have managed to spin a cop that big from 0.2 ounces of camel down.

Should I call the National Archives, or something? The Smithsonian, perhaps? Whatever I have here, it can’t be normal.

Photos or it didn’t happen May 17, 2009

As promised, here are photos from yesterday when we visited the Como Zoo and Conservatory. Seeing as all I did today  was hang some shelves, ply some mediocre yarn, and play the Sims 2, I’m rather glad I have photos to share.

So I lied May 16, 2009

No, I didn’t lie about today being full or interesting… just that this would be a long entry to make up for yesterday’s. I’ll list everything I did today, and I think you’ll understand why I just need to go to bed and post photos and details tomorrow.

• I got up at 8:30 with a headache, ate breakfast, showered, and took some medicine.
• A few hours later Janelle picked me up and we went to lunch and then to my cousin’s garage sale in Anoka, where I picked up some books, shelves, and other random things (including 4 stuffed peeps, for a swap I’m in later this year).
• After that, we went to the Como Zoo and Conservatory, and saw the Japanese Gardens. I have photos from this that will be up on Flickr sometime Sunday.
• We got done there around 2:30 and went to Jamba Juice for a drink, then stopped by Lake Johanna to sit in the sun for a while, but it was pretty cold and windy so we didn’t stay long.
• Then we went to the mall, where I got some shirts, stickers, and sunglasses. Janelle also got some shirts.
• At 6 we met my mom and Cory for dinner at Khan’s Mongolian Barbecue, and ate tons of food.
• After that we went back to my place and watched The Emperor’s New Groove.
• Around 9 we went to Autumn and Tiffany’s place for a Cosmic Wii Bowling tournament. It was “sponsored” by Sierra Mist, meaning they got a group photo of us with their product and gave out cases of the new grapefruit version.

So, you see, I’m very very very tired right now and I think I need to go to bed rather than filling in more details. I’ll post some photos tomorrow, promise.

Repeated Nothing May 15, 2009

I did more nothing today! What an exciting week I had, chock full of… nothing.

Well, I mean, I did get groceries… so that’s something. It’s nice to have food in the house.

I was going to write about how I got a movie trivia question right at lunch today, and how that was weird and funny because I don’t watch movies hardly ever, but then I realized that the fact that a trivia question was the stand-out moment of my day was pretty sad and I should probably not bore you all with something so silly.

Tomorrow, however, is going to be full and interesting, so I’ll leave it at that and make up for it tomorrow. That seems to be a recurring theme for this blog… short, boring Friday entries followed by massive Saturday entries.

Grasping at straws May 14, 2009

I’m going to attempt Random Thursday again, because I did basically nothing today and maybe if I do this it’ll look like more happened.

1. I spent most of my evening playing Discworld (we’re talking 5:30-10:00 here) and my game crashed about 10 minutes ago. I had only saved once, about 2.5 hours back. …I may not pick it back up again, we’ll have to see.

2. I still haven’t finished Panda Hat #2 for my coworker, and probably should’ve done that instead of playing 2.5 futile hours of Discworld. It just occurred to me, though, that said coworker has the day off tomorrow anyway, so I couldn’t have given him the hat until Monday no matter what.

3. I made really, really excellent tuna melts for dinner. I think the excellence was directly proportional to the amount of awesome spices I added.

4. I got another letter from my adorable British penpal today, with puffy dinosaur stickers included! They are almost as adorable as said penpal!

5. I took some photos of a house near our apartment building, today. It has an incredible sort of moat of violets.

6. Tomorrow at work is going to be a Good Day. It will probably be the second-best Friday of the month, in fact. My least favorite coworker AND a particularly annoying tech both have the day off, I get to wear jeans, and my main boss won’t be in. The best Friday will be next week, as I don’t have work and it’s the first day of a four-day weekend.

7. At lunch tomorrow I am going to attempt to find stationery for penpallery shenanigans. I’m not sure where to look. I have a feeling B&N might have some, but I’m not sure it’ll be any more than utilitarian in design. Perhaps one of the strange and tiny gift shops would have something.

Mission Accomplished. May 13, 2009

We finally found the perfect spot for our craft group.

No, not The Beat– not only was the light not great and the comfy seating limited, but the atmosphere was a little TOO quiet, and tonight we arrived to find it was a concert night anyway, so we went to the Dunn Bros on West Lake St, down by the Breuggers and Lunds.

It was perfect! There was plenty of comfy (and interesting) seating- check out these thrones!

The drinks were good, and varied. Everything from coffee to milkshakes to lemonade to herbal tea. They had baked goods from La Patisserie, which were quite good. I had a guiness stout gingerbread cake with lemon glaze, which was exactly as good as it sounds (aka really, really good).

The lighting was good, none of us seemed to have much trouble seeing what we were doing, and we were all doing different things.

I also asked the staff there if there was any way to reserve the area for our group, but they said “you don’t really need to. There’s always plenty of space” so I take that as a good sign.

Yawn May 12, 2009

I had a really boring day, today. Work was pretty dead, and what work I had to do was dull. My boss was around all day so I couldn’t knit at all. When I got home, I played Discworld for a while (an old playstation game, great fun if you’re a Pratchett fan, great confusion if you aren’t) and then recorded the podcast. I just finished editing that, and it’s uploading now… so that was the entirety of my day.

I got stuck in Discworld a few times. It’s a good game, but a few of the things you have to do are completely unintuitive, and sometimes you have to click on just the right spot to get the interaction to work. For instance, to get the “magic coil”, you have to go to the barber, talk to the lady in the chair after you “look” at her hair curler, distract the barber with thoughts of his true love, and then while he’s distracted (about 5 seconds) use a particular item to pickpocket not the barber himself, but his pocket, which is a very small area on his torso. Rather annoying, but as I said the game manages to be really fun anyway. It has that essential Pratchettyness to it that makes it hilarious dispite its shortcomings.

Fraid I haven’t got much more to talk about, really. I will try to have a better post tomorrow, but I did want to let you all know that Episode 5 is in fact up. It’s long this time, lots to talk about, but I think it’s interesting anyway. Heh.

Well, off to bed.

Lanoliny May 11, 2009

That is how I would describe the state of my hands, even post-washing. I spun the pale green batt from the batt-your-own booth tonight, and it was very greasy, but fun to spin. A totally different experience from spinning totally clean, lanolin-free wool. I only had an ounce, so I only got this much:

It’s very, very fuzzy and probably will be more so even once it’s washed. I think I might ply it with some thread, or something, so it won’t take away much yardage.