Kiss My Knits!

Well, I spilled the beans to my mom as to what the present was, so I can post freely. I asked her to try these on, and while she does have wide feet like me, these looked a little too wide to my eye. They’re probably okay across the ball of the foot, but they need to be narrower further back on the foot. So I have put in a lifeline, pictured to the right, and am about to rip back to that point and do a slight decrease. These felt okay on me, but my mom’s a full size smaller than I am. It’ll be interesting to see what effect a different number of stitches will have on the pooling that’s starting to show up. I’m betting it’ll be more pronounced, but whatcha gonna do, eh? We’ll see.

On a totally geeky note, while I was in Myrtle Beach, I found The Living Room, a little coffee shop/used book store that made a great cuppa joe. I looked at the shelves while I was waiting for my coffee, and saw something that made me laugh out loud – I had to have it!

Holy moly! I didn’t even know they made these!
I remember playing Zork from Infocom in college on my Mac Plus. Ah, those were the days. I loved all those Infocom games. It’s a straight line from these single-player text games to my involvement with Dragonrealms. I once got so stuck on an Infocom gagme that I had to call the eighth grade little brother of a dorm-mate I barely knew to try to get tips on a particularly tough puzzle. He totally understood why this strange 20-year-old college girl was calling him, as any good geek would.

And like most grownups of my age, I remember “choose your own adventure” type books where you’d select one of two outcomes and turn to the page for that outcome to continue the story. I just had no idea that the two had come together in this happy congruence. And written by Steve Meretzky, no less!

This may not mean anything to anyone, but boy, those Infocom games will always have a special place in my heart. A special place in my closet, too – I still have the original Infocom games in their packaging, complete with the peril-sensitive sunglasses in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which is now available to play online.

By the way, the original Zork text-based adventure games are available for download here if you’re in the mood for a trip down memory lane.

So for some reason, the Jayne hat became very popular over at http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/ . Apparently it’s all the rage to give your icon a Jayne hat. My husband brews beer and is an avid member of the forum, so when a member of the Brewing Network flew in from Australia for a big beer event, he asked if I’d make one and ship it to the guy here in the states.

Well, the hat got passed around all night to everyone at the event, and poor Oz (original name for an Aussie, eh?) didn’t get it back. It’s apparently now the Official Homebrew Network Jayne Hat, and they’re comparing it to the Stanley Cup – one of a kind, held in high esteem, and very special. The powers that be are holding a contest, and the person who shows up at the next event and has the best idea of where to take the hat and photograph it will be awarded the hat. Then they’ll pass it along to the next person with a good idea, and so on. They hope it will travel around the world.

I find this interesting because many of these people have never even seen Firefly – it’s just “a Lufah hat” after the first guy to post a pic of himself in one. Yet somehow, the magic of Jayne’s unbelievable hat has taken hold of another fringe group of lunatics. I’ll be very interested to see the pics of the places that it goes.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… but mainly it was the best of times!

Will post when I’ve had more sleep and done the mountains of laundry we brought back!

I’m off to the beach with the hubby and daughter today! This’ll be the first beach trip since Mr. Tvini and I took one just before the little niblet was born.

Everybody be good while I’m gone!

No mice caught last night, so I think that’s all of them.

However, the peanut butter in the traps has attracted ants. We’ve traded one species of vermin for another.

Great. Just great.

Mom, don’t click!

The Koigu project went well last night (finally!), to the point that I didn’t go to bed until 1am. This was a mistake, as I woke up at 5:30 feeling poorly. Then my daughter woke up and crawled into bed with me. If I’d been feeling better, it would have been great, but it was still good because she was so snuggly and sweet.

She’s been playing chess recently. She understands how the pieces move, and how they capture, and I think she’s starting to get the idea of thinking a move ahead. She does play by her own rules, of course. Wants to move and capture all the pawns, then some other piece, and so on. So here’s my little ham with our Simpsons chess board. This is why you never tell my daughter to “SMILE!”


We only caught one mouse last night, so either that’s it or the one we caught was shouting out little mousey warnings to the others. I’ll reset the traps tonight, just in case.

And mouse number two is caught. I wonder if we’ll go for three tonight. Lord, I hope not.

Second night running of thunderstorms. The power flickered just a bit, but we seem to be safe and sound. Famous last words, eh?

We caught a mouse last night, and my daughter was absolutely thrilled about letting it go. Quite the morning adventure. Actually she wanted to keep it, but I explained we couldn’t and she understood. Since my cousin said he had a mouse but wound up catching FOUR, I’m re-setting the traps tonight. My daughter told me, “I collect mice!” Yikes! Couldn’t we just go with stamps or bottle caps or something?

The first morning of summer camp at the Nature Museum went well. She had a good time, and was able to answer questions appropriately, like telling me that some animals with good senses of touch were raccoons and possums, since they have forepaws that look like hands. She’ll be doing the camp all this week, so they’ll probably focus on a sense a day.

It’s always a hoot going to the Nature Museum. They’ve had some of the same exhibits since I was a kid, and that’s a good thirty years ago. Some things really are slow to change, and that’s not a bad thing.

The Koigu project hit another snag when I misinterpreted the directions – again. But I am undeterred! Folks on my mother’s side of the family are known for our stubbornness determination!

I finally ordered my copy of Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party which I am looking forward to like crazy!

Made good inroads into cleaning the kitchen. The dishes are all clean and the counter may not be exactly sterile, but it is pretty spic and span. Somehow, even though I have less time, the house always winds up cleaner when it’s just me here. Maybe I’m doing more because I’m not expecting someone else to pitch in. Whatever the reason, a cleaner house can’t be a bad thing.

Hat on the needles for Australia (this will take slightly longer than usual, it’s cotton on smaller needles), then Pittsburgh, and Virginia.

Behold the stupidest, fattest, loudest, laziest cat in existence. This is Nerys, named in a contest on my husband’s old computer bulletin board, back before there was this newfangled intermanet thingie. Ironically, we originally got her to be sure another of our cats got enough exercise. You can see how well that worked out.

Has she lifted one fat-sheathed muscle to chase the mouse? No. She has not. And yet, if our old cat Purr-Zha were still around, this wouldn’t be an issue. OId, blind, toothless, diabetic, arthritic, and cancer-ridden, he would still have taken out this mouse with one swipe of his paw. Nerys, on the other hand, can’t even reach her own butt. Man, did we get the short end of the cat deal.

The Koigu is swatching up at 6 stitches per inch on a #3 needle, which would have been too tight, so it’s just as well I’m being thorough and checking the math now. I’m going with a WendyKnits pattern, which looks like it’ll work just fine.
(ETA 7-27-06 I wound up getting 6.25 stitches per inch on the final product.)

The hubby leaves for Raleigh in about 15 minutes. Fortunately, my daughter’s summer camp, which I thought was only for a few days, will run all week in the morning. Yay! I can still have my morning Jayne-hat knitting time!

And finally, of interest only to Firefly fans, an actual sign that was spotted in South Charlotte. Photographer Matt Wiggins titled it best:

When Bounty Hunting Doesn’t Work Out . . .