Kiss My Knits!

Souvenirs, beach anticipation, and blueberry muffins.

I went out last night to buy a dress for Emily after realizing that she has none that fit her properly. I had asked her if she wanted to come along, but she said I should get her one and surprise her.

Since I was at the mall, I decided to stop at the Apple Store. I went to the back of the store with my determined face on, which tends to deter kiosk vendors and over-eager salespeople. One guy, however, was very friendly and greeted me, so I smiled back and said hi. He looked familiar.

He came up to me as I was pondering games, and said, “Aren’t you that Zork girl?” Aha! Yes! It was Zork guy! We reminisced again about text-based games and he said that I would forever be tied in his mind with that entire genre. I love that! I left him my card so he’d have a name to go with the Zork connection. He’s got a Windows machine now, so he’s going to try to download some and give them another shot for old times’ sake Nice guy, I like him.

I did not, by the way, buy any games. I spent far too much money on my solo weekend, and I’ve got too much other stuff to do to really enjoy a new game anyway.

Everybody’s asked if I was doing wonderful and wild things this weekend. The answer has turned out to be “nope.” Instead I’ve wandered around town doing things I wanted to (hence the spending too much money), and also taking care of a lot of errands like dropping things off at Goodwill, etc. I think there’s been some disappointment on some people’s parts because of that, but there shouldn’t be. It’s still a great break.

When I’m taking care of Emily, there’s a constant blanket of responsibility over my mind. Whatever I’m doing, I have to also have a process running in my mental computer that factors in how it affects my child. When she’s out of town, I don’t have to factor that in. The blanket is peeled off and more of who I used to be is exposed. I can stay up late if I want, knowing that there won’t be a little person stealing my bed at 6am. I can go to the video store and know that I’m free to browse as long as I want without a little person getting bored, or having to subconsciously keep constant tabs on her location. I can play my music loudly, even the stuff like Ike Reilly that has lyrics that are obscene.

life is definitely different without my daughter around. Nonetheless, I’ll be very glad to have her back today.

While putting up a Serenity flier yesterday, I saw a poster for The Charlotte Public Library summer film series. They’ve got some really good movies, and they’re showing them in the theater at Imaginon. Nice venue! Sunday, they’ll be showing the Buster Keaton silent movie Our Hospitality with live piano accompaniment. This will probably fall during the time that I have to go pick up Emily from her grandparents, but if it doesn’t, I’m going and I’m asking my father if he wants to come. I mean, look at the picture – that’s comedy gold, people!

They’ve actually got a lot of good movies. I wouldn’t mind seeing All About Eve on the big screen, and I know Guys and Dolls is one of my husband’s favorite musicals. I wonder if they sell popcorn…

I have several care packages to mail, hopefully today. gets a knitting kit, and so does . They may take an extra day – everything’s slower when school is out.

Speaking of things slowing down, I’ve managed to pick up poison ivy on one finger of my right hand. It’s not an area where the yarn rubs directly when I knit, but it’s still slowing me down because it’s quite sensitive. With my poison ivy track record, I should just never go outdoors ever in the summer. Well, this is why I build extra time into my Jayne hat estimates. I almost never need to use it, but this week I will.

Got to run – somebody wants me to play!

While watching the Seven Samurai a few days ago, we ran into a problem we’ve run into before. We have a DVD player that works intermittently. We also have a DVD/VHS combo with a non-working DVD player. So we have to play DVDs on our PS2 game system. When it’s a particularly long movie, or when the PS2 has been on a long time and heats up, it stops playing DVDs. We finally wound up putting an ice pack under the machine in order to watch the last half of the movie. I think it was the ice pack that made us decide to get a new DVD player.

And so we did! Behold, the Panasonic DMR-EH75V. It’s a DVD recorder / VCR combo with an 80gig hard drive and the ability to record in all kinds of new and fancy ways. Today we used the TVGuide online function to tell it to record Barney – no setting times up or anything, just “hey, this program’s gonna be on, record it, willya?” It worked like a charm.

We’re still figuring out how everything works, but so far, this thing ROCKS. It’s no TiVo, but I do see what all of y’all with DVRs are going on about now. The remote is easy enough that Emily got the hang of it this morning on the first try. We can rip our old VHS tapes to DVD and hopefully free up some space. It took the place of two non-functioning machines, so that’s a space saver right there. And it will be much easier with this system to get our home movies onto some kind of actual watchable format. This was a little pricier than the budget DVD/VCR combo we might have gone for before, but I think it’s going to prove to be worth the money.

In summer break news, Emily is signed up for the local dance school’s “Little Mermaid Week” now, and is quite excited by the prospect. She looks forward to this dance camp every summer. I think we probably still need one or maybe two more activities to round out the summer, so we don’t both go crazy.

Tomorrrow, my husband and a friend will be driving to Niagara Falls for a meeting of online friends. It won’t just be Emily and me, though. Her Nana has obtained tickets to a stage production of High School Musical and wants to keep her over the weekend for that. Looks like a great start to the summer!

Yesterday, Turtlegirl76 and I went to the Charlotte Dragon Boat festival and had a great time!
Read all about it! Pictures, too!

Lookie what I got! sent me the sheep shirt I’d been coveting. Wooo! I love this thing. Fits great, too, , thanks! I’m really going to make a concerted effort to get to Yarns Forever in Greer today, and I’m definitely wearing this shirt.

Side note: In spite of the half-lidded eyes, I am not, in fact, high. It’s simply that the shirt is so damned brilliant it is blinding me.


In other fiber news, I spun up a tiny portion of the roving that gave me on our trip to Raleigh. Wow, is this stuff soft! I can’t remember what the fiber content is, but I think it’s something like 50% Corriedale, 50% marshmallow fluff. I’d like to try to dye the rest, although now that I’ve felt how nice it is, I’m kind of afraid to ruin it. Nonetheless, I’ve been wanting to dye roving, and I think would appreciate me enjoying having that adventure, even if it means I destroy her gift. It was really a gift of the time and enjoyment of using the fiber, wasn’t it? Lord, I hope so. Maybe I should get some junk fiber to practice on first.

I’ve been cranking out Jayne hats like a fiend, and realized yesterday that I had time to make another hat for charity without making anybody else’s hat late. So I’ll be knitting up one for Dallas today. Tomorrow night there’ll be a Firefly shindig, so I can probably get more work done during that, since I don’t think they’ll mind me knittin’ up the Jaynes. That shindig is after I go see lead her team to victory at the Charlotte Dragon Boat races. Go, ! I’m pulling for you – no pun intended!

One unrelated note: My favorite site for the day: Balloonhat.

Yesterday’s earrings inspired me to fish something out of my jewelry box. This is another piece that I made a while back, this one with glass seed beeds and Swarovski crystals on a silk cord with a sterling silver toggle clasp. There are two clear beads just before the clasp that are just garden variety faceted glass.


This is a pretty simple one to make. Thread your beads in the order you wish them to appear, then crochet a base chain out of the beaded cord for that nice twisted look. You want to thread about three times the length that you want the piece to be. The clear glass beads near the clasp are to ensure that you have enough free space to thread the toggle through the ring. Making this bracelet is a little more time-consuming than the dragonfly earrings, but I get more wear out of the bracelet so it’s worth it.

As to style choice, you’re certainly not limited to crystal. I did a version of this out of larger matte beads for my mom, and I think it came out looking very nice. This might be another one to do next time I’m needing a break from the Jayne hats.

Hats up for: ME, ME, NC

Every year so far, I’ve made something for my daughter’s teacher’s children. In kindergarten, it was this cotton sweater. In first grade, it was this baby pullover. Unfortunately, this year, my daughter’s teacher has three daughters, ages 14, 16, and 18. I love this teacher, but I am not making three full-sized sweaters.

Instead, I’m going with earrings. Four sets, because Emily said that the teacher needed one too, which seems only fair. Because I’m a stickler for high-quality materials, the beads and findings are sterling silver and the colored bits are Swarovski crystal. I’ll let the teacher decide who’s going to get what.

I’m pleased with how these turned out. I’ve got more dragonfly wings and Swarovski in my stash, so maybe I should make some for sale. Hm.

Literally shiny! If this is the matte finish, I’m glad I didn’t go for the UV coating. Also, they extended the left side more than I was expecting. The text as designed by butted up against the edge of the card, but when I submitted it to Bizcardguru to print, I nudged it further in to sit within that site’s preferred safe title area. perhaps I was too conservative in not leaving it where it was. But sometimes art gets cut off if you go past the safe area – that’s why it’s called a safe area. Maybe it’s more common in TV than print, and I didn’t realize that. Next time, trust .

However! None of that matters, because I’m thrilled with how these turned out. I’m going to be handing these out to random strangers. And, of course, mailing them off to the Serenity screenings that are giving away my hats. Now all I need are care cards and maybe some non-Jayne-specific cards (although maybe not, now that I see these) and I’m good to go!

We’ve introduced Emily to the wii. She doesn’t want to play for very long, which is fine with us since we don’t want her hooked on video games. She enjoys making miis (each little person you make to represent you onscreen is called a mii) and seems to be pretty good for her age at golf.

Hmm… golf scholarship… hmm…