Knitting and Tagged again…

Embossed Leaves #1, you are done! Off the needles for you!

Supersock #1, you are done! Off the needles for you!

Uh. Two #2 socks? At the same time? Uh, I totally didn’t plan that one out.

Teri tagged me so I’ll play along…

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

As stated by others, it’s pretty hard to pick only seven songs so I’m going for seven artists. There might, or might not, be more that one song per artist, but I’ll try my hardest to limit the number of songs to three per artist.

1. Donde estas, Yolanda? and Lilly by Pink Martini - Yolanda is so much fun! Every time I need a little pick me up, I que up this song from the album Sympathique. Lilly, from the album Hang on Little Tomato, sounds similar to Yolanda and is really fun. I love to change the lyrics from “Lilly, Lilly, Lilly, Lilly, Stay!” when I’m singing along at home to “Kally, Kally, Kally, Kally, K!” Kally just looks at me like I’m the crazy string-obsessed lady.

2. Never Know, Flake and Bubble Toes by Jack Johnson - My love for Jack started with Flake on the radio and evolved to the point where he is one of the few people I have actually seen in concert. I remeber trying to find Jack on the internet when I first heard his music, but I couldn’t remember his name and kept mixing him up with Joe Jackson! I can listen to all of his songs on all of his albums over and over.

3. The Moon and Antartica - entire album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News - entire album and Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again - entire album by Modest Mouse - I’m trying really hard to limit here. Modest Mouse, for me, is one of those bands that I absolutely love, from their old, rough-around-the-edges, released on their own label music to the slicker stuff they have put out with Sony. Right now, Good News for People Who Love Bad News has been playing in my car for the past month, non stop. I am so enamoured with Modest Mouse that I went to one of their live shows last year. Holy shit. TWO drummers drumming AT THE SAME TIME and NOT MISSING A BEAT. TWO! A banjo. A double bass. A couple of gituars, accoustic and elecric. Horns. A big-ass piano. And a totally incoherent when speaking but not when singing Issac. Bliss! One of my favoite Modest Mouse lyrics: I do not need you to tell me that I am not a cat! LOVE IT.

4. Be Yourself and Doesn’t Remind Me by Audioslave - Soundgarden was one of those bands that blew me away when they hit the scene. Same with Rage Agasint the Machine. When both bands went their seperate ways, then Chris Cornell joined forces the band from Rage, and it was musical genius - the best of both groups. (a little side note - the last album Johnny Cash released contained a cover of Soundgarden’s Rusty Cage - it is so awesome to her the Man in Black’s take on a song that I have loved since I was a youngin’)

5. Brothers & Sisters and Crazy Beat by Blur - both songs are on Think Tank, another album I can listen to over and over. Crazy Beat is so funky and perfect for both surfing the internet and figuring out how I want this site to look.

6. Feel Good Inc. by Gorillaz - this song makes my smile. I don’t own a copy of it - which is surprizing since I have really liked everything the Gorillaz have put out - but I always crank the volume when I come across this song. Because I don’t know the lyrics when the little rap part starts, I sing “Don’t stop, Shitty Kitty!” followed by best attempts at beat keeping noises.

7. Que Onda Guero and E Pro by Beck Beck, how I’ve loved you back in the day. Then came Sea Change. Sure, it’s a great album, but what happened to the Beck from Odelay? You know, the one who changed music for me? It looks like he’s back. “Have you seen the vegtable man in the vegtable van? ” Maw!

And the honorable mentions goes to Only by Nine Inch Nails and Love You Madly by Cake.

All of the above, with the exception of Feel Good Inc. are on Pinky’s Brain. Internets, I would like to introduce you to Pinky…

and the Brain…

I made Pinky last year, when I the Brain came to live with us.

Holy long post, Batman.

Gossip

So, Kally and I had a little chat yesterday. Well, it was more like a big gossip session than a chat. I wasn’t feeling too well, so she kept me company by sitting on my lap and telling me all kinds of stories while I worked a little on my secret knit project. Kally is always in the know and she felt it was a good time to share some dirt with me.

Kally told me all about the lady whose dog really likes the tree outside our office window, the lady who never picks up her dog’s business. Well, she took her dog for a walk the other day, stopped at his favorite tree, the one right outside our office window, and she totally didn’t pick it up. Kally insisted it was a good thing for the dog that she doesn’t know how to use the phone, because she can read the sign that threatens a $500 fine for not picking up dog poop, you know, the sign with the phone number of who to call to report those who don’t pick up poop, you know, the sign with all the free poop bags attached to it, yeah, she can totally read that sign.

dogs are so messy!

As far as progress goes, I finished the back of Cherie v.2.0,

please ignore the wrinkles

turned the heel of the Embossed Leaves Sock #1,

and almost finished SuperSock #1, only a toe remains.

Oh, there’s that secret knit project too. Here’s a hint:

Snow…

Mid-morning Wednesday it started to snow. Big, heavy, wet flakes filled the sky and started to collect on the ground. I was completely grumpy and wearing the wrong shoes. Walking to my lunch-hour class was not fun as I slid down slushy sidewalks. After class let out, it was still snowing. Some jackass threw a snowball at one of his friends and missed - hitting me in the head. As I slid my way uphill, a SUV too big for the narrow campus lanes splashed the dirty slush that collects in the gutters onto the crowded sidewalks, soaking my khaki trousers (and my fellow students). I went from grumpy to down right angry.

When I returned to work, I sent the Mr. an email detailing the events of the last hour and a half. Later that evening, when my spirits finally lifted (thanks in large part to a Mexican dinner date with the Mr.), he joked that it was a miracle my email made it through the spam filters - it was the first time I had used the “fuck word”* that many times in an email.

To further lift my spirits, I successfully knit a short row heel onto my Cherry Tree Hill SuperSock. Could it be the perfect end to a not-so-perfect day?

The pictures I promised earlier:

Beginning of Embossed Leaves

exhausted dye

exhausted shitty kitty

finished Kool Aid yarn

closeup

*Growing up the “F word” was always fuck in my house. Being in Utah with some very conservative neighbors (not the cows - they were pretty liberal and open-minded), the “F word” I always got into trouble for saying was fart. Yes, fart. So, when I was old enough to say fuck without getting into serious trouble, I began to ask for clarification - do you mean the “fuck word” or the “fart word”? The Mr. finds this just as funny as I do. Clearly, we are a match made in non-Mormon Utah dwelling heaven.

Socks, Socks, Socks…

A little over a year ago, I decided to be brave and venture out of my house to meet other knitters. One fateful Tuesday in December, I went to my first Stitch n’ Bitch where I met Susan, Margene and Laurie. All three were knitting socks and Susan insisted that I too would be knitting socks someday. Me? Socks? Yeah, right. Sure thing. I’ll get right on that.

A few months later, my curiosity continued to be perked by the socks that flew off the needles of these three amazing women. One night, Susan showed the group how to start a toe up short row sock - provisional cast on and all. Mental notes were taken, worsted weight yarn was purchased (I highly recommend knitting a first sock out of a larger weight yarn) and the internets combed in search of a sock pattern. A few weeks later, I had my first sock. Second Sock Syndrome (”SSS”) set it and it took a month and a half to finish sock number two. Before actually knitting a sock or two, I thought SSS was a bullshit excuse for Startitis, but I have felt it with every pair of socks I’ve knit - sock number one can fly off the needles, sock number two takes two to three times longer, yet I have no interest in working both socks at once. Why does number two take so long? Why is the sky blue? Why is Kally so shitty?

For 2006 I have the following socks planned, all from stash:

1. Cherry Tree Hill socks. I started working Nancy Bush’s Conwy back in December, after finishing BIL(2). One month later, I hadn’t reached the heel shaping of the first sock. The pattern and yarn colorway combination just wasn’t working for me. Conwy has been frogged and I decided to go with something simple for this particular yarn. Hello picot and stockinette.

2. Embossed Leaf Socks with Nature’s Palette. I am completely copying Margene on this one, though I didn’t realize it when I bought the yarn - the same day, place and time that Margene bought her yarn.

3. Koigu socks. Not quite sure what I’m going to do with this lovely yarn other than turn it into socks. I may try Conwy.

4. Jaywalker - maybe, baby. Several years ago, I bought a monster cone of fingering weight wool on ebay. I don’t know what to do with all of it, but I do know I have more than enough to make several pairs of socks. I found this tutorial, have made a swatch, done the math, wound the mother of a skein, purchased the kool aid (learning the hard way that self-check out is not the way to purchase twenty-one packets of kool aid), gathered together my mason jars, and…

I haven’t done anything else. I may wait for warm weather and let the yarn soak in the sun for a few days rather than cooking with a crock pot (stove top seems like an unnecessary fire hazard, too short to use the microwave for anything other than popcorn).

5. Mr. socks. The Mr. really liked the yarn I used for BIL and I have almost a full ball, so I’ll be making toe up ankle socks for him. I think I’m going to have to tackle the two at once thing to ensure I don’t run out of yarn, again (see BIL(2) above).

Raise your paw if you’re ready for 200SOX!