JenLa

…Things

1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time… I know where my watch is pal, where the hell is yours? Do I point at my ass when I ask where the toilet is?

2. People who are willing to get off their ass to search the entire room for the T.V. remote because they refuse to walk to the T.V. and change the channel manually.

3. When people say “Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too”. Damn skippy! What good is cake if you can’t eat it?

4. When people say “it’s always the last place you look”. Of course it is, moron. Why the hell would you keep looking after you’ve found it? Do people do this? Who and where are they? Gonna kick their asses!

5. When people say while watching a film “did you see that?” No asshat, I paid $12 to come to the cinema and stare at the damn floor. (or knit)

6. People who ask “Can I ask you a question?”…. Didn’t really give me a choice there, did ya sunshine? One day I’m gonna answer “No” and watch their heads explode.

7. Fucking yarn store hoars who hand me drama first thing in the fucking morning. Go hang yourself with your own fun fur. Entitle THIS…

8. When people say “life is short”. What the fuck?? Life is the longest damn thing anyone ever does!! What can you do that’s longer?

9. When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks, “Has the bus come yet?”. If the bus came would I be standing here, dumbass?

10. People who say “It goes without saying”…and then they go ahead and say it anyway! Well, if it goes without saying do me a favor, will ya? Don’t say it. Sheesh!

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for today. My recent knitting either makes for some seriously boring-assed reading, or it makes for some seriously boring-assed REDUNDANT, beating-a-dead-horse reading. In either case, I’ll hopefully be turning some WIPs in to UFOs sometime in the not so distant far-flung future, resurrecting an UFO, so I can fall in love with it again. Also, I’m dying to dye. I’ve got a metric buttload of blanks that I’m itching to experiment with, and it’s finally getting cool enough to be able to stand over pots of stinky, steamy colored water and not risk spontaneous combustion. Now if only I could find that extra set of hands…

Calling the Chicken Goddess!!

I went up to the big barn today to check on the sheep and fill the trough. The big barn is kind of quiet, it opens on the back to the 127 acres of woods and it’s a good place to think. Or if you’re kind of jumpy, it’s a good place to worry about snake attacks in hot weather or coyote attacks in twilight. Or possibly even some deliverance-meets-slingblade type of person hiding out in the horse stall. Not that any of those things has ever happened, it’s just easy to get imaginative up there. It’s a very open/ramshackle kind of place and I did grab a handful of baby snake with the hay one day and there’s probably a billionty rodents since my barn cats don’t actually live in the barn. I should be calling them potting shed cats, but I digress.

So I was up there filling the troughs and giving some limp produce to the sheep and I heard a strange noise. It seemed like a bird noise and the barn has bird nests in the rafters, so you tend to look up to make sure there’s nothing in residence right above your head. All I saw was a phoebe sitting on a fence and they don’t make that kind of noise. Then I heard a sort of scratching and scrabbling. I looked around and saw the pitchfork lying dangerously on the ground nearby and decided that reaching for it would cause me to have to turn my back on the mystery creature. I heard the noise again, but saw nothing. I began imagining imminent attacks by giant zombie cassowaries. Steeling my nerves, preparing for disembowlment and silently willing my stash to be divided amongst the Knitch Knitters, I crept carefully and slowly around a stack of hay bales. I could hear the noise very nearby, but I couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, there was a slight movement in the upper left corner of my field of vision.

I jerked my head up to be confronted with:
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A ferocious, feral HAY HEN!!!!

It bokked at me and flapped its wings menacingly. Suddenly, I saw in the bottom right corner of my eyes a SECOND FERAL HAY HEN!! And it was making that dreadful noise. Much to my terror, they kept walking around and around bokking and bokking and scratching and SCRATCHING !!!

Tiny, skinny, straggly looking POULTRY!!!! How? Why? They didn’t come from the neighboring commercial chicken farms, though many of those do escape each cycle. Those are big, icky, white Eatin’ Chickens. These are small [possibly venemous] brown yard chickens. Eventually it occurred to me that if I could harness the power of these beasts, I could have……..eggs. So I fed them. They seemed to like it and were momentarily distracted from their murderous intentions.

The sheep, however, seemed disturbed. Who could blame them? In order to bring you, the knitting public, a glimpse into the behavior of the rare and dangerous FERAL HAY HEN, I shot the following nature film even at my own imperilment. Watch it if you dare. [may still require processing time]

I hope you were able to get the full effect of the terrifying noise over the background sound of the water filling the trough. I need the Chicken Goddess [or anyone with experience with this exotic animal] to tell me what I should do to keep them around. I thought if I built nesting boxes and continued feeding them it may someday lead to a domestication of this wondrous and appalling monstrosity. Who knows what this could lead to? Someday people might be able to just go right to their neighborhood supermarket and buy eggs to eat! I could make tens of dollars! But do I have the courage?

the sound of a heart pounding: bump-bump…bump-bump…bump-bump…….

Uh, what was that? Where’s Morning Glories? Uh…yeah…well, about that. She’s in the time-out closet. No, she’s not on restriction, no I’m not angry with her. I’ve just been overtaken by obsession lately. Well, okay, obsession’s not quite the word for it, but it’s a lot easier than typing OMG, these designs are making me crazy! With all their not-quite-rightedness, and their constant need of debugging tweekage….so I’m ignoring everything else, and the only reason MG sits in the time-out closet is that her bag has no zippability thus requiring stashage - away from a little needle-chomping Dizzy Blonde. sheesh! And WAAAAH! the yarn I’m using hurts my hands after a while, but that’s beside the point (and whiney). So, to make things easier, and this post WAAAY shorter (too late?), let’s just say I’ve been obsessed by design lately. Want a peek?

Charts are 90% done, long-hand instructions are about 65% done, I’m even test-driving a name that I’m not entirely hating. My math’s been checked (thank you Ava), I’ve got my test-knitter lined up, and I’ve wasted as much time knitting the prototype as I’m gonna with sCRAP yarn. So now it’s time to suck it up, put on my big girl pants and knit it fer reals.

Also I’ve been working on a scarf pattern for a friend to offer up as a thank-you for a fund-raiser. More on that once the pattern’s in her hands, which should be some time next week. Much to my embarrassment, this design has taken me much longer to work out that it should have. Either I’m WAY too much a perfectionist with my own shit, or I just didn’t think things all the way through, but DAMN, it seemed like every time I picked it up, there was one issue or another. I think I have it now, of course I just jinxed it, so I’m sure there will be yet one more bug to, uh…debug. yeah

If you’re thinking that looks somewhat familiar, you’d be right. Jen let me use her adorable cat’s face lace pattern from her socks of the same name. Speaking of which…I need to queue up 2 pairs of those socks!

Speaking of adorable cat faces, you can’t see it here…

wantz

…but trust me, this little guy’s got one! One Saturday as I was walking the dogs, he followed me home, sauntered right up to the front door, and commenced to yowl something fierce when I put the front door between us. After I reassured Sassy that my Queen Cat Covenant still stands (when Momoze died I promised her that I wouldn’t get another indoor cat while she still lived), I spent some time in the front courtyard with this sweet little guy (whose purring rattled the windows), After about 20 minutes of heavy petting he decided that he’d visited long enough, went on his merry way. Later that day I saw him down the block (spelled that b l o g) hanging out with some kids playing beach volleyball, where one of the boys scooped him up and took him home. I was so afraid that someone just dumped him in our neighborhood, I am so glad that’s not the case, and a little disappointed cuz a teeny tiny part of me wants to steal him, but not enough to upset the delicate equilibrium that is my household. Besides, I can’t really afford a divorce right now, you know? At least he still comes around for pats and scritching every once in a while. Hmmmm. I wonder…do you think the tuna might have something to do with that?

SAFF handspun sweater challenge sweater: DONE. Whew. And yes, I put the damned zipper in myself. By machine. And it could be better-WOULD be better if Jared had done it-but it’s in, it functions and now certain people are going to have to expend their energy finding something else to rag me about. I guess I could have at least ironed the zipper bands before taking the photos, but the REAL photos don’t come until SAFF anyway.

Specifics:

Pattern: Ribby Cardi by Bonne Marie Burns.

Yarn: 100% hand spun by me. The sleeves are a merino/mohair/alpaca blended pindrafted roving from Ozark Carding Mill, bought last year at SAFF and spun up immediately afterwards. It was the first yarn I ever made that I was truly happy with. The body is from a corriedale roving Sandy gave me, purchased at MDS&W from Copper Moose. All over dyed with procion dyes. I’d call them both heavy worsted yarns.

Needles: US 6 and 7 clover bamboo circs.

Mods: none, but there are mods I will make when I knit it again.

Thoughts: The sweater is not terribly photogenic, I need to get someone to take outside pics of me wearing it [when it cools off again, not before!], because it’s quite pretty and I can’t seem to capture it on a dress dummy or in my bathroom. I made the sleeves too long. I don’t really mind, I like having long sleeves and I can fold the cuff up and that’s fine. If they grow more with wearing, I will probably perform surgery, though. I also should have made a smaller size. I like a generous fit on a sweater, but I think I could have afforded to go down one bust measurement-even though I knit the size that is my exact bust measurement. If I were doing this one color, or if I hadn’t been spinning the yarn for the body while knitting the sleeves, I think I would make this all in one piece and just end up grafting the armpits closed instead of seaming the whole sweater. Overall, I’m extremely pleased. The pattern is super easy and knits up fastfastfast. I had a few days of mild resentment about accepting this challenge while I was endlessly spinning the corriedale, but I’m so very happy that Elizabeth came up with this idea. I canNOT believe I spun the yarn for this sweater. Furthermore, I cannot believe I made this sweater from the twist of the hairs to the zipper. I actually think I have amazed myself. I am amazed I was able to do this, amazed I made yarn good enough to knit a sweater, and amazed I had the fortitude to see it through. I am flabbergasted that I have a month to spare.

I have loads of thank-you notes to post here, but due to a super long, tiring day at work, I’m limited today’s thanks to Elizabeth for giving me this push. Who knows when or if I’d have ever knit a whole sweater out of my hand spun if not for this? Thank you, Elizabeth!!! Can’t wait to see yours and I know you’re getting there.

And where the hell did my autumn go?? Summer, I thought we talked about this.