JenLa

A whole lotta stuff is going on around the bloggerhood, just not much of it involves me. Which is okay for a little bit, because, well, it can’t always be about me right? Or can it?

hmmmmm

Knitwitch is having a good old-fashioned murder mystery, detective story going-on. There are 2 ways to win the contest: Either find the clues and deduce her secret, or find the clues, jump to the completely wrong conclusion, and make an outlandish stab at the ridiculousness of your conclusion. Either way, if you guess correct, or if you make her shoot coffee through her nose, you’ll be in the running for her prizes. Oh hell yeah, I’m entering!

Oh, and while you’re there, check out her awesome yarn bowls. Gotta get me one of those!

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Congrats to Ruth! Her handy-dandy stitch savers & uber-cute stitch markers made it into the”Cool Stuff” section of Knitty’s Spring ‘08 issue. You can find them at Ruth’s Etsy Store Way to go!

Now here’s where I usually include a picture, especially since Ruth so kindly sent me one. But me, in my usual dumbassery didn’t take the picture. I got to work this morning and thought…hmmmm, wasn’t I s’posed to grab a picture of something? I even left myself a note on here to remind me to insert the picture. Sheesh! So yeah, Ruth sent me one of the stitch savers and it is WAY cute. It says HOOPTY, which, every time I use it, will further remind me of her and the wonderful time I had on the Great South Denver Yarn Crawl of Aught-Seven.

Good Times…Good Memories!

Speaking of the Denver crew, our very own Geek Girl is getting married this weekend! I’m sure she’s going through all the last-minute “holy shit this better go right or I want someone’s head on a platter” bride stuff, so go on over and give her some love! Wish I could be there Marisa. I know it’ll be beautiful. And my best advice? Take lots of pictures. Once the day’s over, you’ll need them as evidence that you were actually there, because nothing goes in such a whirlwind as a couple’s wedding day. The DH often says…”Our wedding day? Heard it was nice. Wish I was there.”

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Okay, I can’t stand it. Enough about others already. Let’s talk about me. I GOT PREZZIES!

Now before you all start thinking it’s my birthday, it isn’t. That was back in December. And now-adays the fewer I have the better I like it, so don’t be going and giving me extras. But, I’m still getting prezzies, and that I DO like. This one was the long-anticipated box from Georgia, and holy crap! was it worth the wait. Have a look!

The purple yarn is 375 yards of beautiful Jenspun handspun. Jen initially purchased the roving at SAFF as a way to induce me to try spinning again, but then decided that I would much prefer the fiber in its post-spun yarn form. Does she know me or what? Spinners, never fear, she also sent me a vagillion yards of pencil roving and a pretty little drop spindle.

Now, that blue you see there? That’s her idea of a joke. One day I was touting the “benefits” of knitting with red-heart, saying something to the effect of “hell, if I wanted to knit with coke bottles, I’d stop recycling and make my own asscylic yarn.” So what does she send me but yarn made exactly of that…recycled soda bottles. Well, for coke-bottle yarn it’s WAY better than red-heart could ever consider aspiring to be in the neighborhood of. I have no idea what I’ll knit with it, but dammit if it won’t be something for Jen.

Last, there’s the wonderful little take-and-go bag. At first glance I thought that she had found this in a clever little LYS, and I wondered how the HELL does she keep finding stuff in my favorite color combination: chocolate & lime.

A perfect match!

Then, upon closer inspection, here’s what I discovered:

Exact same fabric

Oh yeah, it’s easy to pecfectly match accessories when you’re the one making them! I love this bag so much it has inspired the colors for the bathroom remodel. And no, the DH has no say, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. He can take his pick, either the bath remodel or the new guest room, but ONE of those rooms will be decked out in chocolate & lime. Thank you Jen!

Oh, before I forget…there might be a certain episode (8) of a certain podcast (Diva Knitting) from a certain Knitblogger (CK), with an interview from a certain mouthy other Knitblogger (me) that either earned her an “explicit” rating or broke her bleep button, (don’t know which) coming out in the certain near future. But you didn’t hear it from me, mkay?

Thank you Lola & Ava, Jean, Marcia and Farmwitch for naming JenLa as one of the blogs that make your day…(Uh, did we miss anyone?)…right back atcha!

And now for our list of the blogs that make OUR day, please refer to the following links:

January 1, 2008
January 1, 2007
January 1, 2006
January 1, 2005

Get the picture Stacey, or do we need to spank you harder?

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Diva Voting
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La’s got a button in Cheryl’s Project Sanity Button Contest, and there’s some pretty tough competition! So go on over to Diva Knitting and cast your vote. You also may just want to join Project Sanity. Unfortunately, it’s waaay too smart and organized and disciplined for the likes of us!

There is much knitting and spinning and book buying and stash enhancing going on, we’ve just been SO busy assing around in Ravelry with life-stuff. We promise that someday soon we’ll post some real knitting and/or fiber-related content…or not.

Last Wednesday I played hookie from work to spend the day with Donna and her family.

Donna Does Disney

I acted as unofficial tourguide and quasi-ambassador of fun at the Happiest Place On Earth, and loved every minute of it…even though the park was a bit on the crowded side…and even though I had spent the entire day there not 2 weeks prior. Half the fun of Disneyland, at least for me, isn’t the actual park, it’s the people with whom you spend the day. Both Donna and Em were Disney virgins, with Dave having visited once before…22 years ago, made for an exciting day. Donna and I both brought knitting, but we were so busy jaw-jacking, we didn’t even whip it out until we sat down to dinner. Carolyn joined us and a wonderful cafe in Downtown Disney, where all the adults had cheeseburgers, and the teenager had a rack of ribs, whose size equaled a full-rack by Ausie standards. Rack jokes were quite prevalent, much to the teenager’s chagrin, of course.

By the end of the night I had talked myself hoarse, and the next morning I awoke to the flu, the one I had JUST gotten over, reestablishing itself securely in my head and chest. But it was SO worth it! And it’s not like it was a mancold or anything…I think I’d have to have testicles to be so entirely debilitated by a little bug. (Yes, yes we do have an outbreak of the Mancold at Casa de La…2 reported cases. I’m surprised they can function at all…GRUMBLEeffinpansiesGRUMBLE

Not only did I have a wonderful day, but Donna brought me a prezzie all the way from Australia!

George!

That there is 100 grams of spun Ausie heaven from The Knittery. Purple-to-gray merino/cashmere yarnie goodness called Midnight! I don’t want to knit it. I just want to stroke it and pet it and call it George. Thank you Donna!

If you’d like to keep track of the rest of their trip (hiya back, Wendy!), you can find their travel blog here. Hawaii should prove to be VERY interesting…

This is the second year in a row I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a knit wonder from downunder. Last year it was Peeve. This year, Donna. Who will it be next year? Hell, we’ve even just converted the office/craft/dump-all room into a guestroom…

…complete with Cat. (she thinks it’s her room. No, seriously, she does)

Because it’s a New Year and that means it’s also the Fourth Annual JenLa Knit Blog Awards. The awards show where we make this shit up a couple hours before we hit publish. The awards show where you don’t get a vote. The awards show where if you whine, you get a demerit next year. The awards show where Jen and La forget to give out most of the awards. Shut up, it’s New Year’s Eve and we’ll chug champale if we want to. It’s also the awards show that almost didn’t happen this year. [Remind Jen to show you photos of her computer, currently in pieces.] Yet, we overcame not just our schedules and computer woes as well as our husbands clamoring for us to spend JUST ONE New Year’s Eve with them, but also a zombie apocalypse to bring you this year’s awards. OK, it wasn’t really a zombie apocalypse, it was really more like we were really, really tired and brain-dead, but still. We were going to nip this in the bud a couple years ago but the public outcry was too much for us. So in order to avoid disappointing a handful, we irritate the masses. Grab your steaming hot mug of Shutthefuckup and kindly ignore the fact that the list shrinks by approximately 20% every year.

1. If Only It Were Her Underwear Award goes to Purling Dervish for the most frequent changing of themes.

2. Designer of the Year Always a hard one, and every year it gets harder with more and more knitters bringing their talents to the designing end of it all. However, this year Anne Hanson Came close to making us give up designs by anybody else. And she designs them so fast, you’d have to be faithful only to her just to knit them all!

3. The Thanks For Making Us Look Bad Award: Amy’s Babies. Why don’t you just do everything better than us, then? FINE.

4. The Cutest Ugly Thing Ever Award: F. Pea’s Star Nose Mole. Does ugly GET any cuter? Sheesh! So what’s next? Knitted manatees or Jerusalem crickets?

5. Funnestest. The Furry Fury This blog has EVERYTHING! Humor, monkeys, singing and dancing, plus a lot of made up words. The english language only has a quarter of a million words and if you read us [like........ever] you know it’s not enough.

6. Double Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Award: Shut Up and Knit! the sweetest Cookie we ever bit into…and nibbled on…and spit back out. Oops!

7. Excellence in Knitucation Award: TECHKnitting. We’ve learned things we didn’t even know we didn’t know.

8. Best Streaming Curse: Wanderlust knits much, much envy.

9. Now Dance For Our Amusement: Uberstrickenfrau. Post more, Olga. Enough with your lame excuses about life and responsibilities, we have decreed that you shall write in a more frequent manner.

10. Blogistan’s Most Popular Book: Yarn Harlot strikes again with her run-away Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot’s Guide to the Land of Knitting. Between her book and her tour, she’s gotta be the hottest knitlebrity out there. Hell, she even has her own Wiki entry ferkreissake!

11. Jen & La’s Favorite New Book: Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Yes, it’s our award show, and if we wanna be different, then dammit, we’ll be different!

12. The Jaws, aka Fresh Blood Award goes to: Ok, wow there are one hell of a lot of new knitting blogs lately. And a bunch of them are actually good! So this year instead of deciding, we’re awarding a whole list of our faves as a way to say “Welcome to the Bloggerhood”. In no particular order:
Fumbling With Needles
Knit Devil
Uberstrickenfrau (what can we say? we. love. her)
Knits 4 Bears
Ruth

13. Best New Internet Knit Thing Ever: What do YOU think?? Ravelry. Duh

14. Longest acronym in the history of all mankind: MAMoStriLiWhUnDerInfluHomiIdWhoFaMeStiNeedaCouMoYeaToGeOvLastin Found here at Purls B4Swine.

15. Best LYS: Knitch. In addition to the awesome yarn store, knitter’s loft with kitchen, they have a bar. What ever else could you possibly want…except, maybe some cabana boys? Oh, wait. They’ve got one of those too!

16. Overshare, aka TMI, aka Poke Out My Mind’s Eye award goes to: Evil Science Chick (again) for her wonderful spinning analogy.

17. Most contageous virus wide-spread meme: The Days-Of-the-Week meme

18. Longest Picture Award: This one. Dude, Jessica called it right there in the comments.

19. Our Favorite Blog Pet Award: Chappy! Sorry, Chappy, there’s no biscuit jackpot here, but we know adoration counts with dogs.

20. Stupidest Pet Trick We’re Still Waiting to See Award: The Chicken Goddess shampoos her chickens. No, really. For fun. Still waiting for that video, though..

21. Home Away from Home Award: Purling Oaks, where we feel like we could just drop in, have a cup of tea and absorb all the comforts and warmth.

22. Most Inappropriate Name Award: Turtlegirl. Have you seen how much stuff she knitted this year? There’s definitely steady, but no slow here.

23. Twice as Nice Award: Two Black Sheep. Lola and Ava-knitting/blogging/swearing sisters trying to keep the blog a secret from their Mom. Lola even got knocked up just to distract her.

24. Spinning Technical: Tie! Abby’s Yarns and Spinning Spider Jenny make that whole twisting hairs into yarn thing seem so easy-and fun!

25. The Hawkeye Award: Carol of Knit & Run spotted a tiny (but ubercool) write-up about us in a small (but incredibly tasteful, in our humble opinion) crafting magazine.

26. Queen of Socks It’s not just the profusion of socks, but the variety and beauty that edge Debi out in front. And get a load of her maincures du jour!

27. Best Podcast Award: Is a tie this year between Sticks & String and Stash & Burn! Not only do they both have content continuity (is that redundant?) but they stick with the fiber and and we LOVE that. Their voices are pleasant (La especially likes David’s aussie accent). Both ‘casts have interesting interview, introduce us to new yarns, books, techniques and other yummy fibery subjects. S & B’s dedication to greener knitting and S & S’s thought-compelling essays are just a few of the reasons you all should be listening too!

28. KAL of the Year: Knit From Your Stash 2007. ALL the cool kids were doing it!

29. I Think I’m Turning Japanese Award: You can’t knit just one of Anna’s designs over at Mochimochi Land.

30. Give ‘Til It Bleeds Award: Sarkasmo donates blood. Her own blood. Like, from inside her body! How’s that iron, Sarkasmo?

31. Cutest Couple Award: Red Dog Knits Scrappy and Gangles. Plus, they have the coolest mom evar. Take us on a laundry basket ride, Kristi!

32. We’re Gonna Need a Step Ladder to Reach the Bar You Set Award: Farm Witch for living off the grid, farming yarn while making the earth more livable and for her beautiful creations.

33. Realest: Big Alice, who gives you the bad along with the good. No pretense of perfection, and we’re grateful for her special dose of humanity in a polished up world.

34. Most Popular Pattern: Monkey. They might have even been more popular than last year’s Jaywalkers, but we’re not betting the farm on it just yet.

35. Give Us Somma That Award: Norma, just a wee little shot of your energy, please? Your drive? Your convictions? Kthanks.

36. Blogudrama of the Year: Oh, let’s not drag THAT up again, please. In fact, we’ll just be eliminating the Best Buns award this year, too.

37. Scared the Crap Out of Us Award: Peeve went MIA for a really long time. Oh sure, she CLAIMS life and other stuff got in the way. We suppose her reasons were all good and acceptable, but we worry, you know. Welcome back!

38. The Pacific Sardine Award: aka How Many Knitters Can La Fit Under Her Teeny Tiny Roof goes to The First Official Gathering of the Anti Social Knitters Group (A.S.K. for short), supervised by Saber, Trixie & Sassy and those in attendance:
Zoe
Susan
Betty
Wen
Andria
Madge
Marie
Lyssa
Monica
Michelle & Maya
Wendy

39. Biggest Yarn Craze: This was a toughy! On the one hand, the sock yarn nobody can keep in stock would definitely be Smooshy, but for pure luxury, hands-down, sea silk made anyone with even a vague budget cap on their yarn buying sea green with envy…Though we predict that Woolmeise, will sure be a contender next year. You all are buying up so quickly we can’t get our hands on a single skank!

40. Raving For Rovings Awards: Though you can always count on BFL being popular, Cormo seems to be the spinning fiber of the moment. It’s Corriedale. It’s Merino. It’s Cormo! [We hereby predict Shetland for 2008. That's foreshadowing, folks.] And while there are any number of awesome roving clubs out there, luxury abounds at Wooly Wonka Fibers and there are colors you will dream of all night long at Electric Sheep. But Jen was several times thwarted this year from getting her hands on some Funky Carolina.

41. Everyone’s a Comedian Award: LOLcats. Incessantly duplicated, almost never replicated. Hysterically funny at that URL. Every knitting blog’s a wannabe. Oops, we might be bleeding into Biggest Irritation Award territory here…..

42. Al Swearengen Award for Excellence in Swearing: Lizard Smells, the curser formerly known as Cheap Ass Knitter wins, as predicted by…um… us, last year. Insider what?

43. Best Effin’ Oh of the Year Award: Autumn Rose. We shall live vicariously through CK, Claudia and Deb.

44. Most Missed: Lauren. Sneef!

45. Knotion of the Year: Go Knit Pouches. We got ours from Spinning Yarns Online.

46. Pusher of the Year: Loopy Ewe. You can’t resist the pull of her tractor beam, don’t even try.

47. Blue Fairy Award: Rabbitch , for becoming a Real, Live Yarn Person. No, seriously! Go Look. She didn’t even have to stop telling lies.

48. Best Comment We Got Award: Heather cracked us up and demonstrated a deep sense of kindred spirit with her comment here.

49. Robert Altman Award: For all the highly complex and irritating dramas she was involved with this year, Claudia should get a studio deal.

50. Secretly Famous Award: Famous Steve is so secretly famous, even he doesn’t know what he’s famous for.

51. Picture Perfect Award for best photography goes to Cara, hands down! I mean, really. Who doesn’t have a set of her gorgeous greeting cards? Well you should get one…or ten!

52. Best Non-Knitting Blog: Ugly Overload. Try it each morning before coffee.

53. Harnessing the Power of the Knitter Award: Norma and the Red Scarf Project. So successful it’s almost too successful.

54. Shortest Meet-up in Knitting History Happened over some fish tacos and Bug chasing between House La and House Pacalaga, and lasted all of about 2 hours. One of La’s favorite brief moments of ‘07.

55. Religious Moments in Knitting Award: Thank you sweet Wool Gods for Thy bounty that is Addi Lace Needles. We give thanks for their pointy gloriousness, their smooth-ed jointyness. Thy comfort is in our hands. Thou cleaveth not the plies of the yarn, but scoopeth them in divine perfection. The lovingly crafted stitches Thou clingest not. Addi Lace Needles, Answer to Our Knitting Prayers. May all blasphemers and profaners against Thy perfection burn in everlasting Hell. Amen.

2007 sucked less. It was weird, but not as horrible as 06. At the end of it all, we probably both feel a little out of touch with the rest of you, but right now it’s a whole new year! While the future may be uncertain, knitting and blog friends are definite. And although not a lot has been happening on the blog lately, it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot happening. There’s lots to tell, which is a good way for a new year to begin if you have a blog. Thank you to all our readers, lurkers, commentors and linkers. You’re all a part of our lives and we’d feel so lonely without you.

Happy New Year from Jen and La!

Saturday couldn’t have been more perfect if I had planned it myself. Well, ok, I admit it. I planned SOME of Saturday, but the lovely weather-gamut-running weather? That was all by chance. The part I planned? Why, a meet-up of course. A small gathering of local bloggers whom I either crush on/stalk regularly, covet their children and/or haven’t seen in ages! It was the perfect afternoon of yarn shopping, good food, good conversation and great company. First, we did a little shopping at Alamitos Bay Yarn Company, where it just so happened to have been the same day Laura Bryant of Prism Yarn was doing her trunk show, where we were also outted as bloggers by the owner. Dammit! Can’t do anything in stealth mode anymore.

As usual I was tempted by all kinds of yarn, but seriously restrained myself to 1 skein:

Now, I know one of you out there coughDebcough is saying….hey, you already HAVE a skein of Moutaincolors Bearfoot in Indian Corn! To which I would have to respond…well, HAD is more accurate, having destroyed the original skein with too much of the rippage in a failed attempt at an original design. I loved the yarn so much I decided to replace it with the same exact yarn. And this time? No more experiments!

Oh! And a book

Then we all trogged the massive distance of 100 feet to have lunch at Busters.

Wen, Michelle & Silvia
Andria, Carolyn, me & Jill (yes, that would be the “formerly from Atlanta-area Jill”)

Where Michelle always somehow manages to order the most curious-looking food on the menu…

…where Jill refused allow me to be the only lush (hey! it was 12:08 when I ordered that margarita!) and where Andria dropped the “V” bomb just in time to send our waiter scuttling away, but not before we saw him blush, all the way from his toes!