JenLa

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!

Her: hhhhhhhhhhhh
Him: What’s wrong?

Her: I wanted to start this new shawl tonight, but the pattern calls for slender, pointy size nines, and all I have are the dull, plastic, interchangeable ones.
Him: I guess this calls for a trip to the yarn store to get the right needles, huh?

Her: blink blink…blinkity…blink
Him: Isn’t there one in Long Beach that you like?

Her: mouth drops to the floor
Him: walks away smug in the knowledge that, even after 6 years of marriage he can shock her into silence, and that’s saying something

It actually couldn’t have been a nicer weekend. First, came the realization that I hate Forest Path Stole with the fire of a thousand suns. I TRIED to like it, I really did. But to no avail. I hate it. Hate. Hate. Hate. Loathsome…Detestable…SEETHING hatred. So much so that I would rather crochet a bra-and-panty set out of barbed-wire, razor blades and red heart than knit one more single solitary stitch on that craptastic stole. If I didn’t love the yarn so much, I would have set fire to it. I still may burn the pattern in effigy, if only my candle-lighting lighters hadn’t somehow gone missing…

Even the DH when seeing it, considered it too fussy. So Friday night I had the satisfaction of turning this…

Into this…

Yeah, not much ripping satisfaction was to be had, the yarn kept hanging up on itself, so, after only 3 rows of utter frustration, I put myself out of my misery by severing the umbilical. Ahhhhhhhhhh! So Debi? You know I love ya, but I gotta say adios to the FPS KAL. Hasta la vista, bay-bee!

So the yarn’s on vacation now. There are a couple of patterns I’m contemplating for it, one of which is in Victorian Lace Today, and the other is in A Gathering of Lace. But no hurry, I’m now working on Morning Glory Crack…errr…Wrap, and it consumes every waking thought, every fiber of my being calls out for it. Even though it took 4 times casting on and knitting to row 4 only to rip because somehow, in the last 13 months the DH forgot how to make a meal without my assistance, thus breaking my concentration with a multitude of “Honey, where’s the…”

Saturday afternoon was spent in the company of Michelle and the incomparable Miss M. Good company, good knitting, and good geek made the afternoon just fly by. The highlight for me? Miss M falling asleep in my arms.

On Sunday, the DH and I took a drive to Long Beach where we not only intended to patronize a yarn shop, we actually set foot in one, and wanna know something? He didn’t spontaneously combust! Fancy that. I perused the patterns, fondled the yarn and flipped through some books, but only walked out with a set of size 9 Addi turbos. Afterward, we had lunch at Busters, went to an arts and crafts show at the bay, and then headed home. It’s nice having an entire weekend with no other obligations except to relaxation.

So, how was your weekend?

I was chatting with Melissa this morning. We’re both Foodie Wannabes. She’s one of the few locals who likes many of the same things I like. I told her I was excited that the week I’m in Boston happens to coincide with Boston Restaurant Week. We then pondered a knitting and eating tour when Atlanta has theirs the week after. I looked it up and while Boston has 130 restaurants participating, Atlanta has 8. What a suave international city! Eight. We then wondered if fried chicken and barbecue were haute cuisine, would Atlanta then have the requisite interest and participation? Which led us to agree that we can’t even say Atlanta has the best BBQ because the western and midwestern states do it as good or better. Philly has cheesesteaks, and NYC and Chicago fight over pizza, Boston has it’s cream pies and beans, Maine it’s lobster, Maryland it’s crab cakes, Louisiana it’s gumbo, Florida it’s key lime pie. What is quintessentially Atlanta food? Are we stuck with fast food from Chick Fil A, The Varsity and Waffle House? There’s maybe Brunswick Stew, but for one thing, half the people here don’t know what it is and for another, it’s origins are up for debate. Vidalia onions? Since even many natives have never eaten the rare authentic vidalia onion, it hardly seems to qualify. Those are not onions as you know them, trust me, it’s the truffle of the onion world. Boiled Peanuts? Okra? Fried Green Tomatoes? Collards? Black Eyed Peas? All very tasty, but again, nobody equates the city of Atlanta with them. It’s just southern cooking-or if you’re in the wilds of L.A. they’d refer to it as “soul food”, which isn’t exactly right. Melissa found that our official “prepared” state food is Grits. Grits! I like them, but come on. The Carolinas and California all out-peach the Peach State. We may have invented the peach as we know it today, but I have yet to find a Ga peach this year. We’re the poultry capital of the world, but I can think of no specifically famous Atlanta chicken dishes apart from the aforementioned Chick Fil A sandwich. We’ve also got muscadine grapes, which is the same as scuppernong, and there are numerous wineries here fermenting them, but they’re gag-inducing and I can’t help but think that most people outside of the south would be beyond horrified if you handed them a glass of muscadine wine and asked them to drink the whole glass. I recently found this:

Which is not made with muscadines, but white wine and I like it. But white wine jelly on crumpets doesn’t sound very Atlanta, does it? We’ve decided that we’re currently stuck with Coke until we can find something obscure and raise it to fame. For now, we’re going to go with Coca Cola Cake:

The picture was taken in a restaurant in South Carolina.

Usually you find it as a sort of sheet cake in a tin foil pan at a picnic. You will recognize it by the sort of anemic brown, slightly crunchy frosting and fallen/compacted look. It may be camouflaged with m&m’s spelling out “hapy birtday” or a smiley face made with maraschino cherry eyes and canned pineapple mouth. It’s a wonderful tool for irritating others at a public beach, just feed the overly sugared and somewhat caffeinated cake-with a can of coke each to wash it down-to a group of six or more children then turn them loose on the unsuspecting public. You’ll have the place to yourself in no time.

Melissa points out that we have a state possum. I put forth that it’s probably our state dish, too, but no confirmation yet. So what’s your quintessential local meal?

Spank first…bitch later

Uh, Hello! blogger-using blogging people! WTF? You just don’t listen do you? Not only are you still with blogger, (yeah, I know it’s free, but there are other, less-sucky free blog hosts, like Wordpress & Blog Drive) but you’re still using their lame-ass commenting platform. A platform that for the last few days has refused to allow Jen and me to sign in to comment. At all. We couldn’t sign in with our blogger accounts, or our google accounts, or even anonymously…fuckers…thus forcing us to open entirely NEW accounts and in so doing FORCED us to start 2 new blogs which can be found here (which was created first)…and here. We didn’t wanna. They MADE us…

So, in case you were wondering. No, we haven’t been ignoring you. Yes, we’re still alive. No, you haven’t pissed us off…or offended us in any way whatsoever. Yes, we still read you, love you, and have wanted desperately to be able to comment. We just couldn’t because blogger sucks ass. So please, for the love of all things wooly, if you don’t want to change your host (change can be scary), at least consider changing your comment platform. May we suggest Haloscan?

/end spanking…

…commence bitching/

So I had every intention of having the first tier of the Forest Path Stole done so I could take a picture of it and post about today. It was a reasonable goal, or so I thought. I revisited FPS yesterday and found, that once I got it straight in my head how the whole herringbone, stitch-picking-up thingy worked, that first unit of lace (Fern) on the first tier was very enjoyable and quick.

I figured I could knock out the other 3 lace units and get a picture of it in time for the FPS-along update tomorrow. Instead I have this:

Yup, count them. 2. Only 2 measily lace units on Tier 1 done.

And what was the cause of this set-back? My very first run-in with a tiny little beautiful technique of lace knitting called a NUPP. They should have called it “Brick Wall” or “Uber Suckage of Time”.

I’ve spent all morning working with those Estonian instruments of torture, trying to find a way to make it happen in less than 2 hours per nupp, and employing all kinda weird things in a desperate attempt to just make it work.

BTW, isn’t Nupp Wrestling an Olympic sport? Well, it should be, dammit! Finally I swallowed my pride and whined to Jen and she said one word: Looser (which in my skimmer’s head I read as LOSER, and was about to get all sorts of defensive). That did it.

Thank GAWD Deb talked me out of my original idea of modifying the stole so the Lily of the Valley is every OTHER lace unit. And I’d tell her so on her blog if I could ever leave her a comment. How is it that something so beautiful as Lily of the Valley lace knitting can be such a pain in the ass?

Oh, and speaking of which…Stacey (comment #13) Cute, but a) I’m not doing UFOR, therefore I can languish any project I want, and b) tapdancing on landmines never did anybody any good. Just so you know.

‘Nupp said…

I don’t know if she realized it, but Little Mary Sunshine (and I mean that in the most loving way possible [start Faina]) started a bandwagon today, and I’m all in…

Random Things I Like

• The smell of Jasmine
• Mango sherbert
• Dogs who wag their entire bodies
• Earl Grey tea
• Baroque music
• Experimenting with flavors while cooking
• Cat’s making biscuits in slow motion in the air
• Saturday afternoon naps
• The sound and smell of the rain
• Garlic butter
• Lizards
• Food Network Challenges
• Pancakes
• Bach-Gounod’s Ave Maria
• Me time
• Stargazer Lilies
• Knotts Berry Farm
• Trixie’s purple-and-pink stripey tongue
• Asparagus Ravioli
• The Mists of Avalon
• J.S. Bach’s Cello Concerto
• Digging for the Truth
• Cat Pwrowrs (where they’re purring and they meow)
• DH’s Pineapple upside-down cake
• Tostones with mango salsa
• Star Wars IV, A New Hope
• Quiet conversations with my dad
• Lively conversations with my mom
• Surf ‘n Turf BBQs
• Quantum Leap reruns
• Shoe shopping
• Experimenting with color
• Cable Knitting

~~~~~~~

Next thing you know they’ll be offering to wipe our asses. Jeez!