Cattywampus

Two things

DH is out of town at the moment, and I sat down last night to good take out and my A&E dvd of Pride and Prejudice, thinking I would watch half last night and half tonight.  Right.  It was only 9:30 when the first disc finished, so I put in the second disc just to watch another half hour while I finish the first sleeve on Sunshine.

Uh-huh - and now let's talk about that ocean front property in Arizona.

For heaven's sake, I couldn't go to bed when Wickham had absconded with Lydia and Elizabeth didn't yet know that Darcy still loved her!

So I'm tired.  But damn that Colin Firth makes a good Darcy.

Now the second item - in 2008, to sock club, or not to sock club.  I'm torn, I'm torn!  With DH looking for a job, there's a good chance that we'll be moving and I'll be unemployed after we move & until I find a job, so new, fun yarn coming in the mail that is already paid for when I am not buying any yarn at all would be really nice...but maybe I should consider different clubs that are a shorter commitment & therefor a bit less money, like Fearless Fibers or Sundara.  Oh dear, oh dear, I just don't know. 

Anybody out there who has done other sock clubs & might recommend those?

Progress?

Well, I did manage to turn the heel on my watermelon tourmaline socks. I seem not to be able to get the count right EVER.  I know how to do it, but it does seem that I simply can't count and end up with more stitches on one side every single time.  

Oh well.  I don't suppose it matters at all, except that it drives me nuts that I can't seem to count, you'd think I would be able to get that straight at this point in my life.  hmf.

Also, buttons were found for Mrs. Darcy!  I am quite pleased with them, I am working on the sleeves - the latest James Bond movie helped me get a few inches in last night - but I am anxious to get to the sleeves done & put on the buttons and try it on.  Oh!  And I am SO very proud of myself - I went into the LYS to get the buttons and didn't BUY ANY YARN.  Only 2 months to go until SAFF and my self proclaimed yarn boycott is over.

I have been working on the fair isle yoke cardigan.  It doesn't look like much yet.  I got bored with it (already?) and wanted to do some color work before I got to the yoke to see if I can practice and keep it from looking messy.  So I started the Endpaper Mitts (purple, not blue).  I might actually try to make them mittens...I will decide when I get up to a deciding point - which will be a while.

I"m definitely experiencing some cast-on-itis right now, I want to start everything and continue nothing...like my gorgeous bee stole, for example - I really would love to finish that, but for some reason I'm not motivated - I hate that.  I think I have second half of stole sydrome - I did it once...I'm not excited about doing it again.  But how could I knit both halves at the same time?  Unless I got an extra set of needles and worked one section of each half & did it that way in the future.

 

BTW - the newest Bond movie, Casino Royale, was actually good, like Sean Connery Bond good.  I was really, really not anticipating that. 

ooohh, AND last week in a moment of weakness, sale prices, and a gift card I ordered the Horatio Hornblower movie set.   So we watched one this afternoon, I just adore those movies - and Horatio himself, he's a hottie! 

Sunday afternoon I made pecan shortbread bars - YUM - and I can't seem to find the recipe anywhere online and I have no clue where I got it - sorry!  And swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce.  mmmmmmmm

I'm completely denying the fact that it's August and obnoxiously hot.  I'm done with summer and am making fall foods, thank goodness for airconditioning.

Check.

The movie report:  We watched 300 friday night.  I wasn't overly impressed...it was well done, it was pretty, but there were too many limbs flying about for my taste.  Saturday night we watched Hot Fuzz, which was absolutely hysterical.  Some kinds of violence are just more fun to watch than others...

I FINALLY finished a baby quilt for a good friend (check!) - the baby is just about a month old, so I'm not doing too bad, and really, he couldn't have actually needed a blanket yet, right?

I finished the body of Mrs. Darcy - I was trying so hard to knit loosely that there is considerable rowing out in the top, that's driving me nuts, I'm hoping it will even out when I block it.  If not, I might take a crochet hook & tighten up those rows.   I am pleased so far, I just did a garter stitch edging & button band, I like the way that looks.  Now that I've gotten this far I really can start my fair isle yoke sweater and still be sure I"ll finish it - it's only sleeves, that's just a few evenings' work & then I'm done.   

 

Duke, being helpful as always, is around to hold my knitting down in case gravity suddenly goes awry & things start to fly about the room.  He's good like that.

Sunday evening again

Already the weekend rolls to a close, and it was a long one for us too - we both took off thursday and friday, and OH was it nice to be home for so many days in a row!!

We watched The Burbs Wednesday night to prepare, I had never seen it!!  We also watched Superman II, The Descent - OMG it was terrifying, I spent about half of the movie hiding behind my knitting, it was mostly a suspense flick with some gore to set the mood, but it had great build up to the terror, and Reno 911, which was funny if you like the show.

I finally finished the first installment of the mystery stole, there is no way I will be done with the second installment by this friday, so I'm obviously going to be behind for the whole thing.  Oh well.  I just can't knit it endlessly, it takes too much concentration for me to work on it for more than an hour at a time.  So far it's gorgeous, so it's worth all the trouble...and Duke likes it too...

We had  a frog visitor last night, for some reason it decided to scale the window on the side of the front door. 

I am still re-finishing tomato, I am much happier this time, I just need to sit down and finish the ribbing on the bottom hopefully I'll have an FO pic of it in a few days.

The herb garden & the marigolds are happy, but everything else is suffering from the drought.  You can see one of the less-than-lush beds behind the herb garden.   

I wasn't diligent in watering during the spring b/c we were out of town so much and now there's no point, it's too late for them to catch up and with the drought it seems like a waste.  They're mostly perennials, so we'll see how they do next year.

Next up the Sockapalooza socks MUST be knit.  They've been started & sitting in a bag for2 weeks now...

Weekend wrap up

Here goes.  I have been reading (listening to as I knit) Labyrinth, which was, up until now, kind of slow, but good. Well finally, finally after 11 hours of jumping all over the place and too many characters here & there it is all coming to a head, but I had to stop listening/knitting to make dinner.  Hmf.  Eating is necessary but sometimes irritating.

We watched The Prestige, which- if you don't mind watching people doing really bad things to each other was probably actually a good movie - for me it was torture.  It put me in a horrible, horrible mood friday night.  Stupid movie with stupid mean people in it.  Also, Sunday we watched the Prairie Home Companion, which was...odd and a bit boring.  I don't know what we were expecting, but that wasn't it. 

My dad got his father's day socks, not even a whole week late & here they are - I think they came out v nice.  STR in some color I can't remember but is had to do with weather - stormy something or other?  **they are in fact called Stormy Weather - thank you Zonda!

I did send out my last SP package but I don't think she' s gotten it yet.

Also exciting for me, not so much for you - I organized.  I organized the laundry room, the bedroom closet (donations for Goodwill galore!), the bathroom cabinets, the bookcase in the den with all my crafty books on it - I even got magazine holders at Staples & put the IK, Vogue, & Quilting magazines in them.  I organized my knitting/quilting books by topic.  I got caught up with the stack of magazines in the living room and I sorted & filed the clutter on the dresser/jewerly box/bookshelves in the bedroom.  I am feeling GOOD about all that.

There was much knitting.  I started Tomato & had to run & get some contrasting yarn for the pattern, I am using cascade sierra in Jade, but the constrast is cascade pima tencel - the gauge is the same & I think it looks fine.  They didn't have any colors in the sierra that would have worked well.  No cream, no grey, no neutrals of any kind.  Go figure.  And I sure as heck wasn't waiting a whole week for some to come...I want to have this baby done by next weekend!

This is my biggest piece of color work to date & while I definitely had a few 'off pattern' places I had to frog back to, overall I am pleased.  Here is the inside, I think  I was so paranoid about it being too tight that it ended up being a bit loose in places, but not so much as to look bad.

Woohoo - have I been a busy lady this weekend!!  And now I'm going to go back & knit some more...must...finish...tomato...

Pride & Prejudice

okay.  so we can all agree that pride and prejudice is an amazing book, and mr. darcy is ever a misunderstood dreamboat.  right? 

I just saw the new (ish) 2 hour movie version.  They TOTALLY took out alot of the little details that made Elizabeth & Mr. Darcy's courtship the intimate and intricate dance that it was.

And really, the guy who played Darcy - did they really just cast for 'someone to look like colin firth did when he played Darcy'?  Cuz he did - he looked like he was trying to play colin firth playing mr. darcy, only MUCH less sexy and sweet and less EVERYTHING. 

So when A&E had made an 8 hour miniseries that played relatively true to the book, and Bridget Jones Diary took and it and modernized it in a fun, albeit almost unrecognizalbe way, did we REALLY need a version where they leave out extremely pertinent details?  Like Wickham trying to run off with Darcy's sister, for example. 

Okay, yes, I'm a little nuts about it, but it's SUCH an excellent story, the details make it work, and their relationship is built on such brief encounters, as I supposed happened during that time period, so they are specific encounters, and they messed with it.  I was going somewhere long and involved, but really what it boils down to is that they messed with it.  The story has too much in it to be made into a two hour movie and be able to stay true to it. 

And they replaced Colin Firth.  That is NEVER an acceptable option.

NEVER.

Why?

So when a person is staying home alone, in a house full of windows, why - oh - why would said person decide that 9 days before Christmas is a good time to watch a series of zombie movies?

Apparently, I have some delusion that I don't ALREADY get freaked out being home alone, and I decided to up the ante just for fun by watching first Resident Evil and then Dead or Deader on the Sci-Fi network. 

I couldn't have watched Gladiator, or something warm & fuzzy like A Christmas Carol? 

NNNOOOOOOOO - not me!   

So instead I spent the evening in the LR watching TV just WAITING for the zombies to plaster their faces against my windows and come to eat me.

But now the bright light of morning is shining in the windows to protect me, so it's all good - b/c I know they were out there.  I could feel their eyes and practically smell their fetid breath coming through the walls while I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and trying to sleep.

Actually, I slept like a log - zombies or no zombies.  ;-)

Anyway - in addition to scaring myself half to death with zombie movies, we got the Christmas shopping DONE, and I got DH's wrapping DONE, we don't have a tree to put them under, but hey - you can't have everything...now all I have to do is make some cookies today, finish the lone Christmas knitting project I have (a hat, it's half done now) and get two boxes in the mail.  WOOHOO!  Almost done, done, and done...almost.

Post Script:  I have no idea why this entire post hyperlinked itself to the Lace Shawl KAL - does anyone have any ideas?