don't faint, i've got pictures!

Well hello there, it's me, Kiki's digital camera...I've been lonely for a long time because the computer that once so willingly accepted my images has gone to wherever over-priced computers go when they crap out. In any case, she finally got her stuff together and took me in to a place that could get my images off and put them on a cd....never mind the fact that the tech at the store said my memory card was 'so old she'd never seen one like it'--sheesh!--here's some pictures that Kiki took over the last few weeks...maybe I'll be getting replaced soon along with the computer, who knows...

Okay, enough of my camera's musings, here's a couple of pictures of my Mr. Bean-inspired bear I made a while back, here he is, lovingly named Legume:


As you can see by the DVDs, which we own, we are not fans of the show at all. Here's a bit of a close-up on his face and features:

I know what you're saying...Mr's Bean's bear had dark eyes, or sometimes no eyes at all depending on which show you were watching, but this was my preference, so I claim artistic license. He was shamefully easy to make, being that he is almost all garter stitch, and I found the pattern over at Knitting Pattern Central for anyone else who must now have teddy. A word on yarn choice, the pattern is written for dk weight and I used worsted, so my resulting bear is a little larger than the original, but it's just more of him to love.

And now some of my experimental tomatoes, of which the count is over 200, and a few more to come, so yes, 'The Great 'Mater Experiment' of 2007 has been successful, even resulting in a few conjoined tomatoes:

And here's a picture of the first 3 tomatoes that were harvested this year.

And I do have more pictures, but I'll just save them for another time. It's good to be posting images again.

just checking in...

That is all, thanks, bye. Or maybe not all, since everyone who knows me knows I tend to talk or write people's ears off...of course that's only if I know them...but I suppose the innernets is just like having 20 million bestest friends anyway, right? Yeah, I know, like that many people would ever read this blog....

One of these days when we finally get another computer when l figure out how to get the pictures off my digital camera without the software (maybe take it to a store or something? DUH!) and then I can post all of pictures of the the inanely trivial things I tend to photograph. I know you are just dying to see them, aren't you?

The epic "ghan of graph" is--dare I say it?--almost complete. No really, despite the self-destructive perfectionist urge I have to make it just a little bit larger--can you believe it, the single crochet stitches made it just a skosh smaller than I thought?! I can't win with this, can I?--I shall not rip it a second time...that is what borders are for, to make the blanket just that little bit bigger. Despite the love/hate relationship I have developed with this thing, I must say some little part of me does think it's quite cute. I'll still be happy to have it done and out of the house, I'm just sayin'.

a great big pain in the...hand

Have you ever worked on something for what seems like ages, and then all of a sudden you come to an awful realization, say like you made a mistake near the beginning of a loong scarf or something and didn't notice until you were almost finished? In my case, I worked over a third of a graph afghan and realized that it was going to be waaaay too big....

I should preface this by saying that my wonderful friend Pammy asked me a couple of months ago to make a graph pattern for her first grandbaby due in the Fall, to which I of course agreed. I started it and then promptly left it for a month or so few weeks to finish a few other things and such, thinking, as all procrastinators do: "Well I have until October, LOTS of time!!!" Then a couple weeks ago I realized my lots of time had ticked away, as time will do, and decided to hunker down and start seriously working on this thing....and so I did...and I worked very hard, trying to bang away 10-15 rows a night...and so my hand began to hurt--a lot--and this weekend I decided to take a day or two off from the marathon of evening crochet...and it was at this point that Cee made this innocent comment: "Gee, that's turning out to be a really big blanket...." To which I replied, "Oh.. no...wait, do you think so??" Heartsick, I tried to float down the river of denial for as long as I could, but once the idea was in my head it wouldn't get out, don't you just hate that? And after I measured and did some arithmetic (never my strong point) I figured that by the time this baby blanket was finished it was going to be over 5 feet in length without the border...I just knew I'd have to frog all 23 inches of my graph ghan in progress. Honestly it's not my fault....the pattern I have was meant for filet thread crochet, so I was kind of winging it for baby yarn, having to guess hook size and which stitch to use....Sure, I could have left it, and then maybe when it was complete, they could have used it for a hallway runner...nothing would appease me, not even Cee saying "Well, just keep this one and start them another one", to which I replied, "But then I'd have to buy more yarn..." At this point he made a noise sounding suspiciously like a scoff and said "You'd do that anyway..." Humph! No, I made the decision, took a deep breath, and started ripping. It took me most of Sunday afternoon and evening just to rip the dang thing out. I was actually nauseous, thinking about all that hard work, all those yarn strands I had to keep untwisting while I worked, and then had to do the same thing when I ripped it back out....live and learn, what can you do? And so now, a few days later, the ghan has been restarted with a smaller hook and in single crochet.....and when it is done I will be very glad to see the back of it....my hand still hurts, and time, she is not on my side...but it WILL get finished!

I harvested the first 3 tomatoes yesterday and took a picture, here it isn't:

Two of my maters were only the size of raspberries, but one was your typical cherry tomato size....they tasted pretty good, and I felt very fulfilled, maybe the way a farmer would when he had sown his seeds and tended and then harvested his crop, well okay maybe not, but you get the idea, I started singing "The Circle of Life" and danced around my kitchen, eating my cherry tomatoes....not really, but I guess this sort of proves that my thumb is a little bit green after all.

still living in the dark ages

Still here. Still breathing. Still without computer. You don't realize how much you have come to rely on 'things' until you don't have them anymore, do you? I mean, if this were 15 years ago, I wouldn't be going through internet withdrawal, would I? I wouldn't be jonesing for a blog fix, or a Youtube chuckle or just thinking up some idiotic thing to type in a search box, just to see if there were sites dedicated to it, now would I? I wouldn't be checking IMdb for an actor I saw in a show and wanted to know what else he'd been in...and I certainly wouldn't be cursing the fact that I couldn't search for knitting or crochet patterns, or looking up how to do a certain stitch or technique either. Ah, c'est la vie as the French saying goes.

We are still 'shopping' computers...which is to say, neither one of us knows a tinker's damn about what goes into a computer and what gigahoosie whatsit we need to run our big, metal picture-box thing. Well, maybe we aren't that bad, but it's a lot closer than I'd like to admit...hopefully soon we will have something.

On the home front, this is where I'd place some pictures of my tomato plants, which are growing nicely and rapidly producing many tomatoes...none of which are ripening that I can see as yet, but who cares, The Great 'Mater Experiment has seemingly succeeded, which surprised no one more than I, you can be sure of that! Only one of the plants seems a little bit sickly, but it is still holding it's own and producing tomatoes, even if they are a little bit smaller than the other three plants.

I've been knitting more dishcloths, and working on what will hopefully be a graph 'ghan, nothing too interesting, but I would still show some pictures if I could. I also just finished a knitted Mr. Bean teddy bear I have affectionately named "Legume"....again, a picture would normally be right in this space:

Sigh.

can't talk....reading...

Yes I am (almost!) 40 years old....Yes, I'm a Harry Potter fan(atic)....yes, I have in my possession the very last book. Yes, I plan on reading it tonight and probably finishing it tomorrow or Monday. Yes, I have no life, just ask Cee and he will tell you so.

If you need me between now and Monday, don't bother, I'm off to be with Harry, Ron & Hermoine....and I still am holding out hope for Snape, because I secretly love that old greasy-haired miserable git of a Potions teacher.

Love, me.

h is for hooped

And that's what our computer is: Hooped.... It seems that what with all the power spikes we've been having lately, due to the drain on our hopelessly inept power grid out here, our surge protector couldn't handle the load, and basically a surge went through our entire system....or so says the all-knowing, smiling computer tech-god. Oh yes, it can be fixed, but given the ancient age of our computer (nearly 5 years old!! How ever did we manage to have it that long?!) it would be more advisable to invest in a new system, and perhaps they could manage to transfer over some of the data we wanted to keep on our old system, if we are very lucky, which as most people who know Cee and I know, we probably won't be, as if it wasn't for bad luck we'd have no luck at all...

So that's it...and since the computer fairy hasn't left us a new system as yet under our pillows, I suppose it may be a while until we can manage a new one, since we hadn't even been thinking of replacing ours for a while...ah well, c'est la vie as they say. There was a lot of 'stuff' on the old one that will be lost, but I suppose it could be worse..although at the moment I'm not sure how...

And for anyone who didn't know, you should replace your surge protector 'often', according to the all-knowing tech-god, as when he asked me how old ours was and I told him "about 2 years" he basically choked on his tongue and again muttered something about it being 'ancient'.

At least I've been getting a lot of crocheting and knitting done, not that I can show you or anything, since I can't upload any pictures, but just imagine lots of cool finished stuff...like thread bookmarks and doilies (table hats) and things like that...

snafu

Or possibly fubar...whichever military acronym you use, they all mean the same thing: our computer has crapped out....my friends, it's so effed up it won't even turn on or off, so you just know that can't be good. There was much gnashing of teeth and screaming of profanities last night, I can tell you.

Luckily, Cee's mum lives close, so she has kindly let me use her computer today. So...until we get ours fixed, (if indeed it can be fixed) my blog posts shall most likely be very scarce.

Pray for us....it could get ugly.

it's a beauty way to go

Ah yes, the immortal words of Geddy Lee as he sang the song "Take off! (to the Great White North)", it is a beauty way to go. Happy 140th Birthday Canada! Ye don't look a year over 100...

cuff 'n stuff

I have begun knitting a pair of socks from the Favorite Socks book. I do really like this book (even though they have flagrantly misspelled the word 'favourite'...for most of us who live in the Commonweath countries, anyway)


The biggest reason I like this book is that it appears to be a challenge for me. I have started no less than three patterns (the above being said 3rd) and have run into...em...shall I say...difficulties...with each one (except this one....so far...) and although it is a little frustrating, I also find it fun searching for answers to my 'howdeedoodat' questions, and rewarding to learn new techniques...for example, I learned how to do a double long-tail cast on thanks to Knitting Help, and then I figured out how to make that cast on in rib, thanks to the back of this very book, and then I gave up knitting that pattern (for the time being) because I kept screwing up the chart, which I have also never used before...ahhh, so much to learn, so many puzzling looks from Cee as he watches me start multiple patterns and frog them over and over.

Here's a closer look at the cuff, just because I know you want to see....or not...anyway here it is:

The biggest reason I like this pattern so far (aside from the fact that I can actually follow it) is that it only uses 4 dpns....most of them call for 5, and well, anyone who has read my blog (hey, it could happen!) knows that I have this 'thing' about sets of 4 and 5 dpns, and how I can only ever find 4's when I need 5's...

Wiki Wiki Fun

So I was surfing aroung the blogisphere the other day, and I came upon a meme that I thought was pretty fun and interesting, and so I swiped it without being tagged, just 'cause I felt like it.

It's the Wikimeme, and basically what you do is head on over to Wikipedia and type in your birthday, month and day only and then you list 3 events, 2 births, and 1 holiday for that day.

Here is what I came up with, for January 14th:

Events:

1. 1690 -- The Clarinet is invented in Nuremburg, Germany.

2. 1954 -- Marilyn Monroe weds Joe DiMaggio.

3. 1978 -- Johnny Rotten quits the Sex Pistols after the final show on their American tour at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.

Births:

1. 1741 -- Benedict Arnold, General notorious for treason

2. 1968 -- LL Cool J, Rapper & Actor (same day and year as yours truly!)

3. 1969 -- Jason Bateman, Actor (star of one of my fave shows, Arrested Development--I still curse Fox for taking it off the air)

Holiday:

New Year's Day in Eastern Orthodoxy--makes sense, since the 7th is Christmas

I won't tag anyone, but feel free to head on over to Wikipedia and glean some superfluous knowledge about the day you were born.

"it's a major award!"

One of my favourite lines from "A Christmas Story"...wait...have I suddenly got Christmas on the brain because I've been making snowflakes? Nope, I'm just excited, happy, and am blushing a little bit, frankly, because the completly sublime Sharon over at Chickenlips Knitting has bestowed upon me my first award:


How totally marvellous is that?! Aside from being one of my favourite colours, the best part of it was the wonderfully kind words she said about me on her blog, which is one I especially look forward to reading. She always has lots of witty and funny posts and pictures of her ongoing and finished works of fibre art. Thank you Sharon, you are the best!

And now my assignment is to pass this hot pink button of praise on to five other ladies who most assuredly deserve it, and here they are:

1. Vik at Like Grandma. This effervescent lady is so divinely kind and welcoming. She always posts such wonderful pictures and stories, and is the driving force behind Knitting for Homeless, a small spark of an idea that is growing into a world-wide movement.

2. Lady Linoleum at Monster Crochet. The title grabbed me and drew me in! This is one creatively prolific lady! She never ceases to amaze me with her new designs. Whether it's crocheted meat, monster eyeballs, or skull in cross bones sweaters, she is a true artist in every sense of the word.

3. Cupcake at Crochetroo. Aussie Aussie Aussie, oy oy oy!! This extraordinary lady is not only diversely talented when it comes to pattern designing, but she also tries to raise awareness to Australian wildlife through the medium of crochet, which is no small feat.

4. Cass at Shut Up, I'm Counting. I recently found her blog through a comment she made on mine, and I'm so glad I did! Her irreverent humour keeps me in stitches, and her multiple pictures of her many diverse pets and projects are always a pleasure to see.

5. Hel at Truth Cycles. She takes some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen! I love visiting her blog to see what her many animals have been up to and to read her outlook on life.

And now wonderful ladies, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pass on this honour to five other deserving blogger chicks. So go ahead, swipe the button, spread the love, share the joy.