I feel like it's been forever

...since I last blogged and I apologize profusely for the delay. Let's see...what to talk about. Well, we went up to Indiana for my oldest sister's wedding reception over the weekend. Most of my family turned out for it so it was nice to see everyone. My nieces and nephew are doing so well in their new environment and they are getting so big. I told them they have to stop aging because it makes me feel old. My youngest niece, Britt, is hilarious. She's six and she likes to use "stinkin'" like every other word, i.e. "What's stinkin' wrong with this thing?" when she's frustrated with something. My sister lives on a small farm and they have chickens, pheasants, cats, a dog, and rabbits. They had pigs but the pigs were slaughtered for the sake of the reception, which was an informal hog roast (the hog was roasted elsewhere and delivered by a catering company, which was nice). The pheasants are under the domain of my sister's new husband. The cats and the dog, Sadie, belong to the household (and one of them, Snow, is freakin' awesome.). The rabbits belong to my oldest niece and she named four of them after various alcoholic beverages (notably, Scotch and Bacardi) and she's thirteen. I shudder to think of her future partying years. hehehe. The chickens also belong to the entire household and some of them lay green eggs. Yes, green. My sister sent us home with some, which was awesome of her. Overall, the party was loads of fun and reminded me a lot of growing up, when we used to go visit my aunt and uncle on their farm and would sit around outside in lawn chairs, eating good food. My sister and her husband plan on getting a goat soon, which should be cool. I'm trying to convince them to get some sheepies so I can pilfer the fleece and learn to spin.

Knitting:

• Emily B. - I haven't forgotten about your mitts. I promise. I will have them done soon, along with a couple of extra goodies since I have been taking my sweet ass time on them and you won't be able to wear them now until next winter. I will atone for my lengthy response time.
• I'm nearly finished with the boob tube and have since renamed it the TaTa Tube. I've put on edging of crochet flowers along the top and bottom (I'm finishing the bottom flowers now) so all I have to do is finish that, weave in the ends, block it (because I block everything) and thread a ribbon through the eyelets. The crochet flowers are eating up some yarn, lemme tell ya.
• I think I'm going to from the crochet flower scarf so I can use the yarn on something else. If I don't frog the whole thing (all three flowers of it), then I'm going to use them as embellishment on something else because I'm just not feeling it anymore.
  
• The Shortie jacket still needs sleeves and it taunts me quietly from the bottom of my knitting bag. It and the Tulip shawl have joined forces in taunting me but I think I'm going to hop back on the Tulip shawl and make some progress on that (i.e. restart it once again and get it right this time. My mama deserves to have it done.)
• The MAN socks were coming along swimmingly but I think they are going to be really baggy so they are about to get frogged too. I just realized that I have a lot of things to frog. Maybe I'll do that tonight and clear out some psychic space by doing so.
• I just started knitting up some dishclothes using the woven dishcloth pattern from Stumbling over Chaos' blog. I dug out the cotton yarn for dishclothes that I had languishing in yet another knitting bag and started knitting away....and smelling cat pee. Yup, cat pee. One of my lovelies had decided to relieve himself or herself on my knitting bag so I will be, ironically, washing the washclothes before I send them out to my family. I can only imagine the looks on their faces if I sent it to them as it....hahahaha.
  
• I promised myself I wouldn't start anything new until I finished something so I'm going to finish a dishcloth, Emily B.'s right mitt, and the TaTa Tube, along with doing some frogging, before I start anything else new.
  

Tales from the Tattoo Shop:

• It's been a bit slow here these days but things appear to be looking up in that direction. If you should find yourself in the Pensacola area, shoot me an email and I'll tell you where we are so you can get a beautifully done tattoo.
• For the love of everything that is holy people, I'm only going to say it one more time: If you don't come out of it or it doesn't come out of you, do not get it's name tattoo'd on you. This includes, but is not limited to, current boyfriends or girlfriends, names that you think are nice/pretty/whimsical, someone you are dating or married to for the moment. Tattoos last longer than relationships and getting your boyfriend or girlfriend's name on your neck will not guarantee the permanence of your relationship. Trust me on that one. (And no, I am not speaking from personal experience. I do not have anyone's name tattoo'd on me but I've seen it done too many times to count and I've seen some of those same people come back in months later because they need to get the name covered up with something else.)

Partaking in Culture:

• We started watching "The Sopranos" from the beginning recently. I love the show but T-rizzle had not really ever watched it so I'm tuning in with him every evening, thanks to netflix.
  
• I've had a chance to read quite a bit and that has been fantastic. I picked up The Mysteries of New Orleans, by Baron Von Reizenstein, again and restarted it. It's much better this time and I have faith in my ability to finish it.
• I read Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park last week and loved it. I got so wrapped up in reading it that it is a wonder that I did anything else. His books are so graphic and shockingly vibrant that I always enjoy them. In Lunar Park, he said that it would be his last book and I hope that was purely fiction because it sucks to think I'd be deprived of his future work.
  
• I finished The Russian Debutante's Handbook, by Gary Shtyengart, and loved every minute of it. It was fresh and fun and funny and well-written. I might do an actual review of it in another post to fill you in on some details so stay tuned.
• I don't know if I mentioned it before but I got Beautiful Knitting, by Luce Smith, a while ago through a book club I belong to and I put it in the closet and forgot about it for some time. Then I dug it up and started flipping through it and I'm so glad I did. It has some great finishing techniques where the pros and cons are explained quite clearly. The patterns I'm not crazy about but overall it is a hugely useful book. If you are looking for a good knitting book on finishing techniques, check it out and you won't be disappointed.

Well, bloglings and blogettes, I'm done for the day. I'll have photos and fun stuff for you to check out next time. I hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather and all the things that Spring has to offer. Have a wonderful day!

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