Spring cleaning!

We've been Spring cleaning here at the casa. T-rizzle cleaned out the garage to make way for the Judge (a beautiful 1969 GTO), which is in need of an engine rebuild. We're hoping to have it done by the end of the Summer so we can take it drag racing again. Fun!! I've been attending to the indoor cleaning, clearing out some space for our impending visitors in the guest room (which meant finding space for my shoes (god I love me some shoes) and clothing, picking my way through the small storage closet (hence the cat pee scented yarn), and doing things like cleaning the ceiling fans and scrubbing the tub. The house is really shaping up. In addition, I've been clearing out some psychic space with my knitting too. In accordance with the 2007 UFO Project, I've decided to frog some projects that saw no end in sight and that has been really gratifying as well. I never realized how those unfinished projects have a way of taking up so much head space.

Knitting:

• As I mentioned before, I frogged my sister's pedicure socks and spit-spliced all the yarn together to make some neat little balls of yarn that are ready to be made into a felted cosmetic case or two.
  
• I also frogged the first sock I ever made: for a number of reasons. One is that I decided to use a three-needle bind-off for the toe (NOT a good idea). See here: It gave it a weird little elf toe thing and also discouraged me from making the other one (that's my story and I'm stickin' with it.). I undid the weird little elf toe and frogged the whole thing. I immediately cast on again, using a four-stitch pattern (the purled ladder) from Sensational Knitted Socks. I've got about two and a half inches done thus far on the sock and I'm already happier with it. Now I can give them to my sister, like I originally planned, or, if they'll fit me, I'll keep 'em for myself. I haven't decided yet. I really like the yarn though. It's got microfiber in it and it's really soft, not to mention vibrant.
  
• I got around to taking photos of the dishclothes I made this past week: and I even took a close-up of one of them for your viewing pleasure: I love how they look and I'll probably weave in the ends tonight and hand-wash them so I can send them out tomorrow or Wednesday to my papa and my oldest sister. That'll knock two family members off the list. I'll have to dig out some more cotton so I can do some more. Simple things like dishclothes can be so much fun.
  
• I took a photo of the nearly finished Titillating TaTa Tube and a close-up of the flowery crocheted edging. If you look closely at the bottom of the second photo, you can see my feet making an appearance. If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you know I have a thing for photographing and posting photographs of my feet. They just kinda snuck into this one though.
  

Tales from the Tattoo Shop:

• This past weekend was good at the tattoo shop. The jackass contigent was pretty low and T-rizzle made an appointment to finish up a fairly sizeable piece this coming week. He's booked with appointments for next week and looking at securing a guest spot down in Ft.Myers around the second week of June, so that should be cool. We'll be able to hang out with my mama and get him some more exposure.
  
• The tattoo shop purchased 15 sets of new flash, some of which is actually pretty cool so it'll be a nice change for them to be able to do some cool flash pieces on some people. Y'all should come by and check it out. Allie, get in touch if you are still interested in getting a great tattoo in September. We'd love to have you come on in and share in our brand of crazy. Of course, Travis will draw up something custom for you but you should give him some idea of what you would like to have so he'll have the opportunity to work up a really cool piece for you. If not, we can always recommend a good artist somewhere closer to you.

Partaking in Culture:

• We've made it up to season three of The Sopranos and season three is, thus far, a real downer. Needless to say, we're looking forward to season four.
  
• I tried to watch The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (this old German film) last night and about an hour into it, I still didn't know what was going on so I took it out and put it into the mailbox with the other netflix. I tried, right?
• Did I mention I've been watching The Riches, that new show on FX, with Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver? Travis isn't so big on it and thinks it's basically a low-budget rip-off of Big Love (which comes on again on June 11. I'm soooo excited!!) but I'm all about it. A new episode comes on tonight and I'm looking forward to some good television time tonight.
  
• Lost only has one more episode this season. *insert big sad face here* They signed on for episodes through 2010 so we are having the sinking feeling that it's going to be pretty slow going from here on out. I hope the writers prove us wrong. I'm completely hooked to too many shows. Whatever, right?
• The 400th episode of the Simpsons aired on Sunday and it was hilarious, as usual. I'm looking forward to as many more episodes as they can generate. The movie comes out on July 27th and you can bet I'll be there with bells on.
  

I'm still thinking of organizing a swap so let me know if y'all'd be interested in doing a Swap from Your Stash. Basic details: All yarn you send to your secret swapping pal MUST come from your stash. You can include a pattern, a knitting (or non-knitting) book, or knitting magazine, as long as it comes from your stash or is written by you. Needles and notions should, optimally, come from your stash as well. Anything else you wish to include in your package to your secret swapping partner is up for grabs. All participants will be asked to answer some questions that I'm coming up with and paired accordingly so everyone can get some new schwag while clearing out some space from their stash. It's meant to be easy on the wallet and creative as well. I'll be sure to include some wingmen to fill in for those who don't receive anything or for those who have to drop out of the swap for some reason. Also, at the end, there will be prizes for most generous swapper, most creative swapper, and most WTF swap received. I'll be posting the swap news on a couple of knitting forums to generate some interest.

Well, fair bloglings and blogettes, I hope y'all had a wonderful weekend and are looking forward to a good week. I'm sure I'll be back on soon as my blogging has been much more frequent as of late. As always, thanks for reading and leave me a comment or two.

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Frogging and blogging

Just a quick update:
I frogged my sister's pedicure socks, finally, so I can make her a felted cosmetic case with the yarn instead. The socks were stripey and, since I was knitting them in the round, I decided to cut the yarn at the end of each stripe. This resulted in a lot of spit splicing and hope that the yarn won't come apart when I'm knitting the cosmetic case. I will say that it does feel good to finally have them frogged though. And now I can knit her something she'll probably actually use. I should swatch and felt tonight or tomorrow to see what I'm getting myself into as far as felting the wool is concerned. I'll update y'all with some photos on that later.

I finished (all except for weaving in the ends, of course) two dishclothes (that smell of cat pee), made of rainbow variegated Sugar and Cream cotton from Sprawl-mart. I have a wee bit left of that particular ball and I think I may have another ball but I have to go spelunking in the closet to find out if that is true or not. I'm hoping I do so I can crank out another three or four in the rainbow colored-ness. If I don't, I'm switching to some other cotton yarn I have that should be fairly lint free after I give them a good washing. I'm contemplating making a dishcloth for everyone in my family, immediate and extended. I'm crazy, I think, but I know they'd all appreciate it, even if they never told me so (I'm thinking about my cousins here...we rarely, uh, make that never, speak but, in the spirit of my deceased grandmother, who used to knit dishclothes for us all, I feel like it'd be nice to make some for them.)

Anyway. That's it for now. I know I promised photos but I had to pop in for a quick update because I was feeling bloggish (sp? on my made-up word...hahaha). I hope y'all are doing well this weekend.

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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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Blue skies, smiling at me...

So I've been sick, which sucks..sore throat, headache, fatigue. Yuck. A direct result of my illness has been no knitting, no tattoo shop goodness, and very little else. I know, super exciting. After the underwhelming result of my "Democracy?" post (There. I said it. Underwhelming.), I minorly revolted against blogging but I got over it and now I'm back. Still vaguely ill but back. In the meantime, I was tagged by Valerie, on her blog, to participate in a meme (which, according to Wikipedia rhymes with "theme" or "gem," depending on your location, in this case it's the rest of the world and the US, respectively.). I'm supposed to reveal seven unknown things about myself, which is difficult, in a way, because some people know a lot about me and some people know nothing about me but I'll give you a list anyway.

1. I read at least one "young adult" novel every year and I generally enjoy them.
2. It drives me crazy when people say "anyways" and "irregardless."
3. I think things like nachos and popcorn are perfectly acceptable to eat as dinner.
4. I'm terrified of armadillos.
5. I like The Partridge Family and other kitschy bands from the '70s.
6. I sucked my thumb until I was 11.
7. I've never read "The DaVinci Code" and, since I've seen the movie and didn't care for it, I probably never will.

So there you have it, bloglings and blogettes. I'm supposed to tag seven other people with it now but I don't know who to tag so I'm cheesing out on this part of it. I'm off to make an attempt at productivity now. *Sigh* I hope everyone is doing fantastic and enjoying the warm weather.

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