Thursday, July 19, 2007
Oh hi!
We have moved into our city condo, and we are very very very very very very happy.
Very.
The unpacking is taking much longer than I thought it would. Two days to unpack the kitchen, that's all I've been able to do so far. With the smaller space there's nowhere to put the pile of trash, nowhere to move...so after organizing our stuff for one room we have to diligently organize the trash as well. Breakdown all boxes, dissolve the dissolve-able peanuts, separate the styofoam from the plastic bubble wraps, unfurl the crumpled newspapers used for wrapping and put them in neat stacks for recycling and disposal later. It's taking more time than anything else but what can you do? Welcome to city livin'!
Yay!
Filed Under: Life
Friday, July 06, 2007
So is everyone a spinner except for me? There's been spinning goodness popping all over the web lately, and I've especially been drooling over this and this and this and this. Beautiful stuff. If someone would teach me how to spin, I could supply my own fleece.
My own little angora factory. It never runs out.
This is cute little Bunny Bunniton's ugly side. He sheds easily, he sheds enormously and he sheds daily. Year-round, non-stop, even in winter but oh so much worse in summer.
Owning such a loose-follicled Bunny such as this one is not for the faint of nose. Unfortunately he doesn't understand this and absolutely hates it when you sneeze. If he's nearby and you're feeling even the slightest tickle coming on, he will know and he will hop hop hop fast away and out of sight before your first achoo, and not before shooting you the most LOATHSOME of glares. One of these days I'll have to get that look of his on camera. I have never seen such pure, human hatred out of any pair of eyes than his.
Sometimes though I will use that to my advantage. When he is insistent on sitting in my lap, and I am insistent on him not, I'll just feign a sneeze coming on, and watch him run off faster than a cheetah on wheels.
Poor Bunny. I should not be so mean. Luckily I am not allergic to him, and even if I were, I'd do everything it takes not to be. Like Duck has. Now with enough over-the-counter medication and mandatory exposure, his eyes swell only half-way shut, his nose clogs in only the left nostril and he hardly turns to me anymore to say, "Let me die."
His previous owners must not have had such fortitude. They must have sneezed violently all the time, they must have laughed cruelly at his unusual tail, and in the end what could you do with such a defective cat but to send him away? When he shoots me that dirty look and runs off like that, I try not to take it personally. He's just afraid he might be going back to the animal shelter.
Filed Under: Cats
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
 Yesterday we were allowed into the condo so we could take measurements for the move. The beloved purple and greenish couch is in danger of being left behind, sad face. But keep fingers crosssed that the movers are really worth what they're getting paid...
Once in though I quickly scampered to the roofdeck. Since it was raining cats and dogs during our first viewing, I had only a hazy impression of what it was like.
So this is what it's like, on a picture perfect summer's afternoon. View of the Hancock Tower - skinny side facing - unobstructed views of the neighborhood, no other decks to the immediate side of ours. La.
Luckily Duck was around because I never took the measuring tape out. Too busy imagining the first thing I was going to do on the roof. Immediately buy some plants for the start of my little urban garden? Put a couple of potted hedges here, here and here? Sunbathe and read? Sunbathe and knit? Sunbathe and read and knit over a tall glass of drink? What kind of drink? If I get too groggy from the liquor and the sun, the stairs might be too dangerously steep for me to navigate, so maybe we should sleep out here the first night? Roll out the sleeping bags and have ourselves a camping trip, count the number of low-flying planes we see ascend and descend under the urban sky?
This will be great fun.
When I finally made my way back inside, I snuck more than a few peaks at the photos lining the fridge, the wall, the shelves. A natural curiousity got a hold of me, the same sort that had me google the name of the buyers of our house to see who they were besides just the buyers of our house (I put all our photos away for our open house and inspection, I'm such a hypocrite!).
Today though I wasn't just curious to see what a twenty-something single gal living alone in a fabulous pad her parents bought looked like.
I was curious to see what OUR child might look like.
Bahahaha.
I mentioned in the previous post that the buyers of our house are the same demographic as Duck and me. Well guess what, the sellers are too! We're keepin' it all in the family!
So I was just curious, you know, as to how their daughter, who lives in the condo, looked.
It was for, ah, research.
I don't even know what I'm saying.
I guess I'm a little fascinated with the phenotype of a mixed-race couple...in other words, what a potential Junior CatDuck would look like...in other words, whether our children would be exotic-looking...in other words...
Whether our children would be hot.
We should not be allowed to have children.
(Even if they might turn out to have honey-blonde colored hair, ooooo!!)
Filed Under: Life
Friday, June 29, 2007
I signed up for the new domain shortly after this slightly whiny post and then for 3 months did nothing with it, exhausted from all the energy spent coming up with such a CLEVER name. That actually Duck invented. Not bad, huh?
It was quite the brainstorming session: domesticat.com was already taken, but I really wanted to continue using that moniker and build the brand, if it's not already established already (heh heh), in preparation for my ascension as a huge multimedia conglomerate. Anyway. domesticatknits.com was the next obvious choice, but then I didn't like the idea of limiting myself to just knitting, even though currently it is the craft of choice.
So here we are with DOMESTICRAFTS. The door is wide open for anything and everything under the crafting sun. And if you squint not too hard you'll notice that domesticat is still alive and kicking in there. Yay!
And I kept the subdirectory name clog - which aside from cat log, can now also stand for craftlog. Or cooking log. Or cocktail log. Or crazydrunk log. See? So versatile. Couldn't get rid of it!
As for Move #2, that is coming along. Two more weeks! The last couple of days have been the hottest of the year, and that was when I 1) chose to make risotto for dinner and 2) haul armful after armful of books for packing and donation.
I can't believe all the college books we'd been toting around from apartment to apartment to house. Bye bye forever you guys!
But that yarn stash has really come in handy.
How to pack a glass vase.
 Look at the tower of Stephen King novels. Some of these are Duck's, but most of them are mine! From when I was in 6th to 8th grades.
Duck said he read Stephen King around the same age as well. What is it with pre-teens and gore? (Where were my parents?) Because though I'm keeping a few, like The Shining and It, I don't ever ever EVER want to see Pet Sematary again. Nor Cujo. Ever.
I guess the older I get, the more I like my pets cute and friendly and not undead. Sorry.
The house is in complete disarray, and it saddens me to think that when it gets put back together is when it is totally empty. So it is officially no longer lived in, at least not by us anyways, and I'm all sentimental and mushy sad about it.
But then maybe not so much will change. Did I tell you that the buyers of our house is the same, um, demographic as we are? Don't make me spell it out. OK I'll spell it out: the husband is lily-white Caucasian and the wife is dragon-red Asian. About the same age too.
I picture our neighbors going up to them saying, "I thought you guys moved."
Filed Under: Life
Monday, June 25, 2007
Pattern: My own! I have christened thee Swarm Drunken Bees.
Yarn: Socks That Rock lightweight in Midsummer's Night
Needles: US1 dpns I finished them!
And then I sat for hours and hours more trying to think of a good name for them. Everything that I came up with was bee-themed, because I think the zigzag pattern looks drunk yet curiously deliberate, bzzzz like a bee in flight bzzzz, and the mini-cables on the side resemble honeycombs.
So I came up with
1. Bumblebee (too cutesy)
2. Honeybee (way too cutesy)
3. Worker Bee (too slavish)
4. Royal Jelly (too weird)
5. Beehive (maybe)
6. Swarm (hmm)
Yessss, swarm...I see a swarm of stitches swirling in and around each other. It's not the prettiest sounding word though, unfortunately. But a quick run through the thesaurus in my head came up with lovely words that conjured up such lovely pictures, such as locusts, plague, infestation...So back to Swarm it was.
Now I name you Drunken Bees! Back from a long day's work, intoxicated with nectar, buzzing and teetering and bouncing off each other just outside your honeycombed nest!
Close-up of heel: Slip stitch at the center, flanked by honeycombs which continue down from the leg, and purl gutter, and bordered by more slip stitches. Finished with a square heel.
At some point I will write up a pattern for these, probably after we
move (3 more weeks!). When I do it will most likely be a pseudo-pattern: more of a general
overview rather than stitch-by-stitch instructions. Really all you need
to know is the stitch pattern, and if you know how to knit a sock, you
can do the rest without explicit instruction, and use your favorite methods of constructing the heel, the toe, up or down...I just hate telling people what to do, especially when there's no right way or wrong way about it!
Bzzzzz!
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Drunken Bees
Sunday, June 24, 2007
I'm taking a short break from packing to energize myself with a heaping, nutritious bowl of Koigu noodles.
Why, yum! I bought this during knithappens' crazy blowout sale a couple months back. I ordered two, but unfortunately only one skein came in the package. I called and emailed and emailed and called about the error, but nothing ever came of it because no one ever answered. :-( Oh well. Only $4.50 lost so it's not a huge deal...that said though, I'll probably not shop there again anytime soon. It'll be Chevron Scarf to the rescue!
Filed Under: Yarn Stash
Friday, June 15, 2007
First Socks that Rock purchase as possible yarn to use for my Sockapalooza socks.
Socks That Rock | lightweight | Midsummer's Night shaded solids
I had no sock pattern in mind when I bought the yarn, so I picked out a something from my Japanese stitch dictionary. It's got some mini-cables, some 4-stitch cables, and a whole lot of ktog's and ssk's.
It is quite an interesting pattern. A little fussy, a little whimsical at the same time.
For the heel, I continued the mini-cables and the purl gutter down each side, and knitted a slip-stitch heel using the stitches from the main "wave" pattern. Then I finished it with a square heel.
This is a fine example of the technique commonly known as Making It Up As You Go Along.
I think I like it. Not sure yet.
Another thing I'm not 100% about is them STRs. I really love the base yarn, love the way it feels in the hand and the way it knits up, but I must say the dye job is completely underwhelming. The colors are muted, unremarkable, doesn't induce me to want to eat the yarn the way Koigus usually do. But it's the pooling, my GOD ALL THE POOLING, that I just can't ignore. Even for a shaded solid it does that icky, diagonal pooling, the unintentional blotchy striping which seems to be its trademark.
Seriously though. What is up with the diagonal pooling. You know of which I speak, I know you do. I noticed it on the first STR I ever knit with, so kindly given to me by Scout. Since then I've seen the diagonal pooling all over flickr. I see it now with the solids. It's so consistent that it drives me crazy, because, wouldn't it be easy to "fix" if you wanted to? Now I say this without having ever dyed a single skein of yarn in my life, and assuming that others want it "fixed" too, which they clearly don't because those things sell out like kittens at the kitten store. But like, could you paint/dye shorter lengths of yarn in the same color? Dye the each color interval more randomly? Something? Then there won't be so much pooling? Maybe...?
I do wonder a little how these socks have achieved rock-star status. Kind of like Obama. Hmm.
******
Has everyone forgotten Dottie, because I sure have! Eeks oops sorry don't hate me! She's been reposing all this time in the office cubicle. Now she's finally enjoying the great outdoors, reposing on a bed of soft frilly peonies. It's one last hoorah before the flowers start fading away.
Filed Under: Postcards from Dottie | Socks | Drunken Bees | Yarn Stash
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