That damn show

That Damn Show is on tonight. Honestly, I would have quit it weeks ago if the husband hadn't said that it was a one-season show, and would be wrapping up soon. But nothing ever happens, it's so awfull and borring and hair-pullingly stupid. I can't relate to any of the characters, things are dropped not mysteriously, but just carelessly, and mistakes!!! They got the call letters wrong on a local TV station, just by getting tow in the wrong order. They got the whale migration times wrong. It's a show about freaking marine biologists. It's frustrating, annoying and irritating. the only marginally interesting character is the bad guy; Lee, and even he's not given near enough development. instead we see that idiot lizzard run around beating like the first 20 minutes of the wookie christmas special. And that was painful to sit through, and I like star wars. I even own the damn ewok movies.

It's amlmost as bad as when i was reading either the Davinci Code or Angels and Demons, but one of them started right out stating a fact i knew to be false. How? I done it my freakin' self! I'm not that smart, but if i can figure out how to make a wrod look the same right side up as well as upside down, it can't take a supercomputer or a demonic cult. That, and the fact that the word is printed right there in the text, so obviosly mr. brown found someone else who could do it to. $5.99 paperback from the grocery store, and yet filled with impossiblities.

The davinci code may make a good movie. It sure read like a screenplay. Like jurasic park 2, I read it first and was filled with amazement at the contradictions witht he first book, which i had enjoyed. Sadly, the movie was just as terrible.

It's only january and the husband and I have seen TWO movies in the theaters! We saw King Kong, and Narnia. Both were fairly enjoyable, Kong more so than Narnia, but only because I am more attatched to Narnia. Kong I never really cared much about, so i had low expectations. Narnia I love. Loved the books (all of em!) Loved the animated movie, loved the BBC movies.
I want to make a Ginarrbrick hat! L,W,W had problems, a certain thinness of plot, and questions as the other Narnia books were written later that didn't exactly mesh nicely. It's a patchwork of a universe, not well planned. But like a favourite jumper, is always inviting and comfortable. The movie was nice to look at for the most part, but some of the compositing was terrible! And it had that ewokification factor that i think any projsect a Lucas team works on can fall prey to. Some overly cute thing in a furry costume parading around and making you just groan and roll your eyes. The battle scene only got a paragraph in the book, so it was nice to see a bit of that, even if it was not nearly as well done as LOTR. I know that it must have been a hard call. There is a battle, there has to be a battle, but it can't be too freaky or the rating won't be PG. It's a very 'hard PG' as some freinds of mine say. They also used this description for Wallace and Grommit's wererabbit movie, which I haven't yet seen.

The little boy is not seeing Narnia, not for a few years. The wolves alone would make him poop twinkies. It's the first time he has been dissapointed that I wouldn't let him see something, he's always just deffered to the "when you're older" rule i have. But he seems to have gotten over it. And he got to see the animated movie, so that's something. I have a lot of odd rules about what he can see and what he can't, it's really the only thing that ever causes friction with any in-laws or freinds or my own family. He can't see anything i haven't seen first, i don't want any surprises. And he can't see a lot of the movies his freinds have seen, mostly beacuse i think they are stupid and overly violent. Most disney films are out. And then he gets scared by different things than most kids. He hated the little Mermaid becasue she was dissobedient to her father so much! He freaked out and left the room durring Willy Wonka (the original) not because of the oompa loompas, or the crazyass tunnel, but becasue the children were so badly behaved.
"they will make mr. wonka angry!!!!" he would shriek. "they are not supposed to do that!" My little hall monitor. He loves Nightmare Before Christmas, Star Wars IV, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Robin Hood, 20,000 leagues Under the Sea, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Herbie the Love bug (haven't seen the new one yet).

He's not ready for the Incredibles, I hated Piglett's Big Movie (What the fuck was up with that anyway???? kidnapping roo? extorting kanga? 100 acre woods revisionist history?) I wasn't pleased by Madagascar but had to admit it was funny in places. Spongebob's movie SUCKED. I like some of the tv shows, but not all. Some are on the banned list. Shrek one and two are brilliant, tho.

ramble ramble ramble. For morning pages, this has really taken me all day. I can't imagine that i'll even get to do this much when i get baby X. I find five minutes, write something, then get called away. I'm sure this makes for terrible reading, but that's another thing, I'm not supposed to be reading these again. It makes me somewhat sad because i'd like to join a webring or something, kntting or witch related, but then again, it's most likely for the best. It'd be dead embarassing.

ok, that's all for today, dinner is in the oven, au gratin potatoes! yum! I'll most likely delte this in the morning. More Horatio Hornblower to watch tonight!
t

Good Morning!

Coffe is good. I have always known this, even when I was younger and hated the taste of it. But the smell!!! Oh, it's so good. The husband and I got a fancy-pantsy coffee droid for xmas from his family, and oh wow has it ever made getting up in the morning at least slightly less horrid. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it is. Mornings are horrid. I can't belive that in a month I'll have to be up and good to go at 6am. It's unnatural.

But coffee, it's just so good.

I'm gonna go get some right now. And then tonight, more Horatio Hornblower! hah!

(and laundry)

But now, coffee.

Oh, and by the way, boycott sew fast sew easy. They seem to suck. I never bought anything from them, so it's pretty easy for me.

knit olympics, take two

So, i'll just do up the 'pi are square' shawl again. I never did one for me, or in fine gauge yarn. It should look rather lacey. I am intrigued by the bronte shawl pattern from red bird knits, but I think it's a bit late to be ordering a kit right now since the event will start on February 10th, and I've only 16 days to complete it. Now, to try and fix the mess I made of the previous entry, before someone sees it.

Knit olympics

stolen from http://www.knottygirls.com/jenlablog/


i really wanted a canadian drunken lace button, but alas, i am not canadian. I am sure Canada is glad of it. I have no idea how to turn off this annoying underscoring. Is this whole entry a giant link?
fukkit. I am going to go find a lace shawl pattern for the knit olympics.

Dutifully reporting in.

We're listening to the Lord of the Rings radio play this morning, after having stayed up waaaaaay too late last night watching Battlestar Galactica. I am looking around for the Winter Olympics viewing scheduel, I remember how insanely difficult it was to co-ordinate all the summer games and even watch a half of what i was interested in. Hardly saw any archery, but plenty of Equestrian, could have had more fencing...And way less swimming. I am sick unto death of swimming. I never want to see an Australian wunderkind in a speedo again. Gotta see the Skeleton, of course. It's so popular that there won't be much chance of it's not being shown at a good hour. Last summer games it was a good thing we had satellite and Tivo, or we'd seriously never had seen anything but swimming. I love Tivo. It's a problem.

Still haven't ripped that toe decrease on the husband socks, I've been obsessing about re-ordering the kitchen. And the whole house, really. It doesn't yet feel like it's used to being really lived in, something about the doorways are bothersome, unsafe. Well, perhaps unsafe is too strong a word. The house seems a bit, fey. And not fey as in it's full of brownies and house faeries looking over us, but a bit wild, not quite ferral, but undomesticated. The previous owner was a single guy and a firefighter who's family and station were in the city, so we figure he was only ever here briefly, just to sleep and eat. He had lived here just barely a year, and had never even used the dishwasher, couldn't tell us how the automatic lights and sprinkler systems worked, or much else about the place. He just didn't know the house very well. So, it seems, that left to her own devices, she went a bit barmy. But nothing permanent, she just has to get used to being lived in again. This is the first house that I can definitely say is female. Our last house was absolutely male, and possibly the house before that. The house before that was a bit of a tranny. Very coy. And haunted by a very odd but mostly harmless former heroin addict. The guy who lives there now still takes care of the place and the ghost. Wolfy's three dollar bill is still attacthed to the wall near the kitchen, and the place seems very happy every time we go back for a visit or party.

After this big re-org fest, I'm going to really get down to blessing the place, putting out salt, consecrating my brooms, doing up my kitchen altar for real, instead of the charming yet spiritually ambiguous one I have now. I've never told anyone that I'm a witch. It sounds ridiculous to say. A woman at the DMV once just starred at me and asked me point blank. I squirmed and was non-committal. Why do I feel this way? I don't not believe in the whole Christian thing, neither do I not believe in Islam, Judaism, or many others. I've been trying to be Buddhist for years, but it just isn't me. I'm a pagantype witchy-poo. I like to pinch salt and hang herbs and make charms. It seems no different to me than prayer. I call on Kali to steady me in times of chaos, I look to hestia when the kitchen feels like a foreign land. I think of the lady and lord of the woods when I think of myself and the husband. I grab earth in my hands, have a special knife and a small black teapot next to my money tree. I fill little pots with rice and move the incense in a square cross pattern before putting it in it's holder. Magical thinking fills my head. Is it like I can ride my swiffer off into the light of a full moon? Turn a former boyfriend into a toad? Hells no. No buff the vampire type crap, no samantha from bewitched. It's a small, personal thing. I don't run around that back yard sky-clad or jog with wolves. I don't belong to a coven, and most likely never will. It doesn't feel like home.

A window box full of herbs, walking out into my yard and naming every plant, and there's more, but i can't put it in words. Maybe I should learn how to write or sumpthin'.

ok, that's all, good blog, I'll most likely delete you in the morning.

I'm waiting for the man...

And for march, when V for Vendetta will be out. I re-bought the comic yesterday, I had it ages ago, but lost or sold it in the many moves. Most of my comics are in boxes in the garage right now, and I keep debating weather or not I will keep them. It seems very silly, to want to keep them on the off-chance that the little boy will want the m when he's a disaffected youth, as I'm sure he'll want nothing to do with anything that I like. But still, some of the best parts of my childhood were 'accidental' discoveries of things that people had put away in garages. I remember finding my dad's stash of Conan the Barbarian books. Loved those. And in going through the bookstore my mom's friend either owned or managed....They'd chat and have tea, and I would wander the isles just looking at all the bookcovers, fascinated. I popped into a comicbook shop yesterday with little boy in tow, on the possibility that they might have a Jayne Cobb doll that I could knit a very tiny hat for, and I saw how the boy was deep in thought looking at all the covers. Some were really not to my liking as far as violence and undressed women...But none that made me want to cover his eyes either. I let him have a long look. And then we tried to find some clone wars comics, but no dice!

I'm tearing up the kitchen again, right now. It's a disaster! I have to get it clean if I want to watch battlestar galactica tonight, that's what I've told myself. That, or all laundry folded and PUT AWAY. The putting away is very hard for some reason.

The husband is at soccer tonight, so little boy and I are on our own for dinner, which almost always means mac 'n yac.

I am having a bit of a knitting rest, I still have husband socks on the needles, but the toe decreases are bothering me, and I don't want to rip it right yet. The sister scarf is almost done, but so boring. And my father's tam needs a pom pom. Plenty to do, but no motivation. Wintertime slackerism.

And it's not like I'll have all this free time soon, or any really. In less than two months I'll be getting the infant! Full time, early to rise, infant. Wow. I said I'd never watch another baby, it's just not worth it to me, but somehow my friends keep reproducing, and I just can't say no! The babies is so cute! And I really do appreciate how difficult it is to find a caretaker that you can trust and afford. I've had people I never even met before call me to ask if I can sit their children tomorrow. It's hard out there. And it's hard for the caretakers. The pay is low, when you think about it. And the hours are long, and the healthcare is non-existent. I am happy to help my friends, and I know I'll adore this infant within moments. I've already taken him for a walk, and he was very cheerful until he got hungry. Aren't we all?

I need the money, too. I'm going to open an account to pay my share of bills and the little boy's fencing lessons, and school uniforms. Kindergarten next year, I can hardly believe it! I think he'll do ok, what he doesn't know he'll pick up soon enough, but I worry about this defiance that has exploded out of him lately. I am sure it is only for me and his dad, but man, five is just full of ultimatums and screams of denial.

I have a small junior accordian that I got at the thrift store, and I am trying to figure out how to play sea shanties. It's hard. 14 notes, and so very hard. I'm just not musical.

Nocturnal

I hate the morning, I really dread it. I can't stand getting out of bed, I feel sick. I want the covers up and over my head to shield me from the day, form the light, from the noise. And it's not even noisy in my house. I feel sluggish, heavy, thick and supremely unmotivated to do anything. It's the absolute opposite at night. Around 9 or 10 pm I feel fired up, ready to go. I want to jump up and start a load of laundry, do the ironing and dishes, mop, dust sweep! And write this crap. The book says I should do it every morning first thing, even if that means I get up early to do so. I can't face it. I don't have it in me. My clock don't run that way. Also I'm supposed to do three pages, but it takes me painfully long to write anything longhand. It seems so permanent and lasting. This is so easy, I type furiously, never even looking at the screen, thousands of typos, run on sentences, who cares. I don't have to think, there is no censor, no one reads this but me, not even the husband knows I have A...*shudder*...A blog! That's cause that's not what this is, really. Not like the blog-o-sphere type of blog. I do have tow links on there so I can hop to my two favourite pages.
perhaps I should delete them, since it's really pointless, I can type them in the searchbar myself. Is there anyway that they could find me since I linked to them? I have no idea how this here interweb stuff works. I only know that once the sun goes down, I feel active, and I type this crap. I get ideas, and I want to draw things, write down stories for the little boy, whatever. Daytime is not a time. I get nothing done. I can't believe that I'm going to be caring for an infant in two months! I have to get up at 5:30 am. But money money money, need the money.
and I like the baby, and his mom.
blarg.
I'll most likely delete this in the morning, but we all know that'll never happen, because, duh! Morning!

childhood ambitions

here i am, six years old, knitting away! the sad thing is, the husband has almost that exact chair in our living room now. slightly higher backed, but the same chair. oh it is so ugly, it pains me. But the yarn i'm working with ain't no prize either. I had a poncho with long fringe made from it, i looooved that poncho!


Current books:
Moby Dick, herman melvile; i never read it!
Cottage Witchery: Ellen Dugan yup, i'm a witch, it happens.
Two Sweaters for my Father: polly klas (i thin i've got her name totally wrong
The History of the Wife: can't remember the author at all!

Recent movies:

In her shoes. Sappy chick flik with cameron diaz and a gal with bad teeth, which i admired. nothing else special.
K19 the Widowmaker: i love a submarine film, love love love! but somehow this was a let-down. shouldn't have been, i mean really, a huge missmanaged dissaster like that? near world catastrophe? shoulda been great! maybe i'll find a book about it.
Serenity: yup, watched it again at my parents' house. my brother loaned us his copy of the series and the movie, so we watched 4 episodes a night and then the movie. my kother commented the day after that it was just too odd not havivng any firefly to watch anymore.
what is it about this series that is so affecting? i remember when it was first broadcast i gave it up in favour of farscape, which was in it's last season (although i didn't know it at the time.) but i keep coming back to firefly in a way that i don't with farscape, or star trek, and don't get me started on how fabulously awful stargate sg-1 is. that shit reeks. Battle star galactica was a favourite when i was a kid, but i have boycotted the new series. i just started watching this year tho, as i feel bereft of shows to watch. Surface sucks ass, house is a letdown, and really, the husband's show, not mine. Lost frustrated me a lot there with the constant repeats, and alais is MIA. really, i should watch less tv. i just feel the need for mind-numbing of a non-alcoholic or drug related source at the end of the day. and it's good to knit to. or needlepoint.

currently i'm working on an embroidery test run of a character from the animae series "samurai champloo", the intro is so textile-ispired, it was an easy choice.

in the days before television, trekkies, and such. did people get so crazy into stories like they do now? pretending they were romeo and juliette? dressing up? quoting lines at each other at conventions in the pub? fanfiction?

gallery one

a modern stocking for the modern christmas, still on the needles at this point, and lacking the brown decorative waves.















the jayne cobb hat, version one in microspun, knitted top-down.















The Arrakis House Worm, but lacking his teeth. also a version 1.




















Egidia's shawl, done in wool-ease and merino frappe. About 5 or 6 feet long.















The Medusa Tea-Cozy, lacking her mouth, sad!















Natalie's cableflame hat, in cotton.















My first traditional stocking, from my mother's mother's reciepe.















The Acorn tam, done by Ruthie.

I still hate my ipod

But I paid too gorram much for it to just let it go. We have a new computer, and of course I had to download itunes again and of course go through and add, file by freakin' file, the music we keep on the external drive. I swear, I have scoured the stupid ipod help file for a way to just tell it to find all my music, for it to just see mp3 files on the computer. No. It is too stupid for that. And now of course all my playlists are lost and need re-building. I haven't yet synched my ipod with the new itunes. We're going to the east coast in a few days, and I need the ipod as-is. No blow-up-ee before the trip, please. Not like the rutting thing has even the battery capacity to last the duration of a lay-over, let alone a coast-to-coast flight.

I guess I should throw down and get the external battery pack dealy. 4 double a batteries, and 8 hours of use. Why couldn't Mac use double a batteries??? Who cares about form if ya gots no function?

ug.

I am avoiding laundry. And mopping the floor. And doing all the things I need to be doing so we can hop on a plane and I can try so hard not to scream constantly and throw up. Avoid avoid avoid. The dread levels are high today. I can feel it more than the usual vapor that infuses the air I breathe. It's like a shawl of doom.

Annual wintertime gifting festival

tee hee hee. firefly and serenity for me.


You are Jayne, the bravo of the group. You may not
be too bright, but you got muscles and can hit
a man in the neck from 500 yards with a bent
scope. You send money to your mother and as
much has you may dislike it, you're a hero.


Which Firefly character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Pretty movies, absorbing books

I am still working on "the portrait of a lady", it's taken me a long time, even though I'm completely taken up by it. I got out "I, Fatty" from the library but now have to return it unread, last night I was up until 2:35 am, even though I made a point of going to bed early, so I could get up early, to begin to adjust to the time difference before we get to the east coast.

bad bad bad.

I have to finish the cable tam by the time I get there, but I have ripped it three times now, and I still find I've crossed over a cable oddly here and there. And I still can't believe it will really come out big enough at all. This sideways construction really doesn't lend itself to future imaginings, and the dimensions given in the book don't really give me much hope either, even though I have extended them.

one size never fits me, nor will it fit my father, for whom it is intended.

in other news, the new computer has so far been set up rather painlessly. itunes is still a bitch, it went and forgot my entire library and all my playlists *AGAIN*, motherfuckingthingsihate. I got sent a link to something called anapod, which is supposed to make itunes talk to windows better. I wonder how much money I have spent on this goddamned ipod just to try and make it work... I have heard nothing about the lawsuit, and can't find mention of it on the apple site.
I want my twenty five dollar gift check to the apple store just so I can take a picture of myself burning it and send it to Steve jobs. What a shitty product the ipod is.

and I used to be a Mac gal all the way. The spellchecker won't pop up in it's little window.
I guess I must have something set on my browser that is denying it. Oh well. Doesn't matter, I'll most likely delete this in the morning.

more sci-fi yarns

The holidays are busy, i'm a babysitter. School's out and my house is full! I cooked my first turkey, which, considering i've been a vegetarian for about 12 years or so, came out woderfully. I combined the American Test Kitchen Brining method with Martha Stewart's mummy wrapping cooking method. i tell you, the smell alone was enought to almost make me fall off the wagon.

I got the Firefly DVD set for the xmas thing, and i made a jayne cobb hat from the episode, the message. i love jayne. i've written freakin' fan fiction about jayne. it's sad. i'm sad. but the hat is kind of nice. I'd looked at the DVD over and over to get a look at how the hat is made, and it seems to be that the earflaps are added on after the fact. i wanted a a hat that I would actually wear, and that meant seamless construction. So i figured i could knit a hat from the top down, by going in reverse from a normal hat. So i cast on six stitches of microspun by lion yarns on to size US 4 double pointed needles, and increase twice each needle using a Make one increase, for about 8 rows or so. then i increased every other row, one stitch from each end of each needle, untill i had 144 stitches. i then continued on
in yellow for a few inches, and swithed to the orange by knitting one row in alternating colors,
to soften the blend. sort of faire isle stylie, one colour in each hand. very akward, but again, my first try. i did that for a few rows and then said, earflap time! i put 30 sts on a holder for each flap, and then what was to become the ribbing on other holders. i then grabbed th red and worked the flaps for twenty rows before decreasing using ssk and k2tog until i had three sts left to do icords. after both flaps were done, i moved on to the ribbing. i did five, maybe six rows of k1, p1 ribbing, then bound off. the seems where the flaps meet the ribbing needed to be joined, and the ends woven in. and ta-da! jayne 1.0

now i see things i want to change on the next hat, a longer band of orange, and also to do it double stranded to add a bit more stiffness and bulk. it's a bit too fine, the gauge is 6 sts per inch, a place i like to work, but i think mrs. cobb used a bulkier wool. the earflaps in the show stick out from jayne's head, i think they may have been done in garter stitch, but it's hard to tell. mine tend to curl a bit, but the selvedge edge looks nice, and i was thinking of adding an interior lining of red felt for warmth and curl prevention. also, the hat is a tad long, it tends to slip down too low on my forehead.

We leave for NY in less than a week, i've got to get the hat for my dad done. the next version of the jaynehat will just have to wait.