Post-Christmas Knitting Update

I believe it may have been Franklin Habit who said, "blogging over the holidays is a pain in the ass," a sentiment that I'm sure many knit-bloggers share.  So if it seemed like the knitting content of the posts went down a little bit, or I became desperate enough to show you images of yarn oddments from my early knitting days, well...I had my reasons.  Because unlike Mr. Habit, I am not clever enough to create holiday knitting mad libs!  So, at long last, may I present:

Like the last flowered hat I did, the flower is actually a pin that can be removed:

I made this as a Christmas present for my mother after she admired mine.  So she knew she was getting a hat, and what the design was, but not the specifics of the colors.  And for a couple weeks, neither did I!

I already had a bit of oatmeal colored yarn left over from something else, and I very carefully selected two different skeins of Lamb's Pride yarn - one for the main color, and one for the contrast stripe and flower.  I ordered the yarn online, from a location which shall remain Nameless, and really believed I was giving myself plenty of time.  (That last phrase has been the downfall of legions of holiday knitters) However, I had never ordered from Nameless before, and was unaware that they tend to take a leeeeetle bit longer than others to ship.  So as the days went by, and my yarn did not arrive, I started to get a leeeeetle twitchy! I was particularly frustrated on the day of the Open House at the Inn on Mt. Ada because that was a clear 3-4 hours of potential holiday knitting time that went to waste for lack of yarn to begin the project.

With nightmarish visions of knitting into the wee hours of December 24th, I came up with Plan B.  I casually asked my mother if she still had the leftover bits of Lamb's Pride from the socks she had made me a year or so earlier.  (It was a really great denim blue color, and she wears jeans much more than she used to.)  She did, and handed it off to me.  So when I went overtown to take my Art History final exam, I tucked the other bits of yarn into my bag and included a trip to the Slipt Stitch in El Segundo just to select another skein of yarn for the main color.  (Because of course they didn't have that yarn in the colors I had ordered from Nameless, that would just take all the freakin' challenge out of it - and we can't have that, can we?)  Obviously I found something that went well with the blue and the oatmeal, and a really nice shell button for the flower that picks up all the colors.  I was so happy to finally get started on the project I cast on and knit the first few rows on the boat on the way home!

The yarn from Nameless showed up about a week later.  (Sigh).  And now I have a couple skeins of Lamb's Pride in my stash looking for a purpose!  I don't think I want to crank out another one of these hats right away, the pattern needs a little work first.  But there's a couple other hat patterns I've been looking at like the Beaufort Hat, and the 3 A.M. Cable Hat, ohh, and then I've been wanting to try the Calorimetry, and there's an Irish Hiking wristwarmer pattern that looks interesting, and someone on Ravelry suggested a knitalong of Carissa Browning's Cable Fingerless Mitts, and...and...and...oh yeah blogging about my knitting - I remember this!

C-c-c-cold!

I woke up early this morning with a sensation that can best be described as wearing a crown of icicles. Okay, that's not so unusual. It does get cold at night here. But the iciness continued from the top of my head all the way down to my toes - and this is a sign that something is not right. My bestest buddy throughout the winter months is my heated mattress pad. It ensures that no matter how freakin' cold it gets, as the wind whistles past my bed, as long as I stay under the covers - I am warm and okay. But this morning - I shivered and shook beneath the blankets - something was not right.

My first assumption, based on the high winds that whipped up the night before, was that we had a power outage in my area of town. This is not uncommon here, and generally gets handled fairly quickly. But a quick glance at my neighbor's houses made it obvious that the problem was mine, and mine alone. So in the wee hours of the a.m. I staggered outside to the electrical panel (modeling my fetching new Christmas pajamas) and spent several fruitless minutes flipping breakers and cursing.

Despite my best efforts and willingness to become a plaid flannel popsicle, it required a visit from our local utility company to get the juice back on, and it took a few hours after that to get the my frozen blood flowing again.

Okay - so maybe this a payback for the warm sunny days I had earlier this week. But I suspect that people living in the midwest, Canada, and other areas think that life in Southern California is always warm and sunny, even in winter. I'll admit that the mercury seldom drops as far here, and it certainly doesn't snow, but it's actually relative.

When I lived on the mainland (even in sunny SoCal!) we had this thing, ohhh what's the word.....oh yeah....HEAT! Even the cruddiest little studio I ever rented (in an even cruddier neighborhood) had a small gas heater on the wall in the main room, and most also had those little electric coil heaters in the bathroom.

There's also this other nifty invention - insulation. (No, not that kind. Being a stick person, I haven't got any of that.) As in the stuff inside your walls that keeps the cold out and the warm in during winter, and the opposite during summer. But my house, along with many of the other old properties in town, was only built to be a vacation home with lots of windows to throw open during the summer months and thin, insubstantial walls. (Think I'm kidding? If I'm not careful I can pound in a nail and the point will show outside!) It really wasn't built for year 'round occupancy. So the cold outside is not far off from the cold inside.

And is there a point to my rambling on about this? Other than my apparent need to vent about my craptastic morning? No, not really. I admit I live in a corner of the world that other people envy. And when things that are specific to this place crop up and make life less than comfortable, we often use the phrase, "price you pay for living in paradise". On good days we even mean it! But I often wish that the people who vacation here, had just a little better understanding of the place they are visiting, and the people who call it home.

A near perfect Christmas

Allrighty now - one holiday down, one to go! Something about having Christmas and New Year's so close together bothers me. Like somehow, if they were spaced further apart - I might enjoy them more? I dunno, I could be wrong, it's just a theory.

I had, what for me anyway, amounts to a damn near perfect Christmas. Stayed up late on Christmas Eve futzing around with my blog, surfing the internet and roaming the halls of Ravelry. ('Bout a 100 other ravelers in the U.S. were keeping me company.) Slept in as late as I wanted on Christmas Day, eventually emerging from my humble abode to spend a couple hours studying outside in the sunlight (oh joy, Santa brought me a Santa Ana!), and then spent the remainder of the day lazily chatting, munching, sipping wine, and opening prezzies.

On that last item, I must have been much nicer this year, 'cause I seriously scored! Warm pajamas, cute stitch markers, a coveted knitting book, and a special seasonal appearance from The Sock Fairy.

The WHAT fairy, you ask? The Sock Fairy of course! No, I don't mean the critter that lives in your dryer, swiping the occasional sock and leaving you with a pile of odd socks that can never be matched up again. Or the gremlin that creeps into your dresser drawers, mixing, mingling, and stirring up the contents so you end up walking out the door wearing one navy sock and one black sock. (Oh, like you never?)

The Sock Fairy is that beloved knitter in your life who actually enjoys wrangling ridiculously thin strands of assorted fibers around toothpick sized, dangerously pointy needles to create lovely, colorful, warm knitted goodness, and then...after all their hard work...they bestow their creations on others!

And to you who are reading this that have NOT worn hand-knitted socks and are wondering what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the big deal? Dude, you have no idea what you are missing! Hand knit socks fit and feel like nothing else, the priciest store bought socks just can't compare. Go find yourself a Sock Fairy! (But get your own - I ain't sharing mine!)

Those 8 tiny reindeer...

Get to take a few breaks you know! (Union rules - it's part of the collective bargaining agreement.)

So once in a while, the Big Guy has to find alternate transportation, and around here rumor has it he just loves seaplanes.



Wherever, whenever, whatever - have a happy one!

Wristy & Hat Updates

My first pair of wristys are coming along nicely:



The yarn I'm using is Plymouth Boku and I really like the colors and the way they transition. Since I have very thin wrists I decided to make this first pair longer than most people might, so I could actually get the full range of colors available in the yarn. At this point I'm less than 2 inches from the end of the wristy, but there's still more new color to go!

The pattern I'm using is very basic and doesn't have a thumb, just a hole. But I like the ones I've seen that have a bit of thumb on them so I took some scrap yarn and another pattern and started teaching myself how to put in a thumb gusset, etc. (Would this be a good time to mention that I have never knitted mittens and have no idea what I'm doing?) So far I have this:



Yes, the whole gusset area is fairly ugly. In the interests of getting to the important parts as quickly as possible I skipped some of the plain rows in between the increases. And that bit of red stuff is the waste yarn holding some of the stitches that (supposedly) will become the thumb. Perhaps tomorrow, when I am feeling strong and sufficiently caffeinated, I will be ready for that challenge.

And you probably thought I was kidding when I said I might do this, but I have cast on another hat:



It's Cathy's Homespun Rolled Edge Chemo Cap pattern. And since I discovered some Homespun lurking in the stash along with the fun & sparkly stuff I thought I'd give it a try. It's a very basic pattern and if it works out the way I think (and hope) it will, I've got an idea for some variations that will help burn through more of the stash.

Well, I'm about to done and ready to end this post, so here's an end of the day Saturday Sky!

De-Stashing: The 3 Step Plan

I've been thinking about my stash. Among the many positive effects of Ravelry was the process of actually dragging my stash out from it's various hiding places under the bed, under the chairs, in the closet...errr....never mind. And even when I think I've dragged it all out to face the harsh light of the day, I still get the occasional surprise. Like this little gerbil that popped out the other day:



The first Christmas after learning to knit, I remember using some Fun Fur double stranded with Homespun, or maybe a Boucle, to make scarves for a few friends, co-workers, and a charity auction. And I'm sure I haven't touched Fun Fur since then, so this must be a leftover from that time. I really had no intension of revisiting that particular phase of my knitting so I have no idea what I'd do with it. I also found this interesting specimen:



Nope, no ball band to be found, it's nekkid as the day it was born. Where did I buy it? No freaking idea. So what the heck is it? Again, no freaking idea. But it's colorful. And it's sparkly! (What, that doesn't excite you? Me either.)

I know in a previous post I wrote about the kind of yarn I purchased when I first started knitting, and why, and other thoughts on the subject. But now as my knitting skills have improved, my interests have changed (for the better) and there are so many wonderful yarns that I want to try. But I just can't justify buying more yarn with all the old yarn lurking unused in the stash. Add that to my plans to attend Stitches West in February (the yarn market - oh gods!) and well...I'm in a bit of a quandary.

After much thought I believe I may have come up with a solution, and it can be summed up as a 3 step process:

Step 1 - Go thru all stash, loved, unloved, and everything in between. Anything that has relevance to a particular work in progress goes into a clearly labeled project bag. Anything that is intended to be a future project will also go into a clearly labeled project bag. All project bags will have the details of the project and any other supplies needed. Any knitting urges between now and Stitches West will be fulfilled by something in these project bags.

Step 2 - Any yarn that cannot be assigned to a current or future project will be stuffed into a USPS mailing box, and once full, will be labeled and sent to Interim House, a drug and alcohol residential and outpatient program in Philadelphia. They have a very successful knitting program and are happy to accept donations. (Thanks to Brenda Dayne for sharing the info on this program).

Step 3 - Use Ravelry's queue and other functions to prepare an updated wish list of specific yarns, tools, patterns of interest - sort of a shopping list. This last item is to exert some control over spending during the Stitches marketplace, so that I do not become overwhelmed and possibly blow money on things that I really won't ever use. (Flashback to the Yarnlady's annual bag sale.)

So that's The Plan (with a capital T and P) and it seems do-able. (Is that a word?) And other than buying the required supplies for the two classes I'm taking at Stitches, The Plan should prevent me from spending any money on knitting in the next two months, alleviate my guilt at all the "fun" novelty yarn going unused, and make room for new arrivals at the end of February.

Think it'll work? I'll get back to you in a few weeks and let you know how it's going!

Some knittin' goin' on

Despite the lack of knitting content in my recent posts, there has in fact, been some knittin' goin' on. It just took a while to get this figured out (AKA "the design phase") and now I have a new hat:




And the part that makes me very happy and feel very clever, is that the rosette is actually removable:



At the last minute I had what I interpret as a stroke of brilliance, and instead of sewing the knitted rosette to the hat, I sewed a pin backing onto it and then pinned it to the hat. (Pin backings left over from making faire favors in ye olde ren faire days - huzzah!) So the rosette can be taken off the hat ('cause sometime you feel flowery and sometimes you don't) and even attached to something else, like a sweater or purse or whatever floats your boat.

And in the interests of keeping all my little bits warm, the yarn that arrived last week was ordered with the intent to knit wristys. (Or wristwarmers, handwarmers, gauntlets, again - whatever floats your boat.) And after some time struggling to close the gap in my knitting knowledge that was how-to-join-a-round-on-double-pointed-needles, I've got a decent start on my first one:



It reminds me very much of what it looks like when someone is starting the cuff of a sock. And I expect it'll go on looking very sock-like for quite a while, up until the point where the thumb starts! What it also has in common with a sock is being very small and portable and I've already bumped it down into a smaller project baggie. (Thoughtfully provided by the folks who taught us that yellow and blue make green.) And like a sock, it will also need a mate. (Unlike me, apparently.) Since the bulk of this particular wristy pattern is just round and round of 2x2 ribbing, I expect that there will be need to be at least one more knitting project in progress at the same time to entertain me.

Ooooo - maybe I'll go cast on a hat!

Blogkeeping Notes

Okay just a quickie tonight, and sorry - no pics.  I'm trying to do a little blog housekeeping (is there a word for that? blogkeeping maybe?) and get caught up on things I thought of doing but never had time during the month of November.  (And you know better than to ask why, right?)

I found another blog ring to join, Academics Knit. (Logan, you might be interested in this one.)  I had planned to add a few buttons (Yes, I am turning into a bit of a button slut - sue me. Better yet, make me a button for it. ) for things I have done, such as the Knitting Olympics, or things that are ongoing, such as the Mother's Day Project.  But I noticed that area is getting a little crowded so I'll try to rearrange that, probably standardize the button sizes and put the rings in a separate section. 

I've got a few other tweaks and additions to make to the decor - and if my response was timely enough, if I made it into the happy hundred, that'll even include Ravelry progress bars! 

So now I'm going to do something truly unique and special - get off the frackin' computer and knit.

Learning to learn?

Okay, I might as well get this over with:



Yes, that is indeed my Saturday Sky. It was very hazy all day long, (mainland? where?) and I waited until the end of the day, hoping that the setting sun might pierce the clouds a bit, or give some nice colors. (Not that we get real sunsets - facing the wrong direction for that.) But, I got nada. This is as good as it got.

On the plus side, after finishing that blankety-blank Art History course I was determined to take another crack at the Psychology class that was kicking my ass a few months ago. That little purple progress bar that was stuck at 5% for the past few months while all the others moved forward? Yeah...you're looking at it now, aren't you? Yes, indeedy - progress at last and moved to 10%. I pulled out the book and dove back in yesterday, then spent more time on it today, and when I logged in the assignment - lo and behold, I scored a 100% on it. Yippeeee!!! I have no idea why it's "clicking" now when it wasn't before, my only guess is that although in the working world I was learning new things, being out of a real school environment for so long, I sort of had to learn how to learn.

Okay, so to keep those other progress bars moving along I just have to take a Psych final exam and a Statistics midterm. Oh joy - pass the Pepto please.

Glow in the dark WHAT?

Okay, so I had not planned to post anything tonight. But as is often the case, the television is on while I'm cruising around on the internet and a little teaser for the 11 o'clock news caught my attention.  And just in case you happened to miss it, I had to share.  See this little glow in the dark kitty?

That's NOT a lighting or Photoshop effect.  Read all about it here.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  There's a certain....I don't know, "ick factor"? I've consulted with the four-legged members of my family and they expressed their thoughts on the subject by (1) pointing one foot skyward (you know - THAT pose) and  (2) flipping a tail up and exiting the room (talk to the tail, dude). 

But I'd really love to hear what other people think.  Leave a comment and share your opinion!

Something for everyone

We like it when a box arrives!



The contents are completely unimportant to her, it's all about having a brand new box to play in.

But it's the highlight of my week to get something like this:



Want some more yarny goodness? I'm sure you do.
Okay, here's another taste:



Deeelishus!

For the love of stinky cheese

In the past I've babbled about stopping at Trader Joe's whenever I'm overtown. But it occurs to me that I might not have put it in the proper context. You know, the one that doesn't send you clicking away from me thinking, "what is up with this woman and her food issues?"

I know for a fact that people who live on the mainland ('cause I used to be one of them) take for granted their easy access to whatever foodstuffs they desire, and an almost endless assortment of choices, from every conceivable ethnic background to the newest fast food chain to the latest trendy restaurant. You see an ad, or feel a craving, and within minutes it can be yours. (Yeah, I'm so happy for you).

Living here we are not so fortunate. Although the grocery store is part of a major chain, it is a very very very small store and although they do the best they can with the limited space they have available, that means they don't really carry a wide variety. Nowhere near what that same store on the mainland stocks. In Avalon, grocery shopping is not about getting what you want, it's about taking what you can get. That's not a whine, or a complaint, just a statement of fact. So it really helps to have an occasional treat to break up the monotony. Therefore - Trader Joe's. And actually, I think the folks at the two Long Beach locations nearest the boat are accustomed to the islanders who come zooming in on kamikaze-style shopping expeditions with large duffles or rolling coolers.

My traditional haul always includes a few salads, a couple baked goods, whatever frozen delicacies I can find, and of course - yummy cheeses. I've got a few favorites but the fun is in trying new ones. My latest newbie has, as my mother put it "a lot of personality":



I believe "personality" is used here as a euphemism for "stinks to holy hell and back again with the fetid breath of a dozen ancient goats". And I had planned to save it for the weekend and treat myself to a little wine and gourmet cheese platter dinner (the healthy alternate to beer, chips, and salsa ), but last night when I opened the refrigerator the box of Arm & Hammer baking powder crawled out and begged me for mercy. I am, if nothing else, merciful, so I reached for the cutting board and crackers. The verdict? More stink than taste. Which is actually okay, I mean, if it tasted the way it smelled - I probably wouldn't be here blogging now.

I noticed something about the label and checked one of the other cheeses I purchased on the same trip:



Do you see it? No? Okay, here it is:



The label guarantees that the milk this cheese was made from is from cows who were not treated with recombinant Bovine Somatotropin or rBST. (I'm going to step aside here for a moment and point out the words around the circle say, "our cows just say nooooo" and that was damn near the title of this post. Be grateful I occasionally show some restraint - okay?) But getting back to the point, there's a lot of controversy swirling around the use of rBST. I'm not about to delve into the scientific facts, or the economic issues, or the legal and political shitstorms that have resulted since rBST first hit the market. I'm just making a purely personal decision.

Cows produce milk. Cows produce a reasonable amount of milk for what their bodies tell them is a reasonable amount of time. I don't want someone injecting a hormone into my body to make it do something other than what it does naturally, I doubt the cow does either. Injections of substances should be reserved for those occasions when nature is not doing what it should, sickness, or injury. So regardless of whether or not those hormones can make it from the cow to me, in any form, or cause any change to my health - I don't see them as a necessary or good thing. I can't say that I will restrict my purchasing of dairy products to only those who guarantee no rBST has been used, but I can say that given a choice between two competing products with that as the difference, it's an easy decision to make. And I'm not foolish enough to think that one tiny little person's shopping choices make a significant impact - but in time, and maybe multiplied by enough other tiny little people, well...

A drop of water doesn't do much, but enough of them make a river. And rivers can carve away mountains.

One for the rings

When I signed up for the Saturday Sky ring I had not anticipated that it would help motivate me to get out of my cozy little home every Saturday so I could get a good shot. Somehow getting all my Saturday Sky photos from my balcony seemed like a cop-out! So although I'd already been out for a walk, and had a good shot I planned to use, later when I got home something really fabulous showed up in the sky, and really - if I hadn't been home I might not have seen this:



And just in case you landed here from the Knitting Blogring, this next bit is for you. I finished another cable cap:



I used a much better yarn with this one, drawing on my stash of Lamb's Pride, and I really love the garnet color but it feels sort of tight. I think the other one did too, and after I'd worn it a while either I got used to it or it stretched out. I've been wondering if I could sort of block some stretch into it. (If that made any sense?!) I have a little hand-held steamer, but for the life of me I can't find anything around the house I can put it on that would serve as my head. Maybe stuff it with towels? I'm open to suggestions!

One down, many more to go

I didn't post yesterday because I was overtown all day and was just too wiped when I got back. The trip was a successful one.  I went to a nice little shop where I petted all their pretty yarn. I went to Trader Joe's and hauled home a couple bags of goodies to liven up my boring local groceries.  But the main purpose of the entire day lasted exactly 30 minutes - my final exam for Brigham Young University's Art History and Curatorial Studies 340.

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly happy to be done with that pathetic excuse for a course intended to teach 19th century European Art History.  But I have to point out that it actually took me longer to get there than to take the test.

6:00am - wake up and turn off alarm clock

6:30am - wake up again, look at clock, curse and leap out of bed in the direction of the kitchen

6:35am - glance out window on my way to bathroom, see choppy waves in harbor, curse again

7:35am - exit warm home, start cold golf cart (cursing), and head for boat dock

7:50am - board boat and settle into seat with warm bagel, knitting, and iPod

8:00am - boat pushes back and departs

9:15am - boat arrives, exit with 50 jillion other passengers

9:20am - locate truck in parking garage, clean month of accumulated crud from window (cursing)

9:30am - drive onto freeway

10:15am - exit freeway

10:20am - pull into parking garage at test center

10:30am - walk into test center office and report for scheduled test appointment

11:00am - exit test center, exam completed

See what I mean?  And just so we're clear, all the cursing is not just my run-of-the-mill, ordinary potty mouth.  These curses were specifically directed at the folks who caused BYU to change their policy, requiring that all collegiate level exams be taken at "certified testing center", instead of allowing the student to find their own proctor.  As is too often the case, one bad apple spoiled it for the rest of the barrel, and now instead of asking a local school teacher or librarian to administer my tests, I have to go overtown for them.

The fun part of taking a BYU course is that when you complete the course they offer you an evaluation form, requesting your feedback. Hmmmm...better buckle up.

Privacy

You give up a lot of that when you live here. I don't know if that's common to all small towns, or just those that are located on a small body of land completely surrounded by water.

When I lived on the mainland, regardless of where I lived, I had people that knew me through school, people that knew me through work, people that knew me from the gym, people that knew me from the neighborhood, people that knew from...etc, etc. Each one in it's own tidy little box. And each of these little groups of people knew the parts of my life that related their specific box. Sure, occasionally there could be a little crossover action, but that was rare, and either very brief and/or very carefully "managed".

But living here it is all one big messy mash-up of people. The woman living next door is your boss, her daughter is the girl serving you lunch who is the babysitter, who happens to be dating the boy bagging your groceries, who is also your employee at his night job, and the guy sitting on the bar stool next to you is your city councilman and repaired your vehicle last week. (That last part is not a joke.)

And when I moved here I found this difficult to get used to - I liked my little boxes and they were hard to give up. What I've found myself doing instead, is almost jealously guarding small pieces of myself from the oh so very public life in this town. I can't keep the folks at work from knowing everything that the folks at the gym know, but I can keep everyone from knowing absolutely everything about me! (If that made any sense at all.) In other words, I can't control the flow of information, but I can control how much is put out there and made available.

So oddly enough, this blog is one of those things I tend to keep to myself. While, to the best of my knowledge (and according to my site stats) this blog is being read by people all over the United States and Canada, there's only 3-4 family/friends that are aware of this blog. (And of those I think only 2 of you are really reading this regularly - and you know who you are!)

Given that, I don't know why I hesitated for so long to use my own photo on the profile, hiding behind a Yahoo avatar and occasional images in the posts with my face turned. I'm certainly nobody famous, and not likely to attract the interest of a scary stalker! And I'm not foolish enough to think that no one ever looks at the blog profile and it's photo (Dude, the site stats don't lie - I saw you lookin' at me!) But somewhere between the wide open spaces of the blogosphere and the friendliness of the Ravelry community, it ceased to matter.

So last night, I took a deep breath and uploaded a decent, fairly accurate picture of me, to both this profile and the one on Ravelry.
Hello! Here I am! Let the stalking begin!
(But please bring wine, chocolate and yarn made from natural fibers - okay?)

But in giving up some of my privacy, I've also decided to take some back. So as of this morning, this was the entrance to my bathroom:



Nice, eh? There was nothing there when I moved into my apartment you-don't-want-to-know-how-many years ago. The curtain is only for the benefit of the occasional guest, and to give the cat something to climb. ('Cause, lord knows, she needs more entertainment - right?)

And this afternoon, this is the entrance to my bathroom:



"The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort...."
-Andy Rooney

Inn on Mt. Ada Open House

I spent a couple hours today up at Mt. Ada during the annual open house. It was nice but a little odd, since last year I was working at the event. And it surprised me that whenever I was inside moving through the crowd (such as on my way to & from the cookie table) people stopped me with a comment or question, thinking I was working. It made me a tad uncomfortable too, and I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I would, since the whole photographing-every-precious-moment-and marketable-angle was a big part of that job. And lord only knows, I have something like a jillion pictures from last year's event! But here's the highlights of what I did get:

Holiday season starters

I realized about halfway through the month of November that one side effect of NaBloPoMo, (for me anyway), was that I probably wouldn't have time to make any changes or additions to the blog itself. All my blog time was focused on posting, any improvements just had to wait. So while NaBloPoMo had some very positive results, and it's actually easier for me to post regularly now, I will probably take a day off here and there to take care of some of those things that fell by the wayside in November.

Today is the first day that it started to feel like the holiday season to me. This afternoon I hung my lights along the edge of the balcony and looking at them now, I wonder why I don't just have some sort of lighting out there year round. It just looks so cheerful and happy. I remember last year I didn't hang them and why. No amount of pretty icicle lights were going to make me cheerful and happy - I was in a swirl of stress and strain, dog-paddling like mad to keep my head above water and all I could think of was when it would be over so I could collapse and sleep. Looking back now, I can't believe I was so miserable and unable to recognize it.

This evening I went out walking around town for our annual Shop at Home Night. (Another thing I didn't do last year). No actual shopping takes place, you just go from store to store, collecting stamps on a card to win a prize, filling out raffle tickets at each store, munching cookies, and at the best stores - indulging in a little adult beverage. It's really a locals event, everyone is out and about and as much of a hermit as I am these days, this was a fairly major social event for me. I feel rewarded for leaving my cozy little shell because I did get to spend a little time with someone I like and rarely get to see!

Tomorrow I'll top that excursion with an even more social occasion, the Open House at the Inn on Mt. Ada. It's usually packed with people and since this year I am not working (either at the event or anywhere else!) my strategy is to arrive at 2pm when the event begins, grab a prime spot outside with a good view and settle in to watch the people around me, feast on cookies, relax and enjoy myself. Should be lots of great photo opportunities, so the task for this evening is to charge up the battery on my camera and select the right knitting project to take with me.

Red Flag Saturday

First, my Saturday Sky:



That flag to the left is the reason I did not make it off the island today. One red flag is only a small craft advisory, which essentially means that it is not so windy that the boats cannot run at all, but there is enough swell that you will not really enjoy your trip. Even if you do not get seasick, others around you might and that's really not pleasant. ***(Warning: slightly gross story approaching)

A couple years ago a coworker and I went over together to attend a convention for people in the animal care industry. The crossing was so rough that we spent the entire 90 minutes sitting outside, freezing and becoming drenched with seawater, just to have fresh, breathable air. And all the while, inside the cabin of the boat the crew were running up and down the aisles with barf baggies and citrus disinfectant, until it smelled like someone puked up an entire orange grove. We disembarked in Long Beach looking like cold, drowned rats - but we had our stomaches intact and were discussing where to eat dinner.

So in the past I have hauled my cookies across the channel in all sorts of less than ideal weather conditions. But I figure that at this particular point in my life if I don't HAVE to, why should I? There isn't anything I was going to do today, that can't just as easily be done on another day, and waiting just a few more days won't make any real difference.

Unlike SOME people, at least I did get out of bed today, running errands and going for a short walk.


Nooooo, eees cold out dere!

Isn't she just about begging to be a lolcat?