that peer pressure can sometimes be good. Behold.

Do you also like the hedgehog stitchmarkers Triplelle made for me? She's selling them now!

I'm also now officially a member of the koigu cult. I've joked about it. I've owned some for almost a year. But I'd never knit with it until now. I can't get over how shiny it is, the richness of the colors. It seems like at the end of every row I'll just stop and marvel and the colors and the magic of this pattern.

See? Sometimes peer pressure is ok.

And am I the last person who found out they can subscribe to yahoo group feeds in bloglines now?

I'm founding a new little kal group. It's called the Jaycrawlers. Anyone who started and hasn't finished their pair of jays is eligible. Here are the buttons.

Not perfect but it gets the idea across. Wear it with pride.

I heard a rumor that someone from a local knitting guild for which I also pay dues was at Village making teh ugly about knitbloggers, including some local ones. I'm not sure if this is sour grapes over a failed blog attempt or general technophobia but it kind of annoyed me.

I'll clarify a few things for people who read and don't get my blog (or blogs in general) and don't want to read the whole disclaimer.

1. You don't have to read it
2. I'm not writing it for you.
3. Comments about wastes of time and energy are laughable coming from someone who also spends time and money on a hobby that a lot of other people make fun of.
4. Don't like it? Bite me. Or pay my bills and I'll write whatever you want me to write.

Sheesh without the yarn fascists telling me what yarn is unacceptable and the hobby dictators telling me what is and isn't a waste of my spare time, I just don't know what I'd do.

It took me a few days to feel like knitting again. I would pick a project up sometimes and absentmindedly do a few rows but my heart wasn't in it. I was mostly eating spicy mashed potatoes from Popeyes and watching Tivo. We all have our ways of coping right? The good part is I did get a little housecleaning done. And lots of cuddles from the kitties and Winter. It's funny to say this but they knew something was up with Mom and were all trying to comfort me in their own ways.

Yesterday I officially got back into the knitting groove. While I haven't finished my second Jaywalker sock (almost to the heel) I decided to just pick up my UFOlympic Clappy and see how the rhythm went on working with it again. I hadn't knit a stitch on that thing since September? October? A long time in my knitting world.

I had Tivoed the opening ceremonies so I was a good little UFOlympic knitalonger and started working on le clap while watching almost four hours of pyrotechnics and people in silly outfits. That's probably disrespectful but I had a very hard time not giggling at such odd and melodramatic spectacles as people on ice skates with big flamethowers on their backs shooting fire off the tops of their heads. It was like a weird version of Starlight Express, which is plenty wierd by itself.

The people who formed images like the skiier and the dove were neat though. And, of course, Pavarotti singing Puccini., well I could've watched that all night. I'm enjoying all the footage of Italy as well. I never got that far north when I was there but I did see some snow in Venice. Strangely I have not caught much of the actual sports. Like a complete girl I like the figure skating and that's about it.

But tonight and tomorrow night, I'm sorry but olympics be damned. Westminster's on and that's what I'm watching! I've enjoyed watching it since 1991 when I had a week to decide whether I wanted to stay in Birmingham and go to school or move to Australia with my parents. Even when I didn't have a purebreed dog, nor any real interest to own one, I've watched it. Now that I have a ridgeback that's had a few cousins win best of breed (one even won best of hounds!) you bet your bippy I'm watching. So me and my clap will be doing that this evening. Winter will probably watch a bit too before taking a nap. She watches the screen when I'm watching shows with dogs on them.

As far as progress on clappypants I'm doing pretty well. I'm on my third skein of six and I just finished repeat number five of twelve in the straight section. So I'm about halfway. At this rate I'll be finishing it this week and have time to finish my Jays before the closing ceremony (which will probably be just as elaborate and fiery but I will try to refrain from giggling).

I haven't taken any photos in a few weeks so I don't have images of the superlong airy scarf I knit for my mil or the oddball fuzzyfeet I'm working on for Cody. Or progress on clapster. I'll get some today before I get any work done.

I did officially sign up for Project Spectrum yesterday and just for fun made a few buttons for it, mostly because I hadn't seen any designs with a color wheel and I thought that would be neat. Feel free to take them.

I don't mind hotlinking from my site (I have a very generous host and lots of space I even survived being boingboinged with an audio file and didn't even make a dent in my bandwidth) so if you don't have a lot of space or have trouble working with graphics you offically have my permission to hotlink these buttons. Just these buttons. And just hotlinking from my site my site mmkay? I made different sizes for each too.

Broadway Marquee Style


Painterly Colorwheels




Partdridge Family Bus



Some medication trademark image-looking design with a colorwheel

Enjoy!

So I finished the other sock this morning. Have to say I'm very proud that I got the stripes to match. Yeah I manipulated the self-striping yarn a little.

Then felted it in the washing machine for a bit. I've been wearing them over a pair of socks today so they've really molded to my feet.

A few notes: the cuffs were knit several inches taller than the pattern called for so they're definitely more like booties. They'll be perfect for spinning on cold nights. Also, I knit completely on dpns because the circs were stretching the yarn more than I was comfortable with.

This pattern is brilliant. Simply brilliant. Now I'm thinking of making some for a few people for giftmas.

*My very first night on AOL waaaay back in 1995 I was wandering around the chat rooms and on a whim went into a room called "Foot Fun". I used to draw my feet a lot because they were always there to stay still for me. Not sure what I was thinking about entering a room called "Foot Fun" but I soon found out it was a chatroom full of foot fetishists. Welcome to the internets.

We had a lot of trick or treaters last night. Well, I should say I had a lot of trick or treaters because Cody was at work. Gave away most of our candy. Mental note: do not tell cheeky nine year old boys to "just grab what they want" because they will. In my defense all the children in the years before him had been so intimidated by the possibilities that they actually did just grab a few treats. Not this kid. Someone always has to ruin the party for the others. Now I do the doling out dammit.

In other news I washed and set some yarn today.

And I'm trying to knit this hat in the October Song yarn but I'm not sure if I have enough yarn for it. We'll see.

now I have Spinal Tap's song "Sex Farm Woman" stuck in my head.

I tried knitting the sock with three strands of the lopi held together on Saturday but I think that on 10.5 needles that is for much stronger hands than mine. I think I'm going to try it again later on but on larger needles - like 13 or 15s. Or maybe single strands. Not sure.

In the meantime I dug around in my stash and found four skeins of unclaimed kureyon (yes I really suck) so I cast my hand (so to speak) at fuzzy feet on Sunday. And it went quickly. In fact I cast it on when "Girl Interrupted" came on tnt and was done with it by the end of "Unfaithful". So, two movies I'd never seen and a humongous sock. Not bad!

It took a little over a skein of kureyon. See the two blue rings on the toe? That's where I had to start using a second skein. Then when I realized I had plenty left over I picked up the stitches at the top and made it a little taller. So the two blue rings at the toe and the green and first grey ring at the top are the second skein. In between those is an entire skein. So I'd say it doesn't even use 1/4 of the second skein, even with the extra rows on the cuff.

And they're not kidding about how huge these puppies are.

So I'm turning the heel on the second one now and should be done with it tonight. I think it'll be a good "pick up put down" project with the trick or treaters.

I did my annual trimming of the bushes and sweeping of the sidewalk for the kids today. I get worried about them stumbling over the rocks from the xeriscaping or getting pricked by our scary bushes. I couldn't find the hedge trimmers though and had to use scissors. Now I have prickles in my fingers and a giant blister. Poor me. But the kids won't get hurt walking up to our door tonight so that's good.

I tried to get photos of Phunq and Kurry since it's Halloween and they're my black kitties. But black kitties are very, very hard to photograph. Especially when they keep moving around. So these are what I got.

This is Phunq (as in George Clinton). He's a sweet boy.

This is Kurry's butt.

This is Phunq and Kurry. And a copper kettle on the brick hearth. Hoo hoo witchy woman.

Kurry at a distance

Phunq again. He likes to pretend that he's a really cool lamp. He's a photogenic guy.

And Kurry being blinded by the flash.

Then the batteries ran out. So there you go. Black cats on Halloween.

Be safe tonight.