Monday Loveseat Petblogging

A very typical scene with my two most frequent knitting companions and a lovely hello yarn shawl in progress. I'd set the alarm on my computer to remind me when Adrian was updating and managed to snag the Maisy Day Pumpkin Patch kit.

We went to Wal Mart for the first time in months and months because it was the only place where I'd seen US 50 needles. Those suckers are HUGE I've already knit a really amusing scarf with them. I haven't made anything with the US 35s I picked up at the same time. I also found that pink and chocolate brown quilt in a bargain bin for eleven dollars. A bargain bin at Wal Mart. Yeah I'm feeling real classy now. It's an amusing quilt anyway.

Here are closeups of the two members of the let's follow mom around like she has veal in her pants brigade.

Oh, I watched The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy last night and Lords of Dogtown today. Meh. They were ok. I think the people who made the Guide to the Galaxy had an appreciation for different things with the Adams books than I did because they took out a lot of the good throwaway lines that are my favorite part but kept a lot of the false Zen hippiecrite stuff that annoys me about his books. Complaining about the general yuckiness of the human race is fine. But it gets awfully tedious after a while. I did like the scene where everyone on the Heart of Gold turned into knit figures and Arthur Dent barfed up yarn. That was cool.

I hate to say this but I liked Lords of Dogtown better. Nice skaterboy eyecandy although I felt like an old pervy woman the whole time. And there were a bunch of invented dramatic devices that were a little weird for anyone who knows the real story. All in all it wasn't nearly as fun to watch as the Peralta documentary.

Odd that both screenplays were written by the original guys and I didn't like them as much as I wanted to. But Ann Rice wrote the screenplay for Interview with the Vampire and it sucked hard. Mostly because of Tom Cruise.

Oh and I watched Harold and Kumar go to White Castle the other night. And liked it. I know, shame on me. I had no idea what it was about when I started watching it. I'd thought it was a weird indie flick, I probably wouldn't have watched it if I'd known what the real Dude Where's My Car type plotline was. But I usually will watch the whole movie once I've started from the beginning. And I did like it. Mostly because of Kumar's domestic fantasy scene with a large bag of pot. That's probably the funniest thing I've seen in some time. I think it reminded me of old stoner boyfriends.

Sideways is coming on in a few minutes so I'm finally getting to see that too. Lots of new (to me) movie watching. I've been actually returning the Netflix and paying attention to premieres on the premium channels.

Monday Petblogging

Winter is a very patient knitting and spinning companion. As long as there's room on the loveseat for her.

And a 15 meg video of Zola eating some wet cat food (her favorite special treat)

Monday petblogging 9-5

These are a few other videos I made of the hedgehog. They're much smaller than the other ones.

The first one is to illustrate how she stiffens her quills because she's usually so relaxed when I take her out that people don't get to see it. She gets cranky when she thinks she's in the tube but still gets touched. Believe me, they can get a lot stiffer than this but it's interesting to show how she controls how much the quills poke out by stiffening her skin.

Stiffening Quills (2.46 megs)

The other is just of her standing around sniffing at the air.

Sniff (11 megs)

Oh and here's a silly badly lit video of winter's wagging tail.

Wag Wag (4.97 megs)

Monday Petblogging - Tubey Videos!

I finally set up Zola's playground on the back porch work table so I could get a good video of her tubing. She did a lot of standing around and sniffing because there are always interesting smelling things outside and I'd painted the work table with a few coats of clear glossy deck stain last week.

But I managed to get some fun videos of Ms. Rockstar Zola and her amazing empty toilet paper tubes. The videos are big files - definitely not for dialup and barely tolerable for broadband. I cut them down as much as I could but really didn't want to diminish the cuteness. They're worth the wait though I promise.

Near Tubing (20.7 megs)

Tubey Tubey! (10.6 megs)

Isn't she the weirdest cutest thing ever?

Not enough cuteness for you? Take a look at this.

Monday petblogging. Sorta

About two years ago we had two turtles that would visit us every day on the back porch. Mostly they came to visit the overripe fruit we would put on the back porch for them to eat. At first we thought we only had one turtle but one day Cody saw two. And he put them in a cardboard box thinking I might want to keep them as pets.

When I started doing research online about what to feed them and what kind of terrarium to get I read an interesting article about how people shouldn't take the turtles from their backyard and make them into household pets, that it depletes the natural population, and I should only get turtles from the pet store who are specifically bred to be pets. So we put them back on the porch with their tiny turtle brains carrying only a faint memory of their day-long vacation in the cardboard motel.

We could still keep them as wild backyard pets like the birds and lizards. (Someday I'll get a photo of the roadrunner that eats the lizards off the back wall.)

The idea of a pocket-sized pet still appealed to us though. We really wanted another puppy but knew that with Ms. Spoiled Ridgeback US and three demanding cats it really would be more than we could handle. So we started looking into a smaller pets. One time I looked down at Winter's hedgehog stuffed chew toy and it inspried me to do a quick search about hedgehogs as pets. Lo there happened to be a hedgehog breeder right here in Albuquerque. Needless to say we were the proud owners of a baby hedgehog within two weeks.

But we would still put fruit out on the porch for the turtles and they kept coming back in the warmer weather. They did their wintering elsewhere. But last year four very large trees in our yard succumbed to disease and we had them removed. As well as a line of large juniper bushes that were well on their way to dying too.

I never saw the turtles last summer and hoped they hadn't been killed by all the yard and tree guys. But look what I saw on our back porch last friday.

It seems they (or one of them) had a baby. It's much smaller than the other two - the shell is about the size of the palm of my hand.

I sliced up a mushy nectarine and a few strawberries and took them outside. But Zippy wasn't after fruit. Zippy was after the dead black beatles from the recent exterminator visit.

Why Zippy you ask? This turtle is pretty fast! Check out the video I made. (click the still below and the movie file will pop up)

This was the first time I tried the video feature on the digital camera so please excuse the shakiness and stuff. I guess this qualifies as backyard pet blogging.

We didn't get a lot of photos during our trip to the farm in Socorro. We were too busy being hot and trying not to discuss politics and religion. I grabbed a few in the car on the way down. And this one of Winter visiting with teenincy cousin dogs is pretty damn cute too.

We call those her lamb ears.

Marquee and Petblogging Monday

Since I'm utterly out of any originality for posts I thought I'd just do theme day memes for a while.

So here goes Mikey's Marquee Monday combined with some Monday Petblogging (I totally cheated and just turned around to take this photo).

isn't she sweet?



ok I'm going to bed

Nyquil rocks my little white goathead-covered socks
oh how I love you, you giant fucking Q

Finished Object, random ten, and Petblogging Friday and a whole lot of other stuff.

This week's FO is not very impressive. Well, actually it's impressivly strange but was not much of a challenge to knit. At all. Like I practically knit this during a two hour nap. But it's just so damn funny. I love it.

This was knit from that strange novelty yarn I bought from a local spinner lady at the fiber fiesta. It has three strands: A finely spun almost threadlike strand of variegated pinkish orangish alpaca, a weird polyester ladder novelty with random tufts of very-off-white almost orange fluffs or tufts, and a very fine strand of pink sparkly polymid so it's sparkly! I made it very thin (seven stitches) and super super long, like almost twice my five feet two and a half inches.

What really gives it the personality is the fringe. I had such fun with this fringe because I didn't worry about making the strands even and balanced. In fact, I wanted it to be as shaggy and wild as possible. We've dubbed it the "Craaaaaaaazy" Scarf. And one must flail and shake the fringe about as one says "Craaaaaaazy" in a nutty voice that goes up and down an entire musical scale. Trust me it really adds to the charm.

I totally dig this scarf. Even if it could be considered the simplest silliest piece of knitting in the entire world, ever.

I was very creative with the photos today. Mostly because it was really hot and impossible to get a full shot of such a long scarf with such incredibly short arms. So I got a little slap happy in the heat. But I got some great photos! Including some amusing self-portraits.

A really cool and strange closeup of my tattoo with my reflection below.

And a shot of both our tails.

Winter wanted me to hurry up so we could go back inside. So it must've been 115 degrees.

And Melon's doing a whole lot better! Her Monday blood tests (here was a photo taken for petblogging Monday that never got posted. I've been a bit busy this week.)

had some great results. A few are still slightly elevated but that crazy Bilirubin is back to normal. So she's not on the antibiotics anymore and thankfully I don't have to do the subcutaneous fluids because as she recovered she fought harder making getting that needle in properly very nervewracking. We're also weaning her off of the steroids. I'm still watching her food intake very, very carefully. If I don't see her eat enough during the day I make her swallow a few syringes of food to make sure she gets the minimum calories. She hates this but I'm not having another scare like I did that friday afternoon week before last. I thought I was going to lose her right there. Thankfully it's very clear she's feeling a lot better. Let's hope it holds.

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The nephew loved his presents. Especially the knit hedgehog. I've heard he sleeps with it every night now. He had a wonderful birthday on Saturday. My mil asked me to bring the real hedgehog down so all the kids could see her. So I brought her little playpen and food and stuff. There were lots of questions about her (like why she kept sticking her head in an empty toilet paper tube and what she eats) and curious little hands. Zola behaved BEAUTIFULLY, as did most of the kids. I'm very proud of my little hedgehog she was extremely well-behaved and not nearly as grumpy as I was worried she would be. I mean, hedgehogs are just plain old grumps anyway but with so many curious little nervous hands I was prepared for the hedgehog tantrum of the century.

Speaking of grumps I watched American Splendor last night and thought it was hilarious. It seems I have a special affinity for grumps and find them highly amusing and adorable. The grumpier they get the more amusing I find them. So of course I thought this movie was charming as all getout. What does this say about me?

I didn't bring the camera on Saturday so I didn't get any pictures of the kids playing with her or of the 'phew and his new hedgehog friend, (who has been named Sam but apparently so has every other stuffed toy) but I've been promised they'll get a photo for me.

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So if you looked at my FO you'd think I had a lazy week. Bah. Check out the WIP I cast on Sunday and need to finish for the baby shower this Sunday afternoon.

Yeah I decided to go ahead and make something for them. Mostly because this is the first grandchild of the aunt who taught me to knit in February and I wanted to make something nice to thank her and make her proud. She hasn't knit in years and years and had to read the stitch n bitch book to remember how to do it before showing me. She still crochets a lot though.

That's the baby kimono from Interweave Knits' Spring 2005 issue. Although I think with the length it actually is more of a Hapi Coat or a Haori. It'a appropriate I'm using the amyville sushi stitch markers isn't it?

Naturally I had to mess with the pattern so I'm doing it in a stockinette stitch with garter edges rather than doing the whole thing in a garter stitch. I'm using some amusing Sirdar Baby Yarn and thought stockinette would show the little wormies better. Yeah the little rayon baubles look remarkably like little mealworms but because I have a pet insectivore I'm probably more familiar with them than the average person. I still think it's a fun and unusual yarn to use for a baby. Yarnsnobbies may wrinkle their noses at the acrylicness but moms always thank me for the easy washability. Yeah, it's acrylic but feels pretty cottony.

It's a fairly easy knit. Probably would've been easier if I'd done the whole thing in garter but whatever. I finished the right front including the right front sleeve on Wednesday and I'm almost finished with the back and the backs of the sleeves. Then I'll only have the left front and sleeves, do a three needle bind-off for the shoulders, seam the bottom of the sleeves and make a little button flap for the front. I have a huge wooden button for closure rather than a ribbon. I think it'll make it more Japanese and a bit more gender-neutral.

They think it's a boy but I wanted to make it neutral just in case. I also picked up some organic cotton baby clothes and socks. The only gender-specific item I bought for the shower were those peepee teepees suggested by Daysleeper Chickie from the Gaiman boards. Those were BRILLIANT! I can't wait for the aunts to see those little things! Many many thanks daysleeper!

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My parents are flying into town Monday afternoon so there's been much panic-induced cleaning going on. It still looks like I haven't done a damn thing and the yard..well, the yard's a lost cause at the moment. But Cody's off this weekend so we should get some serious work done in the house anyway. I'm finding that a fully-loaded (all supplements) Keva Juice Smoothie with a mocha frappucino affigato chaser gets me good and hyped up for cleaning.

Knit. Clean. Fold Laundry. I am the woman in the dunes of unmatched socks.

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Just to make this the most convoluted post ever I thought I'd throw in a random ten.

Guster - Amsterdam
Weird Al - Gump
Velvet Underground - That's the Story of My Life
Nick Drake - Poor Boy
The Cure - The 13th
P.O.D. - Bullet the Blue Sky
ABC - How to be a Millionaire
Petula Clark - Happy Heart
Guns N Roses - It's So Easy
Wire - I 2 X U

Dogblogging, etc.

So CheekyProf was writing about doing some Monday dogblogging this summer. I'm planning to make it more of a general petblogging thing but thought I'd post a few puppy photos of Winter to get things started. So here she is in her black and white adorableness.

three weeks old on 9-14-2001



three weeks old in Cody's lap



approx nine weeks old, just brought home



around eleven weeks old. growing fast



six months old

I've probably posted them before but they got lost during the great photo journal fileloss mystery.

In other news I went to the Dropped Stitch Knitter's Guild meeting today. I'd met a few members at the Fiber Fiesta and went ahead and joined when I found out they meet just down the mesa from my house. It was a fun group of very nice women who really know what they're doing with this knitting stuff but were very encouraging in their praise of my work so far. I'm the youngest in the group by at least ten years but that didn't matter at all it was all about the knitting. I'm sure they'll be very sweet when I bring in my little punk knitter projects, they LOVED my felted lopi tote bag. I did make the mistake of mentioning that I used to design websites so I've been volunteered as the new webmistress. It's ok it keeps me off the streets right? The great part is they meet Wednesday nights so now I'll get to hit them on the weeks I can't go to the Tuesday knit night group!

In non-dog, non-knitting news I wanted to pimp two sites I enjoyed today...

-this has got to be the most personally apt review I've read of Mr. Lucas' latest. Particularly the parts about Padme looking like she's just slightly bloated rather than pregnant with twins and the complete lack of strange cravings or the ever-present morning sickness. I wonder if Get up Grrl has seen it (wish she'd publish an rss feed dammit).

-ok this is sort of dog-related but I've really been enjoying hatamaran's paintings. No, they're not "high art" but they are adorable, expressive, and she's clearly having a good time making them. Which is just as (if not more) important as backing your shit up with all kinds of high-minded art theory. Believe me, this I know.