Monday, May 18, 2009
Slipping In Under The Wire
Ack! I almost forgot to post on this, one of the most important days of the year.
I refer, of course, to Freddie Mercury Day.
(Yes, I know that some people are celebrating Victoria Day, but honey, you celebrate your dead queen and I'll celebrate mine, k?)
Mr. Mercury brought us joy, showmanship, and one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. The world is richer for his having joined us, albeit for far too short a time.
And so, Farrokh, I salute you. You did indeed rock us.
Rest in peace, dear.
I refer, of course, to Freddie Mercury Day.
(Yes, I know that some people are celebrating Victoria Day, but honey, you celebrate your dead queen and I'll celebrate mine, k?)
Mr. Mercury brought us joy, showmanship, and one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. The world is richer for his having joined us, albeit for far too short a time.
And so, Farrokh, I salute you. You did indeed rock us.
Rest in peace, dear.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Oh. Em. Gee.
Gah!
I thought I hadn't blogged for about two weeks and just suddenly noticed that as of tomorrow it'll have been a month.
I believe it was Lee Ann's husband who said that if you don't post for a month, your blog is officially over. Or maybe it was for two months.
Clealy*, sir, I am sneaking this one in just under the wire.
Anyhow, it's been a long and involved month (the same can be said of the last year, really) however reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated (and perhaps celebrated a little too gleefully by some. Names have been taken.)
There are many reasons for my prolonged absence (and erratic posts) but I'm sure most of you don't come here for excuses and whining (although there has been a plethora of both over the past, difficult, year), therefore we shall dispense with all of that and just move on to more pressing issue of what I've been up to over the past, like, three or four months since I've actually written a "real" post.
Things I Have Learned
a) "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Hotel for Dogs" are NOT the same movie. If you get them mixed up and express shock at the latter winning the awards given to the former, you will be laughed at and perhaps taunted.
b) when knitting anything but warshcloths, gauge actually does matter and if you ignore it you will end up with some very nasty objects, none of which you should preserve for posterity. (hint: you should not be able to fit both feet into one sock)
c) fibre people are amazing (no, not Euell Gibbons and others of that ilk who run about eating bark mulch, I mean you, the knitters and spinners and occasionally even the crocheters) and should one start to fall on one's ass, there will inevitably be someone there to pick one up. And then to kick one in that self-same ass should it be so required.
Things I Have Knat
a) Warshcloths. Fourteen of them I believe.
ii) A scarf for my boyfriend-in-law.** It's a gorgeous blue alpaca/silk and I have a picture of it somewhere but I'm posting this from work so y'all are going to have to wait. It was supposed to be for Christmas but I think he got it half-way through January.
#) Seven or eight mitered squares for a blanket for myself. I don't believe I'll ever finish this but one can dream.
ping!) most of a sock for my daughter. This will eventually reside with the one sock I finished for myself, the sock and a half I've done for Sandra, the sock cuff I've done for my brother and the one and a half Seabury socks that I did for my mother. Either that or I'll just suck it up and maybe finish some socks. I should probably learn how as I'm soon going to be hanging out with a lot of people who know how to make socks (this is the literary device known as foreshadowing)
Everyday Things Other People Can Manage But Which Defeat Me Quite Often
7) Pajamas. I have lost my pajamas, completely and utterly, at least twice within this past month. If I didn't know for sure that several people had actually SEEN me in pajamas I might suspect that they were sort of like The Emperor's New Clothes and I didn't actually own any after all.
If in fact I don't own any and have been running about Seattle naked, would you be kind enough to let me know? I always prefer to be cognizant of whether I'm being laughed at or with.
(Actually it might be a bit of a relief if those bright pink fleece pajamas with the red and white reindeer all over them were imaginary, but I digress.)
42) Stairs. How on earth can y'all manage to go up and down stairs without incident on a more-or-less daily basis? You may recall a winter or two back when I bounced down the front stairs of the house, leaving a bruise in the shape of Japan on my ass. Well, I decided to celebrate Easter by bouncing down the stairs outside the kitchen door. Unfortunately there were no bloggable bruises, but as there are four entryways to my home, rest assured that there will be many more opportunities for a rousing game of "name that country" in the near future.
Places I Have Gone
Because of a "get into every place neat for free" pass thingie from Mr. Assmuppet's work, we have been to visit The Vancouver Police Museum, The UBC Museum of Anthropology, The Nitobe Memorial Garden and The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, all of which were way cool. Mr. A and Her Surreal Highness have gone to a pile of other places but I've been working a lot of shifts (just finishing a run of 12 graveyards and I have another 9 days and 38 nights scheduled between now and September 12) so I haven't really been paying a lot of attention to anything.
When Joy comes to stay with me for a few days in June, perchance we shall have a chance to visit a few more places.
(I know! Joy! In my house! I could squee if I hadn't been working on repairing my spinning wheel with glue and pliers and wrenches yesterday and was feeling far too butch to do anything of the sort.)
The Pending Vending
It would seem that amidst my madness I've managed to do at least a little business and I shall be vending both at the Victoria Fibre Fest in June and at the Sock Summit in August (see back to that foreshadowy thingie a couple of paragraphs up).
The latter will be in conjunction with my partner in crime, Barb, from Wild Geese Fibres in Alberta. I've been working on a couple of exciting projects with a few folks -- more details as soon as they're available (or maybe you'll just have to show up and find out what's going on); I'll be vending some gorgeous little fibre art magnets made by the clever hands of my very good friend wenchlette and some moth-repellent sachets made by my friend Lavender who has a store here, but who seems to be temporarily closed. (I will update this link if she reopens in another location).
Speaking of stores, mine's been offline for many moons now due to a number of issues -- time, money, insanity and the difficulty of manipulating the piece-of-crap software I was using (the software was free -- one gets what one pays for, as always). I've decided to abandon the fibrestudio.net website (yes, I know, one can't abandon what one has neither owned nor maintained for many months - shut up) and go the Etsy route until I get my life a little more organized. I've had an Etsy thingie here for a while but I've never used it. Look for updates happening soon.
Um, and I think that's it. I hope that's it because likely half of you have fallen asleep by now.
I'll just go back to doing some paperwork here and maybe make another cup of coffee, seeing it doesn't seem that I'm going to be able to sleep again any time before November.
Carry on.
*not a typo, just a stupid joke known by like three people who read this blog so it was rude of me to include it but it amuses my tiny mind and it is still my blog so I'm leaving it. So there. Call the Ministry if you are so inclined.
**my brother's boyfriend. I didn't know what else to call him, so that works for me.
